Debates about climate change and the environment often focus, understandably, on risk evaluation, mitigation, and adaptation. Important research is dedicated to technical innovations like carbon capture or renewable energy; adaptive strategies to protect biodiversity; or financial solutions to bolster sustainable investment. This work is important, of course. But in order to get to the root of the current climate crisis, it is equally important to question the role we, human beings, occupy in the living world and to radically re-think our relationship with other living beings. This project is at the heart of the work of Professor Corine Pelluchon, whom we are delighted to welcome to Vis A Vis.
Corine Pelluchon is a Professor of Philosophy at Gustave Eiffel University. She specializes in moral and political philosophy, and in medical, environmental and animal ethics, addressing themes such as ecology and our relationship to nature, animal ethics, eco-anxiety, vulnerability and democracy. She received the Günther Anders Prize for Critical Thinking and the prestigious Leopold Lucas Preis in recognition of her work. Major publications include Nourishment: A Philosophy of the Political Body (trans. J.E. Smith, Bloomsbury, 2019), which explores our corporeality and dependence on nature and other living beings; Enlightenment in the Ecological Age (Ethics International Press, 2025), which examines the relevance of the Enlightenment heritage in the current technological, political and ecological context and continues the work begun in Éthique de la considération (Seuil, 2018 – rights available) which focuses on the moral dispositions required to achieve ecological transition. Corine Pelluchon also recently published L’être et la mer. Pour un existentialisme écologique (PUF, 2024 – rights available), where she examines our reliance on the ocean and the submersible dimensions of both the Earth and the human psyche.
Credits
Host: Dr. Emmanuel Kattan
Editor and Producer: Rachel Kahn
Producer: Georgia O’Neil