Vital Materialism and Historical Materialism Encounter Panpsychism

Here is a link to my recently completed Master's thesis on social theory and panpsychism. It explored the relations between Jane Bennett's vital materialism, Marxism and panpsychism in the context of contemporary ecological crises. Below is the abstract:

The ways in which social theorists conceptualise the material world influences their approach to conceiving and addressing the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene. Vital materialism and historical materialism offer promise in confronting these challenges, but are both limited by how they account for the relation between matter and human consciousness. Because of this, they have difficulties in effectively analysing the relationship between humans and the nonhuman world in the context of the Anthropocene. Hence, vital materialism tends to diminish human value and responsibility, whilst historical materialism tends to devalue and instrumentalise nature. This thesis employs panpsychist theory, which holds that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the natural world, as a point of contrast to vital materialism and historical materialism, and as a basis for reconfiguring and extending these theories. It investigates how panpsychist premises can improve the way these fields relate to the Anthropocene and to each other. A key feature of this investigation concerns intrinsic value in nature, and the argument that intrinsic value is dependent on consciousness. The thesis aims to make a theoretical contribution to enhancing how the relations between humans, consciousness, nature and the environment are characterised.