While calls for investing in “green technology” or “geoengineering” prospects may suggest that the ecological transition need not undermine an economics of growth and technological innovation, an alternative thread in environmental ethical reflection focuses on sacrifice, renunciation, simplicity, sobriety. Several questions emerge: first of all, how are sacrifice, renunciation or simplicity understood as terms and as ethical or political norms? Second, what should be sacrificed, renounced, or disciplined and with what implications? What dangers may be implicit in appropriating such values? Reflection on theological and religious understandings of sacrifice and asceticism – and attention to the critiques of theologies of sacrifice and religious practices of asceticism, notably from feminist and liberation movements – may offer essential insights.
Chair: • Sarah Stewart-Kroeker (Université de Genève)
Panelists: • Hans-Christoph Askani (Université de Genève) - Why is renunciation so terribly difficult for us human beings? • Luke Zerra (Princeton Theological Seminary) - Enrique Dussel in Critical Conversation with Communitarian Environmental Ethics • Alda Balthrop-Lewis (Australian Catholic University) - Thoreau’s Religion: Asceticism Against Slavery in Walden
