Task of Philosophy in the Anthropocene

Richard Polt is Professor of Philosophy at Xavier University. With Gregory Fried he has translated Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics and Being and Truth, and edited A Companion to Heidegger’s “Introduction to Metaphysics” and Nature, History, State: 1933-1934.Jon Wittrock is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Södertörn University, Sweden.

• Introduction, Richard Polt and Jon Wittrock / 1. Environmental Cosmopolitanism as a Philosophy for the Anthropocene, Amos Nascimento / 2. The Coming of the Post-Axial Age, John Michael Greer / 3. On Nature and Liberation, Timothy Sean Quinn / 4. Eidetic Eros and the Liquidation of the Real, Richard Polt / 5. Odysseus on the Beach: Humanity between the Anthropocene and the Hubriscene, Gregory Fried / 6. Starting from Ourselves as Living Beings, Luce Irigaray / 7. Philosophy’s Homecoming, Michael Marder / 8. The Uncanny Anthropocene, Byron Williston / 9. Which Way I Fly: Reforming Nihilism in the Anthropocene, Jon Wittrock / 10. Ecological Finitude as Ontological Finitude: Radical Hope in the Anthropocene, Fernando Flores and B. Scot Rousse / 11. The Voices of Nature: Toward a Polyphonic Conception of Philosophy, Thomas Alexander / Index / About the Contributors

What is the task of philosophy in the Anthropocene? One thing is for certain: we cannot merely rely upon established conceptual systems but rather must think deeply and question boldly as we reconsider what it means to be. This impressive array of “axial echoes” offers a glimpse of what it would mean to renegotiate human existence in the Anthropocene.