Philosophical Responses to War and Genocide

with Peter Banki

Ernst Barlach: Totentanz

Many people in the world experience death and dying today without funeral rites, hospitals, nursing homes, palliative care, professional and personal support or even a roof above their head. They are murdered, starved, left to die, at the mercy of decisions they have little or no control over. Through the news cycle and social media, the rest of “us” are bombarded daily with images and stories of war and genocide that distress us, that arguably even traumatise us collectively.
“One way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable..” Judith Butler

In this workshop we will consider how philosophical inquiry may give us some orientation with regard to what “we” as a collective are today experiencing. One of the enduring virtues of philosophical inquiry is that it invites us to sit with the unreadable, without good conscience and self-certainty, with languages and truths that are often irreconcilable.

There will be readings from philosophers such as Hegel, Simone Weil, Raphael Lemkin, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Judith Butler, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and others.