Technoscience, Anthropocene and Presentism: Arendt and the effects of the modern perplexity of “acting in nature”

Abstract

The article analyzes the Arendtian perplexity arising from a central modern experience of the human capacity for action: “acting in nature", that is, the technoscientific intertwinement of nature and history that embodied the power of action to initiate new processes, while displacing action from its original political sphere. When nature and action come to share the notion of process as their common denominator, action loses its capacity to disclose and to generate meaning for the historical narrative, thereby weakening its bond with immortality and with the necessity of history. In dialogue with other authors and concepts, the article examines how “acting in nature” has led us to the following perplexity: we have entered a new planetary regime (the Anthropocene) in which humanity becomes a geological agent rather than merely a historical one, historicizing and accelerating nature, while the historical-political sphere of human action has become atrophied, obstructed, or stagnant under the predominance of a presentist regime of historicity.