I Dialoghi di San Giorgio//Protecting nature or saving creation?
Opening event of the Dialoghi di San Giorgio
13 September
14 – 16 September
I Dialoghi di San Giorgio
Protecting nature or saving creation?
Ecological conflicts and religious passions
I Dialoghi di San Giorgio
Protecting nature or saving creation?
Ecological conflicts and religious passions
The meeting is based on the now widely accepted notion that the gamut of passions mobilized by ecology so far has not reached the level or intensity of what is required for the immensity of the tasks at hand. In the past only religion seems to have mobilized the right set of transformative passions. But it is not clear whether this level of energy is still available nor it is clear whether it is really useful.
Our idea is to review the topic of ecology and theology and try to explore some new paths in what would very easily otherwise risk becoming an accumulation of “feel good” attitudes. Two reasons, we think, explain the relative sterility of many debates at this junction between ecology and theology.
First, too often ecology and theology debates are based on a very old idea of science and technology and on some rather superfi cial, at times distorted, notions of what religion (especially the Christian religion) is supposed to be about. To reopen the science and religion debate – a tired old topic, if even such – we want to explore the tension between Nature and Creation. This implies looking at older theologies of Creation (especially with the Early Church Fathers) and also studying the many traditions of natural the ologies. Second, what is always lost in the interface between ecology and theology is the notion of confl icts and passions. Most authors in the ecology and theology fields proceed as if the two disciplines were happily linked together, while unfortunately neither Nature nor Creation are harmonious. So, the key question may be to mobilize the notions, the rituals, the cosmologies allowed by some religious traditions, but on the condition that they allow the politics of ecological confl icts to be clarifi ed. Without an adequate understanding of confl icts no political ecology can thrive.
The Dialogue will involve a select number of experts and scholars from different experiences and disciplines – philosophers, historians, anthropologists, theologians (representatives of different religious traditions), environmentalists, economists, political strategists and authors. These experts will meet and discuss their points of view, visions and experience over three days (14, 15 and 16 September) in the unique setting of the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, a place capable of creating a suggestive atmosphere, encouraging calm refl ection and open debate. All the participants will sit around a table for three days and the general public will be allowed to attend the debate.
The conversation is likely to be held mostly in English. The following scholars have already agreed to take part: Matthew Engelke, Eric Geoffroy, Izabela Jurasz, Bruno Latour, Ignazio Musu, Ted Nordhaus, Anne-Marie Reijnen, Simon Schaffer, Michael Shellenberger, Elizabeth Theokritoff, George Theokritoff, Andrea Vicini and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.
TIME TABLE
9.00am – 11.00am
11.30am – 1.30pm
3.00pm – 5.00pm
MORE INFO
Tel. +39 041 2710228 – 2710229
e-mail segr.gen@cini.it
