人类世的自然契约

The natural contract in the Anthropocene

鉴于近些年来人类对地球造成的大量且加速增长的环境影响,有人提出应当将这一时期作为"人类世"的新地质时代来思考。尽管一些人认为我们当前的局势说明有理由进行大规模的矫正性干预,但米歇尔·塞勒斯(Michel Serres)却反其道而行之,他提出"一种与自然的契约",号召减少我们对地球的干预。尽管想要与某种没有自主能动性、也缺乏理性和知性的自然订立一种契约困难重重,但是自然契约的观念确实言之有理。它提供了一种关于对人类社会与自然界之间的社会—政治关系进行概念重构的丰富想象,而且有足够多的先例,可以为我们改变与自然交往的路径这一迫切需要提供启示和引导。

In view of humanity’s vast and accelerating environmental impacts on the planet in its more recent past it has been proposed to think of this period as a new geologic epoch called “Anthropocene”. While some suppose that our present situation justifies large-scale, corrective interventions, Michel Serres has proposed “a contract with nature”, which, to the contrary, calls for a reduction in our interventions on the planet. Although there are difficulties in engaging in a contract with something lacking autonomous agency, rationality, and sentience, the idea of a natural contract does make sense. It offers a richly suggestive reconception of socio-political relationships between human society and the natural world, and has enough precedents to serve as a source of inspiration and guidance for the urgently needed transformation of our approach to the natural environment.