Events

Thursday, October 16, 2025 – 5pm, Foster 103

Seth Auster-Rosen , Divinity School, University of Chicago

In this paper, I discuss similarities between the reasoning in Bruno Latour’s early socio-philosophical work, The Pasteurization of France (originally Les Microbes: guerre et paix suivi de Irréductions, 1988), and in Nāgārjuna’s Root Verses on the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, ~2nd c. CE), arguably the most important work of Buddhist philosophy. Latour’s writing on the nature of scientific knowledge and human-nonhuman relations has made him one of the most important thinkers about the Anthropocene geological epoch. Nāgārjuna, like Latour, challenges the ways we conceive of ourselves as human subjects in an objectifiable world; however, his Madhyamaka (‘Middle Way’) philosophical analysis extends beyond Latour’s reasoning. By comparing key insights from Latour’s and Nāgārjuna’s works, I argue that Nāgārjuna ultimately pushes anti-essentialist arguments to deeper conclusions than Latour does, but that Latour’s application of network-based thinking to modern forms of scientific knowledge production models the kind of impact that’s possible for present-day Mādhyamika thinkers in a world of increasing ecological emergency.