Protagoras and the Anthropocene: Can man still be the measure of all things?
The ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras is famous for his saying that man is the measure of all things. Though we don’t know much about Protagoras or his written work except for quotations appearing in other ancient works, the general view is that Protagoras was the father of moral relativism in philosophy.
The Protagoras’s complete statement has been translated as follows: “Of all things the measure is man, of the things that are, that [or “how”] they are, and of things that are not, that [or “how”] they are not.” It is unlikely that Protagoras believed that physical truths about the natural world such as the freezing point of water depended on one’s personal standpoint.
But under Protagoras’s tutelage in matters of values, we are left only with the measuring instrument called “man” (or more inclusively “humans”). In the age of the Anthropocene—that still-not-official geologic age in which humans are designated as the most potent geologic force on the planet—those issues thought to relate solely to the lives of humans do NOT, it turns outs, relate simply to humans.
While we may choose to celebrate the material progress of humankind, we do so heedless of the wider costs to the stability of the biosphere. Those who focus only on measures that exclusively relate to what we regard as human well-being miss the broader picture and mislead their audience. (They often say “the world” is getting better when they mean certain measures of human well-being are moving in a direction we regard as good.)
But, human civilization thrives under very specific environmental conditions, namely the ones experienced since the end of the last ice age. That age, the Holocene, has been marked by a moderately warm and stable climate which made possible agriculture and the concomitant rise of cities.
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