Metaphysical Midwifery and the Living Legacy of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen

Abstract

Although classified by many as a sub-field of economics, ecological economics was originally conceived of, in the late 1980s, as a transdiscipline, employing a range of expertise, in collaboration with social actors, to address a common matter of concern: how to halt, and reverse, the rampant destruction of the biological substrate of life on earth, which is being caused by modern industrialization? From humble beginnings, ecological economics today enjoys increasing recognition as a key academic discourse addressing the combined challenges of social and ecological instability that characterize the global assemblages of twenty-first century human society. At least in part, this can be seen as a result of circumstance having demonstrated the foresight of early contributors to the discourse, among them, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. Both his censure, from the early 1970s until his death in the mid-90s, and the recent renaissance of interest in his work help illustrate something exceptional about The Barcelona School of ecological economics and political ecology: the costs and benefits of a persistent commitment to understanding the human condition as an embedded part of the complex living-systems dynamics of planet earth. Central to this posture are two elements common to the work of both Georgescu-Roegen and Joan Martínez-Alier, long one of his staunchest advocates, and to the Barcelona School of ecological economics and political ecology: i. systematic and structured attention to the historicity of contemporary socio-ecological situations and ii. formal attention to constructing what Foucault, in responding to Kant, once called “a critical ontology of ourselves.” The former reflects a critique of the disregard for life, human and non-human, that has accompanied the rise of the Anthropocene; the latter a response to the epistemological and methodological implications of the integral role played by the hegemonic globalized academia in producing and perpetuating that disregard for life.