However, one of the greatest lessons of the ongoing discussion on global climate change is that these approaches are no longer adequate. We can, instead, offer a new terminology for thinking about this problem of the non- human world. Let us call the world in which we live the world-for-us. This is the world that we, as human beings, interpret and give meaning to, the world that we relate to or feel alienated from, the world that we are at once a part of and that is also separate from the human. But this world-for-us is not, of course, totally within the ambit of human wants and desires; the world often “bites back,” resists, or ignores our attempts to mold it into the world-for-us. Let us call this the world-in-itself. This is the world in some inaccessible, already-given state, which we then turn into the world-for-us. The world-in-itself is a paradoxical concept; the moment we think it and attempt to act on it, it ceases to be the world-in-itself and becomes the world-for-us. A significant part of this paradoxical world-in-itself is grounded by scientific inquiry – both the production of scientific knowledge of the world and the technical means of acting on and intervening in the world. (Eugene Thacker, 2011, preface)
Even though there is something out there that is not the world-for-us, and even though we can name it the world-in-itself, this latter constitutes a horizon for thought, always receding just beyond the bounds of intelligibility. Tragically, we are most reminded of the world-in-itself when the world-in-itself is manifest in the form of natural disasters. (ibid, preface)
No，天災不是悲劇，人禍才是，意思是說，天地人神，人處理不好與天地神的關係，就處理不好人與人的關係，人禍起因于人的 greed 和 hubris，此二毒，就是貪嗔，加起來就是 evil，意思是說，痴是拖泥帶水，婆婆媽媽，無傷大雅，屬肥皂劇，和心理治療，
In a sense, the world-without-us allows us to think the world-in-itself, without getting caught up in a vicious circle of logical paradox. The world-in-itself may co-exist with the world-for-us – indeed the human being is defined by its impressive capacity for not recognizing this distinction. By contrast, the world-without-us cannot co-exist with the human world-for-us; the world- without-us is the subtraction of the human from the world. To say that the world-without-us is antagonistic to the human is to attempt to put things in human terms, in the terms of the world-for-us. To say that the world- without-us is neutral with respect to the human, is to attempt to put things in the terms of the world-in-itself.
In a sense, the real challenge today is not finding a new or improved version of the world-for-us, and it is not relentlessly pursuing the phantom objectivity of the world-in-itself. The real challenge lies in confronting this enigmatic concept of the world-without-us,（ibid, preface)
We can even abbreviate these three concepts further: the world-for-us is simply the World, the world-in-itself is simply the Earth, and the world-without-us is simply the Planet. (ibid, preface)
Scientists estimate that approximate ninety percent of the cells in the human body belong to non-human organisms (bacteria, fungi, and a whole bestiary of other organisms). Why shouldn’t this also be the case for human thought as well? In a sense, this book is an exploration of this idea – that thought is not human. In a sense, the world-without-us is not to be found in a “great beyond” that is exterior to the World (the world-for-us) or the Earth (the world-in-itself); rather, it is in the very fissures, lapses, or lacunae in the World and the Earth. (ibid, preface)
Hence, a central focus of this book is on the problem of thinking this world-without-us; and its argument is that this problem is at once a philosophical, a political, and a cultural problem. (ibid, preface)
Against these two common assumptions, I would propose that horror be understood not as dealing with human fear in a human world (the world-for- us), but that horror be understood as being about the limits of the human as it confronts a world that is not just a World, and not just the Earth, but also a Planet (the world-without-us). (ibid, preface)
Briefly, the argument of this book is that “horror” is a non-philosophical attempt to think about the world-without-us philosophically. (ibid, preface)
