Responsibility Towards Life in the Early Anthropocene

Abstract

The Anthropocene, just established as a particular geophysical state, challenges us to critically reconsider normative responsibility towards life, human and non-human, as the scale of potential global disruption becomes apparent. The characteristics it reveals, of our technically interlocked condition now with non-human nature, the problems of uncertainty and human exceptionalism suggest that currently influential positions, those of Hans Jonas and Michel Foucault, are both useful for understanding the political ontology of human life, but only offer partial perspectives towards better responsibility. A critical program of rereading Foucault’s genealogical account reveals the usefulness of a biopolitical perspective, but also its limitations, and the need to redevelop its framework to include non-human species in order then to appropriately confront the emerging crisis of the Anthropocene.