Utopia, Autonomy and the Anthropocene

Utopia is not an appropriate term to reflect on the idea of autonomy. Utopia is a ‘mystifying’ term. If utopia ‘is something that does not and cannot happen’, then to frame autonomy as a utopia is self-defeating. It implies that autonomy does not and cannot happen (Castoriadis 2005). I will therefore use the term possibilism,as opposed to utopia, as a more appropriate framework for autonomy, the constitutive idea and legitimising value of modern societies (Honneth 2014, p. 15). My purpose here is to give an overview of the idea of autonomy, as opposed to the ideal of freedom underpinning contemporary consumerist culture, to confront the crises that the Anthropocene epoch brings[1].

The crisis of legitimation of the ideal of freedom in the Anthropocene

The Anthropocene posits the transition to a new geological epoch where humans have become a ‘geological force’ altering Earth living conditions (Chakrabarty 2009). The Anthropocene, as an event for social theory, questions, the society/nature, subject/object, divides on which we constructed our social ideals of autonomy, justice, and democracy (Hamilton, Bonneuil & Gemenne 2015), as well as the alliance that the ideal of autonomy has established with abundance (growth): ‘Nothing is more material than freedom’, writes Pierre Charbonnier (2020, p. 18): abundance has sustained the emancipation of individuals and groups by making it a tangible reality (ibid.,p. 49). It is this pact between these two ideals of modernity, abundance and freedom, that the Anthropocene epoch demolishes. This can be illustrated by the ‘planetary boundaries’ framework. The overstepping of these limits affects the possibility of the continuation of this pact, the material conditions of freedom.

What is freedom today? As Benjamin Constant (1997) put it, ‘the peaceful enjoyment of private independence’, i.e., the infinite variation of the means of personal happiness. ‘The aim of the moderns is to be secure in their private benefits: and ‘liberty’ is their name for the guarantees accorded by institutions to these benefits.’ I will not go into the pathological forms of this freedom, l’ère du vide, where a culture of narcissism has led us. Suffice it to say that our freedom is entirely anchored, to a material substrate, and that every act of that freedom brings us one step closer to crossing the planetary boundaries defining the safe operating space for humanity.

As long as the fundamental question of freedom is not renewed as a collective social-historical project, rethinking economics (what we have called here the ideal of abundance), will remain an effort of imaginable and desirable futures, or a utopia (but we have seen what this term implies).

Rethinking freedom in the Anthropocene

I have said that the Anthropocene questions the society/nature divide on which ideals such as freedom, justice and democracy have been built upon. Conceptually, this poses the important and arduous task of (re)legitimising freedom. It is not the first time that philosophy has faced this task. I use the related concept of autonomy which has been subjected to much criticism in the last century (Jouan 2009). The specificity of the new critique is the ‘intrusion’ of nature as a limit to autonomy (the planetary boundaries framework captures this limitation).

I have argued that we can think of nature, not in opposition, but as a constitutive condition of autonomy defined as the self-realisation of individual identity[2]. My claim is that nature must be one aspect, among others (self-confidence, self-respect, self-esteem[3]), of individual self-realisation. Interaction with nature can promote personal autonomy; and the care, respect and protection for nature can be a motivation for the autonomous individual. If this is true, then there is no contradiction between autonomy, as we have just defined it, and nature, since nature is understood as a condition of self-realisation.

The key point here is to understand autonomy in relational terms. Feminist philosophers have coined the term ‘relational autonomy’ to convey the sense that the relations of dependency and interdependency in which we are immersed are constitutive of autonomy (Nedelsky 1989). Thus, in contrast to the myth of the self-made man, autonomy, or relational autonomy, to be precise, articulates the idea that individuals are socially embedded and that our identity is shaped by these social determinants.

I add: nature must be seen as another sphere of relations of dependency and interdependency that promotes autonomy. Eco-psychological research supports this, showing that we have an innate affection with nature. Experiencing nature is, therefore, a source of self-definition (Clayton 2003). That is, as I have argued, a constitutive relation of personal autonomy.

The ontological basis of autonomy in the Anthropocene

Environmental philosophy, especially ecophenomenology, has introduced the notion of ‘relational values’ to go beyond the subject/object dichotomy. Here subjects and objects are less important than the dynamic web of relations that is the world. Meaning does not depend on the evaluations of the subject or the properties of the object, but emerges from the relationship between the two (Gilliand 2021). If this is so, then our description of the world can only refer to the state of processes without a subject (Descombes 2018, p. 32).

This metaphysics of events raises the question of the concept of the subject that is required for autonomy. If we follow Bernard Charbonneau’s existential defence of freedom, freedom is in a subject; ‘freedom’, he writes, ‘is the first person’ (p. 390): ‘I am (je suis)’. It follows that freedom, for Charbonneau, ‘is no longer one value among others, but the original act that creates them all’ (ibid). While I cannot develop this argument here, it illustrates the enormous challenge that a process ontology, which, let us remember, seeks to overcome the subject/object divide, poses to the question of agency, autonomy, and the status of the subject. I will leave this point aside.

Let me conclude by sketching an ontological description of the world that might be adequate for autonomy. I borrow Arne Naess’ (2018) notion of possibilism. For Naess, possibilism is ‘the assumption that the future is in principle completely open, offering unimaginable surprises’ (ibid., p. 4). He summarises this idea with the following sentence: ‘Anything whatsoever can happen at any time’ (ibid., pp. 4-5). It reflects a description of the world that was familiar to the ancient Greeks and that we can find in Aristotle’s philosophy. At the heart of this description of the world is the notion of contingency. This notion is not so far removed from the notion of uncertainty that the Anthropocene carries.

My claim is that action (autonomy) moves within the realm of the contingent, that is, of what can be other than it is (τò ενδεχoμενον αλλως εχειν). This description of the world implies that human action creates an ordered world in the flow of uncertain events. Possibilism, based on a metaphysics of contingency, not utopia, is what the social-historical project of autonomy is.

[1] On this point see Carleheden & Schultz 2022.

[2] For a more detailed account see my 2024 text.

[3] These are the relations to self within the three spheres of recognition (love, rights, shared-values within a community) in Axel Honneth’s social theory. These are intersubjective conditions that allow and promote personal autonomy.