The Anthropocene and the Problem of Anthropological Constants (original) (raw)
Related papers
Pro-Fil – An Internet Journal of Philosophy - MUNI Journals, 2024
The paper focuses on identifying the possible, and assumed, implications of the concept of the Anthropocene for thinking about the human in a philosophy that accepts the transition from Holocene to Anthropocene thinking. The aim of the paper is to produce a systematic treatment of the philosophical-anthropological presuppositions of the concept of the Anthropocene. Illuminating the relationship between the concepts of the Earth System, the planetary boundaries and the Anthropocene has to be the focus if we are to delineate the basic anthropological issues so that they can be further conceptually elaborated from a philosophical-anthropological perspective. Such an approach aims to highlight the various interpretive disagreements not only in understanding the concept of the Anthropocene but also in understanding the meaning of the concept of humanity as a geobiophysical force.
Revision of the human condition in the age of Anthropocene
International Journal of Body , Nature, and Culture, 2022
The ecological crisis that the techno-scientific transformation of the earth has generated is about to unsettle the ground upon which humans build and consolidate their modes of dwelling. This forces us to be aware of something outside human manipulation, which is to say, the planetary dimension. Confrontation with the planetary dimension urges us to formulate new ways of thinking about the world that we inhabit. The increasing prevalence of natural catastrophes stirs the fundamental conditions upon which the existence of humans depends. At this moment, we are forced to admit that we cannot be free of the inertia of material reality. This paper argues that what is required is to view the human condition in contradictory double registers. While humans inhabit the human world as artifacts, they become part of the vastness of the planetary dimension in which humans are entangled with other life forms. Thus, we can pay attention to the reality that the planetary dimension that subtends the human mode of existence becomes unstable and extends beyond human comprehension. Adding to that, inasmuch as it is revealed through the fractures of the human artificial world at the moment of the disaster, it has to do with the sense of fragility that is intrinsic to the human condition.
PERSPECTIVES IN THE ANTHROPOCENE: Beyond Nature and Culture?
Itinerari: LIX, 2020
The contributions collected in this volume compare the views of phi- losophers, literary and cultural theorists, and political philosophers, con- cerning what in recent years has become a much discussed issue: the Anthropocene. Although there are no longer any doubts about the reality of this new era, understood as the epoch of signi cant human impacts on the planet, a wide and controversial debate has developed around the use of this term and on the de nition to be given to it. The Anthropocene cannot only be understood as the perpetuation of an anthropogenic and anthropocentric perspective, it can also give rise to a critical paradigm of inquiry into a series of problems such as climate and geological changes produced by humans. The complexity of the notion of Anthropocene can also be defined as a semi-empty signifer, which is once of the most interesting and stimulating aspects of the Anthropocene, one that invites and stimulates us, sometimes even provocatively, to imagine different scenarios and ho- rizons as alternatives to the present. The contributions collected here speak to this richness and breadth, and also to the “irritating” nature of this term, Anthropocene.
The question of the human in the Anthropocene debate
Debates on the Anthropocene are among the most innovative and even ambitious scientific programmes of the past 15 or 20 years. Their main arguments is that, from a geological point of view, humans are to be seen as a major force of nature so that our current geological epoch is depicted as dominated by human activity. The Anthropocene is an all-encompassing framework that seeks to make sense of the ‘earth-system’ as a whole and whose vision of the future is dystopian rather than progressive: the exploitation of the planet’s natural resources has reached already tipping point, so that the very prospects of the continuity of human life are to be questioned. My goal in this article is to explore the implicit notions of the human – indeed of the anthropos – that are being mobilised in the Anthropocene debate. I will proceed in two steps: first, I will spell out the main the main arguments of the Anthropocene debate with a particular focus on trying to unpack its implicit ideas of the human. Secondly, I shall explain the main features of my approach to philosophical sociology in order to show some of the limitations and contradictions of the ideas of agency, reflexivity and responsibility that underpin the Anthropocene debate.
The end of the end of nature: the Anthropocene and the fate of the human
In this paper I explore the metaphor of the strata of the earth as ‘great stone book of nature’, and the Anthropocene epoch as its latest chapter. Debates about the geological status of the Anthropocene focus on the identification of stratigraphic ‘signals’ that might be being laid down for the geologist-to-come, but I suggest that marking the base of the Anthropocene layer is not a merely technical task but one which is entangled with questions about the human — about the Anthropos of the Anthropocene. Who would be the ‘onomatophore’ of the Anthropocene, would carry the name of Anthropos? I consider a number of ways of characterising the geological force of the Anthropocene – Homo faber, Homo consumens and Homo gubernans. But I then situate this dispersal of the Anthropos into ‘syntypes’ against the background of a more general dispersal of ‘man’ that is occasioned when human meets geology. I do this by bringing into dialogue two works: Foucault’s Order of Things, and Derrida’s Of Grammatology, focusing on their passages about the end of ‘man’ and the end of ‘the book’ respectively. I suggest the becoming geological of the human in the Anthropocene is both the end of the great stone book of nature and the Aufhebung of ‘man’ —both his apotheosis and his eclipse.
perspectives The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical References Subject collections
2020
The human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system. Although global-scale human influence on the environment has been recognized since the 1800s, the term Anthropocene, introduced about a decade ago, has only recently become widely, but informally, used in the global change research community. However, the term has yet to be accepted formally as a new geological epoch or era in Earth history. In this paper, we put forward the case for formally recognizing the Anthropocene as a new epoch in Earth history, arguing that the advent of the Industrial Revolution around 1800 provides a logical start date for the new epoch. We then explore recent trends in the evolution of the Anthropocene as humanity proceeds into the twenty-first century, focusing on the profound changes to our relationship with the rest of the living world and on early attempts and proposals for managing our relationship with the large geophysical cycles that drive the Earth's climate system.
Towards a better understanding of the Anthropocene
arXiv (Cornell University), 2023
201-175. (1) Results of analysis of new sets of anthropogenic data are presented. They confirm earlier results of similar analyses. The expected and inevitable massive deceleration of human-induced global change process is demonstrated as an ongoing phenomenon. Human activities and impacts on the Earth System, while in general remaining strong, are now systematically slowing down. (2) It is now clearly stated, by supporters of the concept of the Great Acceleration, that the socalled Great Acceleration is not acceleration and that this term is open to misinterpretation. (3) There was no systematic sharp increase in anthropogenic growth trajectories around 1950 CE (Common Era) or around any other recent time. (4) Close inspection of data suggests that the Anthropocene is not a geological epoch, but a historical event, also reflected as a geological event. (5) The Anthropocene has no convincingly determinable beginning. What is described as the Anthropocene appears to be an integral part of a long process transcending the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, a natural continuation of the past developments of human interaction with nature. (6) Using the concept of the Jinji unconformity, the embryonic beginning of human (hominid) interaction with the environment could be placed at the time of the first use of stone tools millions of years ago. Gradually the intensity of this interaction was increasing and culminated monotonically in an event described as the Anthropocene.