Origins of the Anthropocene in the Neolithic: A Contribution to an Understanding of the Deep Roots of the Modern Condition

Konrad Ott

Christian-Albrechts University, Kiel, Germany

1. The Presence of Growth

t has been often argued that current global society is trapped in a destructive logic of ever-lasting growth, be it physical growth in terms of materials and energy or be it economic growth in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). This logic of growth is, however, not a general anthropological drive, since there have been and there still are many human communities which make decent livelihoods without ongoing growth of whatever kind. The idealtypical distinction between “cold” and “hot” societies (Lévi-Strauss) makes some sense. The logic of growth looks specific for some cultures, namely European ones. Since European countries were conquering and colonizing almost all continents since more than 500 years, the logic of growth was established globally even after the period of colonialism came to an end. The accumulation of capital via investments is a prominent paradigm of this logic of growth. For the sake of the following argument, I take the globalized logic of growth as European und Eurocentric legacy.

An expansionist pattern (“mindset”) is often taken for granted: “the more the better” (“growth”). This scheme underlies modern ideas of expansion, progress, success, efficiency, large scales, and maximising welfare and utility. This mindset affects the lifeworld, taken as a set of convictions which shape thoughts, parlance, and actions from a deep background. Perhaps, such mindset has roots in the archaic longing for “more” offspring, “more cattle”, “more stored food” etc. Growth generates material wealth within households which has had huge impacts on daily practices, culture, characters, personalities, and, last but not least, on natural environments. Trentmann (2016) presents a middle-range theory of increasing material household wealth over 500 years, including non-Western consumerism. Mass consumption and improving household standards are taken for granted.

Since decades, environmental intellectuals have opposed this scheme of expansion, growth and its logic because it comes at high environmental degradation and creates many negative external effects on the more-than-human-world (“nature”). It also affects pattern of mutual recognition, education, social security etc. I abstract away mental and social costs of growth-addiction (as treadmill effects) and focus on its huge environmental costs.[1] Modern societies as engines of growth may even become incompatible with a finite planet. Growth-addicted Western(ized) culture might reveal to be self-destructive in the longer run. A comprehensive overview of these anti-growth debates since the 1970ies is given in Rathfelder (2023). The recent degrowth-movement continues such criticism. The debate about a great transformation to an ecologically sustainable society that respects planetary boundaries (WBGU 2011) also includes a debate of how to overcome the addiction to economic growth that still spurs conventional policy making to a large degree (Jackson 2016). In the current economic situation in Germany, politicians desperately hope that the engine of growth recovers from stagnation. Even the trade unions demand a “growth agenda”. Growth and its flip side: lack of growth appear as predicament for better or worse. I take the inclination to growth as essential feature of the Anthropocene.

2. The Age of the Anthropocene

Since Crutzen’s famous article (2002), much evidence supports his claim that this logic of and inclination to growth has driven the planet into a new geological period which might be titled “Anthropocene”. Crutzen’s proposal was not completely new. It can be traced back into the 19^th century (Mauelshagen 2016). Haeckel (1870, p. 347) spoke about an “anthropozöisches Zeitalter”. According to Haeckel, radiation of the species Homo sapiens is the beginning of a new major epoch within the history of the Earth. Humans make a huge difference. Marsh’s book (1864) had the subtitle “The Earth as Modified by Human Action”. Marsh sees humans as disturbing agents on a global scale. Following Marsh, Thomas (1955) edited an impressive volume on “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth”. Pfister (2010) points at the 1950s syndrome of a great acceleration which still continues.

Physical indicators of the Anthropocene are increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, population growth,[2] urban agglomeration, mass extinction of species, large-scale agriculture, industrialised meat production, extractivism in mining areas (perhaps including the ocean floor in the near future), global trade, overfishing, ocean acidification, new radioactive substances, etc. Sea-level rise and ocean acidification are among the side effects of GHG emissions (Böhm and Ott 2019). Radiogenic fallout can also be taken as a criterion of origin (Walker et al. 2019). Human activities spread neo-biota around the globe. Humans practice large-scale damming of rivers and clear-cutting of primary forests. They are fishing down the marine food web and, by doing so, they take influence on the evolution of fish species. They convert natural systems into agricultural land and into (neo-)colonial plantations. Humans settle in mega-cities, many of them located at coastlines of the Global South. Global mean temperature (GMT) is about to increase (at least) by 2°C compared to preindustrial times. Despite 30 years of international climate negotiations, the global emissions of greenhouse-gases (GHG) did not peak yet. If emissions remain high over the century, GMT might even increase up to 3-4°C. If so, humankind may leave the temperature range of the mild Holocene, affects tipping points and moves toward “hothouse Earth”.

Crutzen’s basic claim (2002) has been adopted from a geological perspective (Waters et al. 2016, Zalasiewicz et al. 2015; 2020; Walker et al. 2019, 10).[3] The concept of the Anthropocene is dialectic as it correlates the globe and the planet (Chakrabarty 2015). “Globe” refers to a high level of societal interaction (as global trade, migration, and investments), while “planet” refers to the coupled natural spheres, as biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and cryosphere. Natural and human history are blending into each other. Flannery (2018) argues that the cold Pleistocene was replaced by the Anthropocene at the end of the 20^th century, because there will be no glacial ages any more for very long times. The Anthropocene might become more similar to the warm Pliocene.

The term “Anthropocene” should neither imply nor suggest that all humans equally contribute to the current situation. Humans contribute unequal. The excessive lifestyle of the Western (and Asian) upper class and the frugal way of life of, say, groups of Adivasi in the Western Ghats, are worlds apart. Environmental impacts of different nations and strata within nations are highly different. The general term “Anthropocene” points to the aggregate impacts of the human species to the planet, while specific sociological and economic investigations shall and should point to the differences between countries, income groups, elites etc. The differences are often judged from a justice-perspective being close to the moral point of view. The many demands for “more” justice are represented under the headlines of political, distributive, compensatory, environmental, recognitional, gender, and epistemic justice. In the article, I remain silent on ethics until its final section. I wish to focus first on a genealogical perspective on growth. Historians and philosophers are united in their genealogical interest in presumable deep roots. In the following sections I present my macro-historical narrative on the origin of the Anthropocene. This narrative shall bring us in a position to come into discourse about ethical reflection upon normative principles by which humans may navigate through troublesome times to come.

3. Organizing the Argument

If one gives credit to the previous diagnosis, a historical question becomes unavoidable: When did the Anthropocene originate? The recent emergence of the “thick” Anthropocene (section 2) can and should be taken as a precondition for research on its origins.[4] Historical and genealogical research is often driven by practical interest (Habermas 1973). Since we have entered the Anthropocene, we are the first generation of scholars being able to research its origins, building blocks, patterns, dynamics, and the final actualisation of the Anthropocene.

Since I entertain the hypothesis that the Anthropocene has an European fingerprint, we should look into European history. Doing so, we may face the early globalisation of the 16^th century and the formation of the Baconian superstructure (science, technology, industries) from 18^th century onwards (enlightenment). Crutzen argues along this story line that the Anthropocene originated in the process of industrialisation since, say, 1750. Technological spike is the invention of the steam engine. As many authors have argued, continued economic growth established since 1820 (Aghion et al. 2021), it had a “took off” period in the 19. century (Berger 1986 following Rostow) followed by the period of colonialism. After two wars, growth terminated in a “great acceleration” since the 1950s (Pfister 2010) that pushed humanity into this new geological age. This is the mainstream narrative.

I cast doubts on the claim that the Anthropocene is a recent phenomenon. Some scholars emphasize the Latin translation of the beginning of the Hebrew Bible as an intellectual spike of the early Anthropocene: Within a narrative on creation humans are created in the image of “God” and shall follow a divine command to subdue nature (see for a new interpretation Ott 2023b, Hardmeier and Ott 2015). The Christian configurations of such “dominium terrae”, Greek metaphysics of “kosmos noetos”, and Roman imperialism constituted a set of beliefs that gave support to practices of domination. From the perspective of intellectual history, White (1967) was right in arguing that the ecological crisis had deep roots in medieval Latin Christianity. The axioms of domination were secularized in modern philosophies, as in Descartes and Bacon. The secularized doctrine of “dominium terrae” is a legacy of European modernity.

One can even dig at deeper layers. Following Ruddiman (2003) and Scott (2017), my hypothesis claims that the Anthropocene originates in prehistoric times. Some ecologists see a “very early” Anthropocene originating with the human use of fire, megafaunal extinction, and the arrival of humans on all continents except Antarctica (Corlett 2015). I do not deny these claims but wish to turn attention to the Neolithic. More specifically, I claim that specific Neolithic qualitative achievements that allowed for unlimited growth in quantities paved the long and windy road towards the current state of the full-fledged Anthropocene. Scott (2017, 3) distinguishes between a “thin” and a “thick” Anthropocene. “Thin” and “thick” are metaphors for slow origins and full-blown essence. Smith and Zeder (2013, p. 8) are straightforward in this respect: “The initial domestication of plants and animals, and the development of agricultural economies and landscapes are identified as marking the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch.”

My claim relies on standard models of European Neolithization (Robb 2013; Zimmermann 2007). I see Neolithization not as a “revolution”, but as slow process which stretched over millennia. There were long periods of horticulture and complex foraging before agriculture. At the end of this process, however, Europa was settled almost completely by farmers and cattle breeders. Human life had been domesticated within a mild Holocene climate on a vast area of fertile post-glacial soils and sufficient precipitation.

Human populations and technologies in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age were clearly not suited to change the global records deeply.[5] One crucial difference between prehistoric (archaic) past and the present is the mere number of humans. Population growth is paradigm instance of growth. In the Neolithic, less than one person lived per square kilometre (Zimmermann 2007). Population growth was slow or very slow in the Neolithic. Scott (2017) estimates that there were about 50 million humans alive at 1000 BC and far less before (2-5 million worldwide at ca. 10.000 BCE). 50 million humans, who were concentrated in a few areas (such as the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, Egypt, on Chinese river plains, etc.), were not enough to shape global cycles. The presumed early “thin” Anthropocene neither changed the climate, nor polluted the ocean or destroyed large primary forests. It originated on a small-scale, not a large-scale. The origins of the Anthropocene were innovative achievements. Their growth-potentials reveal later in history. The “domesticated” life, however, was more adaptive in terms of pregnancies, birth rates, child mortality etc. Under favourable side-conditions it accelerated. Population growth is an overlooked paradigm for growth.

The logic of my hypothesis is abductive: If “we” humans are now (for better or worse) “makers” (“performers”) of the Anthropocene, there might be some patterns, structures, and mechanisms within the Neolithic human way of life which allows and supports such making. If such patterns, spikes, structures, and mechanisms can be identified and historically reconstructed, the upshot of the Anthropocene must be the final outcome, given some supportive circumstances. It makes sense to distinguish between physical and intellectual spikes of the Anthropocene. If my thesis holds, there must be both material and intellectual spikes of an early (“thin”) Anthropocene.

The method of the argument is genealogical. I see this method at work in Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s book on the dialectics of enlightenment (1944/1947). Horkheimer and Adorno tried to identify the archaic and ancient origins of the collapse of the Enlightenment into modern barbarism. Horkheimer and Adorno outlined how reason collapsed into instrumental rationality, how conceptual thinking collapsed into nominalism, how domination over hostile nature collapsed into oppression of inner nature and cruelty against sentient animals. My reference to Sophocles (section 4) has been inspired by Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s analysis of Odysseus as the first modern subject. As Horkheimer and Adorno take the tale of Odysseus as intellectual spike of the dialectics of enlightenment, I take Sophocles’ song as intellectual spike of the “thin” Anthropocene. From the perspective of 5^th century BC, this song looks back into the deep history of European civilization and its achievements.

The central argument rests on an inverse Hegelian concept: qualitative achievements eclipse into ever enlarging (“growing”) quantities. Such eclipse must be supported by favourable cultural and even religious side-conditions, as “dominium terrae”. The single achievements are not exclusively European, but are to be found in many cultures (as shipping in Oceania, horticulture in China, and pastoral herding in Eastern Africa). Specific to the European trajectory is the dynamics by which achievements, enlargements, innovations, and transfers of knowledge interact to organize prospects for enlargement and growth. If conditions are fulfilled, such increasing quantities continue over long time-scales and finally collapse into a new quality full of negativities: the current global ecological crisis.

4. Sophocles, human achievements and expansionist eclipses

In his “Prinzip Verantwortung” (1979), philosopher Hans Jonas addresses the chorus song in Sophocles’ “Antigone”. Sophocles’ tragedy is dated 440 BC. At this time, the transformation from the Homerian to the Athenian period was completed (Glotz 1927). Jonas argues that this famous song still supposes the ancient cosmological belief that, despite all their capabilities, humans remain too weak to change the cosmic records. Humans can only scratch at the surface. Jonas underrates the explosive potentials which are addressed in the song. My reading of the song presumes to be more in line with Jonas’ deep concerns about the future of humankind in an age of nuclear deterrence, ecological devastation, and technological enhancement of the human being itself.

The chorus song praises the capabilities of the human being to master a world of nature and to constitute culture.[6] The song is about us. The first sentence: polla ta deina kouden anthrōpou deinoteron pelei, especially the word deinos has many translations. There are ambiguities enshrined in the word. “Deinos” might be translated as “fearful”, “terrible”, “marvellous”, “powerful”, “skillful”. The comparative term “deinoteron” means “more than anything else (in the world)”. The wording denotes something that transgresses the expectations and the usual, something highly exceptional and supernatural. The song is about the ambivalence of human exceptionalism. On the bright side, humans are praiseworthy and their achievements are glorious, overwhelming, striking, and marvellous. Following Utzinger (2003), one may consider “overwhelming” as one literal meaning. I would prefer “(extremely) striking” as a translation of the positive aspect of the word. On its dark side, deinos has been translated as “monstrous”. Here, deinos has connotations of hubris. Hubris means to overrate one’s capabilities and to set oneself on a par with deities. Hubris will be punished. “Deinos” also indicates that humans can go too far and may fail on moral grounds. In some sense, ethics is pragmatically implied in the “deinon” because its dialectical semantics entails the idea that “something can go (terribly) wrong”. We, as being humans, can fail in ways no animal can (Ricoeur 1971). The chorus points to the potentials for moral corruption, failure, and evil.[7] The virtue of courage may collapse into the vice of audacity to perform evil deeds. In English translation, the song reads as follows:

At many things—wonders,

Terrors—we feel awe,

But at nothing more

Than at man. This

Being sails the gray-

White sea running before

Winter storm winds, he

Scuds beneath high

Waves surging over him

On each side;

And Gaia, the Earth,

Forever undestroyed and

Unwearying, highest of

All the gods, he

Wears away, year

After year, as his plows

Cross ceaselessly

Back and forth, turning

Her soil with the

Offspring of horses.

The clans of the birds,

With minds light as air,

And tribes of beasts of

The wilderness, and water-

Dwelling sea creatures—

All these he

Catches, in the close-

Woven nets he

Throws around them,

And he carries them

Off, this man, most

Cunning of all.

With devices he

Masters the beast that

Beds in the wild and

Roams mountains—he harnesses

The horse with shaggy

Mane, he yokes

The never-wearied

Mountain bull.

He has taught himself

Speech and thoughts

Swift as the wind;

And a temperament for

The laws of towns;

And how to escape

Frost-hardened bedding

Under the open

Sky and the arrows

Of harsh rain—inventive

In everything, this

Man. Without invention he

Meets nothing that

Might come. Only from

Hades will he not

Procure some means of

Escape. Yet he has

Cunningly escaped from

Sicknesses that had

Seemed beyond his devices.

Full of skills and

Devising, even beyond

Hope, is the intelligent

Art that leads him

Both to evil and

To good. Honoring the

Laws of the earth

And the justice of

The gods, to which

Men swear, he stands

High in his city.

But outside any

City is he who dares

To consort with

What is wrong: let

Him who would do

Such things not

Be the companion

At my hearth nor have

The same thoughts as I!

The temporal perspective of the song points from ancient Greece in retrospect to previous, pre-ancient (“archaic”) success stories of humans. Sophocles’ song includes only a selection of basic inventions. It mentions neither metallurgy and religious practices nor that humans are the only beings which can control fire. Control of fire was praised in the ancient myth of Prometheus.[8] Sophocles seems to presuppose the Promethean legacy.

I see Sophocles’ song as retrospection into pre-ancient times, being full of “wonders”, say: achievements that brought about the highly developed societal life of ancient poleis. The “polis”-way-of life includes, beside city building itself, a division of labour, arts and crafts, long-distance trade, money and commerce, social stratification including slavery, colonisation, a naval fleet, sportive games, rhetoric-agonistic democracy, theatre, and philosophy. The tragedies open the eyes for human failure, while philosophy takes the step of abstraction from mythical narratives to principles and ideas.

Such ancient polis-life is “deinos” itself, highly remarkable. Humans could not have leaped from a hunter-gatherer way of life into such “polis” way of life. The period in between these two distinct modes of human life can be seen as a transition period (= transformation) with reinforcing upswing mechanisms of growth and progress. As Sophocles suggests, no other being on Earth can compete with humans in these “deinon”-respects. The domestication and breeding of animals, crop agriculture including orchards and vineyards, food storage, fisheries with nets, shipping across the ocean, long-distance trade of luxury commodities, metallurgies, densely crowded settlements and urban centres of commerce, political power and religion, and, last but not least, medicine are essential achievements. Following Robb (2013), we can conceive such “Neolithic package” of achievements. The term “package” is not static, but full of reinforcements and transfers of knowledge. Even Jonas (1979, pp. 18-21) has underrated the intrinsic dynamics of this package.

The term “achievement” belongs to a cluster of concepts indicating improvements. “Better” may mean “more” of something being good”, or “less” of something being bad. There are evaluations as “easier”, “more comfortable”, “more convenient”, “less burdensome”, “less precarious”, “less painful”, “less brief”. Technological, cultural, political and moral achievements (improvements) are something most humans wish to keep and wish to continue as traditions. Achievements persist, spread, disseminate, and evolve in the longer run.[9] Sophocles’ song constitutes commonalities between prehistoric and present times. Obviously, these achievements are not alien to us. They are present practices and we are consuming their results on a daily base. Neolithic achievements shape our (post)modern lives. Perhaps, a Hegelian idea can make this point explicit: Humans enrich their world with achievements that are continued within the flow of generations. If achievements emerge and actualise, they persist and endure. They become customs and are eternalised by way of practices being performed since then until now. Persisting practices become knowledge (“know that”) and practices (“know how”) (Ryle 1949). Humans are not forgetful about their achievements, even if there might be periods of recession and doom. Achievements never completely vanish.

Achievements become expansive over long spans of time.[10] Slow by slow, quantities and scales increase and enlarge. Bigger ships and larger nets, larger cropping areas and vineyards, bigger herds of cattle and horses (“caput” indicates numbers of cattle), higher houses and walls, more effective seeds and ploughs, etc. We should not forget the military side of growth. The ancient mode of political expansion was military conquest of large areas of land by increasing armies being equipped with standardized industrial weaponry. Thus, there can be many historical and economic metrical studies on expansion, enlargement, and growth.  The “more and more” is not accidental, but intentional. In the Roman empire, modes of production were almost industrial (mining, trade, metallurgy, farming). In Augustus’s times, Rome had roughly one million inhabitants dwelling in houses with several floors.

In the very long run, there occurs a dialectical transformation (“eclipse”) of specific qualitative achievements into an unlimited increase in quantities.[11] A quality denotes a “how” (“qualis”) while a quantity denotes a “how much” (“quantus”). An increase in quantities (“more”) can transform into a new quality, as sand gradually transforms into a dune. The crucial point is this: The essential Neolithic achievements have no intrinsic limitations in terms of quantity. There are no intrinsic measures (“Maß”) for limitations in quantity and volume. The limits of growth must be extrinsic constraints, determined by limited resources, technologies, legal rules and morals, sufficient lifestyles etc. The logic of growth combats such constraints. One can always add a further unit, if circumstances and technologies allow for it, be it the number of knots in a net, transport capacities of ships, size of agricultural fields, floors in houses, number of domesticated animals, breeding practices, storage of crops, roads, and soldiers. The achievements expand in their quantities on different spatial and temporal scales until they reach and transgress planetary boundaries. The achievements are intrinsically expansive up to excess.[12] Excessiveness, however, belongs to the dark side of “deinos”.

Let us scaffold a simple conceptual scheme[13]: A qualitative achievement (Q-1) emerges at some early points in human history. Q-1, then, expands over historical times and geographical locations into increasing quantities (Q-2). Q-2 refers to periods of “more and more”. Far later, expanded Q-2 collapses into a new and excessive quality with many negative side effects and risks (Q-3), as industrial meat production, mono-cultures of crops, overfishing, commercial cruising, mega-cities, global value chains and trade, arsenals of nuclear deterrence etc. Now, the slow origins and the rapid upshot of the Anthropocene since industrialisation and the great acceleration can be perceived as an eclipse of basic Neolithic achievements (Q-1 qualities) into increasing Q-2-quantities over historical times which have collapsed in a new (excessive and highly dangerous) Q-3-quality since industrialisation, colonialism, and the great acceleration. Q-1 is, by definition, something “good to have”. Q-2 has been a long period of “more of the good” which seems to equal “better”. If x is good, x+1 is better than x, x+2 is better than x+1 – ad infinitum. This is the utilitarian logic of maximising the good. Such a pattern is linear, not dialectic. Abolition of Q-1 would affect our ways of life profoundly: no shipping, no domestication, no agriculture, no medicine, no urban life, etc. Intentional abolition is not a serious option and forgetfulness is extremely unlikely.

Q-2 has been passed throughout historical waves (the Neolithic, antiquity, medieval times, and the time periods 1500, 1800, and 1950 CE). The general European long-term pattern is “growth”.[14] Each Q-2 has a Braudelian “longue durée” history of its own.

The eclipse of Q-2 into Q-3 terminates in a state of excessiveness, crisis, danger, and it motivates even apocalyptic anxieties (see contributions in Allegrante et al. 2023). Q-3 is the current situation of the Anthropocene. Such situation, if described properly, constitutes concerns, fears, and anxieties on the side of its “makers” (Ott 2017 following Jonas).

Given such prospects, there is quest for another transformation from Q-3 to some (more sustainable, safe, resilient, nature-friendly) Q-4. This quest fuels the environmental discourse since the 1970s. Such a transformation cannot be a continuity of Q-2 (“more”, “growth”), but it should not abolish Q-1 (“achievement”). Performing Q-2 as business as usual may even worsen the situation. Q-4 is a presumed better way (mode) of doing Q-1 and it should help to escape the present state of crisis (Q-3). I have outlined an ethics for a transformation into Q-4 elsewhere (Ott 2023a, part IV) and come back to the underlying ethical ideas in the final section.

Here I focus on epistemic relations: The relation Q-1Q-2 is a past-past-relation. It can be filled with many historical case studies and narratives, as about industrial slave trade across the ocean and large-scale colonial economies (sugar cane, cotton, coffee, tea, tropical fruits etc.). Specific Q-2 numbers (“volumes”) can and should be researched quantitatively over all historical times to longer time series. Here, “big data” might be helpful for such macro-histories that may reveal patterns of growth. The conceptual scheme opens many research strategies for environmental history, but also for intellectual histories of Baconian mindsets, counter-movements, nature conservation etc.

The relation (Q-1Q-3) is a past-present-relation. Despite all criticism, this relation should not ignore, that more humans live better lives than ever. „Most people today live longer, are more educated and have more access to goods and services than ever before. (…) The world’s average HDI increased 18 percent between 1990 and 2019 (41 percent since 1970), reflecting large improvements in life expectancy, school enrolment, literacy and income” (Human Development Report 2011, p. 23; see also Rosling 2018). We should not forget that roughly 7-8 percent of all anatomically modern humans that ever lived, live now. This fraction is “more than ever”.

The relation (Q-1Q-2Q-3) is a past-past-present-relation. The relation (Q-3Q-4) is either prospective or prescriptive (or both). If Q-4 is purely descriptive, it is a prognosis, a prediction or a forecast at a specific scale. How much meat will be consumed in 2040 (in country X)? How high might the annual emissions of greenhouse-gases be in 2050 (in country Y)? How big will be the fraction of the global population in 2060 that owns a private car or live in large cities? How many migrants will move around the globe? If predictions are connected to prospects, they are enriched by value-judgement entailing some assumptions of “best interests of future generations”. From the perspective of the DPSIR-model (Ribeiro et al.2024), the Q-2Q-3 trajectories are drivers and pressures, Q-3 are states and impacts, while Q-4 is about response.[15] Any prescriptive Q-4 is a specific proposal for a “good” Anthropocene. From an ethical point of view, prescriptive proposals about good “Q-4” states are evaluative and normative investments entailing concepts such as (strong) sustainability, resilience, justice, degrowth, sufficiency, climate neutrality, restoration etc.

A macro-history of the Anthropocene trajectory would be composed from (Q-1Q-2Q-3Q-4): origins and achievements (Q-1), expansion and growth (Q-2), excessiveness and crisis (Q-3), future solution (or failure) (Q-4). If diagnosis and anamnesis are reasonable, (environmental) ethics can’t ignore the question whether there are prospects for therapies, cures, and perhaps even for processes for recovery and healing.

5. Notes on Ethics

f the generic pattern of eclipses from inventive Q-1-ideas over expansionist Q-2 routes to contemporary excessive Q-3-quantities is robust, the Anthropocene has deep and still under-researched roots. Clearly, many non-Western cultures have also invented such achievements without increasing numbers, volumes, and size. There is, however, a deep entrenchment of European ways of life since the Neolithic with respect to increased quantities, enlargements, expansion, acceleration, growth, excessiveness, “more”. Graeber and Wengrove (2021, p. 274) see an “explosive growth potential” of a specific “European” constellation. Graeber and Wengrow (2021, p. 128) seem to echo Sophocles’s “deinon”: “We are creatures of excess, and this is what makes us simultaneously the most creative, and most destructive of all species.”In its wording, however, this is rather an anthropocentric, not just a Eurocentric statement. I remain critical against anthropological generalizations and take European civilization as excessive in terms of growth. Therefore, we need more research why the “growth”-orientation became such a dominant strategy in European civilisation, but not in all other cultures.

We are now in a position to see the tragedy of the Anthropocene: There are sound reasons to overcome this growth-addicted trajectory on each and every scale (from personal to global), but the records from the Neolithic origins onto the great acceleration point to a pattern of expansion as a deeply entrenched behavioural strategy. It has shaped and colonized the European lifeworld. If the Anthropocene has an European legacy, and if this legacy is connected to an European project of disenchanting and subduing nature, re-enchanting nature, as in animism, is not a credible program. Are there any escape routes out of this logic and crisis which do not re-enchant nature?

There is a bulk of recent literature on the “Great Transformation” (Q-3Q-4) which is quite ignorant of history. The great transformation shall be realized within some decades in a cosmopolitan spirit under normative requirements as human rights, democracy, peace, sexual liberty, environmental justice, less inequality etc. Ethicist are trained to conceptually design such a great transformation. Polanyi’s book, however, was a historical one. The historian observed the transformation to a market society over several centuries which was not intended by anyone. A great transformation in a cosmopolitan spirit within some decades via a legitimate political, economic, and legal design is an unprecedented project in human history. It may remain a demanding postulate only.

What about post-modern ethics? The most sophisticated postmodern ethicist is Bauman (1993). According to Bauman, the great topics within moral philosophy remain largely the same, but postmodern ethics should overcome the modern idea to deal with them in terms of duties, rules, commitments, institutions, etc. The “twin banners” of “universality and foundation” (1993, p. 8) should be rejected. The “postmodern vantage point” is the self-constitution of the responsible subject (1993, p. 15). Baumann, however, gives no analysis of responsibilities. According to Bauman, ethics should not be based on reason, discourse, emancipation etc., but on specific postmodern ways of life. Archetypes of postmodern lives are “postmodern nomads” and “postmodern pilgrims”, vagabonds and vagrants (Baumann 1993, p. 240). “The vagabond is a pilgrim without a destination, a nomad without an itinerary” (Baumann 1993, p. 240). A nomadic-vagabond moral must be “episodic” and may change from one site to another. The tourist is the wealthy and privileged flipside of the vagabond who can afford to cultivate curiosity, amusement, aesthetics, cuisine, etc. Because they can move away, tourists and vagabonds can escape societal commitments and common tasks. According to Bauman (1993, p. 242): “In the postmodern world, the vagabond and the tourist are no more marginal people […]. They turn into moulds destined to engross and shape the totality of life.”

A postmodern ethics of the Anthropocene, then, would be an ethics of migration without many normative ties. At the end of Bauman’s book (1993, p. 299), “conscience” is defined as the “ultimate prompt of moral impulse and root of moral responsibility”. Thus, conscience rests on the fluid and arbitrary moral impulses of the vagabond, the migrant, or the tourist. Postmodern ethics collapses in the denial of responsibilities.

Morality and conscience should not be tied closely to particular ways (or types) of life. No stylised way of life should be privileged in moral affairs. In the Anthropocene, perhaps, more localised, non-vagabond ways of life will persist and global tourism, as a branch of global commerce, may transform into new ways of travelling. If common moral decency entails mutual trust, a fluid vagabond/tourist-ethics may suffer from a lack of trustworthiness. Vagabonds and tourists, as such, are visitors, but not members of moral and political collectives (as states). As such, they stay apart and will not fully participate in ethical life (“Sittlichkeit” sensu Hegel, see Ott 2026). Thus, in the social roles of tourist and vagabond, they will not engage in transformations toward a sustainable post-growth society. Ethics of place making and “being settled” might be more appropriate in this respect. An ethics of the Anthropocene should include place-making, settling, gardening, self-reliance, etc.

Might Marxism offer a better solution? To Marx, the inclination to growth is rooted in the anonymous mechanisms of capital accumulation. Marx states (1867, p. 167): “Die Bewegung des Kapitals ist daher maßlos”. Thus, Marxist scholars propose to replace the term “Anthropocene” by the term “Capitalocene”. This is not just wording, as “Capitalocene” indicates that humans are determined by economic forces which are beyond their control as long as there is commodity production and private property over means of commodity production.

We should closely keep in mind that “classical” Marxism wished to enhance the productive forces after the end of capitalism. All “real” socialist countries planned and forced physical growth of industrial production. They produced extreme negative externalities to natural environments and high levels of pollution. The modernisation projects in the USSR and China aimed at wealth generation by liberating productive forces in socialist modes of production. USSR wanted to make great Siberian rivers flow to the south where they should irrigate the deserts. The large canals in Turkmenistan made the Aral Lake collapse. Communism was expansionist, extractive, and excessive as well (Ott 2013). Socialist modes of industrialized production finally collapsed for many reasons. Are recent approaches for a “green” degrowth communism credible (Saito 2022)? Saito warns against repeating the “mistakes” of command-and-control central planning economies but is silent on the mistakes themselves. Saito’s luxury degrowth communism lacks any economic foundation and credibility (Ott 2026, chapter 6.9.4).

Only a European type of modern ethics might be suited for the task ahead. Modern European ethical theories became secular, as contractarianism (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), deontology (Kant), utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill, Sidgwick), and ethics of mercy (Schopenhauer). Kantianism has been transformed into discourse ethics (Apel 1976). This transformation was grounded in a philosophy of language (Hönigswald 1937). Habermas (1983, 1991) grounded moral validity in commitments being implied by arguing. Apel (1988) conceived discourse ethics as an ethics for a globalized planet. Discourse ethics and environmental ethics can be reconciled (Hendlin and Ott 2016).

In Ott (2023a, part 4, 2026a), I argue for 1) a procedural discourse ethical framework, 2) the unrestricted universe of environmental discourse, 3) the rule-based policy-program of strong sustainability, 4) mutual presupposition of human rights and democracy, 5) for further development of global environmental regimes (as CBD, UNFCCC, UNCLOS), and 6) a sense for history. This synthesis of discourse ethics, deliberative democracy, environmental ethics, strong sustainability and viable post-growth policies operates within the paradigm of modern ethics based on neutral devices (discourse, veil of ignorance) for reasoning, justifying, and equal considerations. This synthesis shall not remain in the domain of moral reasoning, but shall reach “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit sensu Hegel). If one gives credit to the concept of axial age (Jaspers 1955), one may propose such ethics as an European proposal for a second axial age. In 1) such ethics keeps a transcendental grounding within the commitments of arguing as rules of discourse. This transcendental procedural grounding is stepwise amended by content. Such amendments follow Herder’s program to supplement Kant’s categorial imperative with historical content in order to enrich “humanity” (“Humanität”). 

History includes a memory function that can immerse into the deep well of history as “laboratories” for escape routes out of Q-3. Given the deep roots of growth, history makes moral reasoning humble, but also viable. The relation (Q-3Q-4) should not abstract from (Q-1Q-2Q-3). History may help against moral and political hubris. We should better navigate through (Q-1Q-2Q-3) before addressing (Q-3Q-4) from supreme moral principles or (ideal) global justice. History should correct and control our moral ideas and should check them in terms of viability and feasibility. Morals should be saturated with history.

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[1] Since several decades, there were honourable “green” reforms in some wealthy Western societies which decoupled economic growth and environmental pollution (even in the case of CO₂-emissions) (Ott 2026, chapter 1), but the picture on the global scale remains bleak.

[2] Humans proliferate (over)exponentially in modern times. Demographic patterns (birth and death rates) changed dramatically since 1800 CE leading to exponential population growth. At this moment in history, there were 8 billion humans and there will be roughly 9.6 billion people in 2050. Population now matters on all parameters: food, housing, transport, electricity generation, etc. The Anthropocene is a world full of humans, a crowded world. Malthusianism was falsified on the European scale by agricultural progress (Liebig’s fertilisers), but it has not been falsified on the global scale today.   

[3] The geological societies, however, have not yet officially agreed on the strati-graphical proposal of the Anthropocene-group.

[4] This also is a Marxian idea. To Marx, capitalisms must have emerged fully, if research on its origins should make sense at all. One must be familiar with a market economy in order to research its origins (Polanyi 1944).

[5]Scott and Ruddiman both emphasise the role of fire. This Promethean legacy originated before the Neolithic. Fireplaces were highly adaptive. Cooking helped digestion. Fire was supportive to human radiation across the globe. To Scott (2017, 42), humans are a fire-adapted species, a “pyrophyte”. 

[6] It starts with the potentially gender-neutral anthrōpos (“human being”, usually translated as man), but already in the first antistrophe it turns towards the exclusively male term anēr and repeats masculine participles and pronouns. The focus on “man” is also due to the gender bias of ancient society and will be ignored in the following.

[7] The concept of sin in the Hebrew Bible points to the same human predicament as Sophocles’ chorus. According to Genesis 4, the first human who ever died was killed by his brother.

[8] Bosinski (2007, 33) estimates that humans have used fire more than 1 million years. 

[9] If one registers achievements, one may ask, what kind of reasons a presumptive abolition movement might have. Abolition might be demanded by moral theories, as some currents in current animal rights movement demand an abolition of domestication, but I do not see any abolition of such achievements through human history.

[10] Braudel pointed at “long duration” in history. In a similar sense, we suppose millennia for the origins of the thin Anthropocene. Such time spans are supposed in the argument. The Anthropocene is not an event.

[11] The transition from quantity to new qualities has been seen as a mechanism of social evolution by Carneiro (2000) who follows Hegel, Marx, and Engels. I see a more complex mechanism. There were, first, qualities in low numbers which expanded in quantities and, far later, eclipse into another quality which is different from the first one.

[12] What Marx (1867, MEW 23, p. 167) writes about the unlimited accumulation of capital (“maßlos”), is true in a generic sense. Aristoteles realized this accumulation as trait of the commercial art to earn money. The merchants wish to make “more money”.

[13]   The epistemology of conceptual scaffolding is outlined in Ott (2023a), part I.

[14] In this perspective, decline and collapse of the Western Roman Empire was a catastrophic interruption caused by climate change, pandemics, the politics of warlords, and, perhaps, new religions. See Meier (2020).

[15]   This macro-historical scaffold coheres with the DPSIR scheme (drivers, pressure, state, impact, response).