April 5, 1.30 pm, Conference hall. ,
Мероприятие пройдет на английском языке. Вход свободный. Предварительная запись: akadnikova@eu.spb.ru
We usually conceived of our relationship to other human beings and, by extension, to non-humans, as a permanent state of warfare, punctuated by fleeting periods of truce. Such an approach has colored our view of plants and animals as beings constantly engaged in a struggle against one another, in a contest for the “survival of fittest,” both individually and at the level of the species. In this talk, I suggest that we look at interspecies relations from the perspective of peace and not war. Can the “wolf dwell with the lamb / and the leopard [...] lie down with the young goat,” as the Old Testament metaphorically would have it in its image of a righteous Earth? Can humans live peacefully side by side with non-human beings? I will avail myself of theories of cosmopolitanism to delineate the notion of interspecies peace as an alternative to the current war of all against all that characterizes our relationship to other living beings.