Giuseppe Di Capua (Geologist at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Rome, Italy; Treasurer of the IAPG and IUGS Commission on Geoethics) will deliver an invited talk entitled "Etiology of the Ecological Crisis: Building New Perspectives for Human Progress Through Geoethics" in the Session 2 "How can a global geoethics and a new technoethics grounded in various ethical traditions help us resist threats to a sustainable future?" at the Third CIPSH Conference on Global Ethics (Stockholm, 12-13 September 2023).
This conference is an activity of the CIPSH Academy on Chinese Cultures under the patronage of the Union Union Académique Internationale and funded by the CCK Foundation and The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.
Moreover, Giuseppe Di Capua will deliver another invited talk, with the same title, in a symposium entitled "The quest for global ethics: researchers in dialogue" at the Stockholm University on 14 September 2023 (https://www.su.se/department-of-asian-and-middle-eastern-studies/calendar/the-quest-for-global-ethics-researchers-in-dialogue-1.655164).
This is a joint event by Stockholm University, International Union of Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH), Union Union Académique Internationale, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.
Abstract of Giuseppe Di Capua's presentations:
The socio-ecological crisis is a global polycrisis, which needs to be answered on a scientific-technical level (identifying most probable scenarios and sustainable solutions), cultural level (building a society of solidarity, respect, and responsibility) and aesthetic level (redefining the human sensorial perception of the environmental reality). Humanity has become the main engine of climate and ecological change on a global scale, in turn fueled by a general homogenization of the economic models adopted and of people's social needs and expectations. Anthropogenic global environmental changes have produced further transformations in human communities, prompting them in turn to conform to the same concerns and hopes. Now, we are witnessing an epochal transition, in which increased environmental awareness, especially on the part of the younger generations, can lead humanity to a more fruitful coexistence between a local/regional community dimension and a (global) cosmopolitan one, which is not based on ideological-political beliefs of individual parts, but on the sharing of a commondestiny of species by all, as an effect of an increased perception of the physical, chemical, biological limits that underlie human life on the planet and of the precariousness of the social-ecological interrelationships that characterize the Earth. A human community is not a simple aggregation of individuals, but a system of relationships that binds people to the physical, biological, technological environment, virtual and material, through organizational, cultural, social, economic and moral constraints. It is through the sharing of ideals, values, languages, meanings, rules of conduct, traditions that the collective identity is structured and the material and spiritual existence of each individual can be enriched with sense. Geoethics can represent the way for a cultural renewal of society, orienting human choices and decisions starting from a common framework of shared principles and values, capable of responding to global environmental and social changes in a functional and responsible way, by promoting a solidarity, intercultural and interethnic vision, and respect for the environment. Geoethics is substantially an ethics of the global socio-environmental responsibility of a planetary citizenry, grafted onto geoscience (the science that studies the Earth system and its subsystems) which not only has a self-realizing purpose, but is above all the means by which:
a) responsibly assisting society in the great contemporary and future challenges of the Anthropocene by promoting policies of mitigation and adaptation to global environmental changes;
b) contributing to the development of a culture of knowledge of the common home and to the modification of the aesthetic dimension through which human beings perceive the Earth, thanks to its educational and training potential.
Geoethical thought is the tool for guiding our technological societies towards authentic humanistic-ecological progress, which modifies the aesthetic dimension that human beings have of themselves and of Earth.
Calendar of IAPG events on geoethics:
IAPG - International Association for Promoting Geoethics: