Koosje
van Leeuwen

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Koosje van Leeuwen is a writer and publicist working at the intersection of philosophy, biology and culture. Her work focuses on the ethical dimensions of the relationship between humans and the natural world.Below is a selection of the author’s recent work.

The Moral Cost of Instant Understanding

We have become experts at knowing what things are before we have experienced them. A tree becomes the thing blocking our view, rather than a habitat for birds and insects. The sea is a place to cool down, while for a fish it is a neighbourhood and for a gull a hunting ground. In Fleabag, a miscarriage becomes almost instantly a social script once the word is spoken.What do we lose when understanding arrives before experience has had time to unfold?
I argue that this has a moral cost. Before we can ask what we ought to do, something has to matter to us. Ethical life depends on our capacity to be affected: to remain with an experience before it is closed down by recognition, explanation or judgement. I call this interval shutter time.This is not an argument against abstraction. On the contrary: we need abstraction to extend ethical concern beyond what we can encounter directly. But abstraction can also make the particular disappear. The faster I know what something is, the less room remains for experiencing what it also might be. If the ground from which ethical concern grows is progressively eroded, can ethical life survive at all?I have a background in Media Studies and Journalism, with a BA and MA from the University of Amsterdam, and am currently completing an MSc in Philosophy (Epistemology, Ethics and Mind) at the University of Edinburgh. My work brings together biology, media and philosophy.