Tiger Liu

Research project: Human Extinction: Crisis of Experience/Experience of Crisis

Abstract

With the increasing realisation of the destructive capacity of human's planetary existences, extinction has become a catchphrase symbolising the contemporary zeitgeist. To a large extent, the idea of human extinction has acquired a quasi-transcendental status in recent debates: it is against the concrete and imminent possibility of mass extinction of species, human or non-human, that thinkings and actions are called forth, inviting the questioning of the conditions of (im)possibility of life. In response to this problematic situation that 'we' are engaged in, the project asks, what are the historical conditions that structure our being in such a way that our experience of the human-planet relation presents itself as crisis. To deepen this question which has yet to be adequately formulated within contemporary discourse, the project will approach this issue through the philosophical history of post-Kantianism, so as to better articulate the problem(s), specifically through the post-Kantian concepts of experience[erlebnis/erfahrung].