Abstract

This chapter opens with Vogel’s “silence of nature” thesis, which critiques recent arguments for nonhuman agency. While some of his concerns are valid, I argue that he reifies discourse by obscuring its intrinsic moments of non-identity—the fissures where nature’s expressive agency appears. From this critique, the chapter elaborates the core principles of a revised communicative theory of nature, reformulating Kant’s reflective judgment, Fichte’s account of perception, Hegel’s concept of semblance, and Adorno’s critique of reification in discourse-theoretical terms. The alternative proposed here neither mythologizes nature nor renders it mute, but listens across the discursive–non-discursive divide. Discourse is reconceived as porous to life, with recognition functioning as the threshold through which expressive agencies shape inclusion and exclusion. The model remains proceduralist: acknowledging nonhuman agency does not predetermine outcomes—whether rights extend only to animals or to plants, habitats, and entire ecosystems. Its contribution lies instead in cultivating reflective awareness of how discourses operate and resisting the reifying exclusions that silence nonhuman expression. The chapter concludes by addressing the charge of residual anthropocentrism, arguing that acknowledging our ineliminably human standpoint need not entail domination.