Candler Lowe, Campus Carrier Deputy News Editor
The Library series wrapped up its Spring Colloquium that focused on the Anthropocene, the current geological state of the earth, on Wednesday night.
The two-part series, “Adrift in the Anthropocene: Humanity and the End of Nature?” was centered around the affects that human existence has on nature.
The second part of the series, “Wickedness and Goodness in the Anthropocene: Does Ethics Still Matter?” featured Willis Jenkins, associate professor of religion, ethics and environment, from the University of Virginia.
Jenkins focused on the ethical questions that the Anthropocene raises and whether or not humans have an obligation to the environment. Jenkins discussed the difference of what is good for a person versus what is good for the species and the integration of science and humanities that this argument entails.
“I focus on the intersections of religion and the environment, and I am interested in the Anthropocene because it is a quasi-religious kind of setting,” Jenkins said. “It offers a big narrative framework for how to make sense of the human place.”
Jenkins also discussed the question for this context of the Anthropocene is whether ethics matters and for what it means to live a good human life.
Jenkins said his goal was to show how a number of ethicists thinking about climate change ask these questions in terms of asking what to do to make a difference, why it is that they ask this and how it makes sense.
Jenkins argued that there is a link between doing what is good for mankind and what it is that would make oneself feel good and whether it is possible to both.
Somervell Linthicum, user experience and engagement librarian at Berry, was excited that Willis and Erle C. Ellis, the speaker from the first part of the series, “Used Planet: Why Humanity Changed the Earth,” were able to come from two very different angles that provided a good insight into what the Anthropocene means for humans.
“As long as human beings are who we are and have the numbers that they have, the kinds of societies and industrial civilizations that we live in, there is no nature apart from humanity,” Linthicum said. “The question becomes if we have an obligation.”
Where Ellis focused more on the impact that humans have had on the earth, Jenkins took a more theoretical approach. Linthicum believed that Jenkins’ approach was based on the moral obligations under the current circumstances.
“Jenkins took a lot of theoretical approaches and pulled them together to look at how everything fit,” Linthicum said. “He occupies an interesting place and is drawing both on environmental theory and the philosophy of ethics, but also on the account of his Christian theological tradition.”
Linthicum said it would be a thought provoking presentation.
“Jenkins certainly will challenge us to think more deeply, critically, and introspectively about our roles as agents in the Anthropocene,” Linthicum said.