Book Review: B. Latour, Polityka Natury, Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, Warszawa 2009

Zdzisława Piątek

Abstract

The main idea of Latour’s innovative idea, presented in the form of political ecology, is that he introduces established natures in place of the natural needs and interests of the non-human living beings who are part of the collective. It states that the members of the collective do not have ready-made essences and unchanging needs, but needs negotiated by the lower house of the collective. The author of this idea, however, forgets that only people can be meaningfully said, bringing them closer to the truth, that they do not have a ready-made nature or strictly biologically defined needs, and therefore they can be established through negotiations in the broadly understood upbringing processes. So it’s reasonable to say that negotiations can persuade people to become vegetarians, but to say that lions, tigers, and sharks can also be included in vegetarianism negotiations is absurd. To some extent, the nature of living beings can now be changed thanks to genetic engineering, but it is difficult to call genetic engineering techniques “negotiations”. It is only about humans that it can be reasonably said that they create as unfinished beings own nature (second nature) by participating in the world of culture. But also this specific feature of the human species is biologically determined.