Die Vorträge werden von der Universität Wien (Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie, Institut für Soziologie, Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Institut für Philosophie) in Kooperation mit dem Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen veranstaltet.
- 5.10.2023: Kantian Cosmopolitanism and its Critics (Kleiner Festsaal) followed by a reception
Cosmopolitanism is a contested legacy: whether one describes Socrates as the first cosmopolitan––kosmopolitēs (“citizen of the world”)––or reserves the term for the cynic, Diogenes Laertius, Marcus Tullius Cicero or Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor, (Appiah 2006) cosmopolitanism begins with a critique of the polis and the civitas in the name of the cosmos, of an ordered reality whose rationality transcends the many and conflicting, and often unjust, nomoi (laws and customs) of the political world. By interpreting cosmopolitanism as “world citizenship,” Kant makes a fundamental contribution to this tradition. By focusing on Kant’s essay on “Perpetual Peace,” Seyla Benhabib defends aspects of Kant’s legacy against liberal nationalisms as well as postmodern and de-colonial criticisms.
Ort: Kleiner Festsaal
Zeit: 18:30 - 20:00 Uhr
- 11.10.2023: From the Hermeneutics of Suspicion to Reconstructing Cosmopolitan Law (HS14 Oskar Morgenstern Platz)
Seyla Benhabib begins with the Caribbean critic, Sylvia Wynter, whose work pushes us towards a reconsideration of the modernist project in the direction of a less Eurocentric and more global vision. She then turns to the work of a group of scholars named TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law), whose reconstructive contributions to international law enable us to leave behind “the hermeneutics of suspicion” (Paul Ricoeur) towards a more cosmopolitan dimension, very much along the lines of the distinction envisaged by Kant between Völkerrecht and kosmopolitisches Recht. Benhabib distinguishes between liberal nationalism, liberal internationalism, neo-liberal globalism and cosmopolitanism from below.
Ort: HS14 (Oskar Morgenstern Platz)
Zeit: 18:30 - 20:00 Uhr
- 19.10.2023: The Globe as World, Earth and Planet (HS14 Oskar Morgenstern Platz)
Seyla Benhabib wants to analyze three dimensions of globality: the world; the earth and the planet. Globalists are surely correct that as a consequence of economic as well as technological movements, we have reached an unprecedented intensity in time and space in the movement of news and people, services and microbes, fashion and money across borders. This is our world of practices and institutions; conflict and consensus; wars and commerce. But these processes have also endangered the earth: that thin membrane around the planet earth, according to Bruno Latour, which has made human life possible. Must we then adopt a planetary perspective? What does this even mean? The speaker returns here to an important distinction made by Hannah Arendt between “world alienation” and “earth alienation” to reorient our thinking on these issues.
Ort: HS14 (Oskar Morgenstern Platz)
Zeit: 18:30 - 20:00 Uhr
About the presenter
Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy Emerita at Yale University. She is currently Scholar in Residence at Columbia Law School and Professor Adjunct of Law, where she teaches legal and political theory as well as a course on refugee, migration and citizenship law in comparative perspective. She also holds appointments in Columbia University’s Center for Contemporary Critical Thought and the Department of Philosophy. Professor Benhabib is the author of numerous publications, including: Exile, Statelessness, and Migration. Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (2018), Another Cosmopolitanism (2006), The Claims of Culture (2003), and The Rights of Others (2004). She is currently working on a book called At the Margins of the Modern State. Critical Theory and the Law (Forthcoming with Polity Press). Her work has been translated into twelve languages. Professor Benhabib has previously taught at the New School for Social Research and Harvard Universities, where she was Director of Harvard University’s Program for Degrees in Social Studies. Throughout her professorial career, she has held many prestigious visiting professorships including the Spinoza Chair in Amsterdam (2001), the Gauss Lectures at Princeton (1998), the John Seeley Memorial Lectures (Cambridge University, 2002), and the Tanner Lectures (Berkeley, 2004). Professor Benhabib is the recipient of the Ernst Bloch prize (2009), the Leopold Lucas Prize (2012), and the Meister Eckhart Prize (2014). Currently, Seyla Benhabib is Albert Hirschman Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (Insititut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, IWM) in Vienna.