ETHICS OF IRRELEVANCE AND HUMILITY OF THOUGHT IN EUGENE THACKER’S COSMIC PESSIMISM

Abstract

This article proposes an Environmental Ethics grounded in the perspective of Cosmic Pessimism as articulated by Eugene Thacker—a concept that has gained increasing prominence in certain intellectual and artistic circles, reflecting a growing focus on Earth as an autonomous entity and a heightened interest in the non-human. For Thacker, the profound challenges of the environmental crisis, coupled with the apparent indifference of the cosmos to our efforts to overcome them, evoke a sense of the fundamental insignificance of human action. In this context, the disproportion between human agency and the vast cosmic and temporal forces shaping the planet becomes evident—a view fully aligned with the logic of the "world-without-us." Through the lens of Cosmic Pessimism, the author conceives the world not as a unified whole, but as potentially multiple and perhaps not meant for us at all. Accepting our own irrelevance in the face of the environmental crisis may thus bring a certain freedom and introduce humility into thought, prompting us to radically rethink our stance toward the planet. Consequently, pessimism emerges as a way to reorganize without hope, to adapt, and to dissolve established forms of organization, enabling alternative modes of coexistence with Earth.