The Task of Philosophy in the Anthropocene

This volume this volume seeks to answer the question implicit in the title given our unprecedented situation characterised by the geological era of the Anthropocene. Quite a number of contributions echo Karl Jaspers' notion of the Axial Age as the root of a Western tradition articulating both immanence and transcendence. Our own era may well be a Post-Axial Age when viewed historically. The contributions are very diverse with some new formulations like 'environmental cosmopolitanism', the 'Hubriscene' (one can understand that one) and the 'liquidation of the real' where nature is liquidated into resources, property into wealth and truth into information; the legend of Faust comes to mind and we cannot assume by any stretch that 'scientific ingenuity is coextensive with wisdom', especially when it comes to transhumanist ambitions.

The pioneering eco-philosopher Henryk Skolimowski would have had his own response to the question, but will certainly have sympathised with the notion of Shared Dwelling put forward by Michael Marder in his essay; also the need to think deeply so as to extricate ourselves from a cultural rut and philosophy out of its academic backwater. Another essay points out the parallels between ecological and ontological finitude and vulnerabilities, advocating 'radical hope' and poetic imagination in response to the breakdown of a world. My favourite essay was the final one by Thomas Alexander articulating four voices of nature and what he calls a polyphonic conception of philosophy. He understands the centrality of an ecological outlook and redefines naturalism as one who cares for nature and humanism as care for humans, hence a different kind of humanistic naturalism; he contrasts this with the 'monophonic extreme of reductive materialism – a scientistic attitude in which the humanistic, ontological, and transcendental voices are dismissed' (p. 197). What we now need is an interactive field of polyphonic voices. He sees transcendence through gnosis as a form of self-realisation, 'an expansion of perspective and understanding that allows a reinterpretation of the ordinary' (p. 207).