The riddle of the sphinx revisited: Contemplating Fernand Khnopff’s Caresses in the light of the Anthropocene condition

In this paper, I discuss the painting Caresses (1896) by the Belgian Symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff as a portrait of a man-animal-machine hybrid, framed as an alienating reinterpretation of the encounter between Oedipus and the sphinx. I interpret Caresses in two ways: first, as a reflection of modern Western obstacles that impede the development of a proper moral response to the Anthropocene condition, and second, as a potential source of inspiration for Anthropocene morality. For the first reading, I focus on four quasi-simultaneous events that epitomize these obstacles. First, I begin with the first scientific description of global warming by Svante Arrhenius in 1896, which introduced a gap between the physical and moral dimensions of the Anthropocene. Second, I link the first Belgian automobile festival in 1896 to modern Western technological triumphalism. Third, I discuss Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex, first introduced in 1897, as an instance of the modern Western tendency to seek meaningfulness within the individual. Finally, I analyze Joséphin Péladan’s art salons (1892 – 1896) as an example of the late 19th-century esoteric revival – highly influential in proposing alternative sources of meaningfulness but ultimately failing to provide one that fits our Anthropocene condition. In reinterpreting Caresses as a source of inspiration for an ecological Anthropocene morality, I discuss the painting in terms of three non-Freudian “Oedipus complexes” that articulate our hybrid nature as beings embedded within the Earth’s critical zone – a dense network of intelligences encompassing life-forms, technologies, and our moral and philosophical frameworks.