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The Natural Contract
Global environmental change, argues Michel Serres, has forced us to reconsider our relationship to nature. In this translation of his influential 1990 book Le Contrat Naturel, Serres calls for a natural contract to be negotiated between Earth and its inhabitants.
World history is often referred to as the story of human conflict. Those struggles that are seen as our history must now include the uncontrolled violence that humanity perpetrates upon the earth, and the uncontrollable menace to human life posed by the earth in reaction to this violence. Just as a social contract once brought order to human relations, Serres believes that we must now sign a "natural contract" with the earth to bring balance and reciprocity to our relations with the planet that gives us life. Our survival depends on the extent to which humans join together and act globally, on an earth now conceived as an entity.
Tracing the ancient beginnings of modernity, Serres examines the origins and possibilities of a natural contract through an extended meditation on the contractual foundations of law and science. By invoking a nonhuman, physical world, Serres asserts, science frees us from the oppressive confines of a purely social existence, but threatens to become a totalitarian order in its own right. The new legislator of the natural contract must bring science and law into balance.
Serres ends his meditation by retelling the story of the natural contract as a series of parables. He sees humanity as a spacecraft that with the help of science and technology has cast off from familiar moorings. In place of the ties that modernity and analytic reason have severed, we find a network of relations both stranger and stronger than any we once knew, binding us to one another and to the world. The philosopher's harrowing and joyous task, Serres tells us, is that of comprehending and experiencing the bonds of violence and love that unite us in our spacewalk to the spaceship Mother Earth.
"Wise, rich and poetic . . . not simply a philosophical study of the Environment, or an ecological questioning of Philosophy . . . Nature is acknowledged as an inside force which breaks [the philosopher's] discourse, and opens it up to a vigilant poetic meditation."--Substance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism
World history is often referred to as the story of human conflict. Those struggles that are seen as our history must now include the uncontrolled violence that humanity perpetrates upon the earth, and the uncontrollable menace to human life posed by the earth in reaction to this violence. Just as a social contract once brought order to human relations, Serres believes that we must now sign a "natural contract" with the earth to bring balance and reciprocity to our relations with the planet that gives us life. Our survival depends on the extent to which humans join together and act globally, on an earth now conceived as an entity.
Tracing the ancient beginnings of modernity, Serres examines the origins and possibilities of a natural contract through an extended meditation on the contractual foundations of law and science. By invoking a nonhuman, physical world, Serres asserts, science frees us from the oppressive confines of a purely social existence, but threatens to become a totalitarian order in its own right. The new legislator of the natural contract must bring science and law into balance.
Serres ends his meditation by retelling the story of the natural contract as a series of parables. He sees humanity as a spacecraft that with the help of science and technology has cast off from familiar moorings. In place of the ties that modernity and analytic reason have severed, we find a network of relations both stranger and stronger than any we once knew, binding us to one another and to the world. The philosopher's harrowing and joyous task, Serres tells us, is that of comprehending and experiencing the bonds of violence and love that unite us in our spacewalk to the spaceship Mother Earth.
"Wise, rich and poetic . . . not simply a philosophical study of the Environment, or an ecological questioning of Philosophy . . . Nature is acknowledged as an inside force which breaks [the philosopher's] discourse, and opens it up to a vigilant poetic meditation."--Substance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism
136 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Michel Serres
189 books213 followersMichel Serres was a French philosopher, theorist and author.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 20, 2021
The Natural Contract opens with a typical Serresian flourish: a description of a harrowing scene painted by Francisco Goya (1746-1829). Two men are fighting each other with clubs, knee-deep in a quagmire of mud. The outcome of the brawl seems clear: both antagonists will perish. The more violently they clash, the more quickly they will be swallowed by the quicksand.
In Serres' reading this scene becomes a layered allegory for the relationship between humankind and its planetary habitat. Armed conflict has been the engine of history. However, war is not merely a 'primitive' state of men going down by the hand of other men. War is a (de jure) process that takes place within a legal framework: declaration, conflict, armistice. This framework was born from necessity as it put the lid on an endless cycle of vengeance. Serres hypothesises that there lies the origin of the social contracts that regulate societies. He then proceeds, characteristically, by zooming out and bringing into focus the silent, unnoticed background against which armed conflict has always taken place. The mud in Goya's painting symbolises this background. This is quite simply the world which now makes itself felt in response to the increasing weight of human presence on earth. Foreground and background are swept up in reinforcing feedback mechanisms: the more fiercely we compete, the more assertively earth makes itself felt. 'Subjective violence' engenders 'objective violence'. A new condition announces itself for humanity, a limit state of history. Serres: "We must therefore, once again, under threat of collective death, invent a law for objective violence. We find ourselves in the same position as our unimaginable ancestors when they invented the oldest laws, which transformed their subjective violence, through a contract, into what we call wars. We must make a new pact, a new preliminary agreement with the objective enemy of the human world: the world as such." This is the natural contract. Indeed, "we must decide on peace amongst ourselves to protect the world, and peace with the world to protect ourselves."
In the second part of the book Serres builds on this opening gambit. Contracts are systemically distinctive artefacts. They have a homeostatic function. Contracts canonize, thingify and stabilize relationships. They acknowledge an essential equality between signatories, codify obligations, and seek to balance interests of the parties. Similarly, "the natural contract recognises and acknowledges an equilibrium between our current power and the forces of the world."
The third essay reframes the envisioned equilibrium as a new stage in the relationship between science and law, reason and judgment. The project of scientific reason seeks limitless freedom to deploy itself. Human laws, at the service of various powers that be, have tried to curb this expansionist drive. The trial against Galilei was just one telltale flashpoint in a long conflictual relationship. However, the growing power and efficacy of the exact sciences were able to overrule this situation. Reason rose above judgment. Today, in the context of a global pandemic, we acquiesce when scientists advise politicians to sidestep constitutional rights. Serres suggests that our predicament invites us to think differently here. Rather than one dominating the other, reason and judgment have to enter into a positive cycle. "Thus it is better to make peace by a new contract between the sciences, which deal relevantly with the things of the world and their relations, and judgment, which decides on humans and their relations. It is better to make peace between the two types of reason in conflict today, because their fates are henceforth crossed and blended and because our own fate depends on their alliance. Through a new call to globality, we need to invent a reason that is both rational and steady, one that thinks truthfully while judging prudently."
At this point Serres introduces a new character, The Troubadour of Knowledge, which will turn to be the protagonist in his next book, Le Tiers-Instruit, published in 1991. The Troubadour models this hybrid reason with courage and wisdom. (S)he is the product of a process of education that gave her the courage to expose herself, to cast herself off. Listen how eloquently Serres brings the third essay of the Natural Contract to a close:
"We must learn our finitude: reach the limits of a non-infinite being. Necessarily we will have to suffer, from illnesses, unforeseeable accidents or lacks; we must set a term to our desires, ambitions, wills, freedoms. We must prepare our solitude, in the face of great decisions, responsibilities, growing numbers of other people; in the face of the world, the fragility of things and of loved ones to protect, in the face of happiness, unhappiness, death. To deny this finitude, starting in childhood, is to nurture unhappy people and foster their resentment of inevitable adversity. We must learn, at the same time, our true infinity. Nothing, or almost nothing, resists training. The body can do more than we believe, intelligence adapts to everything. To awaken the unquenchable thirst for learning, in order to live as much as possible of the total human experience and the beauties of the world, and to persevere, sometimes, through invention: this is the meaning of equipping someone to cast off."
This might have been a fitting conclusion to Serres' ruminations on the contract with Nature. But he presses on with a moving meditation on the experience of 'casting off' and the role of cordiality, concord, contract in navigating that transition into a new world. The philosopher conjures unforgettable images: a ship that unmoors in the port of Brest while a couple - woman on the quay, man on the departing vessel - continue to be connected by the graceful parabolas traced by an apple exchanged between them; the launch of spacecraft Ariane from its base in a rainforest; the pre-dawn departure of a party of mountaineers from a high hut in the Alps. The cord that ties the climbers together becomes a powerful simile for the relational import of the contract: "The term contract originally means the tract or trait or draft that tightens and pulls: a set of cords assures, without language, the subtle system of constraints and freedoms through which each linked element receives information about every other and about the system, and draws security from all."
Today our technologies offer a system of cords, of exchanges of forces and information with the Earth. We ceaselessly inform with our movements and energies, and the Earth, in return, informs us of its global change. For better of for worse, we are doomed to live contractually with the Earth. This demands vigilance and diligence, a decisive break with our contemporary negligence. It also demands a rekindling of love, for our mother. In the book's final pages, the philosopher bursts into a paean to the painfully beautiful manifestation of pure potentiality: "Indescribable emotion: mother, my faithful mother, our mother who has been a cenobite for as long as the world has existed, the heaviest, the most fecund, the holiest of material dwellings, chaste because always alone, and always pregnant, virgin and mother of all living things, better than alive, irreproducable universal womb of all possible life, mirror of ice floes, seat of snows, vessel of the seas, rose of the winds, tower of ivory, house of gold, Ark of the Covenant, gate of heaven, health, refuge, queen surrounded by clouds, who will be able to move her, who will be able to take her in their arms, who will protect her, if she risks dying and when she begins her mortal agony? Is it true that she is moved? What have we not destroyed with our scientific virtuosity?"
In Serres' reading this scene becomes a layered allegory for the relationship between humankind and its planetary habitat. Armed conflict has been the engine of history. However, war is not merely a 'primitive' state of men going down by the hand of other men. War is a (de jure) process that takes place within a legal framework: declaration, conflict, armistice. This framework was born from necessity as it put the lid on an endless cycle of vengeance. Serres hypothesises that there lies the origin of the social contracts that regulate societies. He then proceeds, characteristically, by zooming out and bringing into focus the silent, unnoticed background against which armed conflict has always taken place. The mud in Goya's painting symbolises this background. This is quite simply the world which now makes itself felt in response to the increasing weight of human presence on earth. Foreground and background are swept up in reinforcing feedback mechanisms: the more fiercely we compete, the more assertively earth makes itself felt. 'Subjective violence' engenders 'objective violence'. A new condition announces itself for humanity, a limit state of history. Serres: "We must therefore, once again, under threat of collective death, invent a law for objective violence. We find ourselves in the same position as our unimaginable ancestors when they invented the oldest laws, which transformed their subjective violence, through a contract, into what we call wars. We must make a new pact, a new preliminary agreement with the objective enemy of the human world: the world as such." This is the natural contract. Indeed, "we must decide on peace amongst ourselves to protect the world, and peace with the world to protect ourselves."
In the second part of the book Serres builds on this opening gambit. Contracts are systemically distinctive artefacts. They have a homeostatic function. Contracts canonize, thingify and stabilize relationships. They acknowledge an essential equality between signatories, codify obligations, and seek to balance interests of the parties. Similarly, "the natural contract recognises and acknowledges an equilibrium between our current power and the forces of the world."
The third essay reframes the envisioned equilibrium as a new stage in the relationship between science and law, reason and judgment. The project of scientific reason seeks limitless freedom to deploy itself. Human laws, at the service of various powers that be, have tried to curb this expansionist drive. The trial against Galilei was just one telltale flashpoint in a long conflictual relationship. However, the growing power and efficacy of the exact sciences were able to overrule this situation. Reason rose above judgment. Today, in the context of a global pandemic, we acquiesce when scientists advise politicians to sidestep constitutional rights. Serres suggests that our predicament invites us to think differently here. Rather than one dominating the other, reason and judgment have to enter into a positive cycle. "Thus it is better to make peace by a new contract between the sciences, which deal relevantly with the things of the world and their relations, and judgment, which decides on humans and their relations. It is better to make peace between the two types of reason in conflict today, because their fates are henceforth crossed and blended and because our own fate depends on their alliance. Through a new call to globality, we need to invent a reason that is both rational and steady, one that thinks truthfully while judging prudently."
At this point Serres introduces a new character, The Troubadour of Knowledge, which will turn to be the protagonist in his next book, Le Tiers-Instruit, published in 1991. The Troubadour models this hybrid reason with courage and wisdom. (S)he is the product of a process of education that gave her the courage to expose herself, to cast herself off. Listen how eloquently Serres brings the third essay of the Natural Contract to a close:
"We must learn our finitude: reach the limits of a non-infinite being. Necessarily we will have to suffer, from illnesses, unforeseeable accidents or lacks; we must set a term to our desires, ambitions, wills, freedoms. We must prepare our solitude, in the face of great decisions, responsibilities, growing numbers of other people; in the face of the world, the fragility of things and of loved ones to protect, in the face of happiness, unhappiness, death. To deny this finitude, starting in childhood, is to nurture unhappy people and foster their resentment of inevitable adversity. We must learn, at the same time, our true infinity. Nothing, or almost nothing, resists training. The body can do more than we believe, intelligence adapts to everything. To awaken the unquenchable thirst for learning, in order to live as much as possible of the total human experience and the beauties of the world, and to persevere, sometimes, through invention: this is the meaning of equipping someone to cast off."
This might have been a fitting conclusion to Serres' ruminations on the contract with Nature. But he presses on with a moving meditation on the experience of 'casting off' and the role of cordiality, concord, contract in navigating that transition into a new world. The philosopher conjures unforgettable images: a ship that unmoors in the port of Brest while a couple - woman on the quay, man on the departing vessel - continue to be connected by the graceful parabolas traced by an apple exchanged between them; the launch of spacecraft Ariane from its base in a rainforest; the pre-dawn departure of a party of mountaineers from a high hut in the Alps. The cord that ties the climbers together becomes a powerful simile for the relational import of the contract: "The term contract originally means the tract or trait or draft that tightens and pulls: a set of cords assures, without language, the subtle system of constraints and freedoms through which each linked element receives information about every other and about the system, and draws security from all."
Today our technologies offer a system of cords, of exchanges of forces and information with the Earth. We ceaselessly inform with our movements and energies, and the Earth, in return, informs us of its global change. For better of for worse, we are doomed to live contractually with the Earth. This demands vigilance and diligence, a decisive break with our contemporary negligence. It also demands a rekindling of love, for our mother. In the book's final pages, the philosopher bursts into a paean to the painfully beautiful manifestation of pure potentiality: "Indescribable emotion: mother, my faithful mother, our mother who has been a cenobite for as long as the world has existed, the heaviest, the most fecund, the holiest of material dwellings, chaste because always alone, and always pregnant, virgin and mother of all living things, better than alive, irreproducable universal womb of all possible life, mirror of ice floes, seat of snows, vessel of the seas, rose of the winds, tower of ivory, house of gold, Ark of the Covenant, gate of heaven, health, refuge, queen surrounded by clouds, who will be able to move her, who will be able to take her in their arms, who will protect her, if she risks dying and when she begins her mortal agony? Is it true that she is moved? What have we not destroyed with our scientific virtuosity?"
January 16, 2009
the world in the middle and us all around it.
May 21, 2024
At some point in the modern era, temps broke off from temps. Weather separated from time. As humanity moved indoors, their labor, life, and experience of time ceased to depend on the weather. With no peasants in the field, who were dependent on the sun and warmth, nor sailors at sea, who were at the whims of the tides, the social systems of humans were annexed from the weather.
The split of temps from temps was due, contends Serres, to “the greatest event of twenty century:” agricultural activity being thrown from the helm of human life (28). Agriculture and the weather being cut-off from human experience and temporality entails that “the climate never influences our work anymore” (28). Once indoors, argues Serres, we hear not the wind but the chatter of law and science.
With rain and its fruits stripped from our memories, we live in the very short-term. Harvests and care for the soil are but a passing thought. Swamped within our short-term temporality, we have strived, quite successfully, to control and master the earth, to render the earth as one of our devices. For Serres, the greatest sciences of the day object the world to its technologies and in so doing not only give humanity the ability to dominate the world, but to possess it (32). And once possessed, the world can be destroyed.
Through the possession and dominance of the earth, we practice what the Romans designated as jus abutendi, the right to destroy and consume one’s property. Our legal systems and scientific knowledges have slowly, though not voluntarily (their shutters were rattling), become aware of how our myopic obsession with the short-term is destroying the world. Yet, such narrow and worldless legal awareness and shuffles amount to little more than a slightly slower tying of the noose we are preparing for our necks.
The social contract and natural law, for Serres, are absent of the world. The social contract, in its mythological sleight of hand, becomes “no longer rooted in anything but its own history” (34). Natural law reduces nature to human nature; it is a law which all laws are on its side because it founded the law (35). Social contract and natural law alike, per Serres, no nothing of the weather and the demands the rain makes of us.
Yet, what happens, notes Serres, when “nature behaves as a subject” (36)? What happens when it is not only humans and their associations which are a legal subject, but nature and the world (37)? Can a contract with nature, this new legal subject, set aright the scales of justice as humans did amongst themselves in 1789 and 1917? For our relationship with nature to reach a state of equilibrium, what is owed from us, this global collectivity, to the world, this new legal subject? Can a contract with nature ameliorate the years of it being destroyed?
As Serres coyly eludes, the right to destroy one’s property is not an action, no matter how legal, free of consequences: “slaves never sleep for long” (39). The master’s peaceful sleep can only last a season. The world is speaking back, Serres states. What language does it speak? The language of forces, bonds, and interactions—a language that is “enough to make a contract.” Nature and its world are speaking to the global collectivities; we can feel and intuit their demands. How do we enter a contract with them?
As such, what might this natural contract be? The natural contract is as virtual and mythological, though nonetheless as powerful, as those before it. It is a contract which “acknowledges above all the new equality between the force of our global interventions and the globality of the world” (46). Like the monks, so attached and bound to their strange actions and words, the natural contract binds and attaches us to the world; it is a contract whose cardinal sin is negligence and forgetfulness (47). This bond and tie to the earth, our contract with it, is rooted in a love that is the ground of solidarity between our social contracts and our natural contract with the world (49-50). Storm clouds are on the horizon. Masters, like slaves, can only sleep for so long. How can we extend a contract?
Questions Regarding Contracts
I found Serres discussion on the origins and nature of contracts, both in the chapter studied above and in subsequent chapters, to be provocative. However, throughout Serres writing on contracts, I had a set of questions continually resurfacing in my mind. I ask these questions to address my hesitancies. Given I found Serres’ work to be compelling, I hope asking these questions allows me to better understand, and thus either adopt or disagree with, Serres’ work.
To be abrupt: a good theory of power is to situate those who can disregard and ignore contracts as powerful and those who cannot disregard and ignore contracts as less powerful. One can ask, who has the option to disregard this contract? The party with an option is more powerful than the optionless party. For example, petitioning the State to fulfill its contractual obligation with its populous through materializing and granting the populous’ right to happiness can be rendered impotent if the State choses, for whatever reason, to disregard this contract. In this instance, the State is more powerful than the populous. Presently, the UC system’s ability to disregard and unilaterally change its contract with the UAW is demonstrative that the UC has more legal and political power than the UAW.
As it concerns the natural contract: is it the global collectivity or the world who can disregard this contract? Answering this question will tell you who is more powerful in this contract. Serres perceptively notes that disregarding a contract with the world can only be beneficial to the disregarder for so long—bad weather is forecasted. However, the mere option for one party of the contract to disregard the contract would suggest that the contract can be largely, though not entirely, rendered impotent. How are we to address this question in Serres work? Is the concept and logic of contract a strong enough arrangement to bind and tie—even when one party has the option to disregard the contract—the global collectivity to the world? To name examples Serres employs: were the contracts of 1789 and 1917 strong enough to bind humanity to one another? On that point, do 1789 and 1917 break or make Serres point regarding the potency of a contract? How do we analyze a contract that one party has the option, at least for a time, to disregard?
The split of temps from temps was due, contends Serres, to “the greatest event of twenty century:” agricultural activity being thrown from the helm of human life (28). Agriculture and the weather being cut-off from human experience and temporality entails that “the climate never influences our work anymore” (28). Once indoors, argues Serres, we hear not the wind but the chatter of law and science.
With rain and its fruits stripped from our memories, we live in the very short-term. Harvests and care for the soil are but a passing thought. Swamped within our short-term temporality, we have strived, quite successfully, to control and master the earth, to render the earth as one of our devices. For Serres, the greatest sciences of the day object the world to its technologies and in so doing not only give humanity the ability to dominate the world, but to possess it (32). And once possessed, the world can be destroyed.
Through the possession and dominance of the earth, we practice what the Romans designated as jus abutendi, the right to destroy and consume one’s property. Our legal systems and scientific knowledges have slowly, though not voluntarily (their shutters were rattling), become aware of how our myopic obsession with the short-term is destroying the world. Yet, such narrow and worldless legal awareness and shuffles amount to little more than a slightly slower tying of the noose we are preparing for our necks.
The social contract and natural law, for Serres, are absent of the world. The social contract, in its mythological sleight of hand, becomes “no longer rooted in anything but its own history” (34). Natural law reduces nature to human nature; it is a law which all laws are on its side because it founded the law (35). Social contract and natural law alike, per Serres, no nothing of the weather and the demands the rain makes of us.
Yet, what happens, notes Serres, when “nature behaves as a subject” (36)? What happens when it is not only humans and their associations which are a legal subject, but nature and the world (37)? Can a contract with nature, this new legal subject, set aright the scales of justice as humans did amongst themselves in 1789 and 1917? For our relationship with nature to reach a state of equilibrium, what is owed from us, this global collectivity, to the world, this new legal subject? Can a contract with nature ameliorate the years of it being destroyed?
As Serres coyly eludes, the right to destroy one’s property is not an action, no matter how legal, free of consequences: “slaves never sleep for long” (39). The master’s peaceful sleep can only last a season. The world is speaking back, Serres states. What language does it speak? The language of forces, bonds, and interactions—a language that is “enough to make a contract.” Nature and its world are speaking to the global collectivities; we can feel and intuit their demands. How do we enter a contract with them?
As such, what might this natural contract be? The natural contract is as virtual and mythological, though nonetheless as powerful, as those before it. It is a contract which “acknowledges above all the new equality between the force of our global interventions and the globality of the world” (46). Like the monks, so attached and bound to their strange actions and words, the natural contract binds and attaches us to the world; it is a contract whose cardinal sin is negligence and forgetfulness (47). This bond and tie to the earth, our contract with it, is rooted in a love that is the ground of solidarity between our social contracts and our natural contract with the world (49-50). Storm clouds are on the horizon. Masters, like slaves, can only sleep for so long. How can we extend a contract?
Questions Regarding Contracts
I found Serres discussion on the origins and nature of contracts, both in the chapter studied above and in subsequent chapters, to be provocative. However, throughout Serres writing on contracts, I had a set of questions continually resurfacing in my mind. I ask these questions to address my hesitancies. Given I found Serres’ work to be compelling, I hope asking these questions allows me to better understand, and thus either adopt or disagree with, Serres’ work.
To be abrupt: a good theory of power is to situate those who can disregard and ignore contracts as powerful and those who cannot disregard and ignore contracts as less powerful. One can ask, who has the option to disregard this contract? The party with an option is more powerful than the optionless party. For example, petitioning the State to fulfill its contractual obligation with its populous through materializing and granting the populous’ right to happiness can be rendered impotent if the State choses, for whatever reason, to disregard this contract. In this instance, the State is more powerful than the populous. Presently, the UC system’s ability to disregard and unilaterally change its contract with the UAW is demonstrative that the UC has more legal and political power than the UAW.
As it concerns the natural contract: is it the global collectivity or the world who can disregard this contract? Answering this question will tell you who is more powerful in this contract. Serres perceptively notes that disregarding a contract with the world can only be beneficial to the disregarder for so long—bad weather is forecasted. However, the mere option for one party of the contract to disregard the contract would suggest that the contract can be largely, though not entirely, rendered impotent. How are we to address this question in Serres work? Is the concept and logic of contract a strong enough arrangement to bind and tie—even when one party has the option to disregard the contract—the global collectivity to the world? To name examples Serres employs: were the contracts of 1789 and 1917 strong enough to bind humanity to one another? On that point, do 1789 and 1917 break or make Serres point regarding the potency of a contract? How do we analyze a contract that one party has the option, at least for a time, to disregard?
June 10, 2021
This was.. a weird read. As such my thoughts on it are very conflicted.
The whole first third of the book or so I was very invested in the ideas the author was building. The philosophical line of thought really is very interesting, just because sometimes it's fantastic to be able to understand things through new points of view and that's precisely why the idea of a natural contract as a philosophical concept sounded intriguing. The second third of the book became extremely technical, excessively so. It seemed like the author wanted to discuss everything under the sun and link it all together but the links were so far-fetched that everything became a confusing jumble and it just really pulled away from the original point. Here I understood the intention but reading that felt needlessly exhausting. The third third is where the book truly lost me.. Don't get me wrong, I love me a philosopher who can tell a good story. I adore the skill it takes to place underlying philosophical thought into a well-written tale but this? this really wasn't it. The short stories not only felt confusing and irrelevant to the natural contract but they were also often very disturbing, particularly reading it as a woman. A virgin daughter holding her mother at her death compared to birth? Comparing the Earth to his mother, daughter and lover all at once? Perhaps the intention really was to make the readers feel uncomfortable, but for me it completely ruined any idea of a contract whatsoever.
End of rant.
The whole first third of the book or so I was very invested in the ideas the author was building. The philosophical line of thought really is very interesting, just because sometimes it's fantastic to be able to understand things through new points of view and that's precisely why the idea of a natural contract as a philosophical concept sounded intriguing. The second third of the book became extremely technical, excessively so. It seemed like the author wanted to discuss everything under the sun and link it all together but the links were so far-fetched that everything became a confusing jumble and it just really pulled away from the original point. Here I understood the intention but reading that felt needlessly exhausting. The third third is where the book truly lost me.. Don't get me wrong, I love me a philosopher who can tell a good story. I adore the skill it takes to place underlying philosophical thought into a well-written tale but this? this really wasn't it. The short stories not only felt confusing and irrelevant to the natural contract but they were also often very disturbing, particularly reading it as a woman. A virgin daughter holding her mother at her death compared to birth? Comparing the Earth to his mother, daughter and lover all at once? Perhaps the intention really was to make the readers feel uncomfortable, but for me it completely ruined any idea of a contract whatsoever.
End of rant.
June 4, 2023
Assaig, al meu parer, absolutament fonamental per tal d’entendre la intenció de la filosofia contemporània, aparentment força més experimental. A El contrato natural, Serres no recorre massa a d’altres pensadors però la seva segueix sent una obra que culmina un pensament que recorre la filosofia des de fa temps: la relació entre l’home i el món. Les meves referències més immediates són Heidegger i el seu ser-en-el-món en contraposició a l’ésser històric i deslocalitzat tradicional; també ho és l’encarnació de la visió de Merleau-Ponty, i per suposat la multiplicitat rizomàtica deleuziana. Serres treballa amb aquestes idees de fons, però també demostra un excepcional coneixement de la història humana i una magnífica reflexió sobre el dret, la ciència i la societat.
A la primera meitat del llibre, la veritablement dedicada a la formació d’un nou contracte -contracte natural- Serres comença amb l’ús d’un quadre de Goya per il·lustrar el canvi de paradigma - el Duelo a garrotazos. Curiosament, el vaig visitar fa cosa d’un mes i no em vaig fixar en allò que per a Serres és més important: el fet que els duelistes s’estan enfangant, enfonsant-se en el món mentre batallen. Serres fa un repàs històric del contracte social, i és potser convenient haver llegit els teòrics d’aquest -Hobbes,Locke,Rousseau- i acaba fent-nos veure que la història humana ha negligit sempre allí on tenia lloc l’acció, el món: en quins moments, més enllà de quant té rellevància per explicar una guerra, trobem el món com a factor explicatiu afegit de la humanitat? Per a Serres, el contracte social no és suficient per explicar la realitat: o bé és, de fet, la base de la modernitat, per la qual el món és només d’on s’extreu, i no on es viu ni on es produeix. Fent un gir a la postmodernitat, Serres ens obliga a incloure el món en la cosmovisió deficient fins ara, i extén totes les cordes que ens relacionen amb aquest, el fa un actor impossible d’ignorar a partir d’aquest moment, doncs la Terra, ferida, fa temps que pren el seu lloc a la força: l’amenaça de seguir amb un contracte que ignori aquesta realitat és l’extinció de la humanitat. L’establiment d’una relació, la institucionalització d’aquesta, és bàsica per tal d’aprendre no tant a conviure, per responsabilitzar-nos d’allò que li fem.
La segona part del llibre, sobre els conflictes entre ciència i dret, és també prou interessant, però per a mi força més enrevessada i complicada d’entendre. Això sí, Serres demostra una gran capacitat de pensament abstracte, sense perdre de vista el món i metàfores adequades en cada moment. Ubicar-nos al món és, en fi, l’objectiu principal de Serres: així, és la base sobre la qual treballarà Latour més endavant, a ¿Dónde aterrizar? i constitueix, alhora, la formalització del pensament de Lovelock, de Margulis, de tots aquests investigadors i filòsofs del s.XX que ens parlen de la simbiosi.
A la primera meitat del llibre, la veritablement dedicada a la formació d’un nou contracte -contracte natural- Serres comença amb l’ús d’un quadre de Goya per il·lustrar el canvi de paradigma - el Duelo a garrotazos. Curiosament, el vaig visitar fa cosa d’un mes i no em vaig fixar en allò que per a Serres és més important: el fet que els duelistes s’estan enfangant, enfonsant-se en el món mentre batallen. Serres fa un repàs històric del contracte social, i és potser convenient haver llegit els teòrics d’aquest -Hobbes,Locke,Rousseau- i acaba fent-nos veure que la història humana ha negligit sempre allí on tenia lloc l’acció, el món: en quins moments, més enllà de quant té rellevància per explicar una guerra, trobem el món com a factor explicatiu afegit de la humanitat? Per a Serres, el contracte social no és suficient per explicar la realitat: o bé és, de fet, la base de la modernitat, per la qual el món és només d’on s’extreu, i no on es viu ni on es produeix. Fent un gir a la postmodernitat, Serres ens obliga a incloure el món en la cosmovisió deficient fins ara, i extén totes les cordes que ens relacionen amb aquest, el fa un actor impossible d’ignorar a partir d’aquest moment, doncs la Terra, ferida, fa temps que pren el seu lloc a la força: l’amenaça de seguir amb un contracte que ignori aquesta realitat és l’extinció de la humanitat. L’establiment d’una relació, la institucionalització d’aquesta, és bàsica per tal d’aprendre no tant a conviure, per responsabilitzar-nos d’allò que li fem.
La segona part del llibre, sobre els conflictes entre ciència i dret, és també prou interessant, però per a mi força més enrevessada i complicada d’entendre. Això sí, Serres demostra una gran capacitat de pensament abstracte, sense perdre de vista el món i metàfores adequades en cada moment. Ubicar-nos al món és, en fi, l’objectiu principal de Serres: així, és la base sobre la qual treballarà Latour més endavant, a ¿Dónde aterrizar? i constitueix, alhora, la formalització del pensament de Lovelock, de Margulis, de tots aquests investigadors i filòsofs del s.XX que ens parlen de la simbiosi.
September 25, 2024
Twee jaar voor het Klimaatverdrag (UNFCCC) het licht ziet en een decennium voor de term Antropoceen formeel zijn intrede doet, publiceert S. dit boek met daarin de oproep om onze verhouding tot de aarde grondig te herzien. S. stelt dat, net zoals samenlevingen maatschappelijke verdragen (Hobbes, Rousseau) hebben opgesteld om de relaties tussen mensen onderling te regelen, we nu een natuurlijk verdrag moeten opstellen om onze verantwoordelijkheden ten opzichte van de aarde te definiëren en te beheren (p. 62v). De aarde heeft volgens hem handelingsvermogen (agency).
S. is een systeemdenker. Voor hem bestaat de wereld primair uit relaties, berichten die via deze relaties worden doorgegeven, en achtergrondgeluiden die deze berichtgeving (creatief) verstoren. Zijn schrijfstijl wijkt af van gebruikelijke non-fictieteksten over het klimaat. Hij mengt poëzie, proza en wetenschappelijke stijlen. Merkwaardige personages en entiteiten – doorgaans gepositioneerd in een nieuwe context – bevolken zijn betoog: Hermes, Adam en Eva, Jozua, Jezus, boer, zeeman, engel, parasiet.
Centraal staan echter de twee mannen op het schilderij van F. Goya (1823) die elkaar op leven en dood bevechten met knuppels. Het ontgaat hen dat ze gezamenlijk wegzakken om te smoren in het drijfzand (pp. 11-12). De aarde slokt ze in stilte op.
S. geeft kritiek op de scheiding die de Verlichting heeft aangebracht tussen de mensheid en de natuur, een perspectief dat heeft geleid tot de uitbuiting van natuur en natuurlijke hulpbronnen. Volgens S. heeft de moderniteit de natuur grotendeels gezien als een passieve achtergrond voor menselijke activiteiten. Echter, de natuur is niet iets externs dat overheerst moet worden, maar een belangrijke speler met wie we een wederzijdse overeenkomst moeten aangaan. De aarde is in staat is om wraak te nemen op ons misbruik – een idee dat tastbaar wordt gemaakt in gebeurtenissen als overstromingen, stormen en milieurampen.
Waar maatschappelijke verdragen de rechten en plichten tussen mensen in een burgermaatschappij definiëren, stelt een natuurlijk verdrag een juridische en ethische structuur voor die de aarde zelf omvat. S. ziet dit verdrag als een verdrag dat de integriteit van de natuur beschermt en tegelijkertijd de duurzaamheid van de menselijke beschaving garandeert. Het delven van grondstoffen en de exploitatie van de fysieke ruimte zetten de mens namelijk voortdurend aan om elkaar met knuppels de hersens in te slaan.
“Onze eerste wet is het ‘hebt elkaar lief’. … De eerste wet doet geen uitspraak over bergen en meren; ze heeft het vóór mensen óver mensen, alsof de wereld niet bestond. En daarom moet er een tweede wet komen die van ons vraagt de wereld lief te hebben.” (pp. 76-77)
S. is een systeemdenker. Voor hem bestaat de wereld primair uit relaties, berichten die via deze relaties worden doorgegeven, en achtergrondgeluiden die deze berichtgeving (creatief) verstoren. Zijn schrijfstijl wijkt af van gebruikelijke non-fictieteksten over het klimaat. Hij mengt poëzie, proza en wetenschappelijke stijlen. Merkwaardige personages en entiteiten – doorgaans gepositioneerd in een nieuwe context – bevolken zijn betoog: Hermes, Adam en Eva, Jozua, Jezus, boer, zeeman, engel, parasiet.
Centraal staan echter de twee mannen op het schilderij van F. Goya (1823) die elkaar op leven en dood bevechten met knuppels. Het ontgaat hen dat ze gezamenlijk wegzakken om te smoren in het drijfzand (pp. 11-12). De aarde slokt ze in stilte op.
S. geeft kritiek op de scheiding die de Verlichting heeft aangebracht tussen de mensheid en de natuur, een perspectief dat heeft geleid tot de uitbuiting van natuur en natuurlijke hulpbronnen. Volgens S. heeft de moderniteit de natuur grotendeels gezien als een passieve achtergrond voor menselijke activiteiten. Echter, de natuur is niet iets externs dat overheerst moet worden, maar een belangrijke speler met wie we een wederzijdse overeenkomst moeten aangaan. De aarde is in staat is om wraak te nemen op ons misbruik – een idee dat tastbaar wordt gemaakt in gebeurtenissen als overstromingen, stormen en milieurampen.
Waar maatschappelijke verdragen de rechten en plichten tussen mensen in een burgermaatschappij definiëren, stelt een natuurlijk verdrag een juridische en ethische structuur voor die de aarde zelf omvat. S. ziet dit verdrag als een verdrag dat de integriteit van de natuur beschermt en tegelijkertijd de duurzaamheid van de menselijke beschaving garandeert. Het delven van grondstoffen en de exploitatie van de fysieke ruimte zetten de mens namelijk voortdurend aan om elkaar met knuppels de hersens in te slaan.
“Onze eerste wet is het ‘hebt elkaar lief’. … De eerste wet doet geen uitspraak over bergen en meren; ze heeft het vóór mensen óver mensen, alsof de wereld niet bestond. En daarom moet er een tweede wet komen die van ons vraagt de wereld lief te hebben.” (pp. 76-77)
August 24, 2017
Poetic and creative restructuring of culture/nature contract. Offers the peripheral perspective of nature, pushing for an establishment of agency in the natural forces of the world.
August 18, 2021
I try not to imagine I know authors beyond the words they've written because its unhealthy and weird, but the whole time I was reading this I was like "Damn, Serres and I woulda been BUDS"
April 11, 2024
Much more about law than "ecology"
October 25, 2024
Great philosophical input, could potentially revolutionize the way you view the environment and understand humanity's position in the world.
March 11, 2012
Serres-lukupiirin toiseksi kirjaksi valittiin Luontosopimus, joten tämän uudelleenluku oli paikallaan. Avautuu toisella kertaa vielä paremmin kuin edellisellä. Ehdottomasti upeaa kieltä, mutta totuus, jonka metaforista saa aukaistua, on vielä hätkähdyttävämpi. Serresin huomiot ovat kaukonäköisiä ja tosia, siksi myös välillä vähän maailmaatuskaa lisääviä.
May 3, 2015
Nice idea, but much cloaked in extensive load of non-substantive text, while not adding much to elaborate the argument. Does not get much further than the initial idea, unfortunately. Feels like it could have been much better.
September 14, 2019
Lecture intéressante pour comprendre la nécessité de retrouver une harmonie, un sens de l'équité et de justice vis à vis de la Nature. En revanche, je trouve que les propos de Monsieur Serres sont assez répétitifs au long du livre, et peu explicites.
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