Freya Mathews

Freya Mathews is an Australian environmental philosopher whose main work has been in the areas of ecological metaphysics and panpsychism. Her current special interests are in ecological civilization; indigenous (Australian and Chinese) perspectives on "sustainability" and how these perspectives may be adapted to the context of contemporary global society; panpsychism and critique of the metaphysics of modernity; and wildlife ethics and rewilding in the context of the Anthropocene.

Mathews has been teaching in Australian universities since 1979. She currently holds the post of Adjunct Professor of Environmental Philosophy at La Trobe University. Mathews is the author of several books and over seventy articles on ecological philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her advocacy of ontopoetics, which she described as meaningful communicative exchanges between self and the world, is an aspect to this philosophical view. She also promotes a kind of ecocentrism to address and sustain inconvenient, and time-consuming conservation practice.

Selected publications The Ecological Self, Routledge, London, 1991. Reissued 1993; paperback 1994 For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism, SUNY Press, Albany, 2003 Journey to the Source of the Merri, Ginninderra Press, Canberra, 2003 Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a Recovery of Culture, SUNY Press, Albany, 2005 Ardea: a Philosophical Novella, Punctum Books, New York, 2016 Without Animals Life is not Worth Living, Ginninderra Press, Adelaide, 2016