Demons of Modernity: Dostoyevsky and the Idols of Fossil Capitalism.

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Abstract

Climate and environmental change present crises that fundamentally alter the philosophical grounds on which social institutions are constructed. The “hyperobject” of climate change creates a new terrain for social philosophy to operate in. A “hyperobject” is a phenomenon intertwined with everything, yet we do not directly perceive it because it exists on such vast temporal and spatial scales. We can only grasp the fragments. In the case of climate change as a hyperobject, a notable shift is how it constructs selves differently from societies where the reality of climate change was not yet known. This leads to the examination of existential crises in human-environmental systems. This essay applies Dostoevsky's fiction to analyze the crises of climate and environmental change as modern social institutions contribute to them. Institutions can face a crisis of meaning when the follies of their legitimating narratives, such as progress, growth, and modernity, are highlighted by disruptions to planetary systems. Across the works of Dostoevsky, we can see how, without meaning and an existential construction, there can be a worship of new idols even if it’s just oneself. These same logics are what sustain fossil capitalism and produce the environmental destruction that has brought on the pressing issue of climate change. With climate change as a central hyperobject, we can draw on thinkers like Dostoevsky to guide us in navigating its complexities. This paper examines the meanings and aims of social institutions, and we can draw critiques and bring to the surface the contradictions and nihilism that arise from them, interweaving into the lives of individuals living in various forms of society. This is not a new problem, but climate change makes it truly existential.

Author

• Emily Swanson, University of Florida