Twice a month, The duty challenges enthusiasts of philosophy and the history of ideas to decipher a topical issue based on the theses of a prominent thinker.
The message of the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, at the opening of COP27 has the merit of being clear: humanity must choose between “collective suicide and climate solidarity”. As Alexandre Shields reminded us in the podcast Pick up the one, titled “The Chosen Ones should they be educated about the climate crisis? », the average Quebecer emits 9.1 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year and, to limit global warming to 1.5°C, we would have to reduce our emissions to 2 tonnes per person per year.
Although the staunchest defenders of the technicist approach still believe that we will get there without drastic changes in our ways of living, it is becoming increasingly clear that sobriety must necessarily be part of the solution. But how will Western human beings, fundamentally egocentric, succeed in sacrificing the unprecedented comfort in which they have been enjoying themselves for several decades to act in favor of the common good and the survival of future generations? How to transcend this state of inertia catalyzed by “comfort and indifference”? How to develop, both among our elected officials and among everyone, this imperative climate solidarity? How can we ensure that our quest for meaning is guided by the concern to take care of the world?
In his work Human, too human, published in 1878, Nietzsche reminds us that human beings always act out of personal interest. “Never has a man done anything that was done solely for others and without any personal motive; how could he even do something that had no connection with him, that is to say without inner necessity (which should all the same be based on a personal need)? How would the ego be able to act without ego? »
He insists that living in perpetual awareness of selfless thought, being capable of selfless actions, is not possible for any living being. And this, among other things, because we are biologically subject to our hedonic system, a functional system that we share with all mammals, which is also called the “reward circuit”. This circuit, firmly installed in an ancestral part of our brain, the result of millions of years of evolution, responds to five mechanisms – eating, having sex, being attentive to the slightest information, rising in the social hierarchy and be efficient (acting while spending as little energy as possible), which favored the survival of prehistoric man, as Sébastien Bohler points out in his book The human bug (Robert Laffont, 2019). Over the millennia, natural selection has favored individuals who exhibit these behaviors, essential to the survival of the species in a hostile environment. We, the descendants of thousands of human generations, have therefore inherited the most efficient reward circuit in the history of mankind. So, although we are increasingly aware of the scale of the climate challenge and the urgency of adopting a frugal lifestyle, our striatum, millions of years old, maintains us, with blows of dopamine , at best in the status quo, at worst in an exponential and destructive overconsumption. We live for ourselves. We live for today. We now live at full speed. We live irresponsibly. Are we therefore at the end of history?
Let’s go back to Human, too human. Note also that the title refers not only to the universalism of the human race, but also to the desacralization of the world. A decade after the publication of this work, Nietzsche will announce the death of God and, with it, a long series of declines and destructions. Modernity and postmodernity have effectively cut us off from a collective meaning. Scientific rationalism has condemned visions of the world based on transcendence, rejecting at the same time any notion of the sacred and any collective ritual, which are nevertheless necessary for the need to belong and for the creation of meaning.
In this book, Nietzsche provides an answer to the question that concerns us: is triumphant individualism the only possible conclusion of History? Indeed, the aphorism 94 declines The Three Historical Phases of Morality, from which emerges a glimmer of hope. Before going any further, let us linger a moment longer on the title of the aphorism. The word “morality”, a little dusty, a bit outdated, would perhaps have been replaced by “ethics” if Nietzsche had lived in our time. Moreover, the epithet “historical” supposes an evolutionary character over time. However, we will see that we not only always find humans in each of the three phases described below, but that each human can, at different times and in different circumstances, find himself in one or the other of these three phases. They would therefore be, in my opinion, permanent, coexisting in everyone, since the human is human.
According to Nietzsche, the first phase is that which distinguishes the human from the animal. For the philologist, humans, aware that they are part of a time frame, unlike animals, will seek lasting happiness rather than momentary. He “turns therefore towards utility, opportunity: this is where the free will of reason begins to assert itself”. Opportunistic, human beings place their own interests above principles.
“A still higher degree is reached when he acts on the principle of honour; thanks to him, he disciplines himself, submits to common sentiments. […] He conceives the useful as depending on the opinion he has of others and others of him. Thus, here, the human hardly cares about the other, but about the consideration, the look that the other has on him. This second phase stated by Nietzsche can explain why the majority of citizens submit to the laws, even if the latter may come into conflict with their personal interests. The human values his honor and fears seeing his reputation tarnished, because he knows that the image he projects contributes socially to advantage or harm him. If we managed to collectively embrace an ecological sense, to elevate nature to the rank of sacred, thumb our nose at the paralyzing nihilism left by the death of God, we would be driven by honor, this second phase of morality, to adopting ecological behaviors since behaviors that destroy the environment would be socially considered “evil”. But this remains a long-term undertaking, and time is against us.
Finally, Nietzsche places our hopes for humanity in this third phase. “Knowledge enables him to place the greatest usefulness, that is to say the general and lasting interest, before his own, the esteem and respect of general and lasting value before those of the moment: he lives and acts collectively. The power of knowledge could therefore be able to supplant the ego, the ontological foundation of all living beings. True knowledge, understanding, reflection, analysis would be able to subordinate individualism to solidarity. Knowledge would be likely to change the course of history and ensure that we act collectively.
In the light of Nietzschean insight into “morality” or human ethics, we can only welcome the idea of offering training to elected officials on climate change. Indeed, the only comprehension of the retroactive phenomena in loop already well engaged which will amplify in an exponential way and hardly foreseeable the disastrous impacts which await us could convince our decision-makers of the urgency to act. Maintaining the status quo of the philosophy of small steps, of blind faith in a hypothetical saving technical advance leads us straight to “collective suicide”. Such training could push our decision-makers to go beyond the sole electoral aims (mixture of the first two phases involving opportunity, personal utility and honor), and have the audacity to legislate on measures that are at the same time incentive, coercive and structural favoring the adoption radical changes in our lifestyles towards a necessary sobriety.
Living and acting collectively means affirming a desire to be responsible towards others, towards history and the environment, and showing solidarity towards the chain of generations. If he who knows must assume this responsibility. Our elected officials, unlike the average citizen, hold the levers of the collective. Since time is running out, all their decisions should imperatively pass through the sieve of the climate. May knowledge make them choose climate solidarity!
Despite all the uncertainties of our time, we can say that the world existed before our birth and will remain after our death. If human existence is linear, the world is part of a temporality of another order. Could our legitimate quest for meaning lead us to ensure the permanence of the world which, through duration, transcends all egos?
Suggestions ? Write to Robert Dutrisac: [email protected]. To read or reread the old texts of Le Devoir de philo, visit our website.