Contents

Preface: On Waking Up

Acknowledgments

1 The Anthropocene Rupture

A rupture in Earth history

Volition in nature

Earth System science

Scientific misinterpretations

The ecomodernist gloss

An epoch by any other name

2 A New Anthropocentrism

To doubt everything

Anthropocentrism redux

The antinomy of the Anthropocene

The new anthropocentrism

The world-making creature

The new anthropocentrism versus ecomodernism

In praise of technology

3 Friends and Adversaries

Grand narratives are dead, until now

After post-humanism

The freak of nature

The ontological wrong turn

Recovering the cosmological sense?

4 A Planetary History

The significance of humans

Does history have a meaning?

An Enlightenment fable

“Politics is fate”

5 The Rise and Fall of the Super-agent

Freedom is woven into nature

Responsibility is not enough

Living without Utopia

Notes

Index