Abstract
ABSTRACT The aim of this essay is to discuss one particular aspect concerning the methodological and linguistic dimensions of Michel Serres’ notion of the ‘natural contract’. The essay focuses on the way in which his call for a radical shift in the relation of nature and the human leads him to reject the critical tradition in philosophy most often identified with Kant and to turn instead to invention as a form of philosophical language that is both legitimate and necessary. By examining the reasons and implications for this shift towards the synthetic, non-chronological and polyvocal, I argue that Serres’s use of invention raises questions of how the language of the natural contract must incorporate a ‘natural’ or nonhuman element into a contractual relation. My essay seeks to shed further light on this, the very possibility of communication. The essay concludes with a discussion of the question as to whether Serres’s notion marks a new and problematic version of a grand narrative that is susceptible to the diagnosis of the postmodern condition made by Lyotard as an incredulity towards metanarratives.
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