843679

research-article2019
ANR0010.1177/2053019619843679The Anthropocene ReviewAntadze

Research article

The Anthropocene Review

Who is the Other in the age

2019, Vol. 6(1-2) 38­–54
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
of the Anthropocene? sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/2053019619843679
https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019619843679
Introducing the unknown other journals.sagepub.com/home/anr

in climate justice discourse

Nino Antadze

Abstract
This paper contributes to advancing the research agenda on ethics in the Anthropocene
(Schmidt JJ, Brown PG and Orr CJ (2016) Ethics in the Anthropocene: A research agenda. The
Anthropocene Review 3(3): 188–200). Specifically, it responds to the call to explore ‘the new human
condition’ (Palsson G, Szerszynski B, Sörlin S et al. (2013) Reconceptualizing the ‘Anthropos’ in
the Anthropocene: Integrating the social sciences and humanities in global environmental change
research. Environmental Science & Policy 28: 8) in the age of the Anthropocene by rethinking the
relational ontology within the context of climate change. I propose that given the global and long-
term implications of climate change, climate justice discourse should go beyond the Self–Other
binary and incorporate the notion of the Unknown Other. By drawing on the moral philosophy of
Emmanuel Levinas and moral sentimentalism scholarship, I theorize the ethical relationship with
the Unknown Other. I propose that the encounter with the ‘face’ (identity, experience, voice) of
the Unknown Other is conditioned by the Self’s contribution to climate change. Therefore, the
encounter with the Unknown Other is not physical and corporeal but ethical, and thus triggers a
moral engagement that has a dual base – responsibility and emotion. The former is expressed in
the form of asymmetrical responsibility and the latter in the form of empathy.

Keywords
Anthropocene, climate change, climate justice, Emmanuel Levinas, empathy, environmental
justice, responsibility

The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family
together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. … We require
a new and universal solidarity. (Pope Francis, 2015: 12–13)

University of Prince Edward Island, Canada Corresponding author:

Nino Antadze, Environmental Studies Program, University
of Prince Edward Island, 550 University Avenue,
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, C1A 4P3, Canada
Email: nantadze@upei.ca
Antadze 39

Introduction
The past decade has been the warmest on record (National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA), 2017), the mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 caused the worst known
destruction of corrals (Griffith, 2016), and Antarctica’s ice sheet is rapidly disappearing (The New
York Times, 2017). These are only a few examples illustrating how human-induced degradation of
the environment has reached a catastrophic magnitude. Scientists argue that we have entered a new
epoch in planetary history – the Anthropocene. For the first time in our planet’s existence, a single
species, Homo sapiens, is driving planetary-scale changes (Steffen et al., 2011). Scholars also
agree that the scale and intensity of the changes in the Anthropocene, and more important, the lead-
ing role that humans play in these changes, necessitate rethinking some of the fundamental ques-
tions about what it means to be a human, what binds us together, and how we want to live on this
planet (Gibson-Graham, 2011; Palsson et al., 2013; Schmidt et al., 2016). Within the context of the
Anthropocene, scholars propose thinking about ‘the new human condition’ (Palsson et al., 2013:
8), including ‘different conceptions of connectivity and belonging’ (Gibson-Graham, 2011: 4).
One of the most vivid examples of human-dominated global environmental processes, and thus
of the Anthropocene, is climate change. Today, there is a widely recognized scientific consensus
about the anthropogenic nature of global warming and its consequences (Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), 2007). In fact, in many parts of the world these consequences have
become an everyday reality. Scholars increasingly argue that, because of the disproportionate dis-
tribution of the negative consequences of climate change, it is not only an economic, social, envi-
ronmental, and political issue but also one of the most important moral challenges that we face
(Cripps, 2013; Gardiner, 2010; Jamieson, 2010; Moore and Nelson, 2010).
In this paper, I propose that the unprecedented scale and complexity of climate change require
rethinking the perception of and the relationship with the Other. Within the environmental justice
frame, the Other is conceptualized as the ‘Known Other’, who is identified, described, and even
personalized. In climate change reality, the Other cannot always be identified with certainty, and
his or her existence may be unknown altogether; therefore, alongside the ‘Known Other’, we need
to refer to the ‘Unknown Other’.
By drawing on the moral philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and on moral sentimentalism
scholarship, I theorize the ethical relationship with the Unknown Other. Following Levinas’s
lead, I propose that the inclusion of the Unknown Other in climate justice discourse is possible if
the Self encounters the Unknown Other. For this to happen, one must recognize the existence of
the ‘face’ of the Unknown Other; that is, the fact that the Unknown Other, even though unseen and
unidentified, has an identity and experience, and is vulnerable or may be even suffering. This
encounter commands moral engagement with the Other that, I argue, has a dual base. The first
pillar of this engagement is deontological, based on the notion of responsibility, and the second
pillar is emotive, based on the sentiment of empathy. Yet the conventional frame of responsibility
and empathy needs to be revisited in the case of climate change and reformulated in order to
incorporate the Unknown Other.
The paper addresses the need to enhance the normative premise of climate change (Edelgrass,
2012; Moore and Nelson, 2010) by conceptualizing the Self–Other relationship in light of the pres-
ence of the Unknown Other. More specifically, the paper advances a dual base of moral engage-
ment with the Other that expands the dominant focus on responsibility (Cripps, 2013; Eckersley,
2016; Edelgrass, 2012; Fragnière, 2016; Jamieson, 2014) by incorporating an emotive response to
the suffering of the Other. The paper thus responds to the call to rethink the new human condition
in the age of the Anthropocene (Palsson et al., 2013) by inquiring into what this new human condi-
tion entails in terms of the relational ontology within the context of the unfolding climate crisis.
40 The Anthropocene Review 6(1-2)

More broadly, this paper underscores the importance of formulating and conveying the moral
significance of climate change and framing it as a moral problem. This line of inquiry aligns with
the recent calls to view climate change as a moral challenge (Jamieson, 2014; Moore and Nelson,
2010) and, despite cognitive difficulties in identifying climate change as a moral imperative
(Gifford, 2011; Markowitz and Shariff, 2012), to not dismiss the fundamental connection between
ethical concepts, such as justice and equity, and the unfolding climate crisis (Harlan et al., 2015;
Klinsky et al., 2017). Although the major concern of this paper is to analyze the implications of
conceptualizing climate change as a pressing ethical issue, it is important to note that moral and
political framings of climate change are closely connected (Klinsky et al., 2017; Parks and Roberts,
2010; Vanderheiden, 2016), and will be discussed in the final section of the paper.
This paper is structured as follows. First, I provide a brief review of the notion of the Other in
environmental justice scholarship. A comprehensive review of this literature is beyond the scope
of this paper, so my aim here is to illustrate the need to introduce the concept of the ‘Unknown
Other’ within the context of climate justice discourse. Next, I describe the Levinasian notion of
‘the encounter with the face of the Other’ as a precondition for moral engagement with the
Unknown Other. In this section, I theorize two bases of moral engagement with the Other –
responsibility and emotion. I conclude by discussing the implications of my argument for rethink-
ing the nature of togetherness in the age of the Anthropocene, and by outlining the suggestions for
future research.

The Known Other in environmental justice discourse

The Self–Other dichotomy is central to environmental justice discourse. The environmental justice
movement grew from the grassroots protest against siting hazardous waste facilities in predomi-
nantly black and low-income communities. In this initial conceptualization of environmental jus-
tice discourse, labeled ‘environmental racism’, the Other – racialized minority groups and
communities of color – were treated unfairly through unequal distribution of environmental harms
(Agyeman et al., 2016; Bullard, 1983; McGurty, 1997). The initial understanding of environmental
injustice claims was soon critiqued for being too narrow, and for overlooking the broader socio-
spatial issues that underlie environmental racism (Pulido, 2000), the procedural considerations that
lead to unfair outcomes (Lake, 1996), and the diversity of environmental justice themes that go
beyond the issue of local distribution of pollution (Taylor, 2000; Walker, 2009).
Since its genesis, the scope of the environmental justice frame has expanded to cover a diversity
of issues (e.g. food, energy, climate, urban planning) and geographic scales (e.g. the global mani-
festations of environmental injustice), as well as environmental injustice claims in relation to the
non-human world (Schlosberg, 2013). The complex discursive frame of environmental justice
(Holifield et al., 2009) necessitated the development of a pluralistic conceptualization of environ-
mental justice. According to Schlosberg (2004: 521), environmental justice should be understood
as a ‘trivalent’ concept comprising ‘three interlinking, overlapping circles of concern’ – distribu-
tive, procedural, and recognition justice accounts.
All three justice accounts largely build on the unfair treatment of the Other. In the case of dis-
tributive injustice, the Other suffers disproportionately as a result of environmental problems; in
the case of procedural injustice, the Other’s opportunities to participate in decision-making pro-
cesses are limited; and in the case of recognition injustice, the value of the Other’s experience,
identity, and voice are not recognized. The broader premise of the Self–Other dichotomy in the
environmental justice frame is that, although environmental problems are relevant to all of us, the
Other, who is already in some way disadvantaged, will be more vulnerable to these environmental
problems (Holifield et al., 2018). Within the pluralistic context of environmental justice, the notion
Antadze 41

of responsibility has been analyzed as spatially constituted, not only in relation to distinct spatiali-
ties of distributive outcomes but also in terms of analyzing ‘spaces of misrecognition’ and ‘spaces
of fair process’ (Walker, 2009).
The pluralistic framing of environmental justice has been augmented by the rich empirical
research documenting the diverse understanding and manifestation of environmental injustice. In
these bodies of work the Other, who is treated unfairly, is always known. It may be communities
of color or low-income communities who bear the cost of hosting waste infrastructure (McGurty,
1997; Rootes and Leonard, 2009) or lack access to healthy and nutritious food (Alkon and
Agyeman, 2011; Gottlieb and Joshi, 2010), or indigenous communities who experience not only
the decline of tribal natural resources but also the threat to their identities (Harper and Harris, 2011;
Schlosberg and Carruthers, 2010; Whyte, 2011).
Since the first Climate Justice Summit in 2002 and, particularly, after Hurricane Katrina in
2005, the environmental justice frame has been increasingly applied to analyzing the ethical impli-
cations of climate change (Schlosberg, 2013; Vanderheiden, 2016). Climate justice discourse
underlines the unequal distribution of the impact of climate change, often targeting the most vul-
nerable and disadvantaged communities. As Schlosberg (2013: 46) notes, climate change was ini-
tially seen ‘as simply another, if broader, environmental manifestation of social injustice’. Although
climate justice scholarship has drawn on the pluralistic view of environmental justice, which goes
beyond the distributional aspect and incorporates the procedural and recognition justice accounts,
the distributive turn in climate justice discourse seems to be a dominant one. The most prevalent
approaches to climate justice are the historical responsibility approach and the rights-based
approach (Caney, 2006; Neumayer, 2000; Page, 2008; Ringius et al., 2002; Schlosberg, 2004;
Vanderheiden, 2016), which have a clear distributive logic. In these conceptualizations, both the
polluter and the party that bears the disproportionate burden of pollution are identifiable; that is,
the Other is clearly defined. While the distributive logic holds its place in climate justice discourse,
I argue that it may not be enough to encapsulate the complexities posed by climate change.
Compared with local or even national-scale environmental issues that were at the forefront of the
environmental justice movement and scholarship, climate change is a far greater problem in terms
of its scale and implications. Therefore, the dominant understanding of responsibility as spatial-
ized, especially as it relates to geographies of recognition (Walker, 2009), needs to be reimagined.
In the Discussion and conclusions section, I will return to the pluralistic notions of justice and the
need for a broader understanding of recognition and responsibility. For now, I turn to the notion of
the Unknown Other in climate justice discourse.

The Unknown Other in climate justice discourse

Climate change has been described as ‘a perfect moral storm’ because it involves the merger of sev-
eral ethical problems (Gardiner, 2006: 398), and as a ‘paradigm moral problem’ (Edelgrass, 2012:
210) because the frame conventionally used to analyze moral dilemmas proves irrelevant with regard
to climate change. As Jamieson (2010: 83) explains, in the conventional value system, harms and
their causes are individual, identifiable, local, and short-term. In this scenario, a victim and a perpe-
trator are known, and individual responsibility for intended harm is clearly identifiable. This value
framework works well with the conventional environmental justice framework because the dispro-
portional allocation of environmental harm can be traced to a specific location and community.
Climate justice discourse may pose certain challenges to this frame of thinking.
Climate change presents a different type of moral problem, where the analytical frame of indi-
vidual blame and responsibility is no longer applicable (Jamieson, 2010; Sinnott-Armstrong,
2005). Once accumulated, mundane everyday actions that were not intended to inflict harm may
42 The Anthropocene Review 6(1-2)

cause devastating consequences. Instead of a single person who is responsible for the harm, it is
millions of people who contribute to the suffering of Others, who are mostly distant in space and
time (Jamieson, 2010). Thus, climate change is characterized by ‘the fragmentation of agency’,
meaning the harm is caused not by one agent but by a large number of uncoordinated actors
(Gardiner, 2006: 399). Not only is the agency distributed and fragmented, but the impacts of cli-
mate change are also spatially dispersed (Gardiner, 2006). There is no linear or immediate cause–
effect relationship between individual actions and their effects; rather, these relationships are
non-linear and cumulative (Schmidt et al., 2016).
In this situation, the Other who will bear a disproportionate impact of climate change may not
always be known. Because of the global nature of climate change, it is impossible to know exactly
who will bear the consequences of the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the
atmosphere. For instance, it is unlikely that an American commuting by car two hours a day to and
from work would be aware of how climate change has affected the everyday life of a resident of the
Marshall Islands or a farmer in Ethiopia. Some may not even be aware of the existence of the Marshall
Islands. Here my goal is not to highlight the ignorance of those who contribute to climate change but
to point out that the scale of climate change makes it impossible for all agents to know each other.
The notion of the Unknown Other is also relevant to human Others of the future – those who have
not yet been born. Because of the deferred nature of climate change, its negative impacts will dispro-
portionally fall on future generations (Gardiner, 2006). To some extent we can predict the long-term
impacts of climate change, but we do not have any way of knowing who will suffer from climate
change in the future, how they will react, or what they will feel and think. Aside from being relevant
to humans, the concept of the Unknown Other applies to non-human beings as well. Climate change,
and human-induced environmental changes more generally, also affect the non-human world, neces-
sitating environmental justice discourse to adopt a multispecies perspective (Wadiwel, 2019).
The environmental justice frame has been readily applied to climate justice discourse, but it
does not imply the existence of the Unknown Other. As described previously, it is built around the
notion of the Other who is identifiable and known. I do not deny the merits of pluralistic accounts
of environmental justice in relation to climate justice discourse, but rather I propose that we need
to expand our understanding of the Other in light of the scale and complexity of the unfolding
climate crisis. Rethinking the relational understanding of justice by incorporating the Unknown
Other in climate justice discourse will broaden the scope of the recognition paradigm of environ-
mental justice.
Thus, if we admit the existence of the Unknown Other, the next question is how to establish an
ethical relationship with somebody who is unknown. What is such an ethical relationship based on,
and what does it entail? In the next section, I start to theorize the moral engagement with the
Unknown Other.

Moral engagement with the Unknown Other

I start with the premise that in order to morally engage with the Unknown Other, he or she needs
to have a ‘face’. This is not necessarily a face of a concrete human being but a representation of an
experience of otherness. In order to develop this line of thought I draw on Emmanuel Levinas’s
work, particularly his concept of ‘the face of the Other’, which is a representation of a human face
(or visage) ‘by which alterity presents itself to me’ (Fred Alford, 2014: 252) and by which ‘the ethi-
cal meaning of the Other is revealed’ (Edelgrass et al., 2012: 7).
The concept of the face of the Other is important for our discussion because it highlights the
need not only to admit the existence of the Unknown Other but also to recognize that the Unknown
Other has a face. As Levinas (2012) explains, a face is the symbol that is needed to represent the
Antadze 43

experience of absolute otherness, to expose the Unknown Other’s vulnerability. If the Unknown
Other remains faceless – that is, without the understanding of his or her otherness – it will be
impossible to morally engage with him or her. In other words, we recognize that there is an
Unknown Other, whom we have not seen and may never see, who has a face (an identity, experi-
ence) and is vulnerable or even suffering. A face enables a relationship between the Self and the
Other that does not imply that the Other is with, against, or similar to the Self. The face signifies
that the Unknown Other is present in all its originality, alterity, and irreducibility (Davis, 2013).
‘The face is expression, a source of meanings coming from elsewhere rather than the product of
meanings given by me. … it entails the production of new, unexpected meanings rather than the
communication of what was already familiar’ (emphasis in the original) (Davis, 2013: 46–47).
For Levinas, the face of the Other implies an encounter with the Other, and it is this encounter that
calls for a moral engagement with the Other (Morgan, 2011: 59). Yet in climate change reality we
often are unable to see the face of the Other, witness the suffering of the Other, or even know about
the existence of the Other. As discussed previously, because of the fragmentation of agency in space
and time, a concrete, corporeal face-to-face encounter may not always happen. However, I argue that
although a face-to-face encounter may not be possible, an encounter in the case of climate change
does happen – it is conditioned by the Self’s contribution to the problem. As the Self contributes to
the vulnerability and suffering of the Unknown Other, the Self encounters him or her. Therefore, the
encounter with the face of the Unknown Other is not about geographic proximity, but about ‘the
immediacy of the engagement with difference’ (Sager, 2009: 27). The encounter, despite a conven-
tional understanding of the word, does not establish a certain understanding of the Unknown Other;
it does not make the Unknown Other any more familiar or similar to the Self (Davis, 2013). As Davis
(2013: 45) explains, ‘the encounter is not an event that can be situated in time; it is rather a structural
possibility that precedes and makes possible all subsequent experiences’.
The encounter with the Unknown Other is not physical and corporeal but ethical. The encounter
happens because the Other shares the world with the Self (Davis, 2013; Morgan, 2011), and as
climate change is a global reality, the Unknown Other is always present even if unseen and unrec-
ognized. As Morgan summarizes, ‘It is, from the self’s side, the responsibility to acknowledge and
accept the other that is always already present in ordinary life – pre-conceptual, pre-articulate, pre-
reflective’ (Morgan, 2011: 64). This quote implies that the ethical relationship with the Other,
according to Levinas, is of primary importance and precedes the development of any rules or codes
of conduct (Edelgrass et al., 2012).
The encounter with the face of the Other is ethical because it challenges the Self – it makes the
Self realize that the Self shares the world with the Other (Davis, 2013). As Davis (2013: 48) clari-
fies, ‘My power and freedom are put into question. Such a situation is ethical because a lot depends
upon how I respond’. The encounter with the face of the Other is ethical for both the Known Other
and the Unknown Other. Even though Levinas never uses the term ‘the Unknown Other’, one of
the important aspects of his argument is that the Self–Other encounter reveals the world beyond the
Self, and thus the latter discovers the presence of innumerable Others (or the third party, as Levinas
refers to it). As multiple Others are revealed to the Self, they become equal to the Self; therefore,
the ethical relation that Levinas argues for is tightly linked with the concern for justice (Davis,
2013). As Levinas explains (as cited in Wright et al., 1988: 170), ‘there are not only two of us in
the world. But I think that everything begins as if we were only two. It is important to recognize
that the idea of justice always supposes that there is a third. But, initially, in principle, I am con-
cerned about justice because the other has a face’.
In the next two sections, I propose that the encounter with the face of the Unknown Other trig-
gers a moral engagement that has a dual base – responsibility and emotion – whereas the former is
expressed in the form of asymmetrical responsibility and the latter in the form of empathy.
44 The Anthropocene Review 6(1-2)

Moral engagement through asymmetrical responsibility

According to Levinas, the notion of the face implies asymmetry – one is powerful and another is
weak (Wright et al., 1988). Since the Other is a fundamental and primary concept for Levinas, the
encounter with the Other has a disruptive power over the Self in the form of an ethical command.
As Edelgrass (2012: 221) notes, ‘the normative force of Levinas’s work is grounded in the disturb-
ing consciousness of the other’s vulnerability and suffering’. In this understanding of the Self–
Other relationship, the responsibility toward the Other is at the core of the nature of subjectivity
(Davis, 2013).
Levinas’s understanding of responsibility for the Other contrasts with the traditional conceptu-
alization of responsibility. What matters to most of us on a daily basis, and what has been the major
concern of Western moral thought, is not otherness but sameness – our ‘likeness to one another’
(Perpich, 2008: 2). In other words, ethical inquiry about a relationship or engagement with the
Other is about sameness, not difference. I care more about somebody who is like me, who is close
to me through genetic, ideological, or emotional ties, than somebody who is not. The latter under-
standing is closely tied to the capacity to act; that is, the Self is responsible for actions to which he
or she can respond. Therefore, the circle of responsibility is often bounded by the proximity of an
actor to the issue (Edelgrass, 2012).
While the conventional account of responsibility may work for the Known Other, it excludes the
responsibility for the Unknown Other – we are not responsible for those whom we do not know or
whose suffering we are ignorant about. However, Levinas reverses this logic by arguing that the
Self is responsible for the Other beyond his or her capacity to act. Levinas’s account of responsibil-
ity can be applied to the Unknown Other, as it is about the responsibility that ‘goes beyond what
we choose’ (Edelgrass, 2012: 220). The responsibility for the Other is infinite because the Other is
incomprehensible (what Levinas refers to as ‘Infinity’). The notion of absolute alterity is in line
with the notion of the Unknown Other because the latter exists beyond the Self’s consciousness
and is thereby incomprehensible.
Levinasian responsibility for the Other implies a responsibility that is unbounded spatially or
temporally – it is not conditioned by geographic proximity or influenced by the past (Sager, 2009).
This different temporal orientation departs from the dominant approach of historical responsibility
currently employed in climate change policy arena by shifting the focus from the past to the future.
Such Self–Other relationship is not primarily conditioned by past blames, but by the future of the
Other and responsibility towards him/her. The responsibility for the Other is also not bounded by
reciprocity – responsibility does not imply that the Other will reciprocate. Responsibility is a moral
engagement with the Other that is not an exchange; it unfolds without any pre-conditions, commit-
ments, or expectations and is therefore asymmetrical (Davis, 2013; Fred Alford, 2014).
The Self–Other relationship based on asymmetrical responsibility is thus able to incorporate the
Unknown Other, as it is not bounded by proximity, reciprocity, or past encounters. The Other who
is Unknown cannot reciprocate or become any closer or more similar to the Self. Yet this does not
abolish the need for responsibility for the Unknown Other. Edelgrass (2012: 222) clearly formu-
lates how unbounded responsibility changes the outlook of climate action: ‘There is no argument,
no excuse, that can justify the neglect of the appeal of the other who suffers from the environmental
changes brought by climate change’. More broadly, Levinasian asymmetrical responsibility clearly
connects with the climate justice discourse because the responsibility for the Other arises not
because of the Other’s power but because of his or her vulnerability and suffering (Edelgrass et al.,
2012). The centrality of the disproportionately affected Other, who suffers more than the Self,
closely aligns with the climate justice (and environmental justice) framework, which is concerned
with developing an ethical relationship with the vulnerable Other.
Antadze 45

The asymmetrical responsibility that Levinas advances does not lead to ‘ethical utopianism’ or
‘moral chaos’ (Davis, 2013: 84) because of the presence of innumerable Others, or the third party.
The presence of the third party implies that the Other is not the only Other; there are many more,
and in fact, the Self can be the Other for them. Therefore, the responsibility that I have for the Other
means that the Self can expect the same ethical relationship. Thus, acknowledging the existence of
multiple Others, many of them Unknown, and encountering them by acknowledging their faces,
leads to a relational reality that is grounded in the asymmetrical responsibility of one for the Other.

Moral engagement through empathy

Moral engagement through asymmetrical responsibility cannot unfold without an emotional compo-
nent. In fact, according to Bauman (1995), being for the Other implies a different nature of together-
ness, as it rests on the emotional engagement with the Other before any commitments are made
(Bauman, 1995). The current scholarship places the major emphasis on responsibility (Cripps, 2013;
Eckersley, 2016; Edelgrass, 2012; Fragnière, 2016; Jamieson, 2014), somewhat neglecting the emo-
tive component of the ethical relationship with the Other. Yet emotions are integral to human society
and largely influence our judgments, relationships, and actions. Therefore, the human condition can-
not be decoupled from the emotions. In this section, I draw on the moral sentimentalism scholarship
to illustrate that empathy, as a key moral emotion concerned with the Self–Other relationship, should
play a central role in building a new relational reality in the Anthropocene.
Scholars have argued that moral sentiments are the central moral elements of justice. The stud-
ies on the emotional response to distributive or procedural injustice have shown that people will
experience positive emotions (happiness, satisfaction) or negative emotions (anger, frustration)
(Hegtvedt and Scheuerman, 2010). Yet most of these emotions are concerned with the Self rather
than the wellbeing of the society at large. Importantly, it is the latter that differentiates moral emo-
tions from the other types of emotions that may be triggered through injustice. The difference
between moral emotions and all other types of emotions is the emphasis on reacting and respond-
ing to the events and phenomena that do not directly affect the Self (Haidt, 2003).
Haidt (2003) divides moral emotions into four groups: the Other-condemning emotions (con-
tempt, anger, disgust), the Self-conscious emotions (shame, embarrassment, guilt), the Other-
suffering emotions (empathy, sympathy, compassion), and the Other-praising emotions (gratitude,
awe, elevation). Two groups of moral emotions that have dominated the research on the justice-
morality link are those in the Other-condemning and Self-conscious groups.1 Despite its ability to
bring the Self and Other together in a particularly profound way, empathy has enjoyed relatively
scant attention (Hegtvedt and Scheuerman, 2010). Empathy implies the ‘sharing of another’s emo-
tional state’ (Hitlin, 2008: 84) and ‘having the feeling of another (involuntarily) aroused in our-
selves, as when we see another person in pain’ (Slote, 2010: 13), and differs from sympathy, which
is a non-shared emotional response through which we feel sorry for somebody who is in pain or is
suffering (Slote, 2010).
In the cognitive-emotional framework of empathy developed by Davis (2006), an observer
experiences a certain process, which results in a certain affective or non-affective outcome. That is,
‘the model conceives of the typical empathy “episode” as consisting of an observer being exposed
in some fashion to a target, after which some response on the part of the observer – cognitive, affec-
tive, motivational, or behavioral – occurs’ (Davis, 2006: 443). Similarly, Hegtvedt and Scheuerman
(2010) point out that the questions that explain the observer’s response to injustice that Others’
experience may relate to motivational or situational factors and can be triggered by empathetic
reactions. Yet applying this perpetrator-victim-observer framework of empathy to the climate jus-
tice context may pose challenges, as it does not relate to the fragmentation of agency, wherein
46 The Anthropocene Review 6(1-2)

everybody is a contributor and thus nobody is a neutral non-participant in the process. It is the
contributor who is (should be) empathetic to the other contributor, who has contributed less but is
suffering more than the Self. As I have argued, the Self’s encounter with the face of the Other is
conditioned by the Self’s contribution to climate change, which should trigger an emotional
response.
To clarify the point raised by scholars studying empathy, we tend to feel more empathetic
toward those who are either spatially or temporally close or with whom we are in some type of
communal relationship (Batson and Shaw, 1991; Hoffman, 2001; Slote, 2010); that is, we express
stronger empathetic tendencies when we ‘see’ the suffering of the Other. In an article published in
The New Yorker, Bloom (2013) argues that in light of climate change, ‘the limits of empathy are
especially stark’ because we cannot be empathetically sentimental toward the 7 billion people who
currently live on the planet, most of whom remain nameless, faceless, and story-less for us. That
is, nothing about them can stir our emotions or make us uncomfortable. While it is true that we are
more empathetic towards those who are known and proximal, I would like to follow Clohesy’s
(2013) lead, who suggests interpreting ‘proximity’ broadly, and propose that climate change cre-
ates an ethical proximity that transcends temporal and spatial divide. Therefore, the point of the
proposition on empathetic engagement with the Unknown Other is not about measuring the inten-
sity of empathy or comparing our empathetic responses in different cases. Instead, I am highlight-
ing the importance of emotional engagement with those who are unknown yet impacted by our
actions. Others’ sufferings, either unfolding now or happening in future, should not be left unac-
knowledged by an emotional response. Empathy as a central moral emotion that is concerned with
the Self–Other relationship has to play a central role here.
As Clohesy (2013: 41) argues ‘empathic experience of difference’ can exist only in the society
where ‘the recognition of difference is valued’. An encounter with the face of the Other not only
brings up the need for asymmetrical responsibility but also gives us an imaginative capacity
through empathy to emotionally engage with the Other. Thus, the new human condition in the
Anthropocene is conditioned not only by the deontological duty of asymmetrical responsibility but
also by an emotive response to the suffering of the Other. The moral engagement based on both of
these pillars – responsibility and empathy – will be much stronger, potentially leading to rethinking
the nature of togetherness in the age of the Anthropocene.

Discussion and conclusions

In this paper, I set out to theorize moral engagement with the Unknown Other and thus contribute
to our understanding of a new human condition in the age of the Anthropocene. I argued that in the
reality of climate change, the relational ontology of a new human condition should go beyond the
dominant Self–Other binary to incorporate the Self, the Known Other, and the Unknown Other,
who are all different and should not be reduced to one or another.
An ethical relationship with the Known Other has been established through the environmental
justice frame. However, without establishing an ethical relationship with the Unknown Other, cli-
mate justice discourse will not be complete. The conceptualization of togetherness that includes
acknowledging multiple Others, encountering them by embracing their faces (identities, experi-
ences, voices), and establishing an ethical relationship based on asymmetrical responsibility and
empathy implies that climate change is a moral challenge (perhaps more so than anything else)
because the Self’s encounter with Others defines the Self’s own ethical nature (Davis, 2013). The
conceptualization of togetherness as an openness to the Other who is unknown may sound para-
doxical, but the nature of climate change necessitates it. If we are not open to the Unknown Other,
we cannot encounter him or her, and thus, the latter can never be part of climate justice discourse.
Antadze 47

The introduction of the Unknown Other in this relational dynamic challenges us to consider a
Self–Other relationship that is not always spatially conditioned in a physical, geographic understand-
ing of space. This line of inquiry is relevant to Massey’s (2004) argument about the relational nature
of space, when space is constructed through interactions at all levels (here the emphasis is on spatial
scales; e.g. local or global). The introduction of the Unknown Other does not distort the relational
nature of the space of togetherness but rather diverts the discussion from solely a physical interaction
to an ethical one. Massey (2004) draws on Gatens and Lloyd’s (1999) conceptualization of a respon-
sibility that is relational and ‘implies extension’ both in spatial (goes beyond immediate surround-
ings) and temporal (is responsible for historical events) terms. Both of these points are relevant to
climate justice discourse because greenhouse gasses accumulate as a result of fragmented agency and
dispersed causality (Vanderheiden, 2016); therefore, ‘“as the past continues in our present” … so also
is the distant implicated in our “here”’ (Massey, 2004: 10). However, in the case of the Unknown
Other, the responsibility is not only extended (spatially and temporally, which includes a reference to
the future as well as the past) but also, as I argued previously, asymmetrical.
This point necessitates a distinction between understanding the spatially/temporally/culturally dis-
tant Other and the Unknown Other. In the case of the latter, it is not just a spatial, temporal, or cultural
distance; there is also an unavoidable cognitive inability to know the Other. Therefore, the inclusion
of the Unknown Other in climate justice discourse implies acknowledging the existence of the
Unknown Other, without the prospect of getting to know him or her, as well as the Self’s impact on
him or her through the contribution to climate change. Quoting Routledge’s (2003: 70) definition of
relational ethics, such a moral engagement means that unknown ‘difference is not denied, essential-
ized or exoticized but rather engaged with in an enabling and potentially transformative way’.
The concept of the Other and the inquiry into the Self–Other relationship have been and can be
explored from various theoretical perspectives. In this essay, I draw on the relational moral theory
of Emmanuel Levinas and moral sentimentalism scholarship to conceptualize moral engagement
with the Unknown Other in climate justice discourse. I hope that this work opens up avenues for
future inquiry into the implications of introducing the Unknown Other into our thinking and acting
that will draw on the rich scholarship spanning different theoretical traditions and disciplines. In
the following section, I present some initial thoughts on possible avenues for future inquiry.

The Unknown Other, recognition justice, and solidarity

The acknowledgment of the Unknown Other broadens the scope of the relational understanding of
justice (Fraser, 2003; Young, 1990) conceptualized as recognition justice in environmental justice
literature (Schlosberg, 2004). Recognition injustice implies cultural and institutional forms of stigma-
tization of and disrespect toward certain groups in society based on their religion, race, ethnicity, etc.
(Walker, 2012). Recognition paradigm, therefore, is about ‘failure in social institutions to acknowl-
edge or respect difference as a source of systematic wrongdoing’ (emphasis in the original) (Whyte,
2017: 117). The introduction of the Unknown Other broadens the recognition paradigm of environ-
mental justice, as it implies not only respecting and acknowledging the different and Known Other
but also acknowledging the existence of the different and Unknown Other. That is, it is about not only
the cognitive recognition of the sources of difference (e.g. culture, language, specific practices) but
also the ethical recognition of otherness when the sources of difference are unknown. It is recogniz-
ing the value of otherness without necessarily seeing, understanding, or knowing it.
This broadened understanding of the ethical recognition of the Other can be related to the concept
of solidarity within the context of the climate justice movement. Scholars document how climate
justice narrative has ‘created opportunities for strategic and translocal solidarities’ (Black et al., 2016:
286). These studies highlight the importance of not only place-specific alliances between different
48 The Anthropocene Review 6(1-2)

organizations, such as those working on social justice and climate change (Black et al., 2016), but
also how locally rooted activism can create translocal alliances and thus ‘forge solidarities beyond the
local’ (Routledge, 2011: 384). Others highlight the importance of activist spaces as hindering or fos-
tering factors for forging political solidarity among groups working on climate change (Kleres and
Wettergren, 2017). Scholars also warn that, although forged with good intentions, solidarity can
reflect power inequality (Black et al., 2016; Kleres and Wettergren, 2017; Routledge, 2011), and be
riddled by the legacy of racialization, whiteness, and colonialism (Curnow and Helferty, 2018).
The need for establishing ethical recognition and emotional connection with the Unknown Other
raises questions on how to build ‘solidarities across diversity’ (Routledge, 2011: 295), that is, how
to go beyond the local, place-based contextualization of solidarity and extend it to Unknown Others
without reproducing and further deepening existing inequalities. The Anthropocene, and climate
change in particular, may provide a context in which we can further probe this question and explore
the need for and nature of solidarity. For example, what kind of solidarity can exist in the age of the
Anthropocene? Does the nature of togetherness in the age of the Anthropocene involve a universal
solidarity that unifies humans and non-humans? What is the connection between universal solidarity
and extending the boundaries of moral community ‘by an increasing set of exchanges with distant
strangers’ where these distant strangers, or Others, are not only humans but also non-humans
(Corbridge, 1993; Whatmore, 1997: 463)? Is political solidarity possible in relation to climate
change? If so, what are the conditions necessary to build such a globalized political solidarity?

The Unknown Other and non-human Others

As the notion of the ‘Unknown Other’ is relevant to both humans and non-humans, the discussion
on the Unknown Other can be expanded to the non-human world. This work can draw on the litera-
ture in environmental humanities and, more specifically, the new materialism perspective. New
materialism underscores the interactions between humans and the non-human world, a condition
referred to as ‘trans-corporeality’ (Alaimo, 2016: 155; Coole and Frost, 2010), and thus views
agency in the age of the Anthropocene as being entangled with the non-human world. Human
choices and actions have material consequences for non-humans, making humans responsible for
the material transformation they cause in other bodies, places, and substances (Alaimo, 2016;
Blanc, 2017). This array of work can contribute to depicting the Unknown Other not only discur-
sively but also visually in contrast to the dominant visual representations of the Anthropocene that
emphasize the grandeur of human impact by obscuring non-human agencies (Alaimo, 2016).
This line of thought can draw on the work of Haraway (2016), who proposes adopting the term
Chthulucene to move the focus from the human as a main actor to other biotic and abiotic elements
of the Earth as being ‘the main story’. The implication of introducing the Unknown Other more
actively in this discourse can be twofold. First, it may contribute to overcoming the sharp nature/
society duality and thus enhancing ‘humanity-in-nature’ and ‘nature-in-humanity’ thinking (Moore,
2016: 5), as it challenges the conventional understanding of individual responsibility and emo-
tional response to other humans and non-humans that remain unknown. The second implication
can be related to Haraway’s (2016: 39) assertion that, in the age of the Anthropocene, ‘think we
must’. Here thinking is the opposite of thoughtlessness or the surrender of the capacity to think,
which Hanna Arendt famously suggested implies the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 2006). By recap-
ping Arendt’s account of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s trial, Haraway (2016: 39–40)
describes what thoughtlessness means:

… Here was a human being unable to make present to himself what was absent, what was not himself,
what the world in its sheer not-oneselfness is and what claims-to-be in here in not-oneself … Function
Antadze 49

mattered, duty mattered, but the world did not matter for Eichmann. The world does not matter in ordinary
thoughtlessness.

Haraway’s point about the importance of thinking relates to the argument of this paper: the exist-
ence of the Unknown Other does not justify thoughtlessness in the age of the Anthropocene. Even
if we do not know Others who are or may be affected by our actions (directly or indirectly), the
world should still matter to us; even when the Other remains unknown, we should not surrender
our capacity to think and, with that, our capacity ‘to live in consequences or with consequences’ of
our actions (Haraway, 2016: 40).

The Unknown Other and the political articulation of climate justice

The major concern of this paper is to analyze the implications of conceptualizing climate change as
one of the most pressing ethical issues that we face today. In this articulation, I follow the lead of schol-
ars who have stressed the need to view climate change as a moral challenge (Brown, 2013; Gardiner,
2006; Jamieson, 2014; Moore and Nelson, 2010). However, it is important to note that moral and
political framings of climate change are closely connected (Klinsky et al., 2017; Parks and Roberts,
2010; Vanderheiden, 2016), and more generally, ethics is considered to be ‘the interior life of politics”
contributing to and influencing political action and political activism (Pulido, 2003). This suggests that
future research stemming from the argument of this paper has the potential to engage more closely
with the political articulation of climate change. I presently see two main avenues for such an inquiry.
First, the conceptualization of the Unknown Other introduces a more specific moral language
acknowledging those who are or will be unseen. It is a unifying term for members of present and
future generations of both human and non-human realms. How can the incorporation of this lan-
guage affect or challenge the political action and political activism on climate change? Does it have
the potential to strengthen the role and impact of ethical framing of climate change in the political
arena? These are important questions for two reasons. First, scholars have acknowledged the
importance of incorporating ethics into the political process through building and using moral
language, rather than building arguments solely based on economic or legal arguments (Pulido,
2003). Second, climate change is regarded as a problem that does not readily register as a moral
imperative (Markowitz and Shariff, 2012), yet framing climate change as a moral issue is impor-
tant on both the academic and policy fronts (Gardiner, 2006; Jamieson, 2014; Klinsky et al., 2017;
Moore and Nelson, 2010; Parks and Roberts, 2010).
Second, future inquiry can analyze how reimagining the Self–Other relationship by incorporat-
ing the Unknown Other can contribute to achieving profound and fair climate action by addressing
the root cause of climate injustice – global inequality and its historical and social origins (Parks and
Roberts, 2006; Roberts and Parks, 2007). Harlan et al. (2015) argue that the analysis of (in)justice
is central to climate change politics and climate action because (1) wealthier states and people emit
significantly more greenhouse gasses, (2) poor and marginalized communities are particularly vul-
nerable to the impacts of climate change, and (3) climate change policies, including emission
reduction and climate adaptation policies, have unequal consequences for different people and
communities. This ‘“triple inequality” of responsibility, vulnerability and mitigation’ (Roberts and
Parks, 2007: 7) is particularly evident when applied to the inequalities in wealth and opportunity
between the Global North and the Global South (Coventry and Okereke, 2017). The countries suf-
fering most from climate change find themselves in this situation not because of specific individual
choices or any particular policy decision but mostly because of circumstances that are beyond their
control (e.g. history of colonialism, position in the global economic system, asymmetrical geopo-
litical power relations) (Coventry and Okereke, 2017; Parks and Roberts, 2006; Young, 2011).
50 The Anthropocene Review 6(1-2)

Addressing inequality and injustice at all levels will require building institutions that are aware of
and responsive to ‘the diversity of positions, opportunities and vulnerabilities’ (Klinsky et al.,
2017: 2; Vanderheiden, 2016). That is, rethinking the Self–Other relationship by acknowledging
the existence of the Unknown Other, as well as reimagining the Self’s moral engagement with the
Known and Unknown Others, is fundamental for building such institutions that should alleviate,
rather than produce or maintain structural injustice (Young, 2011).
Although this paper does not aim to contribute to political theory, there are certain connections to
Erik Swyngedouw’s discussion on post-political condition and climate change. Swyngedouw (2010:
225) argues that climate change is subject to post-political arrangements, wherein ‘ideological or dis-
sensual contestation and struggles are replaced by techno-managerial planning’. Thus, climate change
becomes depoliticized by being stripped from ‘the democratic agonistic struggle over the content and
direction of socio-ecological life’ (Swyngedouw, 2010: 225). Consequently, the solutions that are
being sought do not imply fundamental changes in social and economic systems, but rather they
propose technological and managerial ‘fixes’ that do not address the root cause of the problem
(Mangat et al., 2018; Swyngedouw, 2010, 2011). However, the previous discussion on the close con-
nection between an ethical framing of climate change and its political dimension reveals that manage-
rial, policy, or technical solutions should be informed by ethical considerations, and ‘any analysis of
the political response to climate change must take account of the ethical basis of positions’ taken by
different parties (Coventry and Okereke, 2017: 365). Climate change being the greatest moral chal-
lenge of our time will lead to ideological or dissensual contestation. In fact, empirical studies show
that people’s views on climate change are much more influenced by ideological differences than
cognitive or structural ones (Hornsey et al., 2016). This paper’s argument about the need to introduce
the Unknown Other in climate justice discourse suggests that the Anthropocene is a ‘game changer’
not only because it poses a need for introducing transformative, innovative solutions that cross scales
and bridge the social–ecological divide (Olsson et al., 2017) but also, and perhaps even more funda-
mentally, because of the need to rethink and reimagine the human condition.
This paper shares the pathos of a need for ‘the articulation of radical visions of future’ (Roberts
et al., 2018: 308) by proposing a different understanding of the Self–Other relationship that may
seem unattainable or even utopian, given that both individuals and states are reluctant to commit to
climate action even while knowing about Others who are suffering as a result of the unfolding
climate crisis. Yet the age of the Anthropocene challenges us by ‘demanding the impossible and
realizing the improbable’ (Swyngedouw, 2011: 273). Climate change, as a ubiquitous crisis of the
present and the future, may be an ethical force that, once fully realized, could provide a momentum
for rethinking some fundamental questions about the human condition. The necessity of asking
these questions implies that in order to have a profound and lasting effect, transformational climate
action should start from a new ethical height.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments. The
earlier version of this manuscript has been presented at the Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene
Symposium at Colorado State University, Fort Collins in April 2017 and at the 24th Annual Critical Geography
Conference “Envisioning the Future of Critical Geographies” at Pennsylvania State University in October
2017. The author would also like to thank the participants for their helpful comments.

Funding
The authors received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit
sectors for this article.
Antadze 51

Note
1. Haidt (2003) questions whether empathy is a moral emotion at all and considers it more of a role-taking
technique.

ORCID iD
Nino Antadze https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6790-5547

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