Ecomodernism – defending a new humanist approach to nature

Abstract

I defend here Luc Ferry’s new humanist approach to nature, ecomodernism, outlined in his Les Sept Ecologies (2021). Ferry’s notion of a “second humanism” takes into account oversights in the Enlightenment thinking, now seen as abstracted from the real life-world of persons, in particular, and arising out of changed conditions of marriage, that of “love-passion” as core value. I first outline Ferry’s account of the contemporary ecology landscape. Three anti-humanist approaches to nature are considered: the pre-modern supposition of intentionality in non-human living beings; deep ecology’s attribution of an equal functionality to humans and non-humans in the ecosystem; and evolutionary biology’s reductionist version of ethics. I then develop a positive account of the isomorphism of the intentionality of humans and all conscious living animals, through an Aristotelian account of sensation as a power of transcendence. The specific condition of human transcendence is reformulated by contemporary commentators through the notion of language, and again through the explanatory notion of self-enactment. This furnishes a foundation for the defence of the new humanist approach to nature.