Chapter 9: Agency Precedes Essence: Existentialism, Ecology, and the New Materialisms

Over the last century, existentialism has often worked to reinforce and intensify the anthropocentric and voluntaristic aspects of Western Modernity. It thereby contributes to our alienation from material nature and our separation of philosophy from the natural sciences. These separations, in turn, may enable our ecologically catastrophic treatment of the nonhuman world. Thus, one may be inclined to think that the rising interest in materiality and the growing concern for ecological ethics ought to motivate a rejection of existentialism. In this chapter, I argue that this is not the case. I argue that certain versions of existentialism can help to cultivate an axiology that includes the more-than-human and a philosophical sensibility closely attuned to materiality. To achieve this, however, one must first elucidate more pluralistic versions of existentialism that recover some of the deep historical promise opened by a sustained reflection on the distinction between existence and essence. This promise has, to date, gone partially unfulfilled due to the exclusive emphasis on consciousness that recent forms of existentialism have inherited from the Cartesian tradition. This chapter will show that one plausible route to the goal of a renewed existentialism is opened by the shift of focus from autonomy to agency in Bruno Latour’s philosophy of science and technology.