Anthropocene from a mesological point of view / Augustin Berque

総合地球環境学研究所, 2015.9.17 人類世考察会 Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto Anthropocene workshop, 17 September 2015

Anthropocene from a mesological point of view Augustin BERQUE 1. “Anthropocene” comes from the Greek anthropos, human being, and kainos, new. It means that we have entered an age in which humankind is transforming nature to a degree which becomes geologically significant. The suffix cene has been used, in geology, to designate a new age of life on the Earth ; hence Eocene etc. In that sense, Anthropocene might be limited to a geological meaning, the question being how to define when it begins : was it in the fifties with the so-called Great Acceleration? In 1784 with the steam engine? With the neolithic agricultural revolution? With the use of fire? Etc.

2. The point of view here is different. It focusses on the very humanity of our relationship with the Earth. Anthropocene has here a double meaning. It should not only be a new age for the Earth, it should also become a new age for our humanity itself; that is, an opportunity to transform profoundly our way of being, thinking and acting – in other words, our civilization (“modernity”).

This transformation is necessary if we are to survive in the long run. It would have three conditions: an ontological one, a logical one, and an ethical one.

3a. Ontologically, modernity is linked with dualism, i.e. the dichotomy between subject and object.

The modern subject, as professed by the Cartesian cogito, is supposed to exist in itself, needing neither a place nor any material thing for being. I call this “the principle of Mount Horeb”, because cogito, ergo sum, is ontologically the same as sum qui sum (‫)היהא רשא היהא‬. That is, a being transcending any place or thing or other beings. This is exactly the principle which modernity has put into practice on the Earth, and it is, by essence, unsustainable, because we are not gods, but earthlings.

3b. Earthling originally meant “ploughman”. We are those who plough the Earth in order to be, and thus – contrary to the modern subject – ontologically need our relationship with the Earth. The concept for this relationship was provided by Watsuji’s definition of fuudosei 風土性 as “the structural moment of human existence” (ningen sonzai no kouzou keiki 人間存在の構造契機). I translated this concept with mediance (from the Latin medietas, half), meaning the dynamic relation (Strukturmoment) of the two “halves” of human existence : the topos of our animal body, and the chora of our eco-techno-symbolic milieu (fuudo 風土, Umwelt). Dichotomizing these two halves is

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an abstraction. We have to reconcretize human existence, by overcoming the principle of Mount Horeb and acknowledging our mediance. Epistemologically, this means that we have to develop the problematics of mesology (fuudoron 風土論, Umweltlehre). On this point, see my La mésologie, pourquoi et pour quoi faire?, Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2014.

4a. Logically, we have to overcome the binarity which led to modern dualism, and which originates in the double principle of identity (A is A) and of the excluded middle (there is no intermediate third term, both A and non-A). This double principle is that of modern-classical mechanicism, including bit computing. It is the logic of machines, but not that of living beings, who essentially metabolize A (matter) into non-A (life), and even less that of human beings, who necessarily use symbolic systems (language to begin with) in order to be. Now, symbolicity transcends the double principle above, because it integrates both A (an object) and non-A (a meaning). Symbols are syllemmatic : they “take together” (sullambanein) what is physically distinct and maybe distant both in space and time. In order to conceive logically of syllemmas (including quantum entanglement and nonlocality), we have to cultivate the tetralemma (1. A, 2. non-A, 3. neither A nor non-A, 4. both A and non-A), a mode of thinking which was invented in India nearly two millennia ago, and thus overcome, at last, the gap between East and West. As a first step in this direction, see for instance YAMAUCHI Tokuryu 山内得立著『ロゴスとレンマ』(Logos and lemma), Iwanami, 1974, and also, as a sublation (Aufhebung) of the two mutually excluding “logic of the predicate” (jutsugo no ronri 述語 の論理) and “logic of the subject” (shugo no ronri 主語の論理), the concept of trajection : r = S/P, which reads : “reality is a subject S taken as a predicate P”, and the concept of trajective chains : (((S/P)/P’)/P’’)/P’’’ etc., which means that, historically and evolutionarily, the unsubstantial predicate (P, P’, P’’, P’’’ etc.), i.e. the way of taking S, is indefinitely substantialized (embodied) into the substantial subject S’ – i.e. S/P –, S’’ – i.e. (S/P)P’ –, S’’’ – i.e. ((S/P)/P’)/P’’ –, etc. (see for instance my Poétique de la Terre. Histoire naturelle et histoire humaine, essai de mésologie, Belin, 2014).

4b. Now, while the natural course of things (evolution) had been developing from the physical to the biological (matter plus life), and thence to the human (matter plus life plus mind), that is, from the simplex to the complex, on the contrary, the modern ideal of science has been to analytically reduce complexity to simplexity : the spiritual to the biological, and the biological to the physical. Put into practice by the modern world, this reduces the ecumene (the global combination of human milieux) back to the biosphere, and the biosphere back to the planet. This has not only triggered the Sixth Extinction of life on Earth; it also tends to transform us into slaves of our mechanical world system, led by the binary (bit) logic of the market; which is not only an ontological fall, but a moral denial of our very humanity.

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4c. The above reductionism, which is inherent to the modern paradigm, negates the very principle which makes the Earth a human abode (an ecumene). This principle was first formulated, around 440 AD, by Zong Bing (宗炳, 375-443), author of the first treatise on landscape in human history : zhi yu shanshui, zhi you er qu ling 至於山水、質有而趣霊, which means : as for landscape, it possesses materiality, and yet, it also tends to the spiritual (more on this in my Thinking through landscape, Routledge, 2013). I therefore call it “the principle of Zong Bing”. Translated into a mesological problematics, it means the following: the Earth is what it is (S), and yet, it also is the meaning it has for us (P); that is, in the present case, the reality S/P of Anthropocene. This “yet also” (er 而) amounts logically to a syllemma. This is not all. This syllemma amounts also to the structural moment of our existence – our mediance – upon the Earth, which “tends” (qu 趣) in a certain direction: the course of history and of evolution. Now, the ontological paradigm of modernity makes us structurally blind to this reality, jeopardizing the very possibility of our existence upon the Earth.

5. Ethically, our social, political and methodological individualism, that is the denial of our mediance, entails an indefinitely growing disengagement toward our milieu and our historicity, i.e. toward the eco-techno-symbolical network of relationships with other beings and things, past, present and yet to come, which makes possible the existence of the neotenes (incomplete beings, depending on others) which humans are in fact, more than any other species, because of language and, everyday more and more, because of the indefinite development of our technical systems. The more we depend on our milieu, the more we deny it. This denial entails such allegations as Margaret Thatcher’s There is no such thing as society, or the coarse irresponsibility of our energy policies, which, for example, systematically reject on future generations the task of handling our indefinitely growing nuclear waste, the radioactivity of which we are totally unable to eliminate. Benefits for us, negative externalities for them and for the environment! This is the “moral” principle which sustains our civilization, that of capitalism to begin with; and that is what we have to overcome.

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