criteria it is to articulate its propositions. It only knows—such is our
hypothesis—that the propositions cannot be arranged in two sets con-
stituted without due process. At a given moment—let us call it t 0 —we
find it completing its first cycle by instituting a certain number of es-
sences. Very well, but that also means that ithas eliminated other propo-
sitions,being unable to make room for them in the collective. (Let us
recall that we no longer have at our disposal the premature totaliza-
tion of nature that we could use as a supreme court of appeal.) Of
these excluded entities we cannot yet say anything except that they are
exteriorized or externalized: an explicit collective decision has been
madenotto take them into account; they are to be viewed as insig-
nificant. This is the case, in the example given earlier, of the eight
thousand people who die each year from automobile accidents in
France: no way was found to keep them as full-fledged—and thus liv-
ing!—members of the collective. In the hierarchy that was set up, the
speed of automobiles and the flood of alcohol was preferred to high-
way deaths. Even if this may appear shocking at first glance, no moral
principle is superior to the procedure of progressive composition of
the common world: for the time being, the rapid use of cars is “worth”
much more in France than eight thousand innocent lives per year.
About this choice, there is nothing we can say, yet. In contrast, a gradi-
ent is going to be established between the interior of the collective and
its exterior, which will gradually fill up with excluded entities, beings
that the collectivity has decided to do without, for which it has refused
to take responsibility—let us remember that these entities can be hu-
mans, but also animal species, research programs, concepts, any of the
rejected propositions that at one moment or another are consigned
to thedumping groundof a given collective. We no longer have a soci-
ety surrounded by a nature, but a collective producing a clear distinc-
tion between what it has internalized and what it has externalized.
Still, nothing proves that these externalized entities will always re-
mainoutsidethe collective. They no longer have to play, as they did in
the old scenography of facts and values, the obtuse role of a thing in it-
self, of stupid matters of fact, nor the role—as vague as it is estima-
ble—of transcendent moral principle. So what are the entities that
have been set aside going to do? Theyare going to put the collective in
danger,always provided that the power to take into account is sensi-
POLITICS OF NATURE
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