The Limits of Humanist Ethics in the Anthropocene

The preventive measures taken around the world to mitigate the Covid-19 crisis have triggered a stimulating debate on its ethical implications. In this debate, terms like left, right, conservative or liberal appear to have lost their meaning when assessing the character of the current global lockdown. The argument put forward here is that the current crisis shows that Anthropocene ethics, first, evolve in a contestation between the two ethical logics – or ontopolitics – of withdrawal and affirmation and, second, that both of these logics develop in antagonisms that they cannot overcome.