Let us try to redefine humanity by acknowledging its fragility and transience. These days, as philosophy seeks ways to overcome anthropocentrism, the classical theory of evolution can help.
Charles Darwin is rarely considered a classic of philosophy. Although he used to inspire the humanities, his observations and theories have been ultimately assimilated into the canon of natural sciences. Recently, however, the perception of his work is changing . Certainly, Darwin continues to be broadly associated with natural selection and the survival of the fittest, which made it possible to regard social life in terms of competition and animalistic (or inhuman) ruthlessness while protecting one’s life and one’s life only. The full title of his best-known study is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. As we might imagine, the figure of Darwin does emerge in racist and misogynistic contexts, becoming tainted by the bad reputation of eugenics and twentieth-century totalitarianisms. It surely remains an important task toconsider his work in these problematic contexts which reveal the darker side of the West. At the same time, however, it seems equally valuable to verify whether Darwin’s writings also contain something that could inspire us to think about humanity differently and with a greater dose of humility.
Humanists deliberate whether we have learned from Darwin’s lessons and whether the old ruts into which his theories slipped still exist. Can his texts provide answers to the fundamental questions about human origins as well as the nature of our species and its future? Are we capable of taking inspiration from his ideas in times of anthropogenic climate change, the sixth great extinction, and the destabilization of planetary life conditions for life? Did Darwin perceive the world—both human and non-human—merely as a theatre of ruthless competition and bloody struggle, where victory belongs only to the strongest and fiercest? Or perhaps emerging unscathed is possible only for the flexible ones—those who can adapt quickly and effectively to the rapidly changing habitat?
Us and “All the Rest”
The human being is one of the central subjects in Western philosophy. Who are we? How do we think and learn about the world? What is the origin of good and evil in us? What is our role in the world? These questions have been answered in many ways that are incompatible save for one tenet: the belief that human beings are somehow unique.
This special status has been explored with a persistence worthy of a better cause. Aristotle, for example, recognized that there is much we share with plants: the ability to live, grow, and reproduce. Further, sensory perception is something that all animals are capable of. At the same time, he was convinced that there must be something about humanity that sets it apart from all other living beings. He identified this feature as reason—the potential to think and act in accordance with imperatives defined by the highest faculty of the soul.
In the Middle Ages, Christian thinkers likewise associated human uniqueness with the ability to transcend our animal nature. Reason—the divine spark in every person—was supposed to protect the soul from lapsing into the pitiful chaos of animal life governed solely by instincts. Descartes also admitted that, although human bodies are well-designed mechanisms which do not differ from animals, there is an element of consciousness, which he called res cogitans: an immortal mental substance that helps us surpass all mechanical life defined by the laws of nature.
This is the origin of the division between humanity and everything else; it is one between the world of freedom and that of determinism. On the one side lies speech, negotiation, and culture, while on the other, instinct, necessity, and nature. Such a dualistic standpoint has reinforced the sense of uniqueness and justified drawing freely from nature and shaping it in accordance with human will, at best leaving a slight portion deemed worth protecting. Since philosophy addresses the essence of humanity, the concepts it develops automatically become universal: pertaining to everyone and everywhere, regardless of any characteristics considered accidental such as gender, education, or social position. This is just one step away from believing that, if someone does not share this specific point of view, system of values, or lifestyle, they are simply unworthy of being regarded as human and can be consequently turned into products, labor, or resources, just like animals and plants. The history of colonialism and capitalism provides numerous examples of this approach.
Going beyond Anthropocentrism
Enter Darwin—a thinker who showed that human beings granted themselves unique status, and this meticulously assembled order is not based on facts. The scientist demonstrated that there is no qualitative difference between humans and animals but merely one of degree. In fact, many features ascribed solely to human beings can be found in the animal kingdom, albeit sometimes in germinal form. According to Darwin, these elements include not only love, memory, concentration, reasoning, curiosity, imitation, and improvement but also sense of self, recognition of beauty, and differentiation between good and evil. In his view, even if we identify certain properties as purely human—for example abstract thinking—they are the product of gradual evolutionary processes. As a result, humans are much closer to gorillas than gorillas are to, say, lancelets. Moreover, various evolutionary paths can lead to different notions of what is beautiful, good, and right. These observations provide the basis for one possible way out of anthropocentrism.
Darwin, Copernicus, and Freud are thinkers who—as the last one famously put it—dealt a blow to humanity’s self-love. Copernicus proved that Earth is not the center of the universe. Darwin showed that humans are not the crown of creation and the most perfect earthly beings. Finally, Freud demonstrated that people are not even fully capable of self-mastery because they are torn apart by forces they cannot bring to consciousness.
The Freudian metaphor of striking down anthropocentrism with science has been recently elaborated further. Donna Haraway, an American philosopher who specializes in science and technology, argues that technological advancement has led us to undermine another division that is crucial for anthropocentrism: one between the artificial, or technological, and the organic, or natural. Further, Daniel Ross, a scholar from Australia, considers the Anthropocene (the geological epoch marked by anthropogenic transformation of the planet) as another stage in this process of disillusionment: it would appear that we cannot avoid causing harm to the world. As it transpires, Westerners and the capitalist mechanisms of production they have implemented caused a multidimensional crisis that engulfs the earth. As a result, prospects of mass extinction, including that of the human species, have become realistic. Awareness of threats posed by the climate crisis and the destabilization of life on Earth has urged us to revisit the question about humanity. Indeed, humanism is currently being examined from all angles as we witness the proliferation of both anthropocentrism and attempts to subvert it.
Another Step in Evolution
Wherever we turn, different visions of humanity are sprouting up. Although I focus here on those concepts that go beyond the anthropocentric paradigm, it needs to be emphasized that we also observe the spreading of narratives which redouble efforts to separate culture from nature, continuing to think in anthropocentric categories. As it turns out, there is no need to renounce Darwinism in order to emphatically claim that humanity started a new epoch and is now setting the pace of evolution as the omnipotent agent who shall save the world.
Ecomodernists argue that we can save the earth from ecological catastrophe by liberating ourselves from nature through technological advancement. This would supposedly boost the effectiveness of using natural resources, thus ensuring sustainability. Transhumanists, in turn, embrace technological progress as an opportunity to develop a new kind of humanity. They hold that it is possible to eliminate human errors and imperfections through an array of appropriately designed technological means. These solutions would lead us to another stage in evolution—the kind that Darwin could not describe because it would be reached through culture and technology. The above narratives clearly exhibit pride in being human. Even if human actions can be frightful at times, while the world we created appears to be rather bleak, in the end everything is moving forward toward the better. However, it seems that both attitudes—the pride in being human and the recognition of our evil aspect—are two sides of the same coin, ultimately rooted in the belief about the uniqueness of humanity, which will either save the world or push it over the brink into nothingness.
Perpetual Lottery
Let us return to Darwin, as Australian philosopher Elizabeth Grosz encourages. Perhaps Grosz does not draw attention to entirely new aspects, but her observations regarding humanity are quite refreshing. As she underscores, Darwin’s writings can be interpreted differently than in terms of survival of the fittest. After all, natural selection benefits those individuals and species that can adapt to changes in their natural environment. Whatever we deem to be beautiful, fit, strong, refined, or developed at a given historical moment ultimately has no bearing on evolution. It may turn out that all the values cherished so far by humanity are useless in the face of shifting conditions for life. We have simply no idea which characteristics could become crucial from an evolutionary perspective.
Evolution is a blind force of imperceptibly differentiating life that never stops adapting to changes occurring at many levels of the world’s organization. As Grosz stresses, evolution is playfully experimental and leads simultaneously in many directions, forming a web of forking paths that can never be authoritatively considered to be blind alleys. Humans cannot control this process, influencing it only to a slight degree at a very small temporal scale in comparison to life’s development on Earth. Humanity is just an instant in the history of the world, a fleeting composition of matter, while human cultures are no more than provisional stabilizations of transient beliefs and visions. According to Grosz, however, this also reveals something interesting: we can never know what is going to happen because the mechanisms of evolution do not describe a world ruled by determinacy. The past does not contain the future, nor does it limit or condition whatever comes next; instead, it constitutes the material out of which new things are formed. Life is a multidimensional venture that comprises a multitude of forms, colors, shapes, lifestyles, paths of development, and survival strategies. It teems with possibilities. Unpredictable changes may occur at all levels, be they a genetic mutation, a sudden change in environmental conditions, or the emergence of novel factors that bring unknown results.
This process of differentiation is amplified by sexual selection, which Grosz argues is responsible for the abundance or even excess of various lifeforms. Evolution does not choose the simplest road to survival but wanders through a tangle of beauty, attraction, and desire, sometimes leading to solutions that appear extravagant or even dangerous. Evolutionary processes like differentiation comprise a continuous series of questions and answers which demonstrate that evolution does not pertain to autonomous individuals operating over and above the world but (at least) to pairs. Nobody comes into existence by themselves. Flowers are formed alongside whatever they need to reproduce: air, earth formations, and pollinators. Fins are an answer to water; wings and avian skeletons to air. It is an interconnected system. This is the reason why contemporary extinction scholars hold that processes of dying out are not limited to the departure of the last representatives of a certain species but involve the gradual disentangling of the tissue-like weave of life. Extinction sets in motion a snowball of effects that may not be directly observable but nevertheless transform the world. Finally, as Grosz contends, there is no difference in kind between nature and culture, just like there is no boundary between humans and animals. Everything is a single, meandering movement of change: becoming, experimenting, posing questions, and providing answers.
What does this account of evolution tell us about humanity? To start with, we are not the crown of creation but rather a volatile process as well as one of many lifeforms. Moreover, there is no human essence that could be defined once and for all because humanity is changing gradually and unpredictably, unable to control the world or easily fix it. The force of life exceeds humanity, which is caught in its numerous rapids. From this perspective, we may feel absolved of the responsibility for ecological catastrophe, since life flows along its own paths as an overwhelming force that invariably picks up the thread after every great extinction. It is highly probable that this is also going to be the case in the future.
Still, this perspective fails to take into account the fact that human activity—capitalist organization of work and production as well as the transformation of human and non-human beings into resources and products—has imprinted itself on the ways in which life differentiates. Forms developed by individual species across millions of years are rapidly disappearing. Even though it may be impossible to feel responsible for the entirety of life processes on Earth, humanity is indeed to blame for disturbing the life cycles of specific species. For this reason, studying the ways in which we are implicated in extinction processes appears to be one possible path that ethics may pursue aside from examining the narratives humanity has spun about itself as a species in order to support and legitimize a certain vision of the world.
Keeping to the Sidelines
Some people argue that, in itself, the story about humanity and the world cannot change reality. However, Grosz indicates that everything we say about the world and people makes certain formulas for action sensible while invalidating others. Were it not for the belief in the uniqueness of humanity, we could not justify turning the environment into a resource, making plants and animals into products, and forcing people who do not fit the definition of “humanity” to become workforce or cultural curiosities. Thus, it seems particularly timely to embrace the fleeting character of the human form and ask how it can be reimagined in ways that avoid the ruts of anthropocentrism.
It may prove impossible to view the human species in non-anthropocentric terms. After all, it is the human being who attempts to imagine themselves, record the results, and put them into practice. However, just as we can support the view that humanity is the measure of all things, we may also embrace the perspective of evolutionary transience and contingency, acknowledging all of the non-human relations that make humanity a multi-species entity. Indeed, human existence is bound up with that of other species, the most obvious example being the microbes that inhabit the human body and enable it to function. This angle foregrounds interdependence along with shared fragility, uncertainty, and woundedness.
This strategy is one of receding into the background and keeping to the sidelines. It is about becoming silent and striving toward imperceptibility.
Imperceptibility is a term that Grosz borrowed from French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. They define “becoming imperceptible” as a way of deprioritizing the search for those features that set us apart and make us unique. Instead of seeking exceptionality, we may focus on all the relations that weave together our reality and ourselves. This task can be understood as an ethical challenge. Many philosophers supporting the anthropocentric agenda would look for those properties (or their entire systems) that differentiate humanity from the rest of the world. Here, we encounter the opposite: renouncing the imagined uniqueness and moving away from it.
This can be made practicable in many ways. One of them is to show that the skills traditionally considered to be uniquely human are, in fact, present in various forms in the animal world. Contemporary scientific literature as well as popularizing accounts (for example by Frans de Waal, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Alexandra Horowitz, and Carl Safin) provide a host of case studies regarding sign language, deception, humor, mourning, delayed gratification, learning and teaching others, self-recognition, and perceiving injustice. Recently, such investigations have also turned toward the human, demonstrating how thoroughly non-self-reliant we are; how fragile and susceptible to abuse. In fact, we are dependent on light just like pines, and susceptible to toxins just like rats. We need others to survive, but we are also equally likely to be forced into labor as beings who attune themselves to the exhausting mechanisms of availability, efficiency, and around-the-clock productivity.
Imperceptibility is an experiment in ways of seeing things. As Polish philosopher and feminist, Jolanta Brach-Czaina observes in her book, Błony Umysłu (Membranes of the Mind), breathing is an apt example. We rarely think about it except for situations in which we are gasping for air, but it is in fact the absolute basis of our existence as well as a mechanism that obliterates the boundary between ourselves and the world; between animate and inanimate. Something from outside briefly becomes internalized and then pushed out, the particles of breath left drifting in the air. Although we insist on human exceptionalism, we all belong to a community of air. As the Polish philosopher writes, “We are all offshoots of air, […] and there is no reason to think of ourselves as beings that are independent, complete, and finite in themselves. Breathing demonstrates that we exist in a half-emerged state and merely arise from airy spaces. Even though our shapes seem clearly demarcated, it is an illusion because any attempt to separate oneself is impracticable.” In this light, we can imagine humans not as autonomous beings that inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, but as “offshoots of air” or entities that only appear to be separate from the environment.
In a similar vein, anthropologist Natasha Myers invites us to cultivate our inner plants through a series of imagination-based exercises. Her hope is to help us attune ourselves to other processes and sensibilities in order to build on the ruins of the Anthropocene, creating a plant-and-human platform fostering contact, solidarity, and knowledge: Planthropo(s)cene. For example, we may focus on experiencing being exposed to sunlight or try to observe how our bodies are affected by gravity. We can imagine what it feels like to be several meters under the earth’s surface and to reach out higher and higher while retaining a sense of rootedness. We can also envision the sensation of being distributed like a tree whose every leaf receives a multitude of signals. Perhaps by following plants and their priorities we could meet them halfway.
Exercising the Imagination
While writing the above, my head is filled with possible critical voices about these ideas. Can imagining oneself as a plant or an “offshoot of air” change anything? Or save the world? Could it lead to reforms mitigating the results of ecological catastrophe? Would it not be a usurpation; just another way of appropriating plant life? Do we have the time for such imaginative play? Should we not turn to more effective modes of action? Finally, does this not promote a harmonious and romanticized vision of the relationship between humanity and nature?
I share many of these doubts and concerns. At the same time, however, I hold that even though these attempts to imagine human life differently may not change the world visibly, they are far from pointless. Can we argue with full conviction which particular individual actions will make the world a better place? Perhaps it is relational thinking—the kind that replaces individuals with collectives that are inclusive of the more-than-human world—that could provide the right impulse for creative action. We should not expect much from experiments with more humble and less perceptible approaches to humanity, ones that embrace changeability and reject vainglory in the effort to avoid the pitfalls of pride. At the same time, however, such endeavors could hopefully divest people of Western culture— in the anthropocentric sense—of power, allure, and persuasiveness.
It is worthwhile to examine the difficult tradition of Western thought, which has oftentimes justified colonialism and mindless exploitation of life, and to look for cuts, fractures, and breaking points. Perhaps we can make more room for them. Perhaps a different kind of thinking might bear the fruit of different practices—the kind that could rise to the challenges of the future.
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