Humanities in The Anthropocene - The Crisis of An Enduring Kantian Fable

Humanities in the Anthropocene: The Crisis of an Enduring Kantian Fable
Author(s): Dipesh Chakrabarty

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 47, No. 2/3, Recomposing the Humanities—with Bruno
Latour (SPRING & SUMMER 2016), pp. 377-397
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Humanities in the Anthropocene: The Crisis of
an Enduring Kantian Fable
Dipesh Chakrabarty
For Bruno Latour
Exordium
o 15 was the first year when the average surface temperature

of the world rose by one degree Celsius above the pre-industrial
average, thus taking us closer to the threshold of a two-degree
rise, a Rubicon we are told we must not cross if we are to avoid what
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)
of 1992 described as "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the
climate system."1 2016, as one meteorologist put it, has so far been "off
the charts" as far as global warming is concerned.2 The historian Julia
Adeney Thomas remarked in 2014 that the idea of being "endangered"
could not be a purely scientific idea, for the planet has been through
many other episodes of climate change—and five Great Extinctions
of species—before.3 "Dangerous" here is indeed a word that scientists,
politicians, and policy makers use as concerned citizens of the world,
glossing "danger" as a threat to human institutions. In Thomas's words:
"Historians coming to grips with the Anthropocene cannot rely on our
scientific colleagues to define 'the endangered human' for us. . . . It is
impossible to treat 'endangerment' as a simple scientific fact. Instead,
endangerment is a question of both scale and value. Only the humani
ties and social sciences, transformed though they will be through their
engagement with science, can fully articulate what we may lose."4 Indeed,
one of the first general books to be written on the problem of anthropo
genic climate change around the time of the publication of the Fourth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers, pointed out that the entity
to which climate change posed a real threat was human civilization as
we have come to understand and celebrate it.5 "Civilization," of course,
is a value-laden and therefore contested word that humanities scholars
New Literary History, 2016, 47: 377-397
378 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
in recent decades have done much to demystify.6 I bring u

here simply to show how central the concerns of the hum
the human sciences have been to defining one of the graves
humans face in the twenty-first century. The point is unde
moral philosophers such as Peter Singer describe climate ch
"greatest ethical challenge" ever faced by humanity.7 Tru
not define "human-induced planetary climate change" excep
help of big science; and, true, the problem of the "two cu
the sciences and the humanities remains.8 But the question
that follow from climate-change science require us to posses
that only the humanities can foster: the ability to see some
another person's point of view. The ability, in other words,
sympathetically the predicament of another person."9
This moral demand on humans today acquires an addit
from the thought that, seen in a long-term perspective, una
warming may very well accelerate the already growing rat
induced extinction of nonhuman species, with unhappy co
for humans themselves. Voices have been raised, including t
Francis, recommending that human justice be extended not
mals that cross a certain threshold of sentience (as animal li
once argued) but to the entire world of natural reproductiv
Aristotle called the zoe. This proposition that, in effect, sub
main of biological life to the work of the moral life of hum
I argue, a critical turning point for the humanities today, a
radically from a tradition—inaugurated by, among others
Kant—that made a strict separation between our "moral" an
(i.e., biological) lives, assuming that the latter would alway
care of by the natural order of things. This separation, after a
has buttressed for more than a century the much-critiqued
the humanities and the physical or biological sciences. Stran
ronmentalist thought have questioned and on occasions att
close this chasm, but the gap persists and has not been easy to
However, to ask, as we do today, how humans might use th
of their moral capacity to regulate their life as a biosocial sp
other species, is to bring within the ambit of human moral lif
that has always lain outside of its scope: the history of natural
planet. The assumption—made since at least the Enlighten
our animal life could take care of itself while we struggled,
in search of a collective moral life is now under serious strain,
ous implications for the humanities that have traditionally s
domain for the discussion of moral issues in separation fro
life. I argue this point by looking, first, at some relevant writ
HUMANITIES IN THE ANTHROPOCENE 379
in the context of discussions on climate change and

stewardship of life on the planet. I then engage, in co
work of Bruno Latour to show where his thoughts indica
Two Narratives of Climate Change
We generally find two approaches to the problem of cli

One dominant approach is to look on the phenom
one-dimensional challenge: how do humans achiev
their emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the com
Climate change is seen in this approach as a question
source the energy needed for the human pursuit of
accepted ends of economic development, so that billio
pulled out of poverty. The main solution proposed h
ity to make a transition to renewable energy as quick
and market signals permit. The accompanying issues
relations between poor and rich nations and between
ture generations: what would be a fair distribution of th
GHGs"—since GHGs are seen as scarce resources—between nations in
the process of this transition to renewables? The question of how much

sacrifice the living should make as they curb emissions, to ensure tha
unborn humans inherit a better quality of life than that of the presen
generation, remains a more intractable one, its political force reduced
by the fact that the unborn are not present to argue to press their case.
"The nonexistent has no lobby," as Hans Jonas once remarked, "and
the unborn are powerless."11
Within this broad description of the first approach, however, are nested
many disagreements, ranging from capitalist to noncapitalist Utopia
of sustainable futures. Most imagine the problem to be mainly one o
replacing fossil fuel-based energy sources with renewables. Some oth
ers—on the left—would agree that a turn to renewables is in order, bu
argue that because it is capitalism's constant urge to "accumulate" that
has precipitated the climate crisis, the crisis itself provides yet anothe
opportunity to renew and reinvigorate Marx's critique of capital. And
then there are those who think of actually scaling back the economy, d
growing it, and thus reducing the ecological footprint of humans whil
designing a world characterized by equality and social justice for all.
Still others think—in a scenario called "the convergence scenario"—o
reaching a state of economic equilibrium globally whereby all humans
sustain more or less the same standard of living. The role of the human
ties is confined here mainly to climate justice issues, with both politica
economists and philosophers (both in Rawlsian and util

contributing to relevant discussions.12 For all its shortcom
the reduction of the climate crisis to the problem of r
has the advantage that we can develop frameworks of
politics around it.
If, however, one also sees climate change not simply
as part of a family of interlocking problems—expon
increase, food insecurity, water scarcity, expansion of re
and increase of economic inequalities contributing to
conflicts, habitat loss for other species, greenhouse g
so on—all planetary in scope and all speaking to the
ecological overshoot on the part of humanity that affects
of natural life on the planet, global warming seems m
predicament for all humans—not to speak of othe
problem that can simply be resolved by switching to
to this the knotty question of human "agency" that many
underlined: the new geophysical agency of humans o
allowed them already to change the climate of the pla
100,000 years, putting the next ice age off by anything b
five hundred thousand years.13 Within this perspectiv
both deep pasts and deep futures, a very particular c
up for imagination in the humanities. After all, the p
change arises out of our need to consume more energy
the excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could
upon as the resultant "waste" that cannot be properl
this human "waste" affects other lifeforms—by acidifyin
raising the average surface temperature of the planet—th
us to "imagine sympathetically the predicament" of no
of nonhumans as well.
It is, of course, not global warming alone that caused this shift in ou
moral orientation. The phenomenon of an ecological overshoot on th
part of humans—due, perhaps, to the development of a big brain that
has helped humans over tens of thousands of years to create attachments
and affiliations to imagined communities far beyond the face-to-face scale
of kin group or band—is now seen by many to have taken place ove
a very long historical period reaching back to times that Daniel Sma
describes as our "deep history."14 The Israeli historian Yuval Noah Hara
explains the issue well in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
"One of the most common uses of early stone tools," writes Harari, "w
to crack open bones in order to get to the marrow. Some researcher
believe this was our original niche." Why? Because, Harari explains,
"genus Homo's position in the food chain was, until quite recently, so
idly in the middle."18 Humans could eat dead animals only

hyenas, and foxes had had their shares and cleaned the bo
flesh sticking to them. It is only "in the last 100,000 years,"
"that man jumped to the top of the food chain."16 This
an evolutionary change. As Harari explains: "Other anim
of the pyramid, such as lions and sharks, evolved into that p
gradually, over millions of years. This enables the ecosyst
checks and balances.... As the lions became deadlier, so gaz
to run faster, hyenas to cooperate better, and rhinoceros
bad-tempered. In contrast, humankind ascended to the t
that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust."17 Harar
additional significant fact. As a result of their quick ascent t
of the top carnivore, humans themselves, writes Harari,
just." He adds: "Most top predators of the planet are maje
Millions of years of domination have filled them with se
Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictato
Human ecological footprint, we can say, increased furth
invention of agriculture (more than 10,000 years ago) an
after the oceans found their present level about 6,000 yea
developed ancient cities, empires, and urban orders while mov
part of the planet. It was ratcheted up yet again over the
with European expansion and colonization of faraway lan
by other peoples, and the subsequent rise of industrial ci
a further ratcheting up by several significant notches ha
the end of the Second World War when human numbers
tion rose exponentially, thanks to the widespread use of
not only in the transport sector but also in agriculture a
allowing, eventually, even the poor of the world to live lo
not healthy—lives.19
Scholars have carried forward the notion of "overshoot"—"instances
in which populations of organisms so changed their own environmen

that they undermined their own lives"—that William R. Catton, Jr. pu
forward in a book of that name in 1980.20 The literature on animal
liberation/rights that extends the human moral community to include
(some) animals recognizes issues of both cruelty to animals and the
overshooting of human demands for consumption.21 Scholars working
on human-induced species extinction in the context of anthropogenic
climate change have long acknowledged the "overreach" that humans
have achieved, often to their own detriment, in the various ecosystems
they inhabit.22 In addition, well-known arguments about "the Great
Acceleration" and "planetary boundaries" that some earth scientists
and other scholars have put forward are statements, precisely, about
ecological overshoot on the part of humans. As the au

"Great Acceleration" thesis put it: "the term 'Great Ac
to capture the holistic, comprehensive and interlinke
post-1950 changes simultaneously sweeping across the
and biophysical spheres of the Earth System, encomp
than climate change."23 Their data document exponenti
population, real GDP, urban population, primary energ
consumption, paper production, water use, transportation,
happening after the 1950s. And there is a correspond
rise in "earth system trends" to do with the emission o
methane, nitrous oxide, ocean acidification, loss of stra
marine fish culture, shrimp aquaculture, tropical for
trial biosphere degradation, etc.24 Similarly, the idea of
boundaries" that humans should avoid crossing, put for
Johan Rockstrom and his colleagues at the Stockholm R
was also an exercise in measuring human ecological ov
earth system scientists reported recently that "the presen
carbon release rate [around 10 Petagram C per year; 1 P
is unprecedented during the [entire] Cenozoic (past 66
"the present/future rate of climate change and ocean
too fast for many species to adapt" and will likely resu
future extinctions in marine and terrestrial environm
fectively, in "an era of no-analogue state, which represent
challenge to constraining future climate projections."2
Not only have marine creatures and many other ter
not had the evolutionary time needed to adjust to our
pacity to hunt or squeeze them out of existence, but
gas emissions now threaten the biodiversity of the gre
endanger the very same food web that feeds us. Jan Za
colleagues on the subcommittee of the International C
Stratigraphy charged with documenting the Anthropocene
it is the human footprint left in the rocks of this plan
other forms of evidence—such as terraforming of the
will constitute the long-term record of the Anthropocene,
so than the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If
extinction of other species results—say, in the next few
Great Extinction event, then even the epoch-level nam
pocene may be too low in the hierarchy of geological
music historian and theorist Gary Tomlinson, writing
context of climate change, has summed up the problem
earth system point of view:
Across millions of years of biocntural evolution . . . , certain systems remained

outside the feedback cycles of hominin niche construction. Astronomical dy
namics, tectonic shifts, volcanism, climate cycles, and other such forces were in
essence untouched by human culture and behavior (or if touched, touched in
a vanishingly small degree). In the language of systems theory, all these forces
were in effect feed-forward elements: external controls that "set" the feedback
cycles from without, affecting the elements within them but remaining unaf
fected by the feedback themselves. . . . The Anthropocene ... registers a systemic
rearrangement in which systems that had always acted as feed-forward elements from
outside human niche construction have been converted into feedback elements within it.2S
Viewed thus, as Zalasiewicz says in the concluding paragraph of a re

cent essay, "the Anthropocene—whether formal or informal—clearly
has value in giving us a perspective, against the largest canvas, of the
scale and the nature of the human enterprise, and of how it intersects
('intertwines' now, may be a better word) with the other processes of
the Earth system."29 Anthropogenic climate change is therefore not a
problem to be studied in isolation from the general complex of ecologi
cal problems that humans now face on various scales—from the local
to the planetary—and that are creating new conflicts and exacerbating
old ones between and inside nations. There is no single silver bullet that
solves all the problems at once, nothing that works like the mantra of
transition to renewables to avoid an average rise of 2°C in the surface
temperature of the planet. What we face does indeed look like a wicked
problem, a predicament. We may able to diagnose it but not "solve" it
once and for all.30
Modernity and Kant's Geology of Morals31
If, as I have claimed, the challenge posed to our moral life by the scale
of problems created by our practices of consumption makes a breach in
the assumed separation of our "moral" and "animal" lives, and demands
of us that we find "moral" solutions to problems created by "natural
history" of the human species, then clearly the human sciences, and in
particular the humanities, face a novel task today. For it was this very
separation between the animal and moral life of the human species that
underlay, for a large part of the twentieth century, the separation of the
human from the physical and biological sciences.32 The subject deserves
more research. But older readers will remember how vociferously—and
oftentimes acrimoniously—sentiments in favor of this separation were
voiced when in 1975 Edward O. Wilson published his book Sociobiology,
making some strong claims about connections between biology and
culture and managing to infuriate, in the process, M

scientists of many other persuasions.33
The enduring importance of the assumed separation
life of humans from their animal life in post-Enlighte
of modernity is perhaps best studied with reference to a
spelled out in a minor essay called "Speculative Begin
History," published in 1786. The opposition between t
the human species and its moral life was at the heart
essay provides a fascinating reading of the Biblical sto
the question of human dominion over the earth.34 T
exercise was to bring "into agreement with one anot
son" what he saw as "the oft misunderstood and seemingl
claims of the esteemed Jean-Jacques Rousseau":
In his works, [wrote Kant], On the Influence of the Sciences an

Among Men, he [Rousseau] displays with complete accuracy th
between culture and the human race as a physical species whos
member ought fully to fulfill its vocation. But in his Emile, in
and in other works he seeks to answer this more difficult q
culture progress so as to develop the capacities belonging
tion as a moral species and thus end the conflict within him
of both a"] moral species and a natural species?35
Kant regarded this conflict itself—engendered by th

possessing, at the same time, both a "physical/natur
words are used in the same sense in his essay) life and
a decisive influence on human history. For "impulses t
"natural capacities" that were given to man "in his na
necessarily conflicted with "culture as it proceed[ed]
of the human species' moral vocation" could not be r
so perfected itself' that it became, in Kant's words,
(SB 54-55).36
Many in the massive literature on Kant have discussed t
answer to the Rousseau puzzle, some tracing certain
in his answer back to ancient principles, including th
Aquinas.37 My purpose here, however, is not a historical
roots of Kant's thoughts but to reconstruct Kant's arg
explicate how precisely he sought to understand the relat
the animal and the moral aspects of the human specie
essay by explaining why he could take the liberty of read
Genesis speculatively, while clarifying that the specu
same as "fictional."38 Speculation could be "based on
the experience in question was that of "nature," somethin
remained constant in its essential structure. So if human history were a

history of freedom, then a statement about its "first beginnings" could
be read speculatively (i.e. guided by reason) if we based ourselves on our
experience of nature (by definition a constant), and only insofar as the
beginnings in question were made by nothing other than nature itself. As
Kant put it: "A history of freedom's first development, from its original
capacities in the nature of man, is therefore something different from the
history of freedom's progression, which can only be based on reports
[and thus become the historian's province]" (SB 49, emphasis added).
Kant, of course, made certain assumptions about this original condition
of humans so that "one's speculation [would] not. . . wander aimlessly."
He took a certain figure of the human for granted—"one must make one's
beginning something that human reason is utterly incapable of deriving
from any previous natural causes"—and hence began "not with [human]
nature in its completely raw state" but with "man as fully formed adult (for
he must do without maternal care)." He also assumed "man" to actually
be "a pair, so that [man] can propagate his kind," and the pair had to
be "only a single pair, so that war does not arise, as it would if men lived
close to one another and were yet strangers." This latter assumption, it
seemed to Kant, ensured that "nature might not be accused of having
erred regarding the most appropriate organization for bringing about"
what Kant saw as "the supreme end of man's vocation, sociability" (for
the desire to socialize would be maximized "by the unity of the family
from which all men should descend"). Besides, he made some further
assumptions to keep his speculative logic straight: "The first man could
thus stand and walk, he could talk (Gen. 2:20), even converse, i.e. speak
in coherent concepts (v.23), [and] consequently, think." This threshold
of assumptions regarding human skills, he reasoned, would allow him
"to consider only the development of morality in [man's] actions and
passions." Having thus reconstructed this original pair of humans, Kant
placed them squarely in the middle of what we might today see as the
geological Holocene period, with considerable advances already made in
"human civilization": "I put this pair in a place secured against attack by
predators, one richly supplied by nature with all the sources of nourish
ment, thus, as it were, in a garden, and in a climate that is always mild"
(SB 49-50, emphases original). Kant did not know this: but the "man" of
his assumptions could have existed only after the last ice age was over!
Kant's "man" began his journey completely absorbed in the animal
life of the species when instinct alone—"that voice of God that all animals
obey"—"first guided the beginner." But by the time Kant has the human
being in his sights, reason, a faculty somewhat beyond animal life and
yet put in place by some design of nature, had already begun to "stir"
and to "cook up" in humans—in partnership with a com

man faculty, imagination—"desires for things for which th
natural urge," with the result that "man became conscious
an ability to go beyond those limits that bind all animals" (
critically important discovery followed: "[man] discovered in
ability to choose his own way of life and thus not be bound
animals to only a single one" (SB 51). The deepening of thi
propensity gave human beings the capacity to refuse desire
merely animal—thus developing the ability to love. "Refusal," w
"was the feat whereby man passed over from mere sensual
attractions, from mere animal desires eventually to love an
latter, from the feeling for the merely pleasant to the taste fo
This, together with the development of a sense of "decenc
the first hint of man's formation into a moral creature," a
ning that for Kant was "nonetheless epochal" (SB 52). Reas
humans to "the reflexive expectation of the future," and then
that raised "mankind altogether beyond any community w
enabling humans to conceive of themselves—"though only
"the true end of nature." Humans could now see that the pelt o
"was given by nature" not for the sheep but for them. The
over the earth that Genesis speaks of had thus begun. But
to the idea of equality of all humans—"[men] must regard
equal recipients of nature's gifts"—and, more importantly,
that "man became the equal of all [other] rational beings, no m
their rank might be (Gen. 3:22), especially in regard to his
his own end" (SB 52-53). This formulation is, of course, a c
of the famous Kantian dictum about treating every huma
instrumentally but as an end in himself or herself.39
Kant was acutely aware that this "portrayal of mankind's earl
revealed "that its exit from . . . paradise . . . was nothing b
tion from the raw state of merely animal creature to hum
the harness of the instincts to the guidance of reason—in a
the guardianship of nature to the state of freedom" (SB 5
Kant explains, had to be the story of a fall, morally speak
reason stirred in the human breast, "there was neither a command nor
a prohibition and thus no transgression either." But reason could ally
itself "with animality and all its power" and thus give rise to "vices of
a cultivated reason" (to produce wars, for instance). "Thus, from the
moral side," writes Kant, "the first step from this last state [the state
of innocence] was a fall; from the physical side, a multitude of never
known evils of life [natural disasters, hardship], thus punishment, was
the consequence of the fall" (SB 53-54). Much of human history as we
know it followed from the fall: there was hardship

source of so many evils, but also of everything good"—
getting "drawn into the glistering misery of the cit
this also complicated the role of reason in the story
Humans could use reason in a way that hastened th
species—a species designated, according the Genesis
dominion, "to rule over the earth, and not as one de
bovine contentment and slavish certitude" (SB 57). B
straightforwardly guide humans toward recognition
(though Kant in other essays will explain why huma
less end up fulfilling their destiny). Kant would thus w
of nature, therefore, begins with good, for it is God's w
of freedom begins with badness, for it is maw'5 work"
The key to human beings' success was "to be content w
wrote Kant in concluding this essay (SB 57-58). But
what was never easy for humans to do. Providence work
humans considered adversity: wars (which in the end
for humanity from the leaders of nations"), brevity
anteed that improvement accrued to the species and
and the absence of a golden age of all leisure and n
As Kant put it: "Contentment with providence and w
human things as a whole, which do not progress fr
but gradually develop from worse to better; and in t
herself has given everyone a part to play that is bot
within his powers" (SB 59).
The late Kant would anticipate, repeat, elaborat
these basic points in the third Critique (the section
ment) and in several essays including "Idea for a Uni
a Cosmopolitan Intent" (1784) and "On the Proverb:
in Theory, But Is of No Practical Use" (1793). Here is
Critique, for example, on the subject of the separatio
of humans from their natural history:
External nature is far from having made a particular favo

we see that in its destructive operations—plague, famine,
from animals great and small, and all such things—it has
as any other animal. . . . Besides all this, the discord of inn
betrays him into further misfortunes . . . through oppressi
the barbarism of wars, and the like. . . . Man, therefore, is
chain of physical ends. ... As the single being upon the e
understanding, and, consequently, a capacity for setting b
his deliberate choice, he is certainly titular lord of natur
regard nature as a teleological system, he is born to be its u
is always on the terms that he has the intelligence and the will
to himself such a reference to [final] ends as can be self-suffic
of nature, .... Such an end, however, must not be sought in
The important point here is the separation that Kant ef

to put forward his theory of human freedom—between
the moral lives of the human. He assumed that human
life was given, constant, and was to be provided for by
"biosphere," in today's terms). Human history and thi
cerned mostly with the constant struggle of humans to m
destiny of a "perfect" and just sociability: "Nature has
different capacities for two different ends, namely, an
animal species and another end for man as moral spec
The Entangled Moral and Animal Lives of
The pressure that "the animal life" of the human sp

rial and demographic flourishing (in spite of the gros
human societies)—now puts on the distribution of natu
life on earth, endangering human existence in turn, is
becomes clearer by the day. It is not surprising, then, t
philosophers should call climate change the greatest e
facing humanity. And they raise a critical moral-theol
revisiting, in secular forms, the Biblical proposition o
ion over earth": what should humans do, now that our animal/natural
life overwhelms the natural lives of nonhumans? Indeed, the question
of capitalism reemerges in this morally charged context. Should we
continue with capitalism but without fossil fuels? Should we be seeking
alternatives to capitalism? Should humans retreat back into small com
munities? Should the wealthy consume less?
These moral questions testify to the endurance of one of Kant's propo
sitions: that the moral life of humans assumes that man can "choose his
way of life and not be bound like other animals to only a single one"
(SB 57). But if what I have argued above is right, then it could also be
said that the Kantian fable of human history that I recounted is now
coming under strain in unprecedented ways. On the one hand, many
thinkers still work with (implicitly Kantian) ideas about our moral life
representing a zone of freedom; but we cannot any longer afford the
assumption that Kant, along with many others, made—that the needs of
our animal life will be attended to by the planet itself. We now want our
moral life to take charge of our natural life, if not of the natural lives of
all nonhumans as well. The Biblical question of human dominion has

now assumed the shape of secular questions about human stewardship
of and responsibility to the planet.41
For reasons of space, let me work here with only two prominent ex
amples of such thinking: Pope Francis's recent and prominent encycli
cal to Catholic bishops, and a recent essay by Amartya Sen. The Pope's
encyclical is probably the only available Western/European attempt
so far to read humanity's current climate crisis in terms of a deep-set
spiritual crisis of modern civilization, albeit within the terms of Catholic
theology, though that does not lessen its value. (For an Indian scholar,
it is reminiscent of a famous essay Rabindranath Tagore wrote in 1941,
the year he died, entitled "The Crisis of Civilization.") The Pope has
quite a radical critique of the excesses of consumerist capitalism and
especially of what he sees as the "misguided," "tyrannical," "excessive,"
and "modern" anthropocentrism of the "throwaway" civilization that
capitalism has spawned and promoted.42 In this context, he revisits the
question of human "dominion": "An inadequate presentation of Christian
anthropology gave rise to a wrong understanding of the relationship
between human beings and the world. Often, what was handed on was a
Promethean vision of mastery over the world, which gave the impression
that the protection of nature was something that only the faint-hearted
cared about. Instead, our 'dominion' over the universe should be under
stood more properly in the sense of responsible stewardship."43 "We are
not God," writes Pope Francis elsewhere in the book, opposing strongly,
by implication, the view that humans are now the God-species. "This
responsibility for God's earth means that human beings, endowed with
intelligence, must respect the laws of nature and the delicate equilibria
existing between the creatures of this world . . ,"44
Sen makes a similar argument but within a non-Christian framework,
drawing on some tenets of Buddhist thought. Writing on the climate
crisis and on human responsibility to other species, Sen argues for the
need for a normative framework in the debate on climate change: one
that he thinks—and I agree—should recognize the growing need for
energy consumption by humans if the masses of Africa, Asia, and Latin
America are to enjoy the fruits of human civilization and to acquire the
capabilities needed for making truly democratic choices. But Sen also
recognizes that human flourishing can come at some significant cost to
other species and therefore advocates a form of human responsibility
towards nonhumans. Here is how his argument goes:
Consider our responsibilities toward the species that are threatened with destruc
tion. We may attach importance to the preservation of these species not merely
because the presence of these species in the world may somet

own living standards. . . . This is where Gautama Buddha's arg
in Sutta Nipata, becomes directly and immediately relevant. H
mother has responsibility toward her child not merely beca
ated her, but also because she can do many things for the ch
cannot itself do. ... In the environmental context it can be
we are enormously more powerful than other species, . . . [th
for our] taking fiduciary responsibility for other creatures on
have a powerful influence.45
There is, of course, some irony in the fact that one of the
ened with [at least partial] destruction" is the human
Humans need to be responsible to themselves, which, a
humanity shows, is easier said than done. But think of the
follow from this anthropocentric placing of humans in loc
regard to "creatures on whose lives we can have a powe
We never know of all the species on which our actions
influence; often we find out only with hindsight. Pete
dian ecologist, writes about "all those species that may be a
goods [for humans] but have yet to be discovered and
those that provide services of which we simply are unaw
This applies even more to the life-form that constit
bulk of the Earth's biomass": microbial life (bacteria a
Martin J. Blaser observes in his book Missing Microbes, m
"outnumber all the mice, whales, humans, birds, insects, worms, and
trees combined—indeed all the visible life-forms we are familiar with on
Earth—they .. . outweigh them as well."47 Could we ever be in a position

to value the existence of viruses and bacteria hostile to us, except insofar
as they influence—negatively or positively—our lives? Here again the
question is complicated by the fact that ecology and pathology often give
us changing and contrary perspectives. Bacteria and viruses have played
critical and often positive roles in human evolution, such as the ancient
stomach bacteria H (Helicobacter) Pylori. Since the rise of antibiotics
and the consequent changes in the biotic environments of our stom
ach, however, H Pylori has come to be seen a pathogen.48 We cannot be
responsible stewards for these life-forms even when we cognitively know
about the critical role they have played—and will continue to play—in
the natural history of life, including that of human life itself.49
This would mean that humans could only ever discharge the respon
sibility that Sen tasks them with imperfectly, since they would never
fully know who exactly their wards were or for whom they could as
sume responsibility in a fiduciary sense. But here indeed is evidence of
the strain under which the Kantian fable of human history currently
labors. Kant did not demand of human morality that it brought within
its own conspectus the natural history of life. Needless to say, however,
his framework was based on a pre-Darwinian understanding of the his
tory of natural reproductive life and constructed long before humans
began to discover and understand the roles of microbes in biological
history. We are at a point, however, where we are debating the question
of extending the sphere of human morality and justice to include the
domain of natural reproductive life.
It is, of course, undeniable that questions of justice between humans
have been central to the tradition of the humanities. The intensifica
tion, globally, of capitalist forms of social organization has sharpen

the political instincts of scholars in the human sciences. Furthermo
given the history of human values in the second half of the twenti
century, we are committed in principle to securing the life of every
man and to ensuring their moral and economic flourishing, regardl
of the overall size of the human population and its implications fo
the biosphere.50 Besides, any practical proposal for reducing the size
human populations in effect becomes an anti-poor proposition and
therefore morally repugnant. At the same time, a single-minded focus o
human welfare and intrahuman justice increasingly seems inadequa
This is the dilemma to which the humanities need to respond. T
question is: since what the humanities and the human sciences provi
are perspectives from which to debate the issues of our times, can t
overcome their hallowed and deeply set human-centrism and learn
look at the human world also from nonhuman points of view?
Turning to Latour, Looking Ahead
Latour developed his art of thinking long before many of us wo

up to the problem to which he was responding: the problem posed
modern thought by the unsustainable opposition between nature a
science on the one hand and culture and society on the other. He h
developed his thinking over a number of texts including the recent
Inquiry into Modes of Existence?* Since I have been discussing microbial li
in this essay, however, let me turn to the classic book of his that speaks
of microbes, The Pasteurization of France, to show how his thinking clea
a path for developing an approach that challenges human modes
being and knowing, and where the human receives intimations of th
nonanthropocentric precisely through the rustle of a language that
doubt remains, ultimately, all too human.52 Additionally, it remain
nice coincidence for this essay that Latour's anticolonial humor in t
book is aimed in part at the good old philosopher from

whose titanic presence in all discussions of modernity,
we can throw at him, is impossible to escape.
Quite early on in his study of Louis Pasteur's work,
our attention to the agential presence of microbes not
constrained conditions of the laboratory, but in every
"A salesman sends a perfectly clear beer to a customer
but "it arrives corrupted." Why? Because "between th
brewer there was something that sometimes acted an
not. A tertium quid: 'a yeast,' said the revealer of micr
The presence of microbes tells Latour that "we cannot form
the social alone": we have to add in "the action of microbes" (PF 35).
Thus, "you organize a demonstration of Eskimos in the museum. They
go out to meet the public, but they also meet cholera and die. This is
very annoying, because all you wanted to do was to show them and not
to kill them." "Traveling," similarly, "with cow's milk is another animal
that is not domesticated, the tuberculose bacillus, and it slips in with
your wish to feed your child. Its aims are so different from yours that
your child dies" (PF 33-34). Thus it is only after the milk has undergone
the process of Pasteurization and the microbe has been "extirpated" that
it will come to represent the purely "social," i.e. "economic and social
relationships in the strict sense," which can only happen in some very
limited and technologically produced conditions (Pi*" 39).53 Latour con
cludes the first part of this book by remarking that "as soon as we stop
reducing the sciences to a few authorities that stand in place of them,
what reappears is not only the crowds of human beings, . . . but also the
'nonhuman'" (PF 149-50). His project becomes that of "the emancipa
tion of the nonhumans" from what he calls "the double domination of
society and science" (PF 150).
Microbes speak of deep time in the history of life. "For about 3 billion
years," writes Blaser, "bacteria were the sole living inhabitants on Earth.
They occupied every tranche of land, air, and water, driving chemical
reactions that created the biosphere, and set conditions for the evolution
of multicellular life."54 Emancipating such nonhumans from the "double
domination of science and society" could not be a political task in any
institutional sense of the political. Nor does it produce an immediate
program of activism. It is a question, primarily and at the current state
of development of the governing institutions of humans, of creating a
nonanthropocentric perspective on the human world.
In the second part of the book, "Irreductions," Latour looks upon
this project of "emancipation" of the nonhuman as something akin to
an intellectual act of decolonization. "Things-in-themselves?" he asks,
putting a rhetorical question to Kant with his characteristic wit, and

retorts: "But they're fine, thank you very much. And how are you? You
complain about things that have not been honored by your vision?"
Latour's critique of the anthropocentrism of Kant's thinking uses the
metaphor-concept of colonization to create agential space for the non
human. "Things in themselves lack nothing, just as Africa did not lack
whites before their arrival," he writes. "However, it is possible to force
those who did perfectly well without you to come to regret that you
are not there. Once things are reduced to nothing, they beg you to be
conscious of them and ask you to colonize them." And he proceeds to
place Kant in a line of colonial heroes: "You are the Zorros, the Tarzans,
the Kants, the guardians of the widowed, and the protectors of orphaned
things" (PF193). "What would happen," he asks further, "if we were to
assume instead that things left to themselves are lacking nothing?"
This is also where the idea of deep time becomes a part of his critique:
"For instance, what about this tree, that others call Wellingtonia? ... If it
is lacking anything, then it is most unlikely to be you. You who cut down
woods are not the god of trees. ... It is older than you. . . . Soon you
may have no more fuel for your saw. Then the tree with its carbonifer
ous allies may be able to sap your strength." And Latour drives home
the limitations of calculating on human time scales: "So far it [the tree]
has neither lost nor won, for each defines the game and time span in
which its gain or loss is to be measured" (PF 193).
And then comes the arrow of a question aimed at the heart of an
ancient Biblical thought, one that declared humans to be specially
destined to exercise dominion over the planet: "Who told you man was
the shepherd of being? Many forces would like to be shepherd and to
guide others as they flock to their folds to be sheared and dipped. . .
. There are too many of us, and we are too indecisive to join together
into a single consciousness strong enough to silence all the other actors.
Since you silence the things that you speak of, why don't you let them
talk by themselves about whatever is on their minds, like grown-ups? . .
. Do you enjoy the double misery of Prometheus so much?" (PF 192-94).
This I regard as the most important civilizational question of our times,
the one that the Pope raised within the limits of his religion.
Latour's epochal question reminds us that deep pasts and futures
are not amenable to human-centered political thought or action. This
does not mean that our usual disputations about intrahuman in/jus
tice, inequalities, oppressive relationships will not continue; they will.
But now that the moral and biological lives of the species Homo sapiens
cannot any longer be disentangled from each other, one has to learn
to have recourse to forms of thought that go beyond—but that do not
394 NEW literary HISTORY
discard—the human-political. The connected stori

of this planet, of its climate, and of life on it can
anthropocentric perspective. These other perspec
anchored in stories of deep time, and they make u
come very late in the history of this planet, whic
in readying itself for our arrival. We do not repre
mination in the story of the planet. This is where
other scholars' attempts—to open up vistas of aest
and ethical thought help us to develop points of vi
the current constellation of environmental crises
of the deeper history of natural reproductive life
see as a primary purpose of the "new" humanities
University of Chicago
NOTES
A version of this essay was presented to the Centre for Policy Research, New Delh
March 2016. I am grateful to my hosts, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Navroz Dubash, an
the audience for the comments they made. Thanks are also due to Rochona Majum
Rita Felski, and Stephen Muecke for comments on an earlier draft and to Gerard S
for help with research.
1 Tim Lenton, "2°C or not 2°C? That is the Climate Question," Nature 473, no.
(2011): 7, available at http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110504/pdf/473007a.pdf
the exact wording of the phrase, see Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Conve
on Climate Change (New York: United Nations, 1992), 4, available at https://unfccc
resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf.
2 Eric Holthaus, "When Will The World Really Be 2 Degrees Hotter Than It Us
Be?" FiveThirtyEight, March 23, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/when-wi
world-really-be-2-degrees-hotter-than-it-used-to-be/. I am grateful to my colleague, J
Chandler, for drawing my attention to this article.
3 Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams, The Goldilocks Planet: The Four Billion Year Stor
Earth's Climate (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2012).
4 Julia Adeney Thomas, "History and Biology in the Anthropocene: Problems of
Problems of Value," American Historical Review 119, no. 5 (2014): 1588.
5 Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it
for Life on Earth (2005; Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2008). See chap. 22, entitled "C
tion: Out With A Whimper?"
6 See, for instance, the literature cited and discussed in Dipesh Chakrabarty, "
Civilization to Globalization: The 'West' as Shifting Signifier in Indian Modernity,"
Asia Cultural Studies 13, no. 1 (2012): 138-52.
7 Peter Singer, "Climate Change: Our Greatest Ethical Challenge" (lecture, Uni
Chicago, Chicago, IL, October 23, 2015). See https://cie.uchicago.edu/event/cl
change-our-greatest-ethical-challenge-peter-singer.
8 For more on this, see my 'The Future of the Human Sciences in the Age of Hum
A Note" in European Journal of Social Theory (forthcoming).
9 Martha C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010; Prince
NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2012), 7.
10 In the following couple of paragraphs, I draw up

Anthropocene? A Response" in "Whose Anthropocene
'Four Theses,'" ed. Robert Emmett and Thomas Lekan,
in Environment and Society 2016, no. 2 (2016): 103-14.
11 Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search o
trans. Jonas with David Herr (1979; Chicago: Univ. of
12 See, for instance, Steve Vanderheiden, Atmospheric J
Change (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008).
13 For further discussion, see my "The Climate of Histo
35 (2009): 197-222; "Climate and Capital: On Conjoined
1 (2014): 1-23; "Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge
History 43, no. 1 (2012): 1-18.
14 Daniel Lord Smail, On Deep History and the Brain (
California Press, 2007).
15 Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Huma
16 Harari, Sapiens, 11.
17 Harari, Sapiens, 11-12. A similar point is made by
of human-technological changes to that of changes br
"Natural evolution works with small things, never plays
can afford innumerable 'mistakes' in its single moves,
cess chooses the few, equally small 'hits.'. . . Modern te
patient nor slow, compresses . . . the many infinitesima
few colossal ones and foregoes by that procedure the vit
safe."'Jonas, Responsibility, 31. See also the section on "
Balance," 138.
18 Harari, Sapiens, 11-12.
19 The last big famine India saw, for example, was in 1943, though many in the country
still die of hunger and malnutrition.
20 William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (Chicago:
Univ. of Illinois Press, 1980), 95-96; Doug Cocks, Global Overshoot: Contemplating the World's
Converging Problems (New York: Springer, 2013).
21 See Lewis Regenstein, "Animal Rights, Endangered Species and Human Survival," in
In Defense of Animals, ed. Singer (1985; New York: Blackwell, 1987), 118-32; Singer, "Down
on the Factory Farm," in Animal Rights and Human Obligations, ed. Tom Regan and Singer
(1976; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), 159-68.
22 See Jessica C. Stanton et al., "Warning Times for Species Extinction Due to Climate
Change," Global Change Biology 21, no. 3 (2015): 1066-77; Rodolfo Dirzo et al., "Defauna
tion in the Anthropocene," Science 345, no. 6195 (2014): 401-06; Celine Bellard et al.,
"Impacts of Climate Change on the Future of Biodiversity," Ecology Letters 15, no. 4 (2012):
365-77; Gerardo Ceballos et al., "Accelerated Modern Human-Induced Species Losses:
Entering the Sixth Mass Extinction," Science Advances 1, no. 5 (2015): 1-5.
23 Will Steffen et al., "The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration,"
The Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (2015): 1-18.
24 Steffen et al., "The Trajectory of the Anthropocene," 1-18.
25 J. Rockstrom et al., "Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for
Humanity," Ecology and Society 14, no. 2 (2009): 32, available at http://www.ecologyandso
ciety.org/vol 14/iss2/art32/.
26 Richard E. Zeebe et al., "Anthropogenic Carbon Release Rate Unprecedented During
the Past 66 Million Years," Nature Geoscience, March 21, 2016, http://www.nature.com/
ngeo/journal/v9/n4/abs/ngeo2681.html.
27 "If global warming and a sixth ex

then an epoch will seem too low a cate
Personal communication with Profes
28 Gary Tomlinson, 'Toward the An
and Change," South Atlantic Quarterly
29 Zalasiewicz, "The Geology behind
12. I am grateful to Professor Zalasiew
30 See the detailed and excellent di
Wicked Problem—Complexity and Uncertai
Human Behavior (New York: Cambrid
31 The expression "geology of moral
an earlier version of this essay.
32 The separation was formalized in
sciences arose as identifiable discipli
"Modernity's Frail Climate: A Climate H
38, no. 3 (2012): 579-98.
33 The saga of that intellectual war
How Evolutionary Psychology is Reshapi
Hopkins Univ. Press, 2003), chap. 3.
34 For a different, stimulating, and c
cal Theory and the Displacement of P
35 Immanuel Kant, "Speculative Begin
Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey
cited as SB). The words within paren
36 For the use of "animal," "natural,
37 See the literature discussed in an
the Kantian Principle of Treating P
Univ. of America, 2012), chap. 1 and
38 I completely agree with Honig's
of a form of life invariably serve as
sedimented but no less active proces
present, daily." Honig, Political Theory
39 See, again, Honig, Political Theor
Kantian injunctions.
40 Kant, The Critique of Judgement,
1973), 2:93-94.
41 For a critical discussion of some of the issues involved here, see Clive Hamilton,
'The Delusion of the 'Good Anthropocene': Reply to Andrew Revkin" (June 17, 2014),
available at http://clivehamilton.com/the-delusion-of-the-good-anthropocene-reply-to
andrew-revkin/.
42 Pope Francis, Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality: On Care for Our Common Home
(London: Melville House, 2015), 72-74.
43 Pope Francis, Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality, 73.
44 Pope Francis, Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality, 42, 43.
45 Amartya Sen, "Energy, Environment, and Freedom: Why we must think about more
than climate change," The New Republic 245, no. 14 (August 25, 2014), 39.
46 Peter F. Sale, Our Dying Planet: An Ecologist's View of the Crisis We Face (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 2011), 222. J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke note
in their book, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2014), 87, that of the quarter of a million spe
cies that went extinct in the twentieth century, most

described by scientists" and were creatures "unknown
47 Martin J. Blaser, Missing Microbes: How the Overuse o
Plagues (New York: Picador, 2014), 13-14, 15, 16.
48 Blaser, Missing Microbes, chap. 9.
49 Luis P. Villarreal, "Can Viruses Make Us Human?" Proc
cal Society 148, no. 3 (2004): 296-323; Linda M. Van Ble
Evolution," Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 46 (2003): 14
50 See the discussion in my "Climate and Capital."
51 See, in particular, the following three works by Lato
trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni
How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy, trans. Porter (C
2004); and An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthrop
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2013).
52 Latour, The Pasteurization of France, trans. Alan Sh
MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993), 193 (hereafter cited at P
Modes of Existence.
53 See also PF, 43.
54 Blaser, Missing Microbes, 12-13.
55 Bill Brown's Other Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015) is a notable
example of recent work in this direction.

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Humanities in the Anthropocene: The Crisis of an Enduring Kantian Fable

Author(s): Dipesh Chakrabarty

For Bruno Latour

o 15 was the first year when the average surface temperature

New Literary History, 2016, 47: 377-397

in recent decades have done much to demystify.6 I bring u

in the context of discussions on climate change and

Two Narratives of Climate Change

We generally find two approaches to the problem of cli

the process of this transition to renewables? The question of how much

economists and philosophers (both in Rawlsian and util

idly in the middle."18 Humans could eat dead animals only

in which populations of organisms so changed their own environmen

ecological overshoot on the part of humans. As the au

Across millions of years of biocntural evolution . . . , certain systems remained

Viewed thus, as Zalasiewicz says in the concluding paragraph of a re

Modernity and Kant's Geology of Morals31

culture and managing to infuriate, in the process, M

In his works, [wrote Kant], On the Influence of the Sciences an

Kant regarded this conflict itself—engendered by th

remained constant in its essential structure. So if human history were a

and to "cook up" in humans—in partnership with a com

know it followed from the fall: there was hardship

External nature is far from having made a particular favo

The important point here is the separation that Kant ef

The Entangled Moral and Animal Lives of

The pressure that "the animal life" of the human sp

all nonhumans as well. The Biblical question of human dominion has

because the presence of these species in the world may somet

Earth—they .. . outweigh them as well."47 Could we ever be in a position

tion, globally, of capitalist forms of social organization has sharpen

Turning to Latour, Looking Ahead

Latour developed his art of thinking long before many of us wo

book is aimed in part at the good old philosopher from

putting a rhetorical question to Kant with his characteristic wit, and

discard—the human-political. The connected stori

10 In the following couple of paragraphs, I draw up

27 "If global warming and a sixth ex

cies that went extinct in the twentieth century, most

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