Abstract
This first chapter is a general introduction. It lays the foundations of a critical theory for the Anthropocene. It is organised into four parts: (1) Between Prometheism and post-Prometheism (polemical function); (2) Linking Earth, politics and education to prepare for the future (inventive function); (3) Conviviality as a paradigm of political education (creative function); (4) The proposed way forward.
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Notes
- 1.
Cyanobacteria are algae that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and release O2.
- 2.
The Earth’s albedo is the capacity of the Earth’s surface to reflect solar radiation (albedo is the reflectivity of a surface).
- 3.
We have recently found traces of the use of cut stones dating back to about 3.39 million years ago (where stone puncture marks were identified on bones, showing that hominids cutting the meat and extracted the marrow) (McPherron et al., 2010), calling pre-existing knowledge into question.
- 4.
This is a point where thinking has evolved. While it was previously thought that Homo sapiens was 195,000 years old (McDougall et al., 2005), a 2017 paper by French paleo-anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hubelin et al. seems to have proven that Homo sapiens is about 350,000 years old.
- 5.
This list is not exhaustive; other scientists have alerted their contemporaries (Bourg & Fragnière, 2014).
- 6.
Transhumanism or 9/11 with Jürgen Habermas, the acceleration inherent to capitalism with Hartmut Rosa, or the growth of inequalities and social conflicts with Alex Honneth.
- 7.
What needs to be developed? A critical theory in the Anthropocene? Of the Anthropocene or for the Anthropocene? Clearly, all three are interesting. It is indeed important, in the Anthropocene, to pursue the enterprise of critical theory in order to identify what can help reify humanity, and rid the human adventure of the yoke of capitalism. However, we also need to delve into an increasingly critical theorisation of the Anthropocene. Why and how has it come to pass that we have entered the Anthropocene? What are the anthropological and civilisational forces behind it? Finally, it is also necessary, on the basis of these two critical points, to develop a critical theory for the Anthropocene: that is, one that allows us to continue to live, think and act in the Anthropocene. It is a matter of learning to weather the storm of the Anthropocene, and emerge intact (if not unchanged). Thus, a critical theory for the Anthropocene actually means a critical theory for this purpose. The term does not mean ‘in favour of’ the Anthropocene, or ‘in order to favour’ it, but on the contrary, ‘in order to restore the balance of civilisation in the Anthropocene’.
- 8.
- 9.
This plan, which takes up the three functions noted by Deleuze, is inspired by the organisation of French philosopher Etienne Tassin’s preface written to the reissue of his book Le trésor perdu – Hannah Arendt, l’intelligence de l’action politique, published by Klincksieck in 2017.
- 10.
NBIC stands for nano-bio-info-cogno technology.
- 11.
One of the foremost proponents of a ‘good Anthropocene’ is the American geographer Erle C. Ellis, whom we interviewed on the question of a good Anthropocene and the underlying political anthropology. That interview is published in an issue of Political Reasons (Ellis et al., 2019). This interview is a counterpoint to another interview we conducted with Dominique Bourg, published in the same issue of Political Reasons (Bourg et al., 2019).
- 12.
It should be noted here that the common use of the term ‘Promethean’ may refer to the Faustian figure of technological man in the twentieth century, and to western use of technology. In line with the analyses of French intellectual Jacques Ellul, the adjective ‘Promethean’ can be associated with techno-scientific enterprise. The use of the adjective ‘Promethean’ here signifies an additional dimension to the use of technology. Referring to the myths of Prometheus, this adjective allows us to think of human power in the context of transgression. ‘Promethean’ here refers to an anthropological characteristic that cannot be reduced to the West. Prometheism is defined in this work as the combination of techno-scientific mastery with a demiurgic quest for power, based on transgression, exemplifying hybris.
- 13.
The idea of transgressing limits is ambivalent here, since it is not so much a question of transgressing laws enacted by a society, but of going beyond (or even far beyond) what might be thought of as a limit by common sense.
- 14.
It is important to clarify the meaning of the adjective ‘postmodern’, which will be used regularly in this work. It first appeared in Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition, and has been used in the social sciences to describe the emerging post-industrial society (Baudouin, 2002, p. 50). This postmodernity is mainly characterised by the fall of Grand Narratives allowing us to ‘decipher the meaning of the human condition’ (Baudouin, 2002, p. 51). For Maurice Bellet, whose work we shall study extensively in this book, postmodernity refers to the period when ‘we no longer know where we are going’ (Bellet, 2008, p. 642), and Man is confronted with a ‘destructive power […] which is constantly chipping away at the support mechanisms’ (Bellet, 1993, p. 139). Postmodernism can be understood as an ‘idea of delegitimisation [which] denounces the imperialism of scientific reason that aims to optimise the efficiency of global systems, through technological performance’ (Lambert, 2001, p. 73). The end of the twentieth century marks postmodernity, where faith in humanity has been eroded, generating doubt about the future and an inability to anticipate it. Thus, it is important in postmodernity to revisit fundamental questions about the meaning of the human condition and the conditions for a human life. The work of Boutinet (1990, 1998, 2004, 2010) is the main basis for using the adjective ‘postmodern’ to describe the contemporary period in this work.
- 15.
The authors also point out that a set of differences remain.
- 16.
The full title is Lebendigkeit sei! Für eine Politik des Lebens. Ein Manifest für das Anthropozän, i.e. Let there be vitality! For a politics of life. A manifesto for the Anthropocene.
- 17.
The full title is How We Will Save the World – Manifesto for Climate Justice.
- 18.
A group of researchers were involved in the drafting of this manifesto, including French historian Christophe Bonneuil, French philosopher Catherine Larrère, and French urbanist Guillaume Faburel.
- 19.
Delphine Batho, born in 1973, served as Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy from 21 June 2012 to 2 July 2013 under President François Hollande, and has been a Member of Parliament for Deux-Sèvres since August 2013.
- 20.
The book is postfaced by Dominique Bourg, and we can see how much his philosophical work inspired this manifesto that brings together all his driving ideas.
- 21.
It is also worth noting the Manifesto of the Appalled Economists (2010) and the New Manifesto of the Appalled Economists (2015), initially signed by the French economists Philippe Askenazy, Thomas Coutrot, André Orléan and Henri Sterdyniak, and today signed by more than 10,000 people. In particular, the authors propose abandoning the foundations of financial neoliberalism and emancipation of States from the alienation of the financial markets. What is astonishing is that at no point does the adjective ‘atterrés’ (Appalled, in the original French) represent wordplay with the ‘landing’ that the earth could represent for the economy. The thinking is in no way ecological and we do not see a break with the growth paradigm (only with the ways in which wealth is distributed). On the other hand, in The New Manifesto of the Appalled Economists, published in 2015, ecology is a thread running through the economic thinking of the collective of authors who signed it.
- 22.
This will be demonstrated in the first part of this book.
- 23.
Günther Anders published a second volume in 1980 entitled Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen – Über die Zerstörung des Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution (The Obsolescence of Man – On the Destruction of Life in the Age of the Third Industrial Revolution).
- 24.
In order to identify the date of contribution to the scientific and philosophical debate, we refer in this book to the date of the initial publication, working with a translated version published later, or a reprint of the original work. The way the bibliography is referenced identifies the version of the publication we have worked with; for example: 1972 (original edition 1961).
- 25.
Between the waters of Orpheus, Prometheus and Hermes, corresponding to the premodern, modern and postmodern eras.
- 26.
Arendt wrote this book in English, entitled The Human Condition. This title highlights an important feature of this fundamental anthropology book, which is an analysis of man’s relationship with the world, with the aim being to resist totalitarianism. Thus, it has an historical component. The German title is Vita activa and articulates Arendt’s reflection with its counterpart, to which she would respond many years later with her unfinished book The Life of the Mind. It signifies the complementarity of the two human activities – active life and contemplative life – and refers, here, to an anthropological and historical component. The French version is entitled Condition de l’homme moderne. The publisher decided not to call it La condition humaine to avoid confusion with André Malraux’s novel La condition humaine published in 1933, which had a major impact on intellectualism in the first half of the twentieth century. The French title emphasises another dimension with a critique of modernity and a historical analysis. All three titles of this book correspond well to the subject matter (which is not always the case with French translations of Arendt’s work) but each one highlights an aspect of her work. In this work we will refer to this book by its original title, The Human Condition, which is the title of the work that marked the intellectual life of the time. The excerpts quoted, on the other hand, come from the 1961 edition of Condition de l’homme moderne, translated by Georges Fradier.
- 27.
It is also noteworthy that the French climatologist Michel Magny, in his book Aux racines de l’Anthropocène – Une crise écologique reflet d’une crise de l’homme (2019) develops a critique of modernity based on Arendtian thinking.
- 28.
This work was written in French, with quotations originally written in English or German. The original German quotations by Andreas Weber appear as footnotes.
- 29.
In recent years, we have seen examples of the ‘miracle’ of political action, with all the popular protests of the Arab Spring from December 2010; the Maillots Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement from October 2018; the climate strike by schoolchildren and students, ongoing since the winter of 2018; the protests in Algeria in February 2019 against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s standing for re-election for a fifth term; or the Hong Kong mobilisations that gained momentum in June 2019.
- 30.
- 31.
The term ‘the political’, here, refers to the arena in which humans, with all their differences, co-exist and act in concert. The main object of politics, as it is conceived of here, is to lay the groundwork for the future, and work to ensure the world remains habitable and hospitable for generations to come. The political is a particularly equivocal concept whose most basic element is often the regulation of the ascendancy of humans over other humans. The function of politics in Aristotle, which differs greatly from Arendt’s understanding of it, is to work to regulate humanity to reduce the domination of the weak by the strong, by instilling humanity in both. For the French political scientist Raymond Aron, more generally, all concerted action is political. This research draws upon ‘politica civilis’ (the sharing of existence between all humans) more than ‘politica policy’ (the strategic actions of social actors), or ‘politica politics’ (power and institutions) (Aron, 1962, p. 10). One of the objects of politics is to make something happen rather than nothing; to make something happen between people that allows them to support each other’s shared being. This is an existential function of politics, which should not be concerned solely with individual rights and economic gain. In view of the threat the planet now faces, what is the function of politics? Is it to change humanity, to protect it from its own self-destruction? Or is it to preserve humanity as it is, even if it could be otherwise? For the British philosopher Michael Oakeshott, for example, the preservation of humans, as they are, is the purpose of politics (Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, Oakeshott, 1991).
- 32.
In Scranton’s view, entering the Anthropocene means imagining a radically new vision of human life. His proposal is simple: in a different world, we must change in order to go on living. This requires the death of our civilisation. In his book, he ponders what it means to be human in the Anthropocene.
- 33.
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) met Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno and joined the Institut für Sozialforschung, where Critical Theory was developed, in 1932. When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, he emigrated to Switzerland with his family; he subsequently spent a short time for France, and finally left for the United States, where he worked in New York for the Institut für Sozialforschung (which had emigrated from Frankfurt).
- 34.
Here, we find elements that were later worked on by Maurice Bellet – notably in Le paradoxe infini (2004).
- 35.
Marcuse was heavily involved with the widespread student protests of 1968, lending support to their revolt and their protest movement.
- 36.
The Institüt für Sozialforschung was founded following a donation from a German-Argentine Jewish entrepreneur, Hermann Weil (at the request of his son Felix J. Weil, a doctor of political science with a passion for Marxism) and a contract with the Ministry of Education requiring the director to hold a chair at the University. At the institute, German Jews developed a way of thinking, inspired by Karl Marx, about the need to transform society by identifying the mechanisms of alienation and domination. In 1931 a subsidiary of the institute was set up in Geneva, and in 1933 it moved its headquarters to Geneva. At the same time, its journal, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, established in 1932, was located in France, then in the United States from 1941. Both the institute and its journal were then attached to Columbia University in New York until 1950 (the journal ceased publishing in 1941), when the institute returned to Frankfurt. While the subversive thinking of the critical theorists was welcomed at Columbia University, two decades earlier, several scholars at that university had resigned because of the excessive support of the university from the established political authorities. Indeed, in 1917, the State of New York imposed a loyalty oath on students and faculty members (which prohibited protesting against state laws). Several academics from Columbia University (including John Dewey) resigned and created The New School for Social Research in 1919 with the spirit of protest and subversion (where politics is at the centre). In keeping with this original vision, in 1933, the New School for Social Research created a department known as the University in Exile, which welcomed hundreds of expatriate scholars between 1933 and the 1950s. Most of these were Jewish. It was at this institution that Hannah Arendt, her German compatriot Hans Jonas, and the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss worked. Arendt taught the thinking of Walter Benjamin (died 1940), a close collaborator of the Institut für Sozialforschung and an important critical theorist.
- 37.
On this point, a critical theory of the Anthropocene necessarily apprehends emancipation with a certain distance, without considering emancipation in the context of our break away from nature and considering emancipation from the point of view of its collective character.
- 38.
Critical theorists distance themselves from two components of Marx’s thinking: the idea that history should be organised on the basis of progress, and the equating of emancipation with socialisation of the means of production (this disidentification leaves space for emancipation to be interpreted in a variety of ways) (Iakovou, 2001).
- 39.
The Institut für Sozialforschung interacted with the Frankfurter Psychoanalytisches Institut (Frankfurt Psychoanalytical Institute), which was founded in 1929. Freudian thinking is understood as critical thinking about social matters.
- 40.
A few decades later, Rosa, in Resonance, does not exclude the experience of freedom. In fact, it even seems to be consubstantial with resonance.
- 41.
The assimilation to Critical Theory or to the Frankfurt School is particularly variable from one author to another. Thus, Max Horkheimer can be considered the real founder, and Theodor W. Adorno (about 10 years younger) the co-founder. Then other authors are more or less closely attached to this critical theory, conceptualised by Horkheimer in his article ‘Critical Theory and Traditional Theory’ published in 1937 in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (first chapter of the review Traditionnelle und Kritische Theorie that he published in 1970). All of them have developed their own thinking in a very singular way. Herbert Marcuse was particularly involved and then distanced himself at the end of his career; the philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a member of the institute, from which he received several small scholarships, but with profoundly singular academic aims; the German-born American sociologist and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was closely associated with the school’s agenda for a period and then radically distanced himself from it in 1939; Ernst Bloch and his work on utopia intersected with the issues at stake for critical theory. Other important thinkers among the critical theorists of the Institut für Sozialforschung include, for example, the Hungarian philosopher and sociologist György ukács, the German lawyer and philosopher Franz Neumann (1900–1954), and the German thinker Günther Anders (1902–1992), who is regularly associated with Critical Theory. To these early authors we can add the names of those who followed in their footsteps, starting with Jürgen Habermas, though he distanced himself from the initial direction of Critical Theory (Assoun, 2016, pp. 19–26).
- 42.
It is important to point out that Arendt does not glorify tradition, but rather, is able to show the destructive components of tradition, in close proximity to Benjaminian thinking (e.g. pointing out that the American founding fathers were unable to translate their political experience into concepts because they were trapped in the tradition of political philosophy) (Iakovou, 2001: 276).
- 43.
Arendt mentions ‘the Horkheimer clique’ with contempt. In a letter to her husband Heinrich Blücher (1 March, 1955), Arendt criticises the Institut für Sozialforschung’s inadequate support for Benjamin (Arendt, Blücher, Correspondences – 1936–1968, published in French in 1999).
- 44.
Arendt decries the fact that Adorno changed his Jewish name, Wiesengrund, during the rise of Nazism (as she writes in a letter to Gertrud and Karl Jaspers, April 18, 1966, letter no. 395, p. 634). In turn, Adorno and Horkheimer vilify Arendt’s connection to Heidegger, whom they consider a Nazi (Muhlmann, 2001/2002).
- 45.
Benjamin and Arendt also had an important mutual friend, Gershom Scholem (1897–1982). Benjamin met Adorno in 1923.
- 46.
So much so that the reception of Benjamin’s work has long been reduced to Adorno’s interpretation of it, as shown by the contributors to the journal Lignes n°11, edited by Michel Surya, on the theme of ‘Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin’.
- 47.
This is the case, for example, with Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action and Axel Honneth’s struggle for recognition.
- 48.
We may legitimately wonder, as does the French psychoanalyst and philosopher Paul-Laurent Assoun, whether the Frankfurt School’s power derives from the precarious situation of its thinkers at that time in history (2016, p. VI). This remark can easily be extended to much of Arendt’s professional life.
- 49.
In a way, the critique is aimed, first and foremost, at domination.
- 50.
In the course of the history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we see the emergence of a set of intellectual currents and theoretical schools that intersected in the United States and Europe in which Arendt and the Critical Theorists Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse were immersed. In the United States in the first part of the twentieth century, we have: the pragmatist school, the first and then the second Chicago school, the New School for Social Research and the Frankfurt School. There are many relationships between these different schools, centred around the identification of the different forms of alienation and reification in the modern capitalist system, and the proposal of alternatives to the economic hegemony that gives rise to various injustices. In addition to the links already mentioned between the New School for Social Research and the Frankfurt School, we can note that pragmatism deeply marked the work of Karl-Otto Apel (1922–2017) (the German philosopher who was a professor at the University of Frankfurt). It was the meeting with Karl-Otto Apel (in 1950) that introduced Jürgen Habermas (1929-) to American pragmatism. Moreover, the Chicago School was born as a direct extension of pragmatism and of the importance given to surveys as a basis for the development of subversive thinking about power.
- 51.
One of the fundamental differences, however, is Arendt’s view of thought and action as being indissociable parts of the same gesture, where Critical Theorists view them as being separate (Iakovou, 2001, p. 268), and, as already mentioned, the different views of the concept of freedom.
- 52.
Political work about the Anthropocene inevitably touches on totalitarianism, because it considers the very real possibility of humanity’s own self-destruction. The French politician Frédéric Lambert understands totalitarianism as a form of the unthinkable, which, in some respects, is a description that also applies to the Anthropocene: ‘What “totalitarianism” gives us to think about is a reflection on the accomplishment of the unthinkable, which we can define with Kierkegaard as “the reef on which thought is shipwrecked”. To think of totalitarianism through the prism of the unthinkable is to make sense of a tragic experience, that of man, blind to his own finitude and confronted with absolute evil, and to question the human capacity to annihilate his own humanity’ (Lambert, 2014, p. 71). The question of totalitarianism has been studied, in particular, by the Rennes-based political scientist Bernard Bruneteau, who has notably highlighted the complexity of the uses and surrounding this concept (of particular note here is Bruneteau, 2010, or Baudouin & Bruneteau, 2014). Bruneteau distinguishes four paradigms in the uses of the term ‘totalitarian’ by the main theorists of totalitarianism: ‘the one that focuses on describing static structures (Friedrich paradigm); the one that emphasises the movement defined by the logic of a historicist idea (Arendt paradigm); the one that privileges the imaginary constructed from the fantasy of the One (Lefort paradigm); and the one that suggests the interactions of the systems within the framework of an “epoch” (Nolte paradigm)’ (Bruneteau, 2014, pp. 12–13).
- 53.
This is one of the strong points of Arendt’s thinking, but also characteristic of the founders of Critical Theory, who show that it is by living with others that we become human.
- 54.
It should be remembered, however, that the question of nature is particularly present from the very beginnings of Critical Theory, with discussion of the problem of its rationalisation, its reification and the hegemony of its industrialisation.
- 55.
This concept of resonance is expanded upon in the rest of this book.
- 56.
Marxism is the main point of reference in Critical Theory. This means that ‘Criticism necessarily intersects with historical materialism in order to succeed in its passage to history (see supra, p. 24) and that Marxism is not a “system” that would short-circuit criticism, but only the tool to steer criticality. With this caveat, we can draw the connection between the Frankfurt School and Marxism – which explains why it has its natural place there, but with so specific a theoretical stance that it does not lend itself well to such a summary label’ (Assoun, 2016, p. 79).
- 57.
Before he became interested in reading Hegel and then Marx, Horkheimer was more influenced by Kantian German idealism. ‘For Horkheimer, on the other hand, the primary intuition is that of a collapse of knowledge, contemporary with (and indicative of) a formidable crisis of historical reason. Meanwhile, for Marxists of the previous type, there is only the reconstruction of theory and the world with the help of Marxism – the idealist and bourgeois past already being, in principle, a lapsed, even forgotten past. For Horkheimer, it is collapse as an ongoing process that is the most salient aspect’ (Assoun, 2016, p. 87).
- 58.
In a letter from Hannah Arendt to Martin Heidegger on 28 July 1970, she decries the fact that the present time is marked by ‘pure and simple abrogation of the future’ (Arendt & Heidegger, 2001, p. 197).
- 59.
Andreas Weber is not, strictly speaking, an academic. He works as a freelance journalist and writer and teaches at Leuphana University in Lüneburg and at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
- 60.
On the question of the Earth in politics, the American sociologist John Bellamy Foster’s reading of Karl Marx’s thinking is particularly interesting. He shows that the critic of capitalist society, who has sometimes been considered a non-ecologist, is in fact particularly sensitive to the question of changes in our relationship with nature. In 2000, Foster wrote a book entitled Marx’s ecology: Materialism and nature, in which he shows the centrality of ecological questions in Marx’s thinking (in his analysis of agriculture or the circulation of nutrients in the soil, for example). This same idea is also explored by the French philosopher Henri Pena-Ruiz in Karl Marx penseur de l’écologie (2018), who goes so far as to show the presence of an accomplished ecological theory in Marx’s writings. For example, Marx writes: ‘It is not the unity of living and active men with the natural, inorganic conditions of their exchange of substance with nature, nor, therefore, their appropriation of nature, that requires explanation or is the result of a historical process, but the separation between these inorganic conditions of human existence and this active existence, a separation that has been posited as a total separation only in the relation of wage labour and capital’ (Marx, 1857–1858, p. 489).
- 61.
We perceive, through her anthropological categories, that Arendt was marked by her experiences of the horror of the Holocaust and then the Cold War. Her contemporaries who really developed an environmental thought, such as Günther Anders, Hans Jonas and Ivan Illich, realised this in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Arendt died in 1975).
- 62.
However, as Curnier (2017, p. 22) mentions, ‘a number of disciplines apply their traditional analytical tools to the environment without refuting the nature–culture duality’.
- 63.
It is noteworthy that ecological thinking emerged in the nineteenth century, bringing its critique of anthropocentrism and its observations concerning the geological power that humanity had come to wield. Most of the precursors of ecological thought in the 19th and 20th centuries presented in this anthology have in common that they were brilliant, visionary and pioneering scientists, and that they struggled to open their contemporaries’ eyes to the way in which current events close the door to the future rather than opening it.
- 64.
- 65.
This is the most profound contribution of ecological thought, which we can find in different ways in the work of such diverse authors as French historian Jacques Ellul (1954/2008), Teilhard de Chardin (1955/2007), Austro-American philosopher Ivan Illich (1971a, b, 1973a, b), Hans Jonas (1990, 1998), Dominique Bourg and Christian Arnsperger.
- 66.
The ecological crisis can become a spur for politics, in the double sense of an indicator pointing to the political failure of the past several decades, and an arrow guiding the reorientation of political action.
- 67.
Negative Dialectics is the starting point for the intellectual work of both Jürgen Habermas (1929-) and Axel Honneth (1949-), two important figures in Critical Theory, who are identified as part of the second generation of the Frankfurt School (and neither Habermas nor Honneth are Jewish). On the basis of Adorno’s work, Habermas proposed another important concept for understanding rationality. Habermas met Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse in the mid-1950s and was influenced by American pragmatism. Axel Honneth drew upon Adorno’s thinking in creating the concept of the struggle for recognition (Kampf um Anerkennung was published in Germany in 1992), which distinguishes between affective recognition, legal recognition and cultural recognition.
- 68.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) was a musicologist whose work was marked by psychoanalysis. Negative Dialectics, the original German edition of which was published in 1966, was one of his most significant books, in which he criticised Heidegger.
- 69.
Horkheimer arrived at the University of Frankfurt in 1925, and soon after that, contributed to the founding of the Institut für Sozialforschung, becoming one of its directors. As mentioned previously, after fleeing the Nazis, he returned to Frankfurt in 1949 to resurrect the institute, again serving as director. His work was characterised by interdisciplinary research, as founder of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (which publishes texts by philosophers, economists, psychoanalysts, sociologists and more).
- 70.
Aufklärung is translated as ‘reason’, but can more accurately be rendered as ‘enlightenment’. In a very broad sense, Aufklärung refers to the progressive thinking of the Age of Enlightenment (which led to the Industrial Revolution).
- 71.
In our work, we have relied particularly on a set of contemporary authors, and less on the early Critical Theorists, who nevertheless worked particularly on this question of humans’ relationship to nature.
- 72.
There are a variety of hypotheses for dating the entry into the Anthropocene. The earliest date back to the Stone Age with the creation of tools and the mastery of fire, which marked the beginning of the anthropisation of the environment and alteration of the chemical make-up of the atmosphere; however, no geological traces can be found in the sediment record to support this hypothesis). Another early dating hypothesis relates to the emergence of agriculture. Agriculture was made possible by the climatic stabilisation of the Holocene, which allowed for the organisation of agricultural surpluses, from which the great civilisations arose. However, the dating hypotheses which indicate an unambiguous change of geological epoch have in common that they point to homo oeconomicus’ logic of maximisation of individual interests.
- 73.
Andreas Weber regularly refers to the theorists of the Frankfurt School.
- 74.
The phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is the common theoretical basis of these three works.
- 75.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established in 1988, after the first world climate conference in 1979. It brings together the countries of the United Nations, quantifies the risk of climate change and proposes guidelines for mitigating anthropogenic climate change.
- 76.
However, it should be noted that the author puts forward two interesting concepts. Firstly, participation – notably, citizens’ participation in political decisions – is presented as one of the phenomena to be encouraged. If they are involved in the process, people are more likely to adhere to social changes. Secondly, his model of education for the Anthropocene includes an experience-based component, with each person performing an environmental ‘good deed’ every day.
- 77.
The Anthropocene is beginning to make its mark in the field of educational sciences, but even at this early stage, there are various relevant works that can be highlighted: Jagodzinski, 2018; Wulf, 2013, 2022a, b; Priyadharshini, 2021; Tannock, 2021; Hétier, 2021, 2022; Hétier & Wallenhorst, 2021, 2022; Garnier et al., 2021; Prouteau, 2021; Paulsen et al., 2022; Wallace et al., 2022.
- 78.
For example, Adorno was a musicologist, interested in psychoanalysis, whose philosophical work on the cultural industry provided very fertile soil for information and communication sciences. Max Horkheimer worked in philosophy and sociology, but was highly conversant with psychoanalysis. Herbert Marcuse’s work straddles the boundary between Marxist sociology and psychoanalysis. Walter Benjamin’s is as much historical as it is aesthetic, literary and philosophical.
- 79.
As Guillaume Blanc, Elise Demeulenaere, and Wolf Feurhahn note, ‘True interdisciplinarity means working on oneself, with no guarantee that it will be fruitful, but it is worth trying’ (Blanc et al., 2017, p. 275).
- 80.
Twenty-five authors of a recent collective work, Des Sciences sociales à la Science sociale, edited by Alain Caillé, Philippe Chanial, Stéphane Dufoix and Frédéric Vandenberghe (including contributions from French sociologists François Dubet, Danilo Martuccelli and Michel Wieviorka), call for the gradual construction of Social Science with anti-utilitarian foundations.
- 81.
This striking theoretical creativity generated by the Anthropocene is particularly noticeable in three recent collective books: Gouverner la décroissance – Politiques de l’Anthropocène III (2017) edited by French political scientists Agnès Sinaï and Mathilde Szuba; Penser l’Anthropocène (2018), edited by French philosophers Rémi Beau and Catherine Larrère; and Atlas de l’Anthropocène by Gemenne et al. (2019).
- 82.
Arnsperger describes Bellet’s intellectual agenda as fomenting ‘uprising in the very place where humans’ humanity is decided’ (Arnsperger, 2010, p. 35).
- 83.
This notional proposal is in line with the epistemological extension of the anthropology of finitude as a basis for political thought, developed at the University of Lausanne, notably by Dominique Bourg (2010, 2012, 2018) and Christian Arnsperger (2009, 2010, 2011a, b, c). It is also in keeping with the work of Jean-Philippe Pierron (2014a, p. 65; 2016) and Bruno Villalba (2016).
- 84.
Scientists are talking about the possibility of a sixth mass extinction, with 75% of biodiversity disappearing (Barnosky et al., 2011).
- 85.
Of particular note is the interdisciplinary research programme ‘Politiques de la Terre à l’épreuve de l’Anthropocène’ “Earth Policies for the Anthropocene”), organised by the Université Sorbonne Paris Cité with a number of other institutional actors, and directed by Bruno Latour from Sciences Po Paris. There is also a series of books and thematic issues of journals (Sinaï, 2013; Bourg et al., 2017).
- 86.
The question of enhancing climate and environmental education is raised regularly, as noted in an article in Le Monde, by Audrey Garric and Marine Miller on 23 March 2019: ‘Le dérèglement climatique est trop peu enseigné, de l’école à l’université’ (Climate change is too little taught, from school to university). The journalists point out that both teachers and researchers are increasingly critical of the inadequate place afforded to climate change in the various school curricula.
- 87.
It is up to us to identify reasons for hope (other than the fulfilment of the Promethean project of modernity). Marcuse, at the end of his book One-Dimensional Man (1963), refers to a statement by Walter Benjamin: ‘It is only for the sake of those who are without hope that hope is given to us’.
- 88.
The four volumes (numbers 10/11, 12/13, 14/15 and 16/17) of the journal Illusio on the theme of ‘Critical Theory of the Crisis’ show this clearly.
- 89.
Fred Poché presents an interesting way of thinking about ‘remaking democracy’ (2014) based on ‘ethics of the oppressed’, highlighting the importance of standing with the ‘voiceless’ in the public arena (this is also the stance adopted by researchers in the north of France who have studied sobriety from the point of view of people in precarious situations – Villalba, 2016). Speaking out is one of the most important concrete ways of bringing democracy to life and breaking with ‘loneliness’. Fragility – the ‘difficulty of keeping a grip on one’s existence’ (Poché, 2013, p. 10) and on society, is particularly prevalent in today’s societies. On the other hand, for Poché, fragilities can be organised into ‘joyful resistance’: through solidarity, fragility can be made into social foundations. Poché’s project consists of developing action for dignity through the development of politics of fragility and ethics of the oppressed. For Poché, it is important to provide social actors with spaces for argumentation – the true foundation of politics and democracy. Thought allows for the creation of a space free of the dominant contemporary economic rationale, where individuals are invited to ‘de-think’ (p. 20) rather than ‘think’. Poché’s way of addressing the excesses of dominant neoliberalism is to highlight the dynamics inherent in the social reality, which he regards with a critical and positive eye. This analysis is hopeful and encourages the creativity of collective action, which can sometimes take the form of resistance to the logic of annihilation of human beings.
- 90.
For example, Curnier, in the development of educational reflection in the Anthropocene (2017, p. 28), expresses a dual epistemological foundation: the complex thinking of French sociologist Edgar Morin, and the ‘post-normal science’ of the Argentine philosopher Silvio Funtowicz (working in Norway), the American philosopher Jerome J. Ravetz (working in Great Britain), and the Chilean environmentalists Cecilie Modvar and Gilberto C. Gallopín whose purpose is directly political: to influence political decisions.
- 91.
These include Philippe Raynaud, Marc Sadoun and Jean-Marie Donegani.
- 92.
We have published a more in-depth analysis of this body of work in a book introducing the notion of the Anthropocene and proposing a political interpretation of it, L’Anthropocène décodé pour les humains (Wallenhorst, 2019), as well as another book, La vérité de l’Anthropocène (Wallenhorst, 2020a), presenting the scientific content of the ‘major articles’ surrounding the Anthropocene.
- 93.
The famous Club of Rome report was updated by Meadows, Randers and Meadows in 2004.
- 94.
Daniel Curnier’s definition of the biosphere is particularly clear: ‘The concept of the Biosphere refers to the thin layer on the Earth’s surface whose geochemical cycles interact with living processes. While the Anthropocene forces us to shift our temporal perspective, the Biosphere redefines the spatial dimension of our relationship with the world. This concept makes it possible to restore the position of the human species on the surface of a planet whose distance from the sun and geochemical composition offer the only known environment in the Universe that has allowed life to develop. (...) The concept of the Biosphere also recalls the biophysical laws on which human beings depend, and which limit the expansion of their activities’ (Curnier, 2017, p. 221).
- 95.
Curnier points to this idea of humanity being ‘uprooted’ from nature as particularly widespread in anthropological representations in public opinion, and argues that it could lead ‘to the collapse of civilisation, or even to the extinction of the human species’ (2017, p. 99). His analysis of the responsibility of school is clear: ‘From the point of view of the relationship between humans and the living world, school can be seen as symbolic of the student’s uprooting from a social reality anchored in a biophysical substrate’ (Curnier, 2017, p. 180).
- 96.
39–50% of Earth’s surface is currently used by humans, and at least 25% of Earth’s photosynthetic output goes to serve human needs. This directly leads to a loss of biodiversity, including wildlife. The appropriation of the earth’s surface by humans and the destruction of other animal habitats is the primary cause of biodiversity loss (Federau, 2017, pp. 34–35). The American geographer Erle C. Ellis et al., in 2011a, b, mapped the anthropogenic transformation of the biosphere between 1700 and 2000 (i.e. before and after the Industrial Revolution). They mapped what they call anthromes (i.e. anthropogenic biomes), by taking two characteristics into consideration: population density and land use. In their study, they show that in 1700, half of the biosphere was wilderness and 45% of the remaining biosphere was semi-natural. In contrast, 300 years later, only 25% of the biosphere is in a wild state and 20% in a semi-wild state. Only a quarter of the earth’s surface not covered by ice can be considered wild – and indeed, every region of the globe is impacted by pollution and climate change. The Industrial Revolution is the event that the authors put forward as the explanation for the explosion of anthromes in the biosphere. Thus, between 1700 and 2000, the biosphere underwent a transition from a predominantly wild state to a predominantly anthropised state. Although human alteration of the biosphere has been significant since the development of agriculture, it is only since the Industrial Revolution, and then a fortiori during the intensification and globalisation of the Great Acceleration in the mid-twentieth century, that the biosphere has undergone a real transformation, sufficient to be quantified as a change of state, which differentiates it from the Holocene biosphere (Ellis, 2011b).
- 97.
We edited a collective book on convivialism with French political scientist Anaïs Theviot and the infocomist Sandra Mellot: Inter-connectés? Numérique et convivialisme [Interconnected? Digital and convivialism] (2020).
- 98.
The addition of this principle in a version worked on in 2019 is indicative of the diffusion, within the community of social scientists and philosophers, of scientific work related to human/animal differences (of degree rather than of nature), to the complex functioning of trees and their capacities for interaction, or to the planet’s entry into the Anthropocene.
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Wallenhorst, N. (2023). Foundations of a Critical Theory for the Anthropocene. In: A Critical Theory for the Anthropocene. Anthropocene – Humanities and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37738-9_1
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