From Struggle for Existence to Autotelic Joy – A Concept of Life for the Anthropocene
Keywords:
Concept of life, Biological time, Autopoiesis, Plaat, Autotelic behaviour, JoyAbstract
This article develops a concept of life adequate to the Anthropocene, by tracing the historical shift from life understood as a matter of survival under external selection pressures, to self-realizing activity. By following the divergence between continental and British traditions after Malthus and Darwin, we argue that the functionalist understanding obscured essential features of living systems. Drawing on Albert Schweitzer’s ethics of reverence for life, Hans Jonas’s phenomenology of biological temporality, and recent work on autopoiesis, interoception and agency, the article advances a concept of life as intrinsically unfinished and future-oriented. Our perspective let time emerge as an inherent biological agent. Life is characterized not merely by survival, but by self-maintaining agency, temporal openness, and surplus capacities that manifest as autotelic joy. Studies on animal behavior support the claim that joy is not an epiphenomenon but possibly also a pervasive biological factor. The article concludes that the ecological crisis of the Anthropocene is rooted in an instrumentalized concept of life, and that responding to it requires a philosophy that recognizes living beings as processual, relational, and ethically significant.
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