If we lose the Earth, we lose our souls E-Book

Bruno Latour

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 133

Beschreibung

In this book Bruno Latour calls upon Christians to join the struggle to avert a climate catastrophe. First and foremost, Christians need to overcome their lack of interest in "earthly things" and pay attention to the Earth at a time when it is being neglected. He also urges Christians to renew their understanding of their faith in the context of the new image of the world that has emerged from earth system science - that of a world in which the myriad of beings that inhabit the world are interdependent and living in close proximity on a slender, fragile membrane on the surface of the planet. This new image of the world cannot fail to have an impact on the sciences, on politics, and on religion, just as, in earlier centuries, the cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo upset the old order. Latour sees the ecological crisis, and the cosmological mutation that it entails, as an opportunity to convey anew, to the largest possible audience, the tradition of Christianity as it has never been appreciated before, by bringing to bear the lessons of eschatology on the great crisis that looms before us all.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Notes

1. The Great Clamor: Conversation with Antonio Spadaro, SJ

Notes

2. Ecological Mutation and Christian Cosmology

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II

III

Notes

3. On a Decisive Overturning of the Schema of the End Times

Notes

4. If You Lose the Earth, What Good Will It Do You to Have Saved Your Soul?

Notes

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Begin Reading

End User License Agreement

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If we lose the Earth, we lose our souls

Bruno Latour

Translated by Catherine Porter and Sam Ferguson

polity

Originally published in French as Qui perd la terre, perd son âme.Copyright © Éditions Balland, 2022

This English edition © Polity Press, 2024

English translation of the chapter “Ecological Mutation and Christian Cosmology” © Sam Ferguson, 2024. Sam Ferguson asserts his moral right to be identified as translator of this chapter. All other text was translated by Catherine Porter unless otherwise indicated.

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN–13: 978-1-5095-6047-9

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023939928

The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Foreword

Once God has spoken,twice have I heard this.

Psalm 62, 11

In the pages that follow, Bruno Latour addresses four challenges to Christians and theologians concerning the fate of the earth and of humanity. Known worldwide as a philosopher, sociologist, and anthropologist, Latour has spared no efforts to try to convince Christians to undertake a dual operation that is not self-evident. First, and this is the negative version of the challenge, he asks them to pay attention to the earth, at a time when it is being neglected. This implies that they should overcome their lack of interest in “earthly things,” and that modern theology overall should be open to taking more interest in cosmology. Second, this time with a positive emphasis, he asks Christians to renew their apostolic teaching and their understanding of their faith in the context of the new image of the world that has emerged from earth system science. For, along with others, Latour has registered the seismographic shock of a representation of the world that describes not only the interdependence of the myriad beings that inhabit the earth but also the composition, by those beings, of a zone that living beings can inhabit: a slender, fragile membrane on the surface of the planet. Such an image of the world cannot fail to have a considerable impact on the sciences, on politics, and on “religion,” just as, earlier, the cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo upset the old order. Given that renewal is an essential characteristic of Christian teaching, Latour sees in the ecological “crisis,” and in the cosmological mutation that it entails, a “providential” opportunity to convey anew, to the largest possible audience, the evangelical “variation” in such a way that it can be understood in its originality and not confused with the old cosmology.

There are many reasons for assembling a work such as this one. First of all, it makes texts scattered among journals or collective works newly available, and to a larger audience. Second, by arranging them in an order that moves from the latest to the earliest, the book will enable readers to grasp the way the author’s call proceeds not from a grounding theoretical adventure but rather from his attention to current history, to what might be called “signs of the times,” signs whose meaning theologians ought to help decipher. And, ultimately, the publication of the work is meant to convey that call one more time, summed up in proverbial form in the title of Chapter 4: “If You Lose the Earth, What Good Will It Do You to Have Saved Your Soul?” For one has to acknowledge that, since 2008, when the first of these appeals was made, and despite the events that have marked contemporary environmental thinking, even despite the “divine surprise” of the encyclical Laudato Si’ in 2015, theologians in the French-speaking world have not paid serious attention to Latour’s plea that they face up to the cosmological mutation – unlike other thinkers throughout the world who have been making efforts to respond.1 Theology and preaching carry on, here in France, as though nothing has changed, while among the faithful there are ever-increasing numbers who perceive the groans of the earth and who await help in discerning what the Spirit is saying to the Churches about these signs. The confrontation between theology and a cosmological revolution is certainly not without its challenges, as is apparent from the difficulties faced by French theologians such as Teilhard de Chardin or Édouard Le Roy when they tried to integrate Darwin’s discoveries into their thinking. But Christian salvation and witness are now at stake. How many times can preachers associate summertime with rest and meditation on the “beauties of nature” when forests are on fire outside the sanctuary! And salvation is indeed what is ultimately at stake in the devastations of the earth. This small book makes that claim anew, humbly but firmly.

By standing back a little to consider the theological effort Bruno Latour is imploring his readers to make, it is not impossible to see it as a continuation of the work of the theologians who have had to “stitch back together” what modernity had taken apart through a series of abstractions. As we know, the moderns have a truncated picture of human beings, and a certain number of Christian thinkers have never stopped trying to “mend” that picture in order to restore its fullness. In the wake of Maurice Blondel’s research, relayed by Father de Lubac and other theologians, it was at first a matter of relaunching an effort to reweave anthropology together with theology, relocating the expectation of divine Revelation in the desire, consubstantial with the humanity of human beings, to see God. But that first “mending” no longer suffices to allow us to face the drama of the times with dignity. A second “mending” is required, one that solidly attaches anthropology to cosmology and avoids imagining that we can really be humans before we are terrestrial beings, or, worse, without having to be terrestrial at all. On the contrary, this second step affirms the extent to which the dignity of a human life presupposes that it is lived in a fully accepted terrestrial condition.

It is not unreasonable, either, to think that the role of these two “mendings,” these two renewals,2 is to verify and support each other mutually. The call to live the life of daughters or sons of God must not cut human beings off from the other creatures with which their Creator has connected them; quite the opposite: it should impel them into greater solidarity, for charity leads not to evasion but to incarnation. On the other hand, the fact that humanity is in community with myriad other creatures, however dense and normalized that community may be, does not suffice to assuage the human desire that finds its origin, its meaning, and its end in communion with Life and Charity. In publishing this little book, we hope that it will find and encourage readers who can help reconnect zones that have been kept apart: theology, anthropology, and cosmology.

August 25, 2022

Postscript: Bruno Latour had reread and corrected the first proofs of this book a few days before he went into the hospital on September 29, 2022. His death on Sunday, October 9, 2022, prevented him from seeing it in print.

Frédéric Louzeau

Notes

1.

See especially Daniel Bogner, Michael Schüssler, and Christian Bauer, eds.,

Gott, Gaïa und eine neue Gesellschaft: Theologie anders denken mit Bruno Latour

(Transcript Verlag 2021):

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/51234

. Independently of Latour’s works and appeals, we can find reflections on the theological repercussions of the new cosmology and especially of the Gaia hypothesis in the works of Rosemary Radford Ruether,

Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing

(New York: Harper-Collins, 1994); Leonardo Boff,

Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor

(trans. Philip Berryman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997); Thomas Berry, “The Gaia Theory: Its Religious Implications” (

ARC: The Journal of the Religious Studies Department, McGill University

22 (1994): 7–19; Stephen B. Scharper,

Redeeming the Time: A Political Theology of the Environment

(New York: Continuum, 1997); Richard Bauckham,

Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation

(London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 2009):

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/58954

.

2.

Translator’s note

: The word

reprise

, translated here as “mending,” can also be read as “renewal,” literally a “taking up again” and making new.

1The Great ClamorConversation with Antonio Spadaro, SJ

The philosopher, sociologist, and anthropologist Bruno Latour is an emeritus professor at Sciences Po Paris.1 Translated into some thirty languages, Latour is unquestionably the contemporary French-language author with the widest readership in the world; his work on the climate crisis has made him a global presence on ecological matters, “the thinker who is inspiring the planet,” as the weekly magazine L’Obs declared on its cover a few months ago.2 We met at his home near the Odéon, at the heart of the Latin Quarter. A conversation imbued with wisdom and with the hope that is spread through frequent encounters with the big questions. A way of crystallizing more than fifty years of research, teaching, publication, and active commitment to the service of knowledge. A vision shared in the twilight of life.

On several occasions, in articles or talks, you have welcomed the prophetic character of Laudato Si’.3 In what respect has this text by Pope Francis been relevant to your life as a researcher?

For me Laudato Si’ was an impressive text from the outset. As it happened, it came out the same year as my book Facing Gaia4 – too late for me to take it into account. For my part, I was trying to grasp what I call a cosmological mutation – but which is also a mutation in the relations among materiality, spirituality, politics, and so on, all those things that the changing perceptions of the world and nature subject to a questioning that promotes the terrestrial. I was astonished, in reading Laudato Si’, to discover the extent to which the prophetic and eschatological dimension of the new situation was magnificently expanded, quite explicitly, in this text by Pope Francis. He was making historical statements that were not unrelated to the COP 21 held the same year.5

This prophetic and eschatological opening onto questions in which I had more or less given up hope of interesting Catholics unsettled me deeply. It opened up the prospect of pursuing very important questions of theology and transmission, a whole series of topics that I had thought closed. Up to that point, the understanding of Nature that had prevailed during the three previous centuries had closed off themes of Christian spirituality that the new ecological situation was reopening. I found this fascinating. The Pope’s text interested my ecologist friends, researchers in the fields known as the natural sciences, in a way that clearly allowed for a new dialogue that had been impossible, probably since the seventeenth century.

What is it in that text that connects with the emergence of the new cosmological situation?

Technically, the fundamental point lies in a new way of understanding living beings. By linking the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, the Pope is on the one hand making a connection between ecology and injustice, and on the other hand acknowledging the fact that the earth is manifesting itself, that it can act and suffer. “[A] true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (Laudato Si’, §49).

The Pope manages to reinsert a cosmological dimension into subjects that up to now, from a Christian standpoint – whether seen from inside or outside the Catholic Church – were treated as matters of morality. I have always been struck by the complete absence of the cosmos in modern theology, an absence that is paradoxically typical of secular society. Everyone had in some way lost the cosmological dimension. Abruptly, with the ecological crisis, the cosmos is coming back in with extraordinary intensity, among Christians as well as everyone else.

At the same time, in a second completely extraordinary revolution, so-called social questions about destitution, poverty, and so on are being newly articulated by the Pope in connection with this reappropriation of cosmological questions. In “official metaphysics,” this conjunction is unprecedented. The poor who are crying out in lamentation are not supposed to have any relationship with the clamor of the earth.

So here was a shock and a transformational audacity that told me, to put it in my own terms, that we are both trying to change cosmologies, conceptions of the world, and that the two universes are going to be able to come into resonance at last.

You argue in favor of a “Parliament of Things.” I make the connection with the cry of the poor that is also the cry of the earth. They speak on behalf of the world. “This is why the earth herself, subjugated and ravaged, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she ‘groans in travail.’”

(Rom. 8:22) (LS §2)