"Changing our behaviors and representations": interview with Corine Pelluchon
Corine Pelluchon is a professor of political philosophy and applied ethics in the Department of Philosophy at Gustave Eiffel University. She talks about her subjects of study and her latest works, viewed through the prism of the current health and environmental crisis.
What are your main working themes?
Since 2009, I have been interested in the anthropological dimension of the human condition, and more particularly in certain inseparable aspects of this condition: corporeality, vulnerability, our dependence on others and on nature.
Furthermore, I seek to enrich the political liberalism born in the 17th century and to complete the Enlightenment project, taking into account today's challenges: new medical practices and biotechnologies, the animal cause, ecology, etc. These issues require that we do not limit ethics to our relationship with other humans, that we take into account the consequences that our lifestyles have on future generations, ecosystems, other species, and that we develop democracy. In my opinion, ecology and the animal cause are not opposed to humanism, but imply a humanism of otherness and diversity. In this perspective, I worked in particular from the texts of Emmanuel Levinas, who is interested in phenomena beyond our control: fatigue, pain, the incorporation of food, the relationship with the other. I was also greatly inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the living, which considers animals as other existences.
"Consolidate the achievements of the Enlightenment to develop a new project of individual and collective emancipation"
How does the ecological crisis underline more acutely the need for a new social contract?
This question refers to the work conducted in Les Nourritures. Philosophie du corps politique (Seuil, 2015). As soon as we take seriously the fact that we inhabit the Earth and cohabit with other living beings, the protection of the biosphere and justice towards animals become finalities of politics, which is not limited to relations between humans. But saying this is not enough. It is also important that people change their consumption habits and production patterns. This is why, in Éthique de la considération (Seuil, 2018), I insisted on working on oneself to be more sober and to make the ecological transition a stimulating societal project, and not just one associated with sacrifice.
In Réparons le monde (Payot Rivages, 2020), I showed that a global approach to the problems we face (health, animals, environment, social justice) is necessary. We are, moreover, at a moment when we must decide what we leave behind and what we keep in order to make the necessary restructuring.
Can you tell us about Les Lumières à l'âge du vivant, your latest book published this month by Editions du Seuil?
It is a question of placing the questions that interest me at a civilizational level. I have tried to elaborate a project of individual and collective emancipation that consolidates the pillars of the past Enlightenment (autonomy, democracy, unity of humankind, rationality), while taking into account the criticisms that postmodernists have formulated towards them and the tragedies of the 20th century - and, above all, by contesting their dualistic foundations, notably the separation of civilization and nature that has led to the inversion of progress into regression. These new Enlightenment promote a new non-hegemonic universalism, welcoming the diversity of life forms and cultures.
Her career in key dates
- Born in 1967
- Aggregation en 1997
- Thesis on Leo Strauss in 2005 at the University of Paris I-Panthéon Sorbonne
- Spent a year at Boston University in 2006
- Authorized to steer researches (HDR) on "Bioethics, ecology and political philosophy" at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne
- Since 2016, professor at Gustave Eiffel University