Ethics in the Late Anthropocene

In recent years "the Anthropocene" has come to represent a new milestone for human-induced destruction of the environment. There is a widespread consensus that industrialization processes within capitalist modernity have ushered humanity into a new geological epoch bearing little resemblance to the climatic stability of "the Holocene," the roughly 10,000-year span within which all known human civilizations were established. Furthermore, there is general agreement that the ending of climatic stability will have a devasting impact on the Earth's ecosystems, making long-term human settlement and global supply chains difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. This Special Section aims to stimulate critical social theories to explore ways of thinking and acting that would equip us humans better to respond to the multiple challenges we face from the increasingly inescapable reach of ecological disaster. In all five contributions, "the Anthropocene" names a historical moment in which we must reconsider the very category of the human and our constitutive interdependencies with the other-than-human. Challenging the view that only humans possess intrinsic value, Arne Vetlesen calls on us to regard other-than-human beings as moral addressees in their own right. At the same time, he argues that only humans can be considered moral agents due to their powers of reflexivity, abstraction, imagination, and future oriented thinking. These powers make humans alone responsible for their actions. Although at first glance his asymmetric model may seem in tension with it, Vetlesen's argument resonates with Maeve Cooke's call for ecologically attuned relationships between humans and other-than-humans, in which human knowledges are not deemed in principle superior to the knowledges of other-than-human entities and ethical goodness is not determined solely by human concerns and interests but has a partial independence of them. Nonetheless, like Vetlesen, she highlights the continued importance of ethically motivated human action, leading her to propose a reimagined, rearticulated conception of human freedom as ecologically attuned, self-directing, self-transforming agency. The proposed conception aims to break decisively with the ideal of the sovereign subject as it has emerged within capitalist modernity. Yann Allard-Tremblay makes a similar argument, urging us to recognize our embeddedness in the natural world while at the same time asserting our capacity for reflexive, responsible self-direction; he calls on us to seek concrete ways in which our relationships to one another and to other-than-humans can be renewed in their localized contexts. For Indigenous peoples, this process necessitates political resurgence and the revitalization of lifeways impacted by the destructive legacy of colonialism. In the case of non-Indigenous peoples, it may require far-reaching, transformations in relation to the land they live upon. John McGuire, too, holds onto the value of selfdetermining human agency, while drawing attention to its historical entanglement with notions of autarkic mastery and warning against the uncritical embrace of technological innovation as the surest means of meliorating ecological disaster. In the same vein, Karim Sadek contends that any adequate response to our ecologically disastrous situation is predicated on the human agent's ability to move beyond an egocentric mode of being that generates, shapes, and nourishes self-centered, self-driven, and self-concerned perceiving, thinking, and acting. Like the other contributors, This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics, 2019

This article explores the viability of living after ‘the end of nature’ – as Žižek reports – in the Anthropocene. Humans can no longer consistently rely on their persistent interventions to nature as its source. The end of nature, however, does not only mean that the problem is solely ecological. Instead, it points to the original chaos of catastrophes that disturb the link of man’s relationship to nature. In short, the current predicament of the times does not only expose problems of ecology per se but also of economy, biology, and society. So what comes next? Taking off from Heidegger and Leibniz, ethical prospects after this four-fold end should reopen once again the task of thinking the Anthropocene in various independent but coalescing fronts.

International Studies Association (ISA) annual …, 2004

The International Geosphere Biosphere Program has recently suggested that we now live in a new era of natural history, the Anthropocene, one marked by the emergence of a new series of geological, biological and climatological forcing ...

Rivista italiana di filosofia politica, 2023

The ancient one-to-one relationship with the biological life cycle has gradually deteriorated due to the world undergoing a metamorphic process. Such a metamorphosis has affected ecological harmony, in terms of it being both an approach to studying the relationships between living beings and the environment, and a branch of knowledge protecting and promoting ecological balance. One of the crucial aspects of this phenomenon is the need to rethink and redefine the concept of life in an era that has been described as the "Anthropocene". In introducing this special issue of the Journal, the paper aims to investigate the environmental question, which plays a crucial role in contemporary political thought, due to the survival of both nature and mankind being threatened. Since the 1950s, such a complex situation has resulted in two lines of thought whose views follow two opposed ideologies-anthropocentrism and anti-anthropocentrism.

Ethics, Medicine and Public Health, 2018

In response to anthropogenic climate change, bioethics scholars have advocated a return to its roots in Van Rensselaer Potter's vision of bioethics as a discipline integrating the humanities and the sciences to support ecology. These scholars have noted that the discipline of bioethics diverged from this vision, and today its focus is on human health. This paper's ultimate argument is that these scholars do not appreciate the radicalness of their proposal and its potential to disrupt the discipline. This paper's argument unfolds in four steps. In the first step, the paper describes the environmental impact of U.S. health care and claims that contemporary bioethics is unlikely to prioritize environmental protection over patients because of its humanistic character. To emphasize this character, this part of the paper identifies two forms of health care treatment that bioethics would not deny to patients despite their environmental costs. The second step of the paper is to review the scientific fact of man-made climate change and its inauguration of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Then, the third step of this paper reflects on this fact's impact on the category of humanist understanding. The central idea in the third part of this paper is that the Anthropocene undermines the traditional dichotomy between man and nature, which is conceptually necessary for humanist philosophy. If the human is not a distinct category, then attributing preeminent value to humans is invalid, undermining the system of thought centered on humans. The final step in this paper argues that the consequence of reckoning with contemporary ecology is that it generates a demand for a new system of value-and Anthropocene ethics-that deprioritizes human good, and which would provide rebuttals to criticisms that such a system of values is misanthropic. An Anthropocene ethics may justify prioritizing environmental protection over patients' health needs.

Telos 172 (Fall, 2015): 59-81, 2015

published on: APA blog (https://blog.apaonline.org/2019/06/13/the-limit-of-responsibility-the-ethical-paradox-of-the-anthropocene/ , posted on June 13, 2019), 2019

In this post I will try to describe the ethical paradox (i.e. the Paradox of the Omni-responsibility) emerging within the framework of the so-called Anthropocene. The main outcome of such a paradox is the overcoming of Hans Jonas’ imperative (principle) of responsibility as ethical for the ecological thought during the last decades.

Environmental Humanities, 2016

International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research, 2023

This paper is an attempt to draw an outline of similitude by analyzing and comparing one of the critically acclaimed dystopian novels, Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley, with the contemporary society. Although on surface Huxley's novel depicts an ideal fictional society, on delving deeper it is ascertained that it is a dystopia disguised under the garb of utopia. It explores the themes of genetic engineering, Pavlovian conditioning, consumerism, dissipation of science and sexual promiscuity while reflecting over the shifting concerns and angst of contemporary society. The novel prompts the readers to consider their own morals, convictions, and decisions in light of the fictitious social settings that Huxley has created. The crux of this paper is to trace the affinity between Huxley's Brave New World and the contemporary world that has seen various forms of advancements in technology and behavioral modulations and has undergone numerous changes. Our journey towards Brave New World doesn't seem like a far cry. Huxley broods over the fundamental issues hovering over mankind.

Silviya Serafimova, 2019

One of the main objectives of this article is to clarify how-taking into account that mapping (un)common worlds into one (un)common space is not an axiologically neutral process-one can avoid the pitfalls of thinking by adopting "either or" thinking modes, i.e. one can avoid choosing either radical anthropocentrism or radical eco-centrism as a starting point when mapping space in the era of the Anthropocene. In this context, I raise a hypothesis that such a methodological shift is possible if one succeeds, by developing some moral capacities, in applying the principle of ethical gradualism into an interspecies context.