Baptiste Morizot

Born in 1983, Baptiste Morizot is a philosopher, author and lecturer at the University of Aix-Marseille.

The author of a body of work that invites us to take another look at living things, his books Sur la piste animale (Actes Sud, 2017, Prix Lacroix de l’Académie Française) and Manières d’être vivant (Actes Sud, 2020) have won him international recognition. His research interests include the philosophy of life and ecology, evolutionary anthropology and the comparative epistemology of the natural and social sciences. His first book, Les diplomates (Wildproject, 2016), looks at the relationship between humans and living things, both inside and outside them. He won the Prix du Livre de la Fondation de l’Écologie Politique in 2016, and the following year, the Prix littéraire François Sommer for best book on nature. A leading figure in the new philosophy of life, Baptiste Morizot has been translated into ten languages, and has published three other works with Actes Sud(Raviver les braises du vivant, Rendre l’eau à la Terre, Le regard perdu), which address the interdependencies between humans and the living world: an invitation to rethink our connection with life on Earth.

After years devoted to contemporary ecological emergencies, Baptiste Morizot is now focusing his work on the long term, spanning the entire century. Together with lawyer Laurent Neyret, he is exploring the possibility of a “Principle of Habitability,” intended to transform the law so that it truly protects the conditions of life in the context of the ecological and climate polycrisis.

In the 20th century, after two world wars, the law adopted the principle of dignity as the foundation of human rights and a compass for distinguishing between the human and the inhuman. In the same way, the 21st century calls for a new structuring principle: the habitability of the Earth, conceived not as an immediate solution, but as a guiding value for the century, a necessary condition for recognizing our interdependence with living beings.

This reflection deeply animates Baptiste Morizot’s residency at the Villa Medici, a place dedicated to long-term thinking. Located in Rome, where the past remains co-present with the present, the Villa offers a space conducive to thinking beyond the urgent and sowing the seeds of a desirable future for a civilization aware of its finitude.