Nature et souveraineté

How should we rethink the concept of sovereignty in the light of the ecological crisis? For the crisis is in reality not ecological, but political. Rather than human politics applied to the things of nature, we ought to be inventing the cosmopolitics of nature.

To date, philosophers' responses to that vital question have been rare indeed; this essay takes up the challenge. Based on the founding texts of sovereignty and contemporary examples, Gérard Mairet, one of the finest specialists of the concept of sovereignty, suggests some leads for a new political philosophy at a time of environmental crisis. He demonstrates how the concept of sovereignty can be rethought in view of that crisis, bearing in mind that huge areas of the world environment elude all sovereignty: the atmosphere, the high seas, the Arctic.