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Philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour (archive image)
Photo: Uli Deck / dpa
You probably had to think of Bruno Latour as an optimist.
This is rather a rarity in the field of empirical sociology.
Perhaps his general confidence in people and their role in nature is exactly what made Latour a star of the French intellectual scene and far beyond, especially in recent years.
As his publisher Les Éditions La Découverte confirmed to the dpa news agency in Paris, the philosopher of science and sociologist died on Sunday night at the age of 75.
Latour was considered one of the greatest contemporary intellectuals in France and was honored, among other things, as "one of the great innovators of the social sciences".
He was a professor at the elite university Sciences Po in Paris, and his books have been published in more than 20 languages.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday paid tribute to Latour as a humanist and pluralist spirit and expressed the great appreciation of the French nation for the thought leader.
"His reflections and writings will continue to inspire us to explore new ways of relating to the world." Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote that Latour left behind works that would continue to stimulate awareness.
»Lessons from the lockdown«
In any case, this will probably include his most recently published, increasingly alarmist writings and lectures: "Battle for Gaia", his 2015 investigation, which emerged from a series of lectures, on dealing with the "new climate regime".
Or »Où atterrir?« (Where should I go?) his study from 2017, which was published in Germany under the title »The Terrestrial Manifesto«.
»Où suis-je?« (Where am I?) was the name of his last book, which was published in winter 2021, with the subtitle »Lessons from the lockdown«.
Latour was concerned with shifting man's perspective of himself. He should break away from the traditional, science-initiated view of himself as an extraterrestrial who looks down on earth from space with a researcher's eye, in order to move towards a consciousness as part of the surrounding nature.
So instead of staring at climate and natural phenomena from a distance like a satellite or using Google Earth and remaining motionless, he asked people to delve deep into the intricate termite burrow of the environment around them, like Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa in »The Metamorphosis« - and digging in the control system in order to understand oneself as being "close to the earth", as part of the biomass.
Unlike many of his contemporary colleagues, he did not see technology, which is becoming more and more dominant in everyday life, as an enemy of man, but as a component of the systems around him that man should make use of.
Goal: To understand oneself as a being integrated into the terrestrial living space and to literally ground oneself.
»Parliament of Things«
Latour was one of the founders of the so-called actor-network theory, which goes beyond the traditional idea of a purely social construction of reality.
Rather, nature and society ascribed properties to one another in constantly new connections.
From this, Latour developed the idea of a “parliament of things” in which non-human actors should also have a say in the conditions of reality.
Latour saw the corona lockdown in particular, with its restriction of the individual to the narrowest, local space, as an ideal field for experimentation in order to carry out what he believed to be a necessary change of perspective for the future.
Latour loved such catchy allegories.
He can't think abstractly, he once said, he always needs an empirical framework that specifies concrete conditions.
This is how the »Denkatelier«, which Latour created at the suggestion of the government under the title »Où atterrir? considered primacy of the economy and the resulting material constraints should be reflected.
The energy turnaround, the climate crisis and the resulting social conflicts should be placed in a political context by networking scientists and intellectuals.
»Violent reaction of a soil«
Born in Beaune in 1947, Latour was also criticized for his approach of anchoring philosophy in the concrete.
In the 1990s, it became a target in the so-called war of science.
Scientists found it an affront that sociologists like Latour explored their mechanisms of truth production.
Latour emphasized that he was only describing the ability of scientific networks to generate objectivity.
Most recently, his considerations of getting people back down to earth, so to speak, from their heads in the clouds of flight from reality, came to be regarded as too class-struggle, esoteric or even conspiracy-theoretical because of his skepticism about globalization and his plea for the regional and local Act.
In his "Terrestrial Manifesto" everything is ultimately connected with everything else: Social and economic inequality, rampant populism and the "migration crisis" can only be understood, he wrote, by someone who understands that these are "ultimately three understandable, if also ineffective responses to a soil's violent response to what globalization has done to it".
Because of his field studies, whether in court or in the laboratory, the results of which he classified and processed in his models of thought, Latour described himself as an "empirical philosopher".
bor/dpa