Bruno Latour, one of the main thinkers of ecology, dies – 09/10/2022
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French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour, one of the leading contemporary names in philosophy and environmental thinking, died in the early hours of Sunday (9) in Paris, at the age of 75, according to information from his publisher. editions there decovery.
“Editions La Decoverie has received with regret the news of Bruno Latour’s death this evening in Paris. All our thoughts are with his family,” the editor wrote in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse.
The thinker’s influential works, such as “We Were Never Contemporary” and “Where Do We Arrive? How Do You Orient Yourself Politically in the Anthropocene”, were translated into Portuguese and had an impact on Brazilian academia. They engage with the work of important Brazilian thinkers such as the anthropologist Eduardo Vivieros de Castro, one of the creators of the “Amerindian Perspective”.
Latour and Brazil
In an interview with Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, about the political and environmental crisis that Brazil was experiencing, Latour stated that it would be “very important for the rest of the world” for Brazil to find “answers to this crisis”. .
According to him, today Brazil will be “as Spain was in 1936, during the civil war: where everything can be seen that will be important in the decades to come.” In the Spanish Civil War, which was marked by the participation of volunteers from all over the world, the center-left coalition (made up of republicans, socialists, anarchists and communists) faced the fascist and reactionary forces of General Franco with the support of the dictators Hitler and Mussolini. The conflict predicted the tragedy of World War II
Latour was friends with the Brazilian thinkers Eduardo Vivieros de Castro and Deborah D’Anovsky, who referenced French thought in Is There a World to Come? Essays on Fears and Ends. Both mourned the thinker’s death on their social networks.
Latour was still one of the idealists of the theory.network of actors“which takes into account, in addition to human beings, things (or”non-humans”) and speeches, which are also considered “actors.” The theory was influenced by the thought of the French philosopher and sociologist Gabriel Tarde. In an interview with cult magazineAnd the Latur Part of the rediscovery of Tard’s work is attributed to “the Brazilian, Eduardo Vargas, who has been publishing on this subject for a long time”.
In the same interview with Cult magazine, Bruno Latour, defined by the New York Times as “the most famous and most misunderstood of the French philosophers,” commented on the fact that his thought took so long to be accepted in his homeland. He gained space thanks to the influence his books have had among anthropological studies around the world.
French President Emmanuel Macron echoed the idea and praised Latour on Twitter “for her humanitarian and pluralistic spirit, recognized around the world before being recognized in France.”
Creative and humorous
Bruno Latour
Photo: Playback / E-flux Talks
Latour was born on June 22, 1947 to a family of wine merchants in the city of Beaune, located in east-central France.
He studied philosophy and anthropology. He then taught at engineering colleges in France, but also abroad, especially in Germany and the United States, where he was a visiting professor at Harvard University.
He was one of the first intellectuals to realize the importance of ecological thinking.
However, he was recognized above all else in the Anglo-Saxon world and many of his works were first published in English. His work won the Holberg Prize in 2013 and the Kyoto Prize in 2021. He was considered “creative, humorous, and unpredictable,” according to the Holberg Prize jury for the Social Sciences.
The thinker was concerned, among other things, with issues of the administration and organization of research, and in general with the manner in which society produces values and facts.
Capitalism has dug its own grave
And in 2021, he told AFP, climate change and the pandemic crisis exposed a struggle between the “geo-social strata”.
Capitalism has dug its own grave. Now it comes to fixing it. Bruno Latour
He summarized his work for the public in some of his works and expanded his audience with articles on politics.
In an essay, he defended the hypothesis that “for fifty years we have understood nothing of political situations, if we do not give central place to the issue of climate and its denial.”
“It is as if a large part of the ruling classes have come to the conclusion that there will be no more space on earth for themselves and the rest of its inhabitants. This would explain the pervasiveness of inequalities, the degree of deregulation, criticism of globalization and, above all, the desperate desire In returning to the old protection of the national state,” he said.
With information from Agence France-Presse ©
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