Viriato Soromenho-Marques

Praxis-CFUL, University of Lisbon

Anthropocene, Utopia and Dystopia. Contributions to a Philosophy of History of the Near Future

15 March 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy) | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The roots of our present predicament are entangled in the humanistic turn of European Modernity, which was quickly embedded with a new vision of technology. The latter ceased to be a mere instrumental and secondary derivative consequence of knowledge primacy, to become the very vehicle and purpose of the most desirable future, able to be reached through our increased ability to alter and mobilise nature to suit our needs and even our whims. It is no sheer coincidence that the concept of utopia was invented in this period (in Thomas More’s Utopia, 1516), and that the most influential utopias that followed suit, like those of Tommaso Campanella and Francis Bacon have the increasingly predominant presence of techno-science as the anticipation driving force of a desirable future. We have reached the contemporary period with a full-fledged technological orientation of the science infrastructure, and also of its planning and operating procedures, in an atmosphere of uncritical optimism, averse to any prudential reserve. The discourse of unlimited scientific progress marginalised dissenting voices and discounted as acceptable collateral damage the increasing toll of environmental and social negative impacts. The utopian drive of techno-science is growingly escalating towards the opposite world of a dystopian nightmare.