Rendre le monde indisponible, by Hartmut ROSA - Edition La Découverte, January 2020 - 144 Pages
To dominate the world, to exploit its resources, to plan its course... The cultural project of our modernity seems to have come to an end: science, technology, economics, social and political organization have made people and things available in a permanent and unlimited way.
But while all the experiences and potential riches of existence lie within our reach, they suddenly slip away from us. The world mysteriously closes in; it becomes unreadable and mute. The ecological disaster shows that the conquest of our environment shapes a hostile environment. The emergence of erratic crises reveals the inanity of a will to control, leading to widespread chaos. And, as promises of fulfillment become injunctions to succeed and our desires become endless cycles of frustration, control over our own lives eludes us.
Hartmut Rosa suggests that this is because we are deprived of any resonance with nature, people and the beauty that surrounds us, because we can dispose of it as we please. This is the fundamental contradiction we are struggling with. To resolve it, this essay does not commit us to taking refuge in a contemplative posture, but to reinventing our relationship to the world.
Born in 1965, Hartmut Rosa, sociologist and philosopher, is professor at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and director of the Max-Weber-Kolleg in Erfurt, Germany. He is the author of the book The Discovery ofAcceleration (2013), from Resonance (2018).
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