Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research, New York

August 2019 until October 2019

In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Rainer Forst

Funded by Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University Frankfurt and Kassel-Stiftung in cooperation with Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften

Dmitri Nikulin is Professor of Philosophy who teaches at the New School for Social Research in New York. His interests range from ancient philosophy and early modern science to the philosophy of memory and philosophy of history.

Research project title:
Responsibility and Hope

Abstract
After the publication of Hans Jonas‘ Das Prinzip Verantwortung forty years ago, the principle of responsibility has become a key concept in moral and political debates. Yet the unconditional responsibility for the possibility of the existence of future generations – not only of humans, but also of other living beings – is invariably accompanied by the „heuristics of fear,“ which presupposes imagining the worst-case scenario and a pronouncedly bleak future. The dystopian principle of responsibility was introduced as a response to Bloch’s Das Prinzip Hoffnung, which envisions the possibility of a utopian future for humanity. The proposed project will discuss these two principles and will argue that they are not mutually exclusive, so that, while still preserving the imperative of responsibility, one can maintain a utopian ideal as a regulative idea for moral and political action.

List of Recent Publications

Dialectic and Dialogue (2010)
Comedy, Seriously (2014)
The Concept of History (2017)
Critique of Bored Reason (forthcoming)

Edited and co-edited collections:
Memory: A History (2015)
Philosophy and Power in Antiquity (2016)
Productive Imagination: Its History, Meaning and Significance (2018)

Events

Thursday, 17 October 2019
Fellow-Colloquium
»Rethinking Responsibility«