Posted Date: November 8, 2021

Episode Description: In this episode, LAC member Merve Tabur interviews Penn State professor Mark Sentesy. Sentesy introduces his research in philosophical anthropology and the Anthropocene and discusses how ancient views on human relationship to nature compare to our modern-day conceptions. Underscoring the significance of a philosophical understanding of environmental justice concerns today, Sentesy also shares his pedagogical approaches to teaching climate ethics.

Guest Biography

Mark Sentesy works on conceptions of nature in philosophy, science, technology, and culture to address the problem of how human beings fit in the natural world. This means his research ranges from the ecology of the Epic of Gilgamesh, to the relationship between conceptions of community and nature in the Early Greek thinkers, to the origins of physics in ancient Greece, to energy and justice issues in climate ethics.

Mark co-wrote Penn State’s Ethics of Climate Change interdomain course, now taught on four campuses, and soon World Campus as well. He is a founder of the Climate Crossover, an initiative to make climate a class in every discipline across the University. He formerly led the Energy Policy team for 350MA. He is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State, and his book Aristotle’s Ontology of Change was published in April.

Project Abstract

Creating a sustainable, just world is the most important challenge that human beings face this century. This amounts to nothing less than a complete re-negotiation of the relationship between civilization and nature, and it has both infrastructural and conceptual components that are insufficiently understood.

My research concentrates on ancient and modern concepts of nature and philosophical anthropology, in an effort to discover how we have dis-integrated ourselves from the living world, and how we can re-integrate ourselves to become a human resource for the natural world.

My sustainability-related teaching includes courses on environmental philosophy, philosophy of technology, and ancient concepts of nature. I co-created the university’s interdomain Climate Ethics course, which is now being taught at four Penn State campuses, and is being developed as an online course.

I also co-founded Awaken State, a multi-generational collaboration devoted to helping our university bring about the climate transition. I’m also leading the group’s Climate Crossover initiative, which helped bring climate issues into classes across the University. In the spring, 2000 students were in classes participating in the Climate Crossover, and this academic year we will reach 3000 students (and counting). Before coming to Penn State, I created and led 350MA’s Policy Team, which concentrated on energy policy.

Recommended Resources

Connect on Social Media

• @msentesy on Twitter