Cohabiting. Thinking the common with Baptiste Morizot

Abstract

Since the beginning of modernity, humans have lost the ability to distinguish between inhabiting a place and invading (or exploiting) it. They think they can do anything, as the only beings with rights in the common house. In relation to his fellow humans, certainly, but without paying attention to others than humans, other than under their utilitarian aspect. With the help of the notion of cohabitation suggested by Baptiste Morizot, this paper tries to explain two fracture lines at the origin of this attitude: anthropocentrism, on the one hand, and the polarization between “nature” and the human being who believes himself to be outside of it (or separated), on the other. Thanks to the remedies suggested by ecopsychology, I then attempt to identify corrective measures to this handicap, and to explore how Christian anthropocentrism could be thought of in a less harmful way for the living, on a theoretical level.

Keywords

• Morizot
• Common home
• Inhabit
• Anthropocentrism
• Ecopsychology