The Beshara Lecture 2019
Ecosystems as Love Processe
From Biological War Ideology to Understanding Reality as Alive
Speaker: Andreas Weber
Why is our economy still destroying the environment and creating inequality? The answer is that it might rest on a wrong image of life, where the strongest wins and fitness grants success. Two doctrines rule our times: Neo-Darwinism and Neoliberalism, which are deeply connected and together form one overwhelming ideology of inevitable competition and deadly strife. Biological life, however, is never about one winning, but rather an endless celebration of reciprocity. Ecosystems are ways to organise giving that allow the whole to flourish and the individuals to take what they need. If we understand this desire for mutuality as inbuilt in the living world will we be able to imagine a culture that does not destroy life, but that mimics ecology, enacting what may be seen as a practice of love?
Andreas Weber is a Berlin-based philosopher, biologist and writer, who teaches philosophy at Leuphana University, Lüneburg, and at the University of Fine Arts, Berlin. He holds degrees in Marine Biology and Cultural Studies, and during his studies collaborated with the pioneering biologist and brain researcher, Francisco Varela. His books in English include ‘The Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling, and the Metamorphosis of Science’ (2016), ‘Matter and Desire: An erotic ecology’ (2017) and ‘Enlivenment’ (2019).
The Beshara Lecture is a lecture held annually, for the furtherance of the knowledge of the unity of existence and its ramifications in areas of human endeavour.
Refreshments available from 2 pm.
