Philosophy of the Anthropocene

The Human Turn

Sverre Raffnsøe

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137526694
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137526700
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

The Anthropocene is heralded as a new epoch distinguishing itself from all foregoing eons in the history of the Earth. It is characterized by the overarching importance of the human species in a number of respects, but also by the recognition of human dependence and precariousness. A critical human turn affecting the human condition is still in the process of arriving in the wake of an initial Copernican Revolution and Kant's ensuing second Copernican Counter-revolution.

Within this landscape, issues concerning the human - its finitude, responsiveness, responsibility, maturity, auto-affection and relationship to itself - appear rephrased and re-accentuated as decisive probing questions. In this book Sverre Raffnsøe explores how the change has ramifications for the kinds of knowledge that can be acquired concerning human beings and for the human sciences as a study of human existential beings in the world.

Second Investigation: Exploring the Human Turn as a Challenge for Humans and the Sciences

4

The Turn within and of the Human

Abstract: This investigation begins by looking at how the turn towards the human as a decisive factor in the Anthropocene world also entails a new turn of the human. Even as the human factor manifests itself as decisive, it becomes clear how humans are situated beings. Not only are they affected by the world, they are also characterized by a certain way of being in the world, and of relating to it.

Consequently, it becomes imperative to seek new knowledge about how this decisive and irreducible human dimension is more specifically affected, how it is and finds itself in the world, and how it relates to the world.

Looking briefly at portions of the globalization debate, we see how the experience of a mutual, irreducible relationality is expressed here.

Keywords: Befindlichkeit; Clough; globalization; Heidegger; Ihde; Kierkegaard; Latour; Self

Raffnsøe, Sverre. Philosophy of the Anthropocene: The Human Turn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137526700.0009.

Humans as relational and situated beings

As described in the preceding investigation, the Anthropocene and the Anthropogene epochs give name to a world where the human being has taken on a central and decisive role. Homo sapiens is now a species that has extensively begun to recreate the conditions for its own existence, and for the existence of other creatures on the planet.

At the same time, and occasioned by this new epoch, a human turn is making itself felt, as the planet and its denizens have extensively turned towards the human and are now dependent on what humans are doing. The human has become a critical factor. Today, the presence of such a human turn is ineluctable and incircumventable, even though it has largely come about without any conscious effort on humanity’s part, and without our being able to deduce or imagine its consequences. As I have already suggested, the Anthropocene and the human turn have brought one form of the world to a close while opening up a whole new set of questions.

As explained previously, “the human turn” is a phrase that denotes a turn within the human, and also a turn of the human; and it involves the human factor altering its character and turning in a new direction, integrating into a landscape of relationships that are abundant and diverse. With the Anthropocene and the Anthropogene, the human steps forward as a relational being in accentuated form, stepping forward because it is essentially established and defined by its surroundings, which the human relates to in different ways and in different respects. Here, humans do not merely come into being through their relationship with their global and local natural surroundings. They are also shaped and reshaped through their relationships with “foreign” objects or technologies that operate as extensions or expansions of themselves, all the while feeding back upon their modalities of being.

Furthermore, humans are established (and establish themselves) through their relationships with other people, individually and in groups.

The human we find stepping forward and assuming such a pivotal position in the Anthropocene is not a being who is able to take on some natural, already given role on centre stage, straightaway and relatively care-free. This is an important, powerful, potent and colossal being, for this being is imbued with “power to,” meaning the power and the capacity to bring about and effect decisive changes (Raffnsøe 2013: 248). Nevertheless, this being is still not powerful in the sense that it wields “power over,” meaning that it rules over, or has command of the situation and of its own abilities to control it (Raffnsøe 2013: 244).

Consequently, the human being stepping forward with the human turn does not tally with the image of man as the sovereign ruler and the essential measure of all things, located at the centre, an image sketched out in the anthropocentric universe. Instead, we perceive a relational being stepping forward that assumes a central role, in that it constantly stands in relation to, and is affected by, and is relating to something other than itself (something for which it plays a decisive role).

In the relational landscape described here, the human factor unintentionally emerges in the shape of a “singular” irreducible, independent human dimension in (and related to) the described relationality that returns and comes into play in new and ever-changing ways. Such an irreducible human aspect, which emerges as an independent dimension within a relationality, is an absolutely fundamental feature of the human turn.

The human thereby returns, unexpectedly, in the shape of an exacting, independent Befindlichkeit (Heidegger 1979). The human crops up as a singular way of being in a mode and a mood that are connected to finding and sensing oneself, as one finds oneself, situated in a singular setting and related to it. As a consequence, the human re-emerges over and over again in the form of an affectivity, a certain capacity “to affect and be affected” (Clough & Halley 2007: 2), in a certain, and not necessarily predictable, dynamic and discontinuous way of being touched by and of touching the thing to which one is relating (Clough 2008). One way the human element appears is as a dynamic and unstable way of being touched and affected by (changes to) technologies, nature, relations to other people and one’s surroundings. Through this dynamic sensing and finding oneself in relation to technology, nature, social relations and topography, at the same time one establishes new relationships to and among these factors.

Amidst this finding oneself, the human element also appears as a sort of contemplation and stance-taking. Human existence is thus present, not in the form of a given static relationship or given tension in the relation, but in the form of an establishment of an active relationship to the relation or the tension. The human comes into existence insofar as “the relation relates itself to itself” (Kierkegaard 1980: 13; Kierkegaard 1962: 73) or as an act and as an active reconsideration of the given relation (Raffnsøe, Dalsgaard & Gudmand-Høyer 2014). “Considered in this way,” “a human being is still not a self” (Kierkegaard 1980: 13; Kierkegaard 1962: 73), but is rather a self that needs to re-establish it-self, over and over again. This mood involves a specific mode of contemplation and stance-taking when dealing with other people, beings, technologies and nature, which on their part mediate, transform or contemplate the human (Ihde 1990; Latour & Gille 2001; Ihde 2010; Latour 2001). The human takes on the character of an irreducible mutual relationship that emerges as a relating to, contemplation of and stance-taking to the landscape in which the human is situated.

Inasmuch as this human dimension is, precisely, completely unpredictable and cannot be recompensed in advance, this irreducible level can now be subjected to its own independent thematic investigation: How do humans find themselves and feel within the relations they are involved in, and how are they affected by them? How do they themselves affect such relations? How do people reorganize the relationships between and among relationships? What stance do people take in these contexts, and how do people relate to one another and to themselves? How does the human way of contemplating and stance-taking influence or affect these contexts? And how do these above-mentioned contexts affect and influence through people?

In connection with this affectivity and this irreducible relating-to-itself, a new issue of responsibility arises, which in turn raises new ethical questions: How is the human being affected by the circumstance that now, with the Anthropocene and the Anthropogene, it finds itself involved in a series of relationships where man holds decisive responsibility, without knowing in advance how to live up to this responsibility? What stance does the human take to this responsibility, and how is the human supposed to live up to it? And what aesthetic measures can we even set up as valid when seeking to relate to a responsibility of this nature? The human turn also implies an accentuated sort of general responsibility, which at the same time is vague and diffuse.

Such a complex turn of the human becomes clear if one looks towards and explores the phenomenon of globalization as it has grown to prominence in recent years as a decisive new agenda. This is also part and parcel of the general, vague, diffuse and simultaneously accentuated responsibility for which such a turn paves the way. This aspect will be elaborated below.

At all events, the human factor also begins to make itself felt and appear in a new light as soon as one begins to study the turn within central areas of knowledge and skills that are not usually counted among those forms of knowledge that place the human as such at the centre. A turn towards the human is becoming evident among the scientific and academic disciplines that belong in other faculties than those of philosophy and the arts, such as the faculty of science and the faculty of health and medical sciences. These sciences and their corresponding practice areas are establishing new knowledge about the human being, but they are also stimulating new modes of human life and ways of living. This is explored further in the chapter after the discussion of globalization.

Globalization as a turn of the human

The human turn also reveals itself in the phenomenon we know as “globalization.” This term denotes the circumstance that a number of protective, immunological membranes that humankind dwelled in have burst (Sloterdijk 1998a–c), and the world has folded in upon itself to what is now a spherical interconnectedness.

In political and economic contexts, globalization is often experienced and formulated as a virtually given agenda that is imposed from without and sets out specific conditions that lie outside our local influence, and which force us into following highly specific patterns of action (Økonomi- og Erhvervsministeriet 2010; Regeringen 2006; Økonomi- og Erhvervsministeriet 2010).

Upon closer scrutiny, however, a detailed analysis of specific chains of events – various global economic or political crises, for instance – show that the element of “globalization” refers to a complex, non-linear interconnectedness, devoid of unambiguous determinism, between various human modes of acting and reacting (and their consequences) that mutually affect one another (Brenneche 2007).¹

Seen through this lens, globalization refers not only to a new type of relationality, but also to the circumstance that humankind has already begun to relate to its own situation in a new way. People who employ the expression “globalization” have already themselves begun to imagine and take into account that they and their actions are an integral and significant part of a larger mutual context, a context that they are crucially dependent upon and simultaneously influencing. With globalization and with the Anthropocene, people are beginning to feel the need to constructively consider the fact that their home or dwelling – and the relationships they depend on belonging to – no longer consists of the house and the hearth, nor of the nation, but of the entire planet.

As previously emphasized, with this turn, the issues of responsibility begin to present themselves in new and intriguing ways that are, however, also difficult to grasp and firmly hold. So it is in such global contexts that issues of responsibility are manifested as issues of sustainability, both in the human being’s relation to its surrounding world and in its relation to the human factor itself.

Note

1 Globalization therefore also leads to the appearance of a spherical space (Sloterdijk 1998a–c; Sloterdijk 2005) that follows non-Euclidean, Riemannian principles (Brenneche 2007). A new and different topology is necessary to understand this.

5

The Human Turn as It Appears within Central Fields of Knowledge, Capabilities and Skills

Abstract: The call for knowledge and know-how about humans with the human turn leads to a general turn towards the human factor in science, research and education. A brief look at the life sciences, health sciences and “big data” exemplifies how a number of sciences are turning towards the human and setting new agendas for the modes of living that currently exist.

In turn, this raises the question of how humans are affected by, and how they relate to, the knowledge about humankind that is uncovered by these important branches of sciences.

Keywords: art de vivre; big data; Canguilhem; cosmopolitan knowledge; health sciences; human sciences; life sciences; mode of living; Rose; scholastic knowledge; Schulbegriff; science de la vie; science of life; Weltbegriff

Raffnsøe, Sverre. Philosophy of the Anthropocene: The Human Turn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137526700.0010.

Humans in interaction with their surroundings

The advent of the Anthropocene and the Anthropogene show how the human being’s situation, position in and relationship with the world has changed. Globalization also points to the importance of human beings, even while it makes their interconnectedness and therefore also their relative existence in the world palpable and tangible.

Consequently, in the sublunar world it becomes difficult to maintain the idea that there is a clear division or distinction between nature and humankind. On the one hand, the relevant external world seems to turn towards, and appears to be dependent upon, mankind and its activities in a far more literal sense than previously. With the human turn, the human factor has taken on a far more decisive and direct significance for the world of humans. On the other hand, however, the human can also much more directly feel its own dependency on and affectedness by this world, upon which the human itself exerts its own decisive impact. The human turn thus involves a mutual and intimately related connection and a mutual addressing between the human being and his or her surroundings.

Anyone seeking to understand the simultaneous development of climate and environment will surely find it important to possess knowledge about the laws and processes of nature, as established by the natural sciences. Nevertheless, they will also soon realize that “factual” knowledge is not enough in itself, for it is similarly essential to possess knowledge about the human activities that have led to the dramatic alterations we can observe today, not only climate-related, but also with regard to our (natural) surroundings in a wider sense; alterations that set new terms and conditions, and a new agenda. Additionally, it is important to know about how humankind and its constituent individuals respond and react to the changes in climate and environment that are occurring.

The Earth’s climate and environment as we know it today are the result of an interactive process involving humankind and its external natural surroundings. That is what makes it vital to gain relational knowledge of humankind. Such knowledge demonstrates how man’s natural surroundings constitute something other and something more than “external” conditions for the human being, as they are an active part of the human’s world. Such knowledge further shows how humans are actively a part of and set their mark on their natural surroundings. Finally, this sort of knowledge examines how humankind and the human individual respond to and contemplate themselves in these contexts.

Even so, at the same time the human’s understanding of itself, and relating to and dealing with itself and its “own nature,” undergoes dramatic changes in step with technological and medical advances, which decisively affect the human being’s world. And while these advances offer potential interpretations of how the human and “human nature” can be understood, they also call for more knowledge about how humans are affected by and are able to handle the knowledge, capabilities and skills they themselves produce.

The human turn in relation to the life sciences, health sciences and “big data”

Be all this as it may, another and parallel human turn appears if we focus our attention on a central field of knowledge that has achieved seminal importance in our world today, and which still continues to grow.

This wide field, referred to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• First Investigation: Exploring the Role of Humans in the Anthropocene Landscape
• Second Investigation: Exploring the Human Turn as a Challenge for Humans and the Sciences
• References