The World We Live In

Moderator: Karel Kovanda

Panelists: Roger Scruton, Zygmunt Bauman, Karel Schwarzenberg, Richard Sennett

 

 

Keynote speakerandrenowned philosopher, Roger Scruton, posited Prague as the ‘we’ of the ‘world we live in’. Prague, like other European cities, is a synthesis of traditions and influences including Judeo-Christian beliefs, the Greek city-state, and Roman law. He applied the second law of thermodynamics to the city: “unless energy is injected into a system, it tends to disorder” and cited the advent of Christianity, the scientific revolution, and the rise of democracy in Europe as such injections. Scruton applied Hegel’s spheres of influence and lamented Europe’s declining separation of these three, and the increase of state control. Revisiting the concept of the city, he remarked that “in a city people are side by side - their loves, hates, and destinies inexplicably drawn together.” Invoking the conference’s location in Prague, he described pervasive commercialism as “aesthetic pollution”. According to Scruton, we must preserve the European city of tradition not only as a place, but also as an ideal where “humanity is not degraded but raised to a level of mutual respect.”

 

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman spoke next, describing our environment as the world we must live in, because we have no other choice. Challenging listeners to take action, Bauman remarked that “a good society is the society which believes it is not good enough.” Bauman focused on the tradition of the nation-state, believing it to be an impeccable means of collective action and achieving social goals. In fighting the negative effects of globalization, he cited the allegory of the Chinese butterfly whose flapping affects hurricane patterns in the Gulf of Mexico, and concluded that it is our duty to try to be one, since even a butterfly can change history. He ended his speech by describing Václav Havel as a butterfly of his time.

 

Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg followed, echoing the European inheritance of tradition that must be maintained. Schwarzenberg warned that this tradition is “disappearing faster than we think”. He described his memories of the China and India of his childhood and their development into world powers. He argued that the pursuit of commerce brings a temptation to do away with democratic ideals, cautioning against a “flourishing economy suppressing human rights.” He illustrated this temptation with the 20^th century examples of National Socialism. Looking forward, Schwarzenberg remarked “I wonder what will be the great ideas, what will be the great temptation?.”

 

Finally, Richard Sennett, founding director of the New York Institute of the Humanities, focused the conversations on the status of cities outside Europe. It might be difficult for Europeans to imagine the challenges faced by “megacities” like Mumbai or Mexico City – their immense scale “is a great challenge [for urbanists], in trying to figure out what we should do, and how people should live” in such conditions. He stressed the importance of getting the various parts of the city to interact by creating “borders,” permeable edges where people interact, rather than “boundaries”, where intermingling stops. He believed that such interaction could lead to greater democracy.