If we lose the Earth, we lose our souls – Review
If we lose the Earth, we lose our souls, by Bruno Latour, translated from French by Catherine Porter and Sam Ferguson, February 2024. Polity Press, ISBN: 978-1-5095-6046-2, 90 pages. RRP: £12.99
Bruno Latour was a celebrated French philosopher and interdisciplinary scholar, best known for his groundbreaking work in science studies, ontology and critical theory. His lifelong Christian faith is less well known, but forms the context of this book, comprising talks, papers and an interview created between 2008 and 2022. He edited the first proofs less than a month before his death in October 2022.
The book, as much of Latour’s writing, is rich, allusive and deep, inviting multiple re-readings. It covers a wide terrain, but several themes recur, within an overarching concern with the renewal of faith, theology and evangelism in a time of ecological emergency. A central motif is the relationship of the Church to science. Latour identifies a breach between the two, dating from the 17th century, since which time the natural sciences have been viewed as a mere background upon which spiritual, moral and aesthetic ideas have been imposed. The “divine surprise” of Laudato Si is in its potential to heal this breach, recognising the relationship between ecology and injustice, which has been ignored by “official metaphysics”. The earth itself, not alive in a “New Age sense” but through the “entanglements” of living organisms, suffers along with the poor, in the “double cry”.
Latour challenges us to live, not in time, with the comforting idea that acts of charity can be postponed, but in space, acknowledging the reality and urgent needs of the physical world which we share. Galileo, according to legend, spoke in defiance of the Church that the Earth still moves. Now, however, as Michel Serres wrote, we live upon an Earth that is moved, in both physical and emotional senses, as a result of human actions. Eschatology has spatial as well as temporal dimensions, and the new earth is contained within a “tiny envelope” for which we must learn to care. The ecological crisis can be seen as a prolongation of the Incarnation, sharing its acts of abasement and kenosis. The Gospel, critically, does not depend on a traditional cosmological backdrop, but shatters both “common sense” and spatio-temporal frameworks in creating “a people of saved neighbours”.
The richness and challenge of Latour’s ideas was not confined to theory. He organised and participated in seminars and workshops about the practical work of being citizens, listening to others, recognising and realising our powers to act. In this book he advocates for rituals, prayers and hymns that reflect the reversal between old and new ways of seeing heaven and earth. He writes of how the pandemic experience mirrors our awareness of planetary confinement. And he argues, finally, for our fundamental responsibility to keep engaging with science, technology and the world of markets. Frankenstein’s real sin, he writes, was not the creation of his monster, but his abandonment of it when it needed him most.
Tanya Jones
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