Dialectics Facing Prehistoric Catastrophe: Merely Possible Climate Change Solutions

Abstract

The Frankfurt School formulated a negative dialectics that keeps open the possibility for alternative social futures by explaining and diagnosing the non-existence of ‘real possibilities’ to actualize a better world. Ernst Bloch’s category of ‘mere possibility’ makes a ‘warmer’ negative dialectics viable, a form that faces a grim reality head on yet loosens the prohibition against identifying pathways toward alternative social futures latent in social conditions, possibilities with the potentiality (the objective-external dimension of possibility), but lack the capacity (the subjective-internal dimension of possibility), to become actual. This allows negative dialectics to engage in relatively programmatic ‘prospect-exploration’ when tackling dire issues like climate change, even if the proposed solutions are deficient. Identifying merely possible climate change solutions skirts three problematic tendencies in prescriptive assessments of climate politics: (1) promoting the continuation of ineffective mitigation strategies (e.g., carbon markets), (2) calling for a revolution without a revolutionary subject, and (3) fatalism.