Works › Down to Earth
Work #1113 · Late period

Down to Earth

Bruno Latour's 2017 political-philosophical essay — climate, Trump, and the new geopolitics of the terrestrial

Bruno Latour · 2017 (French), 2018 (English) · French · Political-philosophical essay

Tradition: Climate-political philosophy / STS

Latour's 2017 political essay — climate, Trump, Brexit, and the geopolitics of the new terrestrial

Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (2017) is Latour's late political-philosophical essay, written in the aftermath of Trump's election and Brexit. The book argues that the proper organising principle of contemporary politics is the "new climatic regime" — the recognition that the Earth itself has become a political actor. Conventional political-geographic categories (global vs. local, left vs. right, modern vs. pre-modern) are inadequate; what is needed is orientation toward the "Terrestrial."

Author

Editions cited

  • Où atterrir? Comment s'orienter en politique (La Découverte, 2017); English: Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, trans. Catherine Porter (Polity, 2018)
Compare this work

School Embodiments

Deep Ecology · 25%
Critical Theory · 15%
Transhumanism / Posthumanism · 15%
Pragmatism · 10%
Pluralism · 10%
Liberalism · 10%
Deep Ecology 25%

Major late-Latourian statement of climate-political ecology — the Earth as political actor.

"To be Terrestrial is to recognise that the Earth, with its limited resources, is a political actor we can no longer pretend to manage from above." (Down to Earth)
Critical Theory 15%

Critical-theoretical work on contemporary politics in the climate moment.

"The climate-denial of the post-2016 governing classes is not a misunderstanding but a politics — a politics of denying the Earth as actor." (Down to Earth)
Transhumanism / Posthumanism 15%

Posthumanist-political work — the Earth as actor displaces the bounded human-political subject.

"The new Terrestrial is not Gaia-as-organism, but the Earth-as-network, in which human politics must be re-grounded." (Down to Earth)
Pragmatism 10%

Pragmatist sensibility — politics as practical reorientation.

"The question is not the theoretical one of 'what is the Earth?' but the practical one of 'where can we land?'" (Down to Earth)
Pluralism 10%

Pluralist-political framework — multiple Terrestrial positions, not one universal climate-politics.

"There is no single Terrestrial position; there are many proper ways of orienting oneself in the new climatic regime." (Down to Earth)
Liberalism 10%

Engages liberal-democratic political theory and finds it inadequate for the new climatic regime.

"The classical liberal categories of left and right are increasingly inadequate; the new political axis runs between modernising-globalising and Terrestrial-attentive." (Down to Earth)

Internal Tensions

The Terrestrial-political reorientation has been variously assessed — defenders see proper climate-political reorientation, critics worry about its specific political prescriptions.

⧖

I. Time

The 2016-17 moment — Trump, Brexit, the climate-political crisis.

Attributes
Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Substantival Grain: Continuous Freedom: Non-Deterministic Traversability: Linear Direction: Uni-directional Dimensionality: One
✦

II. Space

The Earth-as-actor as proper political-geographic setting.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Relational Curvature: Flat Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
◉

III. Matter

The finite-material Earth whose limits constitute the new political condition.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Relational Conservation: Variable Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
◎

IV. Observer

The Terrestrial-attentive political subject as proper observer of the new climatic regime.

Attributes
Time Instance: Single Space Instance: Single Knowledge Extent: Partial Knowledge Retainment: Partial Physicality: Embodied Agency: Active Number: Plural Metaphysical Agency: Impersonal
⚡

V. Energy

The political-ecological energies of late-Latourian climate-politics.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Substantival Conservation: Variable Dispersibility: Irreversible
⧉

VI. Information

The climate-political content of the new geopolitical analysis.

Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival Cosmic Conservation: Variable Personal Conservation: Variable Granularity: Discrete

Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint

Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.

72%
Roger Bacon
23/32
71%
Aristophanes
17/24
71%
Desmond Tutu
24/34
71%
Howard Thurman
24/34
70%
Carneades
7/10
70%
Ramon Llull
23/33

Computed school proximity

The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.

33%
Communitarianism
18/26
33%
Critical Theory
17/26
33%
Hermeneutics
17/26
33%
Feminism
17/26
33%
Intersectionality
17/26
33%
Black Radical Tradition
17/26
33%
Utopianism
17/26
33%
Systems Theory
17/26

How Down to Earth resolves each dilemma

23 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 8 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 34 unaligned.

Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.

Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Do you really choose? The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it. 69% Are addicts responsible for their addiction? The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real. 69% Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do? An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible. 69% How much weight do future people deserve? Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much. 47% Is regret rational? The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing. 47% Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them? Extinct species are as real as we are; they have standing. 47% Is the universe running out of usable energy? Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing. 47% Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so? Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time. 47% Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide? Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide. 47%
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Does matter have intrinsic moral standing? — — Is the physical world fully real? — — Is the world created from nothing? — — Should we edit the human germline? — — What is a nation? — — What is money? — — What makes someone male or female? — —

Observer · 37 dilemmas · 4 distinctive

Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.

Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree (30/202)
What is our place in nature?
Whether humans are masters of nature, members of nature, or makers of nature is not a question climate science can settle. It depends on what nature is, what we are, and what kind of relationship is possible between us.
Embedded in a web — partners with the more-than-human world.
On these views, humans were never outside nature, and the question of our 'place in' it is the question of how to live within the relations that already constitute us. Plants, animals, rivers, ancestors, descendants are not resources or stage scenery; they are kin and …
Roads not taken Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. (48%) · Nature is partly what we make of it — concepts, practices, and minds shape the world. (15%) · Subject to a real natural order we did not make. (12%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree (30/202)
Should we colonize space?
The drive to extend human presence beyond Earth is sometimes framed as the next chapter of stewardship, sometimes as hubris, sometimes as escape from problems we ought to solve here. Which it is depends on what we take our relationship to nature to be.
Colonisation continues the work that ended the wisdom of seven-generation thinking.
On relational views, space colonisation is the abstract endpoint of the same pattern that produced ecological crisis on Earth: humans treating themselves as separate from the more-than-human world they are actually inside. To go to Mars in the spirit of leaving Earth is to leave …
Roads not taken Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship. (48%) · The 'space frontier' is partly what we make of it. (15%) · Nature includes its limits; colonisation is bounded by what the cosmos allows. (12%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree (30/202)
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Editing the genomes of the plants and animals we eat is either the natural continuation of breeding — careful improvement of what is given — or a category error that treats biology as raw material rather than as living kind.
Editing the genome cuts into the relational fabric; we should be very slow.
On relational views, organisms are not isolated substrates whose genomes can be edited without consequence; they are nodes in webs of mutual constitution with soils, ecologies, ancestors, and human cultivars. Genetic editing changes the node in ways the web has not had time to integrate. …
Roads not taken Genetic modification is cultivation by other means. (48%) · What counts as a 'natural' genome is itself a construction. (15%) · Biology is what it is; we modify it within real biological constraints. (12%)
Distinctive · only 18% of schools agree (37/202)
What happens to "you" when you die?
Whether anything of you persists — and in what sense — depends on what you take a person to be.
You were always a pattern. The pattern propagates.
There was never a "substantial you" to lose. What was real was a pattern of relations — bodily, memorial, social, causal. Those relations don't terminate at the body; they ripple forward through everyone and everything you touched.
Roads not taken A soul continues into another mode of being. (37%) · Death is genuinely the end. (30%) · Individuality dissolves into the One. (8%)
6 mainstream positions
Could causation work backwards? Causation runs one way — the arrow of time is real and structural. 68% Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us? The asymmetry is real because time itself has a real direction. 68% Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it? The arrow is real and structural; the asymmetry isn't an artifact of description. 68% Is environmental damage ever truly permanent? Damage is real and permanent on the relevant timescales. There is no recovery; there is only limitation. 66% Can a civilization recover from collapse? Civilizational complexity is hard to build and easy to lose; recovery is at best partial. 66% Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally? Entropy is what time is. The moral weight, if any, is the weight of working against the current. 66%
27 unaligned
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence? Schools split: 49% / 37% / 8% — Are the dead morally present to the living? Schools split: 44% / 35% / 13% — Are there indivisible units of experience? Schools split: 44% / 37% / 13% — Can prayer for someone far away affect them? Schools split: 49% / 37% / 8% — Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious? Schools split: 32% / 29% / 11% — Could an AI have a mind that matters? Schools split: 30% / 30% / 15% — Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans? Schools split: 32% / 29% / 11% — Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces? Schools split: 32% / 28% / 17% — Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally? Schools split: 50% / 29% / 12% — Does history have a direction or meaning? Schools split: 37% / 23% / 19% — Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless? Schools split: 46% / 33% / 13% — Does prayer change God's mind? Schools split: 46% / 33% / 13% — How is knowledge of reality produced? Schools split: 25% / 17% / 13% — If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived? Schools split: 36% / 29% / 14% — Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom? Schools split: 46% / 33% / 13% — Is memory stored or reconstructed? Schools split: 44% / 37% / 13% — Is reality fundamentally digital? Schools split: 44% / 37% / 13% — Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge? Schools split: 32% / 28% / 17% — Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal? Schools split: 15% / 14% / 4% — Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married? Schools split: 36% / 29% / 14% — Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed? Schools split: 65% / 16% / 10% — Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it? Schools split: 32% / 28% / 17% — What is marriage? Schools split: 54% / 16% / 15% — What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize? Schools split: 44% / 16% / 14% — What makes someone the same person over time? Schools split: 36% / 29% / 14% — When does a person begin? Schools split: 54% / 16% / 15% — Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species? Schools split: 40% / 28% / 14% —

Information · 4 dilemmas · 4 distinctive

Pattern, memory, and what is preserved or lost.

Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
The memory you don't retrieve, the conversation you can't remember, the face you no longer recognise — is the forgetting a loss of something real, or just the routine operation of a finite mind?
Information persists or doesn't depending on whether the holder is sustained.
On these views, conservation is not a flat cosmic law but a function of the conditions that hold. Memory persists where it is sustained — by divine attention, by community, by ritual, by practice — and is genuinely lost where it isn't. The asymmetry between …
Roads not taken Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone. (51%) · Information is conserved — the personal pattern is held even when an individual mind loses it. (39%) · Forgetting is the cosmic case, not the exception; nothing is conserved. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Account deletion, the right to be forgotten, the obsolescence of file formats, the slow decay of digital archives — whether any of this destroys something that was real depends on whether information is the kind of thing that can be destroyed.
Information persists where it is held; deletion releases what isn't held elsewhere.
On these views, information persists or doesn't depending on whether something is sustaining it. What is held in divine memory or in active communal practice continues; what is held only by the deleted artifact is genuinely released. The variable conservation maps onto a variable moral …
Roads not taken Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys. (51%) · Information at the cosmic level isn't destroyed; deletion only obscures access. (39%) · Nothing is fundamentally conserved; deletion is just routine impermanence. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
If we had perfect information about who someone was — their connectome, their behavioral patterns, their history — could we, in principle, restore them? The question is partly engineering, but the ceiling on the engineering is metaphysical.
What is held by God or sustaining practice can be restored; what isn't can't.
On these views, the conservation of personal information depends on what is sustaining it. The Eastern Orthodox doctrine of resurrection holds that the person is preserved in God's memory and restored in the resurrection by divine action operating on what God has held. What is …
Roads not taken The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible. (51%) · The information that constitutes a person is conserved; restoration is in principle possible. (39%) · Nothing of what was can be restored; restoration is wishful framing. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
When someone forgives, does the offense actually go away — erased, undone, no longer a fact — or does forgiveness reframe a wrong that persists exactly as it always was?
The offense persists where sustained and releases where conditionally absolved; forgiveness is real ontological work.
On these views, conservation is not a flat cosmic law but a function of what sustains. An offense persists where it is held — by holding-on, by ritual continuation, by divine attention to a particular debt — and is genuinely released where it is conditionally …
Roads not taken The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away. (51%) · The offense persists ontologically; forgiveness is real moral work, but it doesn't erase what was. (39%) · Nothing is preserved; the offense is impermanent, and holding it is the suffering. (1%)
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