Etica ed ecologia: agire contro i tempi, tra sistema e creatività

Trying to control the current ecological crisis implies an essential rethinking of human acting strategies, which could be described as an act of ‘repentance’. Conceived as the core of a scientific action theory, repentance also becomes the cornerstone of both a new notion of ethical behavior and of a new philosophy of nature capable of responding to the ongoing environmental emergency. In order to shape a notion of agency that is endowed with reversibility as well as with a cybernetic talent, I suggest two behavioral models: on the one hand, Michaelangelo’s sculpting art and, on the other hand, the bat’s sophisticated echolocation apparatus. An odd coupling indeed, but by no means infertile, at least from a philosophical viewpoint. Both models represent a critique of the contemporary sui securus human agency, which finds correspondence in a politico-economical reality of a mythical type, imagined as void of alternatives. In this light, to historicize the capitalistic myth becomes the prerequisite of a renewed action theory.