Transdeszendenz, Ökologie, Demokratie

Corine Pelluchon examines the psychological and political obstacles standing in the way of the emergence of a new ecological Enlightenment, the basic principles of which she has developed in her books. Her starting point is the thesis that the current ecological and democratic crises cannot be understood without analyzing the system of domination that structures our relationships with other people, animals, nature, and with ourselves. In dialogue with phenomenology, critical theory, and existentialism, the analysis uncovers the anthropological roots of modern destructiveness: the refusal to acknowledge one's own vulnerability, the denial of death, fantasies of omnipotence, and the decoupling of technical rationality from responsibility. The author demonstrates that these mechanisms give rise to a culture of death, which manifests itself in the trivialization of violence, the destruction of life, and the erosion of democratic institutions. Violence against animals, ecological extractivism, and the growing susceptibility to authoritarian populist discourses thus appear as interconnected expressions of the same imaginary of domination and the same denial of mortality.
In response to these dynamics, the essay introduces the concept of consideratio. It refers to a way of being that forms the foundation for the virtues enabling us to find joy in changing our lifestyle. It is based on a deepening of our self-awareness as vulnerable, born, and mortal beings, through which we intensely experience our belonging to the shared world. This experience leads to an expansion of subjectivity, which Corine Pelluchon calls transdescendence. This transformation of our relationship to ourselves and to others forms the ethical and political prerequisite for an ecological democracy. At the same time, it opens the possibility of a hope, not to be understood as optimism, but as the ability to recognize, despite the crises, the harbingers of a new horizon - a perspective that gives us the energy to reframe the future.

Hersteller:	Jana Trispel
Anschrift:	Wilhelmstraße 18 DE-72074 Tübingen
Kontakt:	trispel@mohrsiebeck.com

Born 1967; 2003 PhD, Paris I-Sorbonne; 2010 Habilitation, Paris-IV Sorbonne; Knight of the French Legion of Honour 2021; Professor of Political Philosophy and Applied Ethics at the Université Gustave Eiffel in Paris. Born 1964; Professor of Practical Theology and Dean of the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Tübingen. Born 1989; Study of Protestant Theology and Latin in Erlangen; 2021 Doctorate in Protestant Theology in Erlangen; assistant at the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Tübingen.