A philosophical point of view on the Theory of Anthropocene

Abstract

This paper discusses how the model of a universal history which emerges in the current debate on the theory of Anthropocene, in particular in the field of evolutionary biology, risks ignoring differences in ways of economic production and consumption. A tendency for life sciences to gather concepts from the dominant neoliberal ideology has already been the focus of academic research (Cavazzini, 2013). In the Italian political debate, several scholars have criticized the neoliberal assumptions of the Anthropocene studies on the magazine effimera.org, since the scientific debate on this category has thus far focused on the quantitative perspective of a biodiversity crisis (Pievani, 2014) without any attention to political and social inequalities. For it does not analyze the conditions of environmental justice the quantitative method of universal ecology seems to produce a sense of catastrophe so diffused to be almost a symptom of an apocalyptic social disease (Baranzoni and Vignola, 2015).

Following the historical perspective of Fressoz and Bonneuil (2013) in this paper the theory of Anthropocene is considered as a theory of universal history. Referring to evidence of climate change, the two historians have developed an historical perspective that connects both the philosophy of history and the history of “nature”, inasmuch as the two disciplines set out to propose answers for the same questions: How can we imagine going beyond the modern paradigm of labor, since it seems to be no more environmentally sustainable? How can we explain the relationship between conscious human activity and its unconscious environmental consequence? Which constructs of global history describe the environmental crisis?