Reconstructing Photohumanism

Abstract

Roy Scranton argues for a new philosophical humanism as the best response to the existential crisis of the Anthropocene, the new geological epoch for which human industrial activity is responsible. This threat from climate change, Scranton argues, is better met through what he calls photohumanism than by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) alone. This new humanism shares many affinities with pluralistic humanism. A key concern is political action, which is problematized by what Tschaepe calls dopamine democracy. Scranton shares this concern, but his approach puts too great an emphasis on binaries, such as culture and nature, mind and body, and life and death. I offer the philosophical method of reconstruction, as situated within pluralistic humanism and the philosophy of John Dewey. In introducing the need for reconstruction as a method for doing philosophy in a new but ancient sense of learning to die, I reconstruct photohumanism and offer the Deweyan ideal of democracy for overcoming the problem of the Anthropocene.