the general properties of the members of the collective in Chapter 2
and the new separation of the powers to take into account and the
power to put in order in Chapter 3, I now have to approach the ques-
tion of theskillsthat will allow us to follow in real time this experi-
mental metaphysics that the old Constitution, with its obsession with
binary order in nature and society, never managed to register. Still, be-
fore plunging into this enterprise and harvesting the fruits of our ef-
forts, we must deal with one more difficulty and protect ourselves
against the dangers of one other form of naturalism.
The Third Nature and the Quarrel between
the Two “Eco” SciencesOne’s home, habitat, or dwelling is calledoikosin Greek. Commenta-
tors have often been astonished at the fate of the word “ecology”—
“habitat science,” used to designate not the human dwelling place but
the habitation of many beings, human and nonhuman, who had to be
lodged within a single palace, as in a sort of conceptual Noah’s ark.
How can we explain, people wondered, that a term used for nature ex-
ternal to humanity can take from Greek the most anthropocentric, the
most domestic, the most patriarchal of its terms, the one that has al-
ways been the most distant frompolisand the exercise of liberty?^2
The same problem arises with the notion of ecosystem. In suppos-
ing that they had surpassed the old limits of anthropomorphism be-
cause they were integrating nature and society, users of the term “eco-
system” were retaining modernism’s basic defect, its penchant for
composing the whole without the explicit will of those humans and
nonhumans who find themselves gathered, collected, or composed in
it. They had even found a way to array all beings, humans and non-
humans alike, under the notion of “global ecosystem,” in a totality
constituted outside the political world, in the nature of things. The
ecosystem integrated everything, but too quickly and too cheaply.^3 The
Science of ecosystems allowed us to dispense with the requirements of
discussion and due process in building the common world: obviously
a capital failing in a democracy. Science pursued its ravages in philoso-
phy itself, which purported to be putting an end to them. Eco-logical,
perhaps, but not “eco-politically correct.”^4
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