ABSTRACT
The scholar clarifies how anthroponomy involves humankind, first by way of postcolonial concerns about the “totalization” of humankind. Providing three reasons why anthroponomy does not engage in totalization but actually opposes it, the chapter spells out further what anthroponomy involves. Anthroponomy is a specific use of autonomy, a way of coordinating it to bring our planetary situation into moral accountability. It has both mereological and teleological dimensions, which the scholar explains. Joining these with the work of the past months, the scholar follows out some of the implications of anthroponomy as a regulative, critical ideal. He then considers how these moral implications shape a way of life and an orientation for someone who is anthroponomic, including the surprising thesis that no one can be free in our planetary situation without coordinating autonomy anthroponomously. Although this conclusion is surprising, anthroponomy is pluralistic. The question the scholar is left with is how to begin relating accordingly, something that he finds draws on an anxiety different than the one with which he began his study a year previously. This new anxiety is positive and opens out to others. So the scholar leaves off by asking what others can make of anthroponomy and how to support them.
