Unstable Nature and “Myriad Things”: Between European Doublethink and Chinese Correlationism

As an embodiment of the technical thinking of European modernity, the Anthropocene as a phenomenon and as a concept relies on the idea of nature as a world separate and independent from human society. However, the obvious counterproductivity of this dualism points to the need for a new way of thinking about the relationship between humans and nonhumans. The paper examines some of the ontological insights developed in Chinese classical philosophy to indicate on what kind of relationship with nature a collective of nonhuman and human could be based. In particular, it is proposed to conceive of nature as a concept associated with a moral rather than metaphysical order. The paper begins by proposing several positions (Latour, Descola, Viveiros de Castro) that allow for the affirmation of the ontological pluralism and otherness of natures. It makes possible a different way of associating humans and nonhumans. Further, the way in which nature is inscribed in Chinese ontological conceptions that emphasise not just the unity of all things, but the moral wholeness of the world, is examined.

Such a “moral cosmotechnics” presupposes the absence of human exceptionalism and treats human beings as just another thing among many things. This situation precludes anthropocentrism and does not confer on human beings a privileged position conducive to the cultivation of a detached and theorising view of nature. Instead, human existence is always understood as a self-unfolding interaction within nature. Finally, it is suggested that ancient Chinese philosophy in considering the cosmos, did not primarily proceed from a metaphysical formulation of the question leading to a separation of the collectives of human and nonhuman, but rather endowed the cosmos with an overarching morality that supports the continuous building of a collective allows any object to join in. Considering nature not as an object of knowing but as a moral subject is supposed to be a perspective through which a new “natural contract” becomes possible.