Responsibility in the Anthropocene: Paul Ricoeur and the Summons to Responsibility amid Global Environmental Degradation

The nomenclature of the Anthropocene for this geological epoch marks in a novel way the global impact of human activity on the world. Consequently, it creatively raises the alarm bell of global environmental devastation. However, the narrative implicit in the Anthropocene presents challenges to use...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Le Chevallier, Michael 1984- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2024
In: Journal of religious ethics
Year: 2024, Volume: 52, Issue: 2, Pages: 231-261
Further subjects:B Anthropocene
B Paul Ricoeur
B Environmental Ethics
B capabilities ethics
B Responsibility
B Fragility
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Summary:The nomenclature of the Anthropocene for this geological epoch marks in a novel way the global impact of human activity on the world. Consequently, it creatively raises the alarm bell of global environmental devastation. However, the narrative implicit in the Anthropocene presents challenges to use it as a departure point for developing an ethics of responsibility, as it contains morally relevant but ambiguous etiologies, phenomenological challenges to discrete human agency, and the potential erasure of both causes and victims of global environmental degradation. This challenge compounds the challenges to traditional models of responsibility-as-imputation by global forms of environmental degradation signaled in the Anthropocene. Our new epoch demands new models of responsibility. This article draws upon neglected work by Paul Ricoeur to reconstruct a twofold model of responsibility: (1) responsibility-as-imputation and (2) responsibility for the fragile other and the domains that amplify fragility. It shows that a twofold model can more completely respond to harms elicited by anthropogenic environmental degradation by maintaining the benefits of traditional models of responsibility-as-accountability while dramatically expanding the subject and objects of responsibility through attention to the fragile and thus better serving us as we navigate responsibility in the Anthropocene.
ISSN:1467-9795
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of religious ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/jore.12472