Making Good Choices: Thinking about Ethics Beyond Sustainability with Prof. Alison Staudinger

On Sept. 24, 2020 from 6 to 6:55 p.m., in Microsoft Teams, Associate Prof. Alison Staudinger (Democracy and Justice Studies) will lead this discussion which will explore the difficulty of ethical action in the face of (multiple) crises, drawing on the work of Alexis Shotwell, whose book Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times, argues that alongside the temptation to give up on ethics altogether is a desire to remove ourselves utterly from messy, complex systems through completely pure action. She suggests that both approaches are unsustainable, and that instead, “if we want a world with less suffering and more flourishing, it would be useful to perceive complexity and complicity as the constitutive situation of our lives, rather than as things we should avoid.” Drawing on her work, Staudinger calls on us to think together about what “good choices” might be possible in conditions of complexity and complicity, and offer some reasons why trying to make them might be worth it, and necessary for life “beyond sustainability.” (Even though we’re likely to make mistakes). It’s free. See more.