Ludger Schwarte will present his recent book Qualitäten der Freiheit. Demokratie für übermorgen [Qualities of Freedom. Democracy for the Day After Tomorrow]. We will discuss the concluding chapter on “The Ecology of the Future” asking how it relates to the notion of the “planetary”, and thus the project of a planetary aesthetics. In Qualities of Freedom, Schwarte sets out to develop the principles of a future-oriented way of democratic decision-making. He seeks to rethink the very principle of democracy in terms of a theory of time which considers long-term sustainability as much as the disruptive occurrence of unforeseeable events. Schwarte holds that this orientation towards the future must not only acknowledge uncertainty but that it must treat the constitutive openness of the future and its fundamental uncertainty as core aspect of (any) political philosophy. Consequently, political judgment must not only be guided by what is given and what is to be expected, but it also ought to by the anticipation of what is (yet) impossible. In this way, the colonisation of the future is replaced with the “reciprocity of time”.

Ludger Schwarte is Professor of Philosophy at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf.

Introduction and comments by the members of the Planetary Aesthetics project: Stefan Niklas, Nick Psomas, and Emma Ricketts.

To register and to receive the chapter (“The Ecology of the Future”), please contact: Nick Psomas: n.psomas@uva.nl Emma Ricketts: e.l.ricketts@uva.nl

This workshop is generously sponsored by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.