Acceso usuarios
Reece Burns, Jack Lampkin
In 1968, humanity marked the beginning of the Earthrise era, capturing – for the first time – the pictorial sight of our planet in its cosmic position. The result enabled a newfound immense depth to the discourse of globalisation, and, more centrally, the practical and extraordinary power of the world-image. The concept of the world-picture, which is the equivalent of the German phrase Weltbild as developed by Hans Blumenberg, Martin Heidegger, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Martin Buber, is concerned with the world as a system of representation that is infused with the practical power of pictorial realities and the connection to a complex nexus of existential significance. This article illustrates an extension to this concept by utilising Blumenberg’s field of Astronoetics, which examines the theoretical intricate balance between centrifugal curiosity and centripetal care and its implications for terrestrial human welfare and extraterrestrial voyages. This article also examines how astronoetics can inform and enrich the recently formed subdiscipline of Astro-Green Criminology, which investigates the criminal and harmfulness of human agency towards outer space. The article concludes by arguing the value of reigniting the astronoetic tradition as a catalyst for change and a conceptual tool to confront illegal and harmful outer-space activities. The article finalises by inviting green criminologists to embrace astronoetics as an innovative, creative, and insightful approach that disentangles the complexities of our phenomenological meaning of outer-space – the fundamental source from which the multitude of cosmic transgressions originate.
