Abstract

This paper advances the concept of critical ethology as a necessary philosophical and methodological orientation for addressing ecological and social crises. Against the dominant narratives of moralistic environmentalism and functionalist or structuralist sociology and their ‘post’ prefixed versions, we argue that both nature and society must be understood not as fixed, ontologically separate domains but as emergent, relational configurations. Drawing from Simondon’s theory of individuation, Guattari’s three ecologies, Haraway’s sympoietic ontology, the bio-cognitive insights of Levin and Fields, and Indian non-dualist metaphysics, we construct a framework that affirms transformation over restoration, co-constitution over moral polarity, and emergence over essential identity. This framework not only dissolves false dichotomies between the human and the ecological but also opens new epistemological and ethical pathways for acting within complex systems.