Creaturely Freedom and the Great Wheel of Being

Dionysius depicts the divine Logos as the center of a circle, the many logoi of creation its radii.  This image offers resources for resisting the axiological hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being with which it is often wrongly equated. Organizational hierarchies are not value hierarchies: complex organisms are “higher” only in the sense that their possibility is predicated on the existence of simpler forms of organization. A multispecies analysis of freedom offers a fruitful context of application. The possibility of complex forms of freedom is predicated on the prior existence of simpler forms of freedom; the emergence of the former arrives together with heightened modes of interdependence and vulnerability.  Unpacking this dialectic of freedom and dependency, which this paper undertakes in conversation with Helmut Plessner, Hans Jonas, and Peter Godfrey-Smith, can correct human exceptionalism without obscuring the distinctive forms of freedom and agency that are possible for language-using animals.