Secular Hope: Owning Up to Our Responsibility
Prof. Dr. Martin Hägglund
Birgit Baldwin Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities,
Yale University, Connecticut, USA
Diskussionsleitung: Prof. Dr. Andreas Urs Sommer
Vorstandsvorsitzender der Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung
»This lecture addresses the question of hope in relation to our ecological crisis. As we find ourselves responsible for the destruction of our ecosystem, foundational questions concerning our relation to nature have been reawakened. In response to the crisis, many influential contemporary thinkers seek to dismantle the distinction between human beings and other animals, since they assume that the distinction serves to justify our mistreatment of other species and our exploitation of nature. I argue that this approach is fundamentally misguided. Rather than denying the distinction between us and other animals, we need to grasp our distinct kind of responsibility. On the one hand, the ecological crisis underlines that we are animals who depend on our environment and on other living beings. On the other hand, the crisis underlines that we are a distinct kind of animal, since we can hold ourselves accountable for our relation to nature and acknowledge our fellow creatures as ends in themselves. In contrast to prevailing forms of misanthropy, I argue that any viable hope for the future depends on owning up to our responsibility as rational animals.«