In its most common accepted meaning, ‘biophilia’ is about human experiences with nature, but it is also about design and conservation. Biophilic design principles in architecture and urban planning emphasise features, forms and patterns that reflect the environment: vegetation, water, animals, light, air flow, scents, and sounds. The interplay between elements in an environment have multi-layered and reciprocal influences on the well-being of people inhabiting a shared space. The concept explores human relationships with natural elements within an urban context to consider the importance of restoring and preserving native habitat and species, and to encourage the instinctive need humans have for this type of connection. Or this is what I’ve been told; it all sounds rather wishy-washy to me.

I was recently asked about the term biophilia, and I immediately thought of Baroque art, even though it is not a Baroque concept. I have been told that the term was conceived much later than that, in the 1980s, by biologist and conservationist Edward O. Wilson. That makes biophilia a very modern idea; but a winsome idea that can be quaintly applied through modern eyes to art history, with Humanist sensibility. Wilson’s hypothesis proposes an evolutionary impulse to seek meaningful encounters with the natural environment. We need to be ‘in nature’ as much as possible, according to Wilson, because we have evolved as part of it, and we are part of its greater ecosystems.

But to me, ‘philia’ is a slippery suffix. It connotes eroticism and fetish, and perhaps pernicious fascinations with human and non-human encounters. What I have discovered is that Wilson did not invent the term, “biophilia”. It was a German psychoanalyst named Dr Erich Fromm in the early 1970s. Fromm’s thesis, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness,[1] investigates human encounters with nature; his interest however is in the human propensity to do harm, and to be destructive in the world and to the environment.

Fromm links Freud’s notion of ‘necrophilia’—a love of death and destruction and a proclivity to make love to murdered corpses—to his concept of the death drive; and he offers ‘biophilia’ as a dialectic opposite. Necrophilia represents more than a sensational idea—. The necrophiliac impulse is a symbolic expression of a desire to control and possess, and to do so to the point of restricting life or directly causing and venerating its ending. According to Fromm, “destructiveness” is different to any other form of protective, defensive, or aggressive behaviour that serves an evolutionary purpose. It is a distinct human trait and a malevolent psychological state. By likening destructiveness to necrophilia, Fromm aimed to highlight the inherent contradiction between a genuine love for life (biophilia means love of life) and the destructive tendencies ever present in human nature.

Take Caravaggio’s painting, Ragazzo morso da un Ramarro (1596) as an example of an excellent “biophilic” artwork in that sense—it’s the one with a pubescent boy bitten on the finger by a lizard. The gorgeous youth recoils with horror, jumping back with tiny lizard teeth still incising his fingertip. The creature poses no threat to the boy, but we know it is the lizard who is in danger as he may soon be crushed unless the child takes mercy. The question is, will “nature”—that is, the human nature and the natural character of the boy—cause a violent reaction that kills the little creature, or will he show empathy? There are two strong forces at play within the boy’s developing psychology: An urge to control and an impulse to care.

The symbolism is drawn from ancient poetry. Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martial writes:

“Spare the lizard, treacherous boy, creeping toward you. It desires to perish between your fingers”.[2]

The poem describes a Classical bronze statue by Praxiteles, Apollo Sauroktonos, (the Lizard Slayer). Praxiteles’ sculpture shows Apollo, naked, aged somewhere between boyhood and manhood, coquettishly taunting a lizard, grasping at it as it clambers up a tree. He leans against the trunk and tilts his head, investigating the terrified animal. His stance emphasises his counterpoise, his confidence, and control, while the lizard’s fear charges the scene with frisson. The masturbatory undertones may be apparent to some—it is easy to imagine how the reptile will wiggle and fight in his palm as the life is squeezed out of him by a reckless teenager in search of misadventure and pleasure.

In ancient Greek language, “philia” refers to the type of love you find in long-term friendships, in caring for children or pets, or the kind of love you find in the garden as you wait for springtime. Eros, on the other hand, is a type of love associated with passion—passionate love and eroticism—the kind that takes risks, shoots and spurts without thinking. Philia represents a far more sustained mode of tenderness while eros drives people to seek pleasure, and to procreate. But eros can be destructive without philia’s balancing affect. Philia reduces the tension between erotic impulses and the careful cultivation of intimacy. Yet sadly, since Freud, we have started to associate the notion of eros negatively with sexual transgression, and philia is relegated to the realm of “paraphilia”—the Modernist vocabulary for unhealthy fixations and sexual problems.

But this still situates the subject in the middle of an entirely Humanistic and individualistic worldview. Posthumanism on the other hand challenges the Humanist understanding of what it means to be in the world. Timothy Morton explores the implications of climate change from this post-humanist perspective in his book Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. The book examines the interconnectedness of humans and nonhumans in the context of ecological crisis. Morton commandeers Theodor Adorno’s concept of non-identity thinking, which questions the idea of fixed identity and emphasises the importance of recognising the fluidity and contingency of collective subjectivities. Morton sees non-identity thinking as relevant to posthumanism and ecological thinking because it encourages us to move beyond rigid identity categories, and to engage with the entangled, interconnected nature of living within ecosystems.

[1] Fromm E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness (First). Holt Rinehart and Winston.

[2] Jenifer Neils, “Praxiteles to Caravaggio: The ‘Apollo Sauroktonos’ Redefined.” The Art Bulletin 99, no. 4 (2017): 10–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44973215.

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Biophilia is at the Print Council of Australia Gallery, printcouncil.org.au, 19 March-12 April, opening reception Thursday 21 March 5-7pm

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