Monday, Jan 30 2023 | 17:00 CET
Lecture Room 1, Main Building
Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna

Organized by Matthias Flatscher and Sergej Seitz

[T]he contemporary failures of ecological politics and the ongoing ecological crisis [...] require reimagining the conditions for ecological democracy.

-- Eric S. Nelson, Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other, 22

Eric S. Nelson's interpretation of Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas stages two ways of radically questioning and subverting the traditional limits of our ethical imaginary and our ethical imagination. This also has political import and challenges our conception of the subject and the routines of political life. According to Nelson, attending to the nonidentity (Adorno) and otherness (Levinas) of nature opens paths towards an “ecological democracy” that would be able to meet the demands posed by climate change and ecological devastation.

On Eric S. Nelsons book Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other, see here.

Program

17:00 Matthias Flatscher: Welcome Address
17:05 Sergej Seitz: Political Imagination and Alternative Ethical Imaginaries: Introductory Remarks
17:20 Eric S. Nelson: Levinas, Adorno, and the Ethics of the Material Other
17:45 Response by Stephanie Graf
18:30 Response by Michaela Bstieler
19:15 Response by Sonja Gassner-Speckmoser

20:00 Joint Dinner

Eric S. Nelson is Professor of Philosophy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Michaela Bstieler is research assistant at the University of Innsbruck.
Stephanie Graf is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Innsbruck.
Sonja Gassner-Speckmoser teaches political theory at the University of Vienna.

Matthias Flatscher is Interim Professor of Philosophy at the University of Würzburg.
Sergej Seitz is postdoctoral researchter at PREDEF - Prefiguring Democratic Futures