Sketching out ethics for the planetary techno-nature

null, Susanna Lindberg

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Abstract: Sketching out ethics for the planetary techno-nature

The most important contemporary questions are planetary. The global warming and the related ecological crises are not confined to specific geographical zones but concern the entire planet. These phenomena are detected as ecosystemic changes but these are triggered by human technological activity. In the light of these developements many contemporary theorists argue that the "naturalist" opposition between non-human nature and human-made technology is untenable, so that this evolution actually concerns the compound of techno-nature which has become the very element of contemporary life.

 How to relate to the planetary techno-nature ethically? In my paper, I will show that although it can only appear thanks to a theoretical universality, universality is not enough to lay ground to it as the site of practical life. Universality only characterizes theoria, whereas the planetary techno-nature is a finite site of practical existence. This is why the task of planetary thinking is so difficult. I will show in my paper why techno-nature is not universal even though it is planetary; why it does not make a world but an unworld; why it is not universal but elemental; and why its thinking calls for a new kind of rational imagination. I will show why contemporary thinking of the elemental draws from the ancient Greek notion of khora, which has become the counterweight of universality firstly and foremostly in the works of Jacques Derrida but also of Luce Irigaray.

 I will also show why, being khoratic, the planetary space is inappropriable. This is why it is so difficult to get a hold of it in terms of Enlightenment cosmo-politism, which is the most universal form of planetary politics, but it calls for a new practical imaginary. I will therefore open up the question of what taking care of the inappropriable planetary sphere could mean for us, today.

 Susanna Lindberg is a professor of continental philosophy at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. She is a specialist of German idealism, phenomenology, and contemporary French philosophy. In recent years, her research has carried on the question of technology.

After earning a PhD at the University of Strasbourg and a Habilitation at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, she has worked as researcher at the University of Helsinki and at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre; as lecturer and professor at the University of Tampere; as core fellow at the Collegium for Advanced Studies of the University of Helsinki.

 Her publications include From Technological Humanity to Bio-Technical Existence (SUNY, 2023), Techniques en philosophie (Hermann, 2020), Le monde défait. L’être au monde aujourd’hui (Hermann, 2016), Heidegger contre Hegel: Les irréconciliables, and Entre Heidegger et Hegel: L’éclosion et vie de l’être (L’Harmattan, 2010). She also has edited several collected volumes, notably Cum - Weiterdenken mit Jean-Luc Nancy (with Marita Tatari and Artemy Magun, forthcoming at Diaphanes, 2023), The Ethos of Digital Environments. Technology, Literary Theory and Philosophy (with Hanna-Riikka Roine, Routledge, 2021), The End of the World (with Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) and Europe Beyond Universalism and Particularism (with Sergei Prozorov and Mika Ojakangas, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). In addition to this, she has published number of academic articles.