Chad Augustine Córdova, "Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network – French Studies Channel
Host: Gina Stam
Guest: Chad Augustine Córdova, Assistant Professor, Cornell University
Book Discussed: Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France (Northwestern UP, 2025)
Date: December 6, 2025

This episode features a deep-dive interview with Chad Augustine Córdova about his 2025 monograph, which reimagines posthumanism by shifting attention to early modern France and proposing the concept of "anarchic ontology." The discussion explores the metaphysical, ecological, political, and aesthetic stakes of posthumanist thinking, rooting them in both premodern and contemporary philosophical traditions. The conversation covers Córdova’s methodology, key philosophical figures, and specific case studies from Montaigne to Diderot to Rousseau, ultimately arguing for more relational and open modes of thinking about earthly life.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is "Anarchic Ontology" and Its Relation to Posthumanism?

[02:22–06:55]

Definition and Framework:
Córdova distinguishes his approach by arguing that posthumanism is not just about expanding subject matter (like plants or ecology) but demands “rethinking what we understand Being to be and Being in time” – a metaphysical task.
Three Routes into the “Anarchic”:
- Deconstructive/Heideggerian Tradition: Post-Heideggerian attempts to think beyond the teleocratic (goal-driven), principle-structured nature of Western metaphysics (e.g., Schürmann, Levinas, Derrida).
- Ecological Thinking: Relationality and symbiosis (Haraway) over individual forms; life “happens without a structuring ground or a structuring aim.”
- Political Valence: Anarchic thought as an “alternative or an other to a dominant Western tradition of thinking... equating the political with sovereignty or a structure of power.”
Temporal Dimension:
The “premodern” aspect—locating posthumanist resources in antiquity and early modernity, thus challenging the periodization that confines posthumanist thinking to the contemporary.

“Anarchic ontology is a kind of inherently relational way that beings come together, that life happens without a structuring ground or aim.”
—Chad Córdova [04:58]

2. Project Origin, Corpus, and Methodology

[06:55–12:14]

Personal and Scholarly Trajectory:
Córdova’s work grew from interests in the resonances ("connections and correspondences across time periods, across genres") and in how anti-humanism is not a postwar novelty but has deeper roots.
Negotiating Anachronism:
The book seeks to bridge the gap between early modern scholars (concerned with anachronism) and more theoretically oriented ones (who may neglect early modern texts).
Corpus Development:
Figures like Montaigne, Rousseau, Da Vinci, Kant—all used to “open up the Kantian concept of the aesthetic in different directions,” linking aesthetics and ecology.

“I kind of had my own little mini, I guess, Eco turn... if there's this kind of dialectic that hues humanism and anti humanism together, what is beyond that?”
—Chad Córdova [07:53]

3. The Rehabilitation of Aesthetics in Ecological Thinking

[12:14–17:06]

Aesthetics’ Marginalization and Critique:
Dominant ecological thought sidelines aesthetics for its complicity with modern anthropocentrism (Heidegger, Adorno, Morton).
Rereading Kant:
While Kant’s “analytic of the sublime” has received attention, Córdova shifts focus to Kant’s “analytic of the beautiful,” arguing it “articulates something like a relational mode of being… not determined by ends… exceeding the human as subject and the nonhuman as object.”
Aesthetics as Proto-Ecological:
Kant’s notion that "the beautiful prepares us to love nature" is recuperated as a way to think posthumanist, ecological relationality.

“The beautiful is really where we could find some very interesting ways of kind of showing how Kant's aesthetics already kind of goes beyond the modern metaphysical paradigm that he helps to so influentially kind of instate.”
—Chad Córdova [14:30]

4. Situating the Book: Heidegger, Aristotle, Kant

[17:06–20:15]

Historiographical “Holy Trinity”:
Aristotle (culmination of ancient metaphysics), Kant (beginning of the modern), Heidegger (mapping their historical unfolding and deconstruction).
Rereadings across Time:
Application of Heidegger’s method of turning to older texts for possibilities not explicitly at the surface, e.g., “being without why,” “letting be (Gelassenheit).”

“Rereading them can help us kind of also disrupt that history and see how it’s already… undoing itself or going beyond itself.”
—Chad Córdova [19:48]

5. Montaigne’s Essays as “Vegetal Being”

[22:26–26:49]

Vegetal Ontology:
From Aristotle, plants’ problematic status—spontaneous, profuse, not strictly teleological or sexual-reproductive, open to “relational or assemblage-like structure.”
Essays’ Form:
Montaigne’s essays do not compel a reader to a single conclusion, but instead “show you thinking in interrelations.” Their unfinished, constantly revised nature mirrors the profusive, anarchic vitality of plants.
Reader-Text Relationship:
The processual, generative nature of the essay draws the reader into a nonhierarchical, relational rapport; form as posthumanist thought.

“There's something profusive or vegetal, a kind of generous in this sense about this thinking, that places the reader... in this relational or anarchic rapport with the text.”
—Chad Córdova [26:07]

6. From Self-Portrait to Sketching: Rethinking Artistic Process

[26:49–32:01]

Challenging the Humanist Reading:
Montaigne’s claim, “c' est moi que Japan”—“it’s myself that I am painting”—becomes a trap if read only as modern subjectivity.
Barbaric Sketch (Da Vinci):
Córdova draws analogy to Da Vinci’s “componimento inculto” (“barbaric sketch”)—a practice of experimentation not subordinate to finished product, paralleling Montaigne’s essays.
Art and Thought as Dynamic Process:
The essay and sketch are not lesser forms, but potentialities and dynamic processes, revealing concealed possibilities in supposedly ‘fixed’ works.

“Drawing as thinking, and vice versa... sketching or drawing represents this kind of obfuscated potentiality within even the most, say, Cartesian style treatise.”
—Chad Córdova [30:24]

7. Anarchic Phusis: Nature Without Principle

[32:01–37:59]

Concept Elaboration:
“Phusis” (Greek, often translated "nature") is reactivated to mean not essence or form, but emergence, appearance, “to pop up/to come forth” without ground (arche) or end.
Spontaneous Generation (Aristotle):
Where sexual reproduction is ordered, spontaneous generation in Aristotle involves “contingent processes and entanglements of matter”—a more relational, “queer” emergence.
Political Implications:
Seeing nature as anarchic phusis allows a new politics, not based on hierarchy or sovereignty, but on emergent “anarchic coming together.”

“Anarchic fuse is something that exceeds… or a process or a way of being that exceeds these... Ways of kind of metaphysical capture.”
—Chad Córdova [34:09]

8. Nietzsche, the French Moralistes, and Erotic Aesthetics

[39:15–43:12]

Nietzsche vs. Kant on Beauty:
Nietzsche chides Kant’s “disinterest” as limiting, holding up Stendhal’s “the beautiful is a promise of happiness” against it.
Beyond Both Kant and Nietzsche:
Córdova uses the French moralistes (Montaigne, Pascal, Stendhal) to show a tradition where the beautiful is bound up with love, eros, and events outstripping intentionality—but without reducing it to mere psychological desire.
Aesthetics, Eros, Soteriology:
Argues for an account of the beautiful (and of interest) not captured by, but exceeding, the psychological subject.

“The beautiful, or in proximity to the erotic... is hardly reducible to the psychological subject.”
—Chad Córdova [41:48]

9. The Natural Historical Sublime: Diderot and the Limits of Representation

[43:12–48:27]

Natural History and the Sublime:
Diderot’s view, informed by 18th-century science, sees nature as endless change and transformation—not subsumable into anthropocentric histories or the Kantian “sublime,” which recoups human superiority even when nature overwhelms us.
Landscape as Problematization:
Diderot values landscape paintings (especially Vernet) that “put into question the very representability of nature as such.”

“Diderot’s... natural historical sensibility allows him to find interesting in landscapes, gestures towards this natural historical time or power that ultimately kind of exceed representation.”
—Chad Córdova [47:30]

10. Walking, Promenade, and Errant Thought: Rousseau and Kant

[48:27–51:01]

Walking as Aesthetic/Anarchic Activity:
Rousseau’s late works (Reveries) make “wandering” a method of thought—movement without telos or predetermined aim, in contrast to Aristotle and Kant’s teleological mobility.
Anarchic Thought in Movement:
Promenade as errant, open-ended thinking; a metaphor for a posthumanist, non-hierarchical mode of being.

“A wandering form or an errant form of thought, I see as breaking with and repositing... a notion of mobility... that is kind of beyond this Western tradition of metaphysics.”
—Chad Córdova [50:06]

11. Coda: Mycorrhizal Thinking—Plants, Fungi, and Entangled Life

[51:01–54:03]

From Plant-Thinking to Fungal Relationality:
Contemporary “vegetal thinking” (Michael Marder) is enriched by recognizing plant-fungi entanglement (mycorrhizae)—a model for understanding life as ceaselessly relational.
Entanglement, Not Centering:
Fungus-plant mutualism suggests a thinking based on “entanglement… proliferating margins… without necessarily trying to re center any one specific thing.”

“Mycorrhizal thinking... is where kind of ecological thought has... taken us to a certain extent... thinking that essentially is based on entanglement.”
—Chad Córdova [53:32]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Aesthetics and Ecology:
“The beautiful prepares us to love nature in some way. And so I take very seriously the way in which the beautiful is already articulating something that we might call proto ecological and a mode of responding or relating to the non human being...”
—Chad Córdova [15:36]
On Montaigne’s Essays and the Humanist Trap:
“The chapter is kind of responding to this by... trying to show how that paradigm, which is an ontology of selfhood... misses or obscures at least this other Montaigne or other kind of art making, other thinking that's going on in the essays that is far more provocative and cannot neatly be put into that narrative of modernity... but is something even inhuman to a certain extent...”
—Chad Córdova [28:19]
On Political Implications:
“What would it mean to think differently about politics in terms of this kind of anarchic coming together that we see already at play in the notion of spontaneity?”
—Chad Córdova [37:25]
On the Future of Ecological Thought:
“This brings us back up to the contemporary.”
—Chad Córdova [54:01]

Timestamps for Key Segments

[02:22] — What is anarchic ontology?
[06:55] — Project origins: methodology and corpus
[12:14] — Aesthetics’ role in posthumanist/eco thought
[17:06] — Intellectual framing: Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger
[22:26] — Montaigne’s essays and vegetal being
[26:49] — Artistic process: Montaigne, Da Vinci, drawing
[32:01] — Anarchic phusis; political and metaphysical stakes
[39:15] — Nietzsche, French moralistes, and the aesthetic erotic
[43:12] — Natural historical sublime: Diderot, landscape painting
[48:27] — Walking/thought: Rousseau’s promenade vs. Kant
[51:01] — Coda: Fungal/plant relationality and mycorrhizal thinking
[54:09] — Upcoming projects: Montaigne, posthumanist ethics

New Projects Announcement

[54:09–56:26]

Short Book on Anarchic Phusis:
Córdova is writing a concise work elaborating “anarchic phusis” as a crucial concept for thinking about nature in the climate change era.
Monograph on Montaigne and Post-Humanist Ethics:
Tentatively titled Grotesque Life, focusing on how the essay form disrupts dichotomies in contemporary human-animal ethics by proposing a “groundless responsibility... already extended beyond the normal human form.”

"It is an attempt to return us to this strange and very promising form of thinking called the essay... to disrupt, but also intervene in a lot of... post humanist thought today."
—Chad Córdova [55:35]

Summary Flow

The episode thoroughly unpacks Córdova’s Toward a Premodern Posthumanism. It begins with foundational theory—why “anarchic ontology” is the engine of a more deeply ecological posthumanism—before working through illustrative cases (Montaigne’s essays, Da Vinci’s sketching, Rousseau’s walking, Diderot’s landscape aesthetics). Core to all is a commitment to relationality, emergence, and a continual de-centering of the human—not just as a critical stance, but as a positive, generative ontology rooted in premodern legacies and contemporary relevance. The conversation ends with Córdova’s upcoming work, aiming to further develop these themes both philosophically and through concrete case studies.

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is "Anarchic Ontology" and Its Relation to Posthumanism?

[02:22–06:55]

Definition and Framework:
Córdova distinguishes his approach by arguing that posthumanism is not just about expanding subject matter (like plants or ecology) but demands “rethinking what we understand Being to be and Being in time” – a metaphysical task.
Three Routes into the “Anarchic”:
- Deconstructive/Heideggerian Tradition: Post-Heideggerian attempts to think beyond the teleocratic (goal-driven), principle-structured nature of Western metaphysics (e.g., Schürmann, Levinas, Derrida).
- Ecological Thinking: Relationality and symbiosis (Haraway) over individual forms; life “happens without a structuring ground or a structuring aim.”
- Political Valence: Anarchic thought as an “alternative or an other to a dominant Western tradition of thinking... equating the political with sovereignty or a structure of power.”
Temporal Dimension:
The “premodern” aspect—locating posthumanist resources in antiquity and early modernity, thus challenging the periodization that confines posthumanist thinking to the contemporary.

“Anarchic ontology is a kind of inherently relational way that beings come together, that life happens without a structuring ground or aim.”
—Chad Córdova [04:58]

2. Project Origin, Corpus, and Methodology

[06:55–12:14]

Personal and Scholarly Trajectory:
Córdova’s work grew from interests in the resonances ("connections and correspondences across time periods, across genres") and in how anti-humanism is not a postwar novelty but has deeper roots.
Negotiating Anachronism:
The book seeks to bridge the gap between early modern scholars (concerned with anachronism) and more theoretically oriented ones (who may neglect early modern texts).
Corpus Development:
Figures like Montaigne, Rousseau, Da Vinci, Kant—all used to “open up the Kantian concept of the aesthetic in different directions,” linking aesthetics and ecology.

“I kind of had my own little mini, I guess, Eco turn... if there's this kind of dialectic that hues humanism and anti humanism together, what is beyond that?”
—Chad Córdova [07:53]

3. The Rehabilitation of Aesthetics in Ecological Thinking

[12:14–17:06]

Aesthetics’ Marginalization and Critique:
Dominant ecological thought sidelines aesthetics for its complicity with modern anthropocentrism (Heidegger, Adorno, Morton).
Rereading Kant:
While Kant’s “analytic of the sublime” has received attention, Córdova shifts focus to Kant’s “analytic of the beautiful,” arguing it “articulates something like a relational mode of being… not determined by ends… exceeding the human as subject and the nonhuman as object.”
Aesthetics as Proto-Ecological:
Kant’s notion that "the beautiful prepares us to love nature" is recuperated as a way to think posthumanist, ecological relationality.

“The beautiful is really where we could find some very interesting ways of kind of showing how Kant's aesthetics already kind of goes beyond the modern metaphysical paradigm that he helps to so influentially kind of instate.”
—Chad Córdova [14:30]

4. Situating the Book: Heidegger, Aristotle, Kant

[17:06–20:15]

Historiographical “Holy Trinity”:
Aristotle (culmination of ancient metaphysics), Kant (beginning of the modern), Heidegger (mapping their historical unfolding and deconstruction).
Rereadings across Time:
Application of Heidegger’s method of turning to older texts for possibilities not explicitly at the surface, e.g., “being without why,” “letting be (Gelassenheit).”

“Rereading them can help us kind of also disrupt that history and see how it’s already… undoing itself or going beyond itself.”
—Chad Córdova [19:48]

5. Montaigne’s Essays as “Vegetal Being”

[22:26–26:49]

Vegetal Ontology:
From Aristotle, plants’ problematic status—spontaneous, profuse, not strictly teleological or sexual-reproductive, open to “relational or assemblage-like structure.”
Essays’ Form:
Montaigne’s essays do not compel a reader to a single conclusion, but instead “show you thinking in interrelations.” Their unfinished, constantly revised nature mirrors the profusive, anarchic vitality of plants.
Reader-Text Relationship:
The processual, generative nature of the essay draws the reader into a nonhierarchical, relational rapport; form as posthumanist thought.

“There's something profusive or vegetal, a kind of generous in this sense about this thinking, that places the reader... in this relational or anarchic rapport with the text.”
—Chad Córdova [26:07]

6. From Self-Portrait to Sketching: Rethinking Artistic Process

[26:49–32:01]

Challenging the Humanist Reading:
Montaigne’s claim, “c' est moi que Japan”—“it’s myself that I am painting”—becomes a trap if read only as modern subjectivity.
Barbaric Sketch (Da Vinci):
Córdova draws analogy to Da Vinci’s “componimento inculto” (“barbaric sketch”)—a practice of experimentation not subordinate to finished product, paralleling Montaigne’s essays.
Art and Thought as Dynamic Process:
The essay and sketch are not lesser forms, but potentialities and dynamic processes, revealing concealed possibilities in supposedly ‘fixed’ works.

“Drawing as thinking, and vice versa... sketching or drawing represents this kind of obfuscated potentiality within even the most, say, Cartesian style treatise.”
—Chad Córdova [30:24]

7. Anarchic Phusis: Nature Without Principle

[32:01–37:59]

Concept Elaboration:
“Phusis” (Greek, often translated "nature") is reactivated to mean not essence or form, but emergence, appearance, “to pop up/to come forth” without ground (arche) or end.
Spontaneous Generation (Aristotle):
Where sexual reproduction is ordered, spontaneous generation in Aristotle involves “contingent processes and entanglements of matter”—a more relational, “queer” emergence.
Political Implications:
Seeing nature as anarchic phusis allows a new politics, not based on hierarchy or sovereignty, but on emergent “anarchic coming together.”

“Anarchic fuse is something that exceeds… or a process or a way of being that exceeds these... Ways of kind of metaphysical capture.”
—Chad Córdova [34:09]

8. Nietzsche, the French Moralistes, and Erotic Aesthetics

[39:15–43:12]

Nietzsche vs. Kant on Beauty:
Nietzsche chides Kant’s “disinterest” as limiting, holding up Stendhal’s “the beautiful is a promise of happiness” against it.
Beyond Both Kant and Nietzsche:
Córdova uses the French moralistes (Montaigne, Pascal, Stendhal) to show a tradition where the beautiful is bound up with love, eros, and events outstripping intentionality—but without reducing it to mere psychological desire.
Aesthetics, Eros, Soteriology:
Argues for an account of the beautiful (and of interest) not captured by, but exceeding, the psychological subject.

“The beautiful, or in proximity to the erotic... is hardly reducible to the psychological subject.”
—Chad Córdova [41:48]

9. The Natural Historical Sublime: Diderot and the Limits of Representation

[43:12–48:27]

Natural History and the Sublime:
Diderot’s view, informed by 18th-century science, sees nature as endless change and transformation—not subsumable into anthropocentric histories or the Kantian “sublime,” which recoups human superiority even when nature overwhelms us.
Landscape as Problematization:
Diderot values landscape paintings (especially Vernet) that “put into question the very representability of nature as such.”

“Diderot’s... natural historical sensibility allows him to find interesting in landscapes, gestures towards this natural historical time or power that ultimately kind of exceed representation.”
—Chad Córdova [47:30]

10. Walking, Promenade, and Errant Thought: Rousseau and Kant

[48:27–51:01]

Walking as Aesthetic/Anarchic Activity:
Rousseau’s late works (Reveries) make “wandering” a method of thought—movement without telos or predetermined aim, in contrast to Aristotle and Kant’s teleological mobility.
Anarchic Thought in Movement:
Promenade as errant, open-ended thinking; a metaphor for a posthumanist, non-hierarchical mode of being.

“A wandering form or an errant form of thought, I see as breaking with and repositing... a notion of mobility... that is kind of beyond this Western tradition of metaphysics.”
—Chad Córdova [50:06]

11. Coda: Mycorrhizal Thinking—Plants, Fungi, and Entangled Life

[51:01–54:03]

From Plant-Thinking to Fungal Relationality:
Contemporary “vegetal thinking” (Michael Marder) is enriched by recognizing plant-fungi entanglement (mycorrhizae)—a model for understanding life as ceaselessly relational.
Entanglement, Not Centering:
Fungus-plant mutualism suggests a thinking based on “entanglement… proliferating margins… without necessarily trying to re center any one specific thing.”

“Mycorrhizal thinking... is where kind of ecological thought has... taken us to a certain extent... thinking that essentially is based on entanglement.”
—Chad Córdova [53:32]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Aesthetics and Ecology:
“The beautiful prepares us to love nature in some way. And so I take very seriously the way in which the beautiful is already articulating something that we might call proto ecological and a mode of responding or relating to the non human being...”
—Chad Córdova [15:36]
On Montaigne’s Essays and the Humanist Trap:
“The chapter is kind of responding to this by... trying to show how that paradigm, which is an ontology of selfhood... misses or obscures at least this other Montaigne or other kind of art making, other thinking that's going on in the essays that is far more provocative and cannot neatly be put into that narrative of modernity... but is something even inhuman to a certain extent...”
—Chad Córdova [28:19]
On Political Implications:
“What would it mean to think differently about politics in terms of this kind of anarchic coming together that we see already at play in the notion of spontaneity?”
—Chad Córdova [37:25]
On the Future of Ecological Thought:
“This brings us back up to the contemporary.”
—Chad Córdova [54:01]

Timestamps for Key Segments

[02:22] — What is anarchic ontology?
[06:55] — Project origins: methodology and corpus
[12:14] — Aesthetics’ role in posthumanist/eco thought
[17:06] — Intellectual framing: Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger
[22:26] — Montaigne’s essays and vegetal being
[26:49] — Artistic process: Montaigne, Da Vinci, drawing
[32:01] — Anarchic phusis; political and metaphysical stakes
[39:15] — Nietzsche, French moralistes, and the aesthetic erotic
[43:12] — Natural historical sublime: Diderot, landscape painting
[48:27] — Walking/thought: Rousseau’s promenade vs. Kant
[51:01] — Coda: Fungal/plant relationality and mycorrhizal thinking
[54:09] — Upcoming projects: Montaigne, posthumanist ethics

New Projects Announcement

[54:09–56:26]

Short Book on Anarchic Phusis:
Córdova is writing a concise work elaborating “anarchic phusis” as a crucial concept for thinking about nature in the climate change era.
Monograph on Montaigne and Post-Humanist Ethics:
Tentatively titled Grotesque Life, focusing on how the essay form disrupts dichotomies in contemporary human-animal ethics by proposing a “groundless responsibility... already extended beyond the normal human form.”

"It is an attempt to return us to this strange and very promising form of thinking called the essay... to disrupt, but also intervene in a lot of... post humanist thought today."
—Chad Córdova [55:35]

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Summary

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is "Anarchic Ontology" and Its Relation to Posthumanism?

2. Project Origin, Corpus, and Methodology

3. The Rehabilitation of Aesthetics in Ecological Thinking

4. Situating the Book: Heidegger, Aristotle, Kant

5. Montaigne’s Essays as “Vegetal Being”

6. From Self-Portrait to Sketching: Rethinking Artistic Process

7. Anarchic Phusis: Nature Without Principle

8. Nietzsche, the French Moralistes, and Erotic Aesthetics

9. The Natural Historical Sublime: Diderot and the Limits of Representation

10. Walking, Promenade, and Errant Thought: Rousseau and Kant

11. Coda: Mycorrhizal Thinking—Plants, Fungi, and Entangled Life

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Timestamps for Key Segments

New Projects Announcement

Summary Flow

Summary

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is "Anarchic Ontology" and Its Relation to Posthumanism?

2. Project Origin, Corpus, and Methodology

3. The Rehabilitation of Aesthetics in Ecological Thinking

4. Situating the Book: Heidegger, Aristotle, Kant

5. Montaigne’s Essays as “Vegetal Being”

6. From Self-Portrait to Sketching: Rethinking Artistic Process

7. Anarchic Phusis: Nature Without Principle

8. Nietzsche, the French Moralistes, and Erotic Aesthetics

9. The Natural Historical Sublime: Diderot and the Limits of Representation

10. Walking, Promenade, and Errant Thought: Rousseau and Kant

11. Coda: Mycorrhizal Thinking—Plants, Fungi, and Entangled Life

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Timestamps for Key Segments

New Projects Announcement

Summary Flow