Thesis Project: Action in the Anthropocene
What does it mean for a human being to act? In the era of ecological breakdown, such a question perhaps appears somewhat antiquated. Is human action not so thoroughly mediated, its consequences so helplessly beyond our control, and even of our knowledge, as to make the idea of a human agent as the progenitor and author of ”actions” appear helplessly naive?
In my PhD Thesis, I claim that such a reaction is misplaced. Constructing a theory of human action from foundations in the philosophy of biology, I argue that the idea of purposive activity is indispensable to articulate a social theory worthy of our predicament. Through the analysis of action as a normative capacity with a biological origin, I ground insights in the philosophy of action in a story reaching back to biology, while nonetheless resisting the idea that human capacities reduce to ”mere” biology. In this work, I engage with literatures from eco-Marxism and the history German philosophy to contemporary pragmatism and the philosophy of biology.
