Ethics after Humanity

Abstract

Can humanity survive climate change and mass extinction? Concepts of humanity assumed or implicit in the field at the founding of this journal are under critical pressure from multiple directions. Reading across schools of thought confronting relations sometimes called Anthropocene, this essay explains five tasks for religious ethics “after humanity:” (i) incorporate species‐level relations of power and vulnerability; (ii) denaturalize planetary myth‐making; (iii) undo colonial humanisms; (iv) recompose ways of life after the end of the world; and (v) reanimate ethical inquiry in attentiveness to multispecies worldmaking.