---
title: "Planetary Pragmatism"
description: "Lorenzo Marsili's method for planetary cooperation after the end of Western and human centrality: \"the gradual development of a web of concrete and specific practices, policies, and institutions of universal scope,\" without a new metaphysical grounding and without a heroic founding event."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/planetary-pragmatism"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/planetary-pragmatism"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Planetary Pragmatism

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/planetary-pragmatism), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

[Lorenzo Marsili](https://antikythera.wiki/people/lorenzo-marsili)'s method for planetary cooperation after the end of Western and human centrality: "the gradual development of a web of concrete and specific practices, policies, and institutions of universal scope," without a new metaphysical grounding and without a heroic founding event. Between Levinas's fear of a disoriented "saraband" of equivalent cultures and a "geopolitical Platonism" that wants one order imposed after a cataclysm, he takes from Chinese thought the idea of what "resonates" and "befits the moment," and from Foucault's specific intellectual (Oppenheimer) the model of a claim universal within its domain. Concrete universals — a pandemic procurement guarantee, a planetary civil-protection force — accumulate until shared destiny can be narrated after the fact. Blake calls planetary subsidiarity its institutional instantiation.

## Appears in

- [The Planetary](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/the-planetary) (2024-11-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._