Future Togetherness Embracing All Living Things: Extending Some Views of Teilhard de Chardin

Current philosophical literature about the future often explores fast technological development and its social, political, and cultural implications. What is typically missing in such literature is an attempt to address the following question: Is the future going to mean the emergence of a super humanity with the rest of the biosphere left behind? This article explores this issue critically and proposes some answers to it that derive from an interdisciplinary approach. It builds upon the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, especially on the way he deals with two key topics: cephalization and socialization. The paper argues that Teilhard’s work in these areas can be extended to show how the human responsibility associated with being the head of the biosphere entails accepting a kind of communitarian progress that includes other species. The article concludes by proposing some innovative concepts to articulate what is at stake in such responsibility.