International workshop organized by par Jean-Paul Vanderlinden, Director of the Culture, Environnement Arctiques, Représentations, Climat laboratory (CEARC, Paris-Saclay University, University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines), Principal Investigator of the PREFER project (ERC Advanced Grant 2021), with the support of the Paris IAS.

Onsite event, only in English.
Open to the public with registration (link coming soon).

Presentation

The aim of this workshop is to clarify the theoretical and empirical dimensions associated with local terminal risks as axiological sources for the analysis of existential risk. Half-days will be devoted either to current and emerging theoretical issues, or to news from the field.

This international workshop is part of the PREFER project (ERC AdG 2021), which focuses on the mobilization of lay ethics and everyday ethics in the context of existential risk. The project explores questions such as: “When humanity itself is at stake, what are the values that drive humanity to act? Where do these values come from? How can we prioritize the risks that require special attention? What criteria should guide the choice of solutions in the face of unspeakable disaster?”

These are the questions that the workshop's presentations and discussions will help to answer at an important stage. During these two days, the aim is to bridge the gap between theory and real-world experience, giving an insight into how people conceptualize and confront the risks that threaten their humanity - individual, collective, specific, interspecific - and the collective future of mankind.

Program

Wednesday, May 14

9.30am - 10am: Welcome
10am - 1pm: Theorical framing
- Welcome address
- Keynote 1: Theorizing the analogy for existential risks: what are we talking about?
- Conversatorio 1: Thinking the human and the dehuman on all scales: philosophical fragments
- Communication 1: A comparative theorization, Europe-USA
- Communication 2
By Baptiste Salmon
1pm - 2pm: Lunch break
2pm - 5pm: Methodological challenges of analogy
- Keynote 2: Narrative approaches, change, radical interculturality
By Werner Krauss
- Conversatorio 2: Tales and reality, a tension?
- Communication 3

Thursday, May 15

9.30am - 10am: Welcome
10am - 1pm: News from the field
- Welcome address
- Keynote 3: What's deceiving us: materiality as a source of humanization(s)?
- Conversatorio 3: What our fields tell us about modernity as a process of terminalization
- Communication 4: Leaving, coming back - is the delta in danger?
By Thi Minh Ha Bui
- Communication 5: Resistance, struggle, axiological references in the context of the farming world
1pm - 2pm: Lunch break
2pm - 5pm: News from the field
- Keynote 4: From existential risks to multi-species extinctions: thinking about coexistence based on the human-narwhal relationship at Ittoqqortoormiit
By Kalaallit Nunaat and Tanguy Sandré
- Conversatorio 4 : The ethics of care: a promise kept?
By Chloé Dhaille
- Communication 6
- Newt steps

Organizers and partners

- Culture, Environnement Arctiques, Représentations, Climat Laboratory (CEARC) 
- PREFER project (ERC Advanced Grant 2021)
- Paris-Saclay University
- University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
- European Research Council (ERC)