Nature in question

Opening symposium 2017-2018

Presentation by Philippe Descola

Nature isn't what it used to be. As a domain of regularity independent of human action, as a group of beings devoid of language, as a refuge from anthropization, all the meanings that gave nature its troubling unity have been called into question. We now know that, while the "laws of nature" are universal, the idea of nature is hardly so; we know that many animals share with humans faculties long thought to be the prerogative of the latter; we also know that all the planet's ecosystems, even the most isolated, have been disrupted by human action; we know that advances in genetic engineering are blurring the distinction between the natural and the artificial; and we know that global warming and its effect on the Earth's system are turning humanity into a new natural force.

This opening symposium at the Collège de France will examine, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the issues raised by these shifts in the boundary between natural and human determinations.

We'll take a long-term look at the emergence of the singular notion of nature, the role it played in the formation of European consciousness, in the development of the sciences, and in the establishment of a social ontology and a theory of human nature that have long been exceptional in comparison with the rest of humanity. We will then examine the anthropological, legal, philosophical and epistemological recompositions made possible by the erosion of the limits of nature, as well as the persistence of certain fundamental discontinuities between humans and non-humans. Lastly, we will examine the new techniques for producing and repairing life, in order to better understand the ways in which they are overturning our definitions of the human, the mechanisms of the living and the rules of its appropriation. Many of these questions are political in nature. This is why the symposium will open with a round-table discussion bringing together practitioners who are bringing nature into politics, obliged as they are to take account of the fact that new ways of inhabiting the Earth have become indispensable.