Rivista | Lagoonscapes
Fascicolo monografico | 4 | 2 | 2024
Articolo | Existentialism and the Anthropocene: An Appraisal of Two Humanisms
Existentialism and the Anthropocene: An Appraisal of Two Humanisms
Abstract
This paper reframes environmental problems, moving from a crisis of habitability to a problem of ethics, and thus suggests the possibility of creating grounded, subjective politics within the seemingly intractable Anthropocene. To this end, the paper juxtaposes Roy Scranton’s Learning to Die in the Anthropocene with Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity in order to critically examine Scranton’s “philosophical humanism” as a distorted mirror of existentialist “ethical humanism”. Focusing on death and existentialism as central themes, the paper offers a comparison of their conceptions of humanist meaningfulness – conceived as an affect of transcendental capacities in the case of Scranton, and as everyday acts of freedom in de Beauvoir’s philosophy.
Presentato: 01 Luglio 2024 | Accettato: 11 Settembre 2024 | Pubblicato 06 Dicembre 2024 | Lingua: en
Keywords Ethics • Anthropocene • Existentialism • Death • Humanism
Copyright © 2024 Rahul Pillai. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2024/02/001
