Futural Dispatches on Responsibility for the Earth, or, ‘What on Earth Is Ethical Responsibility?’

Dave Boothroyd

doi:10.3390/h11010018

Abstract

This article explores the question of the limits of ethical responsibility in the context of the contemporary ecological crisis. Drawing centrally on a selection of writings by Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and, in the second half of the article especially, Timothy Morton, it attempts to show how the conceptualization of the Earth/environment/biosphere (tropes for the ‘ecological whole’) as an object of ethical concern is problematic and exacerbated in the context of the posthumanist critique of anthropocentrism. If a generalized anthropization of the planet represents the ‘ethical failure’ of the Earth by ‘the human’—the material mark of which is the geo-physical terraforming associated with anthropocene—who or what, might be anticipated to be able to bear, or to live-up to, the ethical responsibility for its continued survival? The article critically brings elements of the philosophy of these thinkers into conjunction to discuss how the future of life/death might be properly considered an ethical matter at all, or alternatively, as the ‘end’ of ethical responsibility. Whilst Morton appears to recognize the potential of deconstructive thinking and Levinasian ethics for ecological thought, it is argued here that his reading of these is at odds with the object-oriented ontological thinking he more stridently identifies with. This messy collision in Morton’s ecological theory is used here as a springboard to explain how a strategic reprise of a certain humanism—or theoretical human exceptionalism—might be key to appreciating how humans taking responsibility for the current ecological crisis is the condition of a futural ethical openness to the non-human.

Highlights

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
If you do not stay awake I shall come like a thief: you will not know at what hour I shall come upon you’ (Derrida 1984, p. 25) Immediately afterwards Derrida writes ponderously, perhaps ruefully repeating it to himself: “I shall come: the coming is always to come”, and wonders “where does this coming come from?” This line of questioning, Derrida shows, necessarily concerns the “narrative voice” of the Apocalypse as an event, and as that which must logically precede any narratology as such
The original emission, is necessarily obscured by the passing-on, not to mention any further obscuration arising from problems of translation incurred at any point in this chain, which includes my passing-on this message in this context, namely a discussion of ethical responsibility in view of the planetary ecological crisis. (Needless to say, this is something that was not anticipated, by John, by Jesus, by some nameless angel, nor by the translators of the biblical text and of Derrida’s French text nor, by Derrida himself)

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The ethical, and the ethico-political ‘problem’, if it can be properly called this, concerns how we should conceive of, let alone how we can live-up to, the notion of ethical responsibility for the survivance of this thing we call the Earth-environmentbiosphere.

Results

Conclusion