u/MichelSerres-discuss

Michel Serres is a humble and inimitable philosopher. In the clamor of promotional noise, he has started to have some recognition in the academic world but no public profile outside France.

Michel Serres thought that existing proposals for responding to the planetary crisis would not make any real difference. Concentrating on reducing carbon emissions, sustainable development projects, technological inventions, state-sponsored initiatives and ‘green new deals’ do not go far enough. He insisted that the abuse and exploitation of the earth and each other were inseparable. They both have a very long history that includes but goes well beyond corporate greed, neoliberalism, capitalism, industrialization or European colonialism.

Serres drew inspiration from what humans have in *common* with the rest of nature. We are a miniscule part of an inexplicable adventure that started some 14 billion years ago. Somehow living things have evolved on the planet through symbiotic processes. A late arrival, humans have quickly become hyperparasites. We are the problem but not the solution. Serres says we must reinvent what it means to be human not for ourselves, but to carry on the adventure of nature.

Serres’ philosophy of ecology does not simply add yet another ‘new’ perspective on the ecological crisis. He urges those who call for a new worldview, a new story, a shift in paradigm, an awakening, an eco-consciousness, a return to nature, a regenerative community, an eco-civilization, a deep transformation or a more-than-human alliance, to be humble, to go slower and *further*, to think the impossible.

Why then turn to a French philosopher who has only recently gained attention in the academic world outside France and has no popular profile? His work thoroughly challenges debates about the causes of and responses to our planetary emergency. In over seventy books published before his death in 2019 at the age of 88, Serres persistently questioned the long history of the crisis facing humankind, the uniqueness of our present era, and potential ways forward for ourselves and the rest of the earth. His books increasingly gain contemporary relevance. Serres’ writing is accessible. He distrusted the academic world and the often specialist and technical words that he claimed served only to ‘exclude people from the conversation’ (NC: 7–8). He is a truly original thinker.

For Serres, the planetary crisis, that the philosopher Edgar Morin called a ‘multi-crisis’, is not just one topic amongst many. It reached the root of his philosophy. ‘To become effective, the solution to a long-term, far-reaching problem, must *at least* match the problem in scope’ (NC: 31). He considered that we are living through a moment that is so exceptional that the *habitual rhythm of social and political change must be broken*. Serres’ thought disrupts established responses to the planetary emergency including those that claim to be offering a ‘new paradigm’ or a different ‘worldview’.

Serres was brought up by the tidal river Garonne in the southwest of France. His father was a boatman who dredged sand and Serres’ early life involved helping the family through often grueling work. In *Biogea*, he calls himself a ‘freshwater forced-labour convict’ who spent his time ‘sifting sand, breaking rocks, compacting roads’ (B: 12). As the biography by François Dosse describes in detail, Serres remained deeply proud of his humble background, which sometimes becomes tinged with nostalgia. Serres claimed that his first training came from working alongside blacksmiths, saddlers, masons, agricultural workers and sailors. He asserted that this physical work and his later life at sea as a sailor taught him more than days in the library:

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The pride in his peasant upbringing is often contrasted with city life which he views as shut off from the varied physical experiences, sights, sounds and smells of the open countryside. Going on to study in Paris in 1952 at the École Normale Supérieure, Serres found himself uncomfortable amongst a largely middle-class academic elite. His studies were paused from 1956–1958 as he conducted military service as an officer in the navy, including involvement in the Suez crisis. Returning to study in Paris, Serres went on to participate in the creation of a philosophy department at the University of Vincennes. In 1968, he published his first book on the mathematician and philosopher Leibniz, a lasting influence on his thought. He worked at the Sorbonne University in Paris and, from 1982, he was a visiting professor at Stanford University. In 1990, he was elected to the prestigious *Académie Française.* Serres continued writing up until his death in 2019.

Serres was well-known in France and over a period of 14 years on a Sunday evening he reflected on *Le sens de l’info*:

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All episodes are [**available**](https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinfo/podcasts/le-sens-de-l-info) to listen to on Radio France and reproduced in a series of books (PC).

Serres writing revisits persistent themes and opens many diverging paths. His books redirect, revise, risk, converse, cross and adventure out. The following is a very brief glimpse of some major shifts:

1968–1980 *Hermes I-V* — early deliberations covering key and enduring themes of communication, interference, translation, distribution and relational complexity.

1977 *The Birth of Physics* — a provocative reading of an ancient poem by Lucretius as a treatise on modern physics. Themes related to the alliances of all nature are picked up later in *The Natural Contract*(1990).

1980 *The Parasite* — one of his most complex books that deserves several readings, introducing the importance of interference and intrusion in the context of communication, evolutionary biology and human relations.

1983- 1993 Three *foundations*: *Rome, Statues, Geometry* — his classical historical trilogy that includes deliberations on violence, death, space and time.

1985 *The Five Senses* — an argument that philosophy has tended to concentrate on sight and language and avoided the senses of touch, sound, smell and taste.

1990 *The Natural Contract* — a legal treatise on the necessity to transform our response to the more-than-human world.

1991 *The Troubadour of Knowledge* and *The Instructed-Third* — two books that in different ways seek an inclusive knowledge, particularly undermining the divide between the humanities and science.

2001–2006 *Hominesence, The Incandescent, Branches* and *Stories of Humanism* — four of his most important later books that describe a common story of the world and an emerging era for humankind.

2008 *Malfeasance, The World War* and *Times of Crisis* — a turn toward a more combative style that recognizes the urgency of addressing the abuse of the world and each other.

2010 *Biogea* — one of his most autobiographical works, a series of short stories of encounters with people, landscapes, mountains, the sea, rivers, and wild animals.

2019 *Religion* — his final book that attempts a synthesis of his work, written shortly before his death.

Serres claimed in an interview that he was one of the first to consider the planetary crisis as a fundamental philosophical question, but such a statement needs clarification (Pan: 63). In France, there was certainly much debate in the 1970s involving scientists, geologists, botanists and agronomists. In 1974, René Dumont was the first ‘ecologist’ candidate in a presidential election, supporting his candidacy with an extensive manifesto. Dumont played an important role in combining ‘theoretical ecology and political ecology’.

Another influential intellectual was the German philosopher Hans Jonas who wrote a highly influential book in 1979, later translated as *Imperative of Responsibility* (1984). The book promoted an ethics of responsibility towards the whole of nature and future generations and has been credited with galvanizing the environmental movement in Germany in the 1980s. A French philosopher, Edgar Morin, was also thoroughly absorbed in ecological questions from the late 1970s, publishing a summary of his vision of planetary history and a collective response to the crisis in *Homeland Earth*(Morin and Kern 1999). Serres was certainly one of the first to treat the ecological emergency as a philosophical question, but not the first.

In his response to the planetary emergency, Serres focused untiringly on what humans and the rest of nature have in *common*. He employed a range of springboards for his thought involving mathematics, science, religion, history and many forms of literature, including fables and myths. Sources stretched from ancient poetry to Ovid’s tales of metamorphosis, Cervantes’ *Don Quixote*, the novels of Jules Verne and the tales of Tintin.

I like to see Serres’ thought in terms of ‘rewiggling’ which refers to allowing a river that has been straightened by human intervention to bend and spill out. The goals of ‘rewiggling’ are usually to reduce flooding, improve water quality and boost biodiversity. Serres considered that most often philosophy tries to steer a straight, logical and progressive course. Customarily, philosophy excludes the messiness of the world by thinking through general concepts or models. It takes short cuts. Serres’ work can be seen to mirror a natural river system, with varied slow and flowing water, twists and turns, falls, deep pools and shallow banks. A wiggling river has many niches for a variety of living things to thrive. A straightened river becomes clogged with single species, or the singular force of the river’s flow will cause it eventually to silt up. Biodiversity operates on multiple scales. So does Serres’ thought.

The influential American conservationist, Aldo Leopold, who Serres respected and who influenced the writing of *Biogea*, expresses a similar metaphor. For Leopold, the river displays the collective, integrated processes of living things and, like Serres, he suggests ‘a reversal of specialization; instead of learning more and more about less and less, we must learn more and more about the whole biotic landscape’ (Leopold 1993: 158). Serres thoughts are not cramped together in a strict order; they wander, journey, and take risks. A critic said one of his books seemed like several authors wrote it. This pleased him.

Influenced by his peasant upbringing, Serres questions how anyone can write about ecology and our present crisis without recognizing that we are part of a swarming entanglement of living things. He offers a philosophy of ‘nature’, but from the start it is important to clarify how he defines this term. He returns to the root of the word from the Latin *natura*, referring to ‘birth’. Nature is associated with generation and regeneration, discovery and invention. It is not something passive, out there. Nature includes humankind, but even more importantly is always being born, diverging, deviating and creating. Serres coined the term ‘Biogea’ to refer to all living things (*bio*) and the earth’s physical composition (*gea*). The human is ‘one hundred percent nature’ and ‘one hundred percent culture’ (B: 50). We are a tiny spec of nature that began many billion years ago.

I have shown some of his breath. originality and seriousness. You should read Michel Serres because you to find out why he asks us to recognise our *common identity* in the telling of a *common story* that reaches the *deep origins of our time of crisis* and evokes a radical approach to the planetary emergency and a *foundation for a new politics of hope*.

**References**

B> Serres, Michel. (2020), *Branches*, trans. R. Burks, London: Bloomsbury.

LGB> Serres, Michel. (2008), *La Guerre mondiale*. Paris: Le Pommier.

NC> Serres, Michel. (1995), *The Natural Contract*, trans. E. MacArthur and W. Paulson, Michigan: University of Michigan Press

Pan > Serres, Michel. (2014), *Pantopie: De Hermès à petite poucette. Entretiens avec Martin Legros et Sven Ortoli*. Paris: Le Pommier.

PC > Serres, Michel. (2006), *Petites Chroniques du dimanche soir: Entretiens avec Michel Polacco, avec la collaboration de Merle et Ogier*. Paris: Le Pommier.