Metaphysics for Climate Disobedience

Abstract

This article examines the metaphysical foundations necessary for a coherent practice of climate-oriented civil disobedience. Drawing from classical theories of civil disobedience—beginning with Henry David Thoreau—it argues that such action has traditionally presupposed a weakly realist moral metaphysics, in which moral truths exist independently to some degree and provide a basis for opposing unjust laws. This foundation is profoundly challenged by the shift from anthropocentrism to radical ecologism, which decenters the human and questions hierarchical ontologies of value. The analysis critiques the anthropocentric premises underlying much classical civil disobedience and proposes instead a relational, non-hierarchical metaphysics inspired by contemporary thinkers such as Emanuele Coccia, Timothy Morton, Donna Haraway, and Stefano Mancuso. In this framework, climate disobedience is reframed not primarily as a utilitarian strategy aimed at efficacy or progress, but as an act of fidelity and friendship toward the more-than-human world. Ultimately, it is reconceptualized as a minimalist pedagogy of finitude and a secular liturgy of anticipatory mourning. This practice commits to reducing entropic violence—the irreversible disorder imposed on ecosystems and future beings—and to fostering non-predatory relations amid conditions of ecological exhaustion. Crucially, it proceeds without eschatological guarantees or promises of salvation, embracing circular fidelity over linear causal efficacy. In an era where +1.5 °C has already been exceeded and techno-optimist narratives falter, such disobedience becomes stubborn testimony: a refusal to pretend that business-as-usual remains viable, even when outcomes remain uncertain.