A Philosophical Journey into the Anthropocene

Agostino Cera

doi:10.5771/9781793630827

Summary

A Philosophical Journey into the Anthropocene: Discovering Terra Incognita presents the Anthropocene not only as a geological epoch, but rather as the potential métarécit of our age and the most faithful expression of the current zeitgeist. Insofar as the Anthropocene establishes that the human agency as technological omni-power represents a “global geophysical force” capable of altering the destiny of the Earth system, the coming of this new epoch shows that technology now embodies the subject of both history and nature. In this totalized form, technology achieves the status of an integral epochal phenomenon: the new environment for human life. Agostino Cera argues that the “technisches Zeitalter” (age of technology) outlined by twentieth-century philosophical thought is fully realized in the Anthropocene and that a more appropriate name for this planetary framework is, therefore, Technocene. The book develops along four basic directions: epistemological, ontological, anthropological, and ethical. It argues that the Anthropocene is something radically new, a terra incognita or an “epistemic hyperobject with a (geo-)historical barycenter,” giving rise to: an unprecedented form of reification of nature (“pet-ification of nature”); an unexpected version of anthropocentrism (“Aidosean Prometheanism”); and an unpredictable ethical paradox (“paradox of omni-responsibility”).

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2023
ISBN-Print: 978-1-7936-3081-0
ISBN-Online: 978-1-7936-3082-7
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 218
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. 1. FIGURES No access
  2. TABLES No access
3. 1. Notes No access
4. Acknowledgments No access
1. Notes No access
1. 1. Birth of an Epoch No access
  2. Between Geology and Ideology No access
  3. Beyond the Two Cultures: Epistemology of the Anthropocene No access
  4. An Epistemic Definition No access
  5. Notes No access
2. 1. The Anthropocene as Philosophical Question No access
  2. The Problem of Periodization No access
  3. The Technocene No access
  4. Apology of Modernity No access
  5. A “Metaphysical” Modernity No access
  6. An Ontological Definition No access
  7. Notes No access
1. 1. Geoengineering or the Problematization of Reality No access
  2. The Pet-ification of Nature No access
  3. The (Self)-Disenchantment of Human Being No access
  4. An Anthropological Definition No access
  5. Notes No access
2. 1. An Anthropocenic Anthropocentrism No access
  2. Anthropocentrism from Hybris to Ananke No access
  3. Aidosean Prometheanism No access
  4. The Ethical Paradox of Omni-Responsibility No access
  5. Beyond the Imperative of Responsibility (Hans Jonas and the Anthropocene) No access
  6. An Ethical Definition No access
  7. Notes No access
1. Notes No access
References No access Pages 183 - 202
Index No access Pages 203 - 216
About the Author No access Pages 217 - 218