Human Species as a Biopolitical Concept

Abstract

The consequences of the multidimensional contemporary crisis – economic, ecological, of healthcare, at the same time – shed light on the ontological condition of the human species and imply an anthropological “revolution”. The article reviews the Kantian and Darwinian drifts of modern anthropological philosophy, which converge to produce a mirror effect between
individual singularity and species singularity to produce a concept of the human species. Resorting to the “perspectivist problem” formulated among others by Viveiros de Castro, it is proposed an approximation to the idea of the human species as both being-species and production-species, starting from its specific relationship with itself and with other living species. In order to understand the type of species that the human being has become, I argue that a new concept of species is required, with basis on a notion of history stripped of evolutionism, as well as a notion of evolution freed from all anthropocentrism – and with the question of capitalism as unavoidable dimension.