A Short Treatise on the Metaphysics of Tsunamis

Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture (SVMC)

by Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Malcolm B. DeBevoise (Translator)

In 1755 the city of Lisbon was destroyed by a terrible earthquake. Almost 250 years later, an earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean unleashed a tsunami whose devastating effects were felt over a vast area. In each case, a natural catastrophe came to be interpreted as a consequence of human evil. Between these two events, two indisputably moral catastrophes Auschwitz and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And yet the nuclear holocaust survivors likened the horror they had suffered to a natural disaster—a tsunami.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy asks whether, from Lisbon to Sumatra, mankind has really learned nothing about evil. When moral crimes are unbearably great, he argues, our ability to judge evil is gravely impaired, and the temptation to regard human atrocity as an attack on the natural order of the world becomes irresistible. This impulse also suggests a kind of metaphysical ruse that makes it possible to convert evil into fate, only a fate that human beings may choose to avoid. Postponing an apocalyptic future will depend on embracing this paradox and regarding the future itself in a radically new way.
The American edition of Dupuy’s classic essay, first published in 2005, also includes a postscript on the 2011 nuclear accident that occurred in Japan, again as the result of a tsunami.

Genres: Philosophy

92 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Jean-Pierre Dupuy is Professor Emeritus of Social and Political Philosophy at the École Polytechnique, Paris. He is the Director of research at the C.N.R.S. (Philosophy) and the Director of C.R.E.A. (Centre de Recherche en Épistémologie Appliquée), the philosophical research group of the École Polytechnique, which he founded in 1982. At Stanford University, he is a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (C.S.L.I.) and Professor of Political Science. Dupuy also has served as chair of the Ethics Committee of the French High Authority on Nuclear Safety and Security, and was inducted as an Academician into the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences.

Reviews

[Christopher Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jean-Pierre Dupuy is puzzled by the fact that when faced with a looming catastrophe (for example, the effects of climate change) people refuse to take appropriate action until the very last minute, if then. In his view, the reason they act this way is they don't consider the future to be real – only possible – and therefore give it little, if any, weight. And so, the catastrophe arrives.

In response to this cognitive dissonance, Dupuy developed what he terms “enlightened doomsaying”, a technique he describes as a “ruse” intended to make the future “real” to the present and thereby connect our destiny (the catastrophe that we are fated to suffer) with those responsible (namely, ourselves). The outcome of such doomsaying may be to avert the catastrophe. But probably not.

Dupuy's interest in this quirk of human thinking (and behaviour) led him to consider more deeply how we view catastrophes, both natural and man-made. The result is this brief book which looks at a variety of catastrophic events (the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the 2004 Sumatran tsunami, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and 9/11) and the ways in which people have attempted to understand them. Citing thinkers such as Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders and Hans Jonas, Dupuy sets out an array of attitudes to catastrophe: God's will, humanity's fault, unfathomable evil or the worst of contingencies. And he demonstrates how these attitudes can come and go, morph one into the other, return in a new guise and then fade again.

The discussion is interesting but wanders too freely and comes close to incoherence at times, as evidenced by Dupuy calling himself up short with: “Have I lost the thread of my argument here?” He says no, but the point is debatable.

The text also suffers from hyperbole. Evil is infinite. Hatred is unfathomable. Nothing is commensurable. These dramatic flares are unhelpful in a serious work. Dupuy has something interesting to say but he detracts from his analysis by such hand gestures and sighs.

At the end of the text, Dupuy suggests that if enlightened doomsaying were to succeed, if it were to make the future “real”, there would be a need to “pause and calmly contemplate the wondrous thing that has just happened”. Indeed. Connecting cause and effect is an achievement worth contemplating. Convincing humans of the central role they playing in creating their own problems is even more praiseworthy. And in that regard, Dupuy's discussion of the “metaphysics” of catastrophes would have been better served if he had brought more contemplative calm and less doomsaying into the writing of this book.

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

After taking a break, I'm reading this treatise again. I consider it to be one of the most meaningful and significant written pieces that I have ever read.

[Eugene Pustoshkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Книга ставит важные вопросы (о кошмарах холокоста, Хиросимы и Нагасаки, о природной катастрофе цунами 2004 года и др.), однако её язык оставляет впечатление устаревшего. Кажется архаизмом рассмотрение важных мировых проблем, когда не имеешь, как создаётся впечатление, ни малейшего понятия о теориях вертикального развития сознания (см. дисциплину психологии взрослого развития), — чем автор в невыгодную сторону отличается от философов Юргена Хабермаса, информированного трудами выдающегося гарвардского учёного Лоуренса Колберга, и Кена Уилбера, информированного трудами всех значимых исследователей человеческого развития.

Никакая философия меньшая, чем интегральная (как её называет Уилбер), не адекватна для ответственной беседы по вопросам, которые поднимает Жан-Пьер Дюпюи в «Малой метафизике цунами» (сама эта книга представляет собой яркую иллюстрацию недостаточности подслеповатых в плане понимания вертикальных стадий психического и морально-нравственного развития, а также горизонтальных состояний сознания неинтегральных подходов).

Тем не менее, книга очень лаконичная и включает вереницу из значимых морально-этических и философских вопросов, над которыми каждому следует поразмыслить. Единственное моё пожелание состоит в том, чтобы эти размышления были интегрально информированы открытиями психологии вертикального (взрослого) развития и интегральных метаподходов.

[Egor xS · Rating 3 out of 5]

L'auteur découvert la pensée de Günther Anders sur l'age nucléaire et sur le Hiroshima, commente l'inondation asiatique de 2004, se souvient du séisme 1755 à Lisbonne chez Voltaire et Rousseau. Il en déduit des raisonnements en reflexion sociale se tenant à la philosophie. Son parti pris est le soi-disant « catastrophisme éclairé », une ruse pour imaginer l'extinction totale.

[Burke Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very unique topic, highly recommend this book. Very short.

[Mills College Library]

111.84 D945 2015

[Scotty · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book kinda sucked. but not totally.