Public evening lecture by Professor Nicolas de Warren, Ph. D. (Pennsylvania State University, Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies)

We are what we leave behind. What essentially defines us phenomenologically today is arguably the waste, pollution and garbage that will leave behind the future of all futures in the form of plastics, "eternal chemicals" and nuclear waste as the lasting legacy of our lives on earth. Given the epic temporality of such epic deserts, to whom have we given these toxic gifts? What forms of life and lifeworlds have we already colonized with our pollution and waste? What form of epic responsibility makes sense for us today towards these unknown and not necessarily human future beings? Will they, whoever and however, encounter us as aliens through what we have left behind?

Nicolas de Warren studied in Paris, Heidelberg and Boston and holds a PhD from Boston University. He is the author of several books, including Husserl and the Promise of Time (2010), A Momentary Breathlessness in the Sadness of Time (2018), Original Forgiveness (2020) and German Philosophy and the First World War (2023). He is currently working on two book projects: a phenomenology of afterlife that explores different meanings in which the dead haunt the living - be it individually, collectively or historically - and a study of the impact of the First World War on Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. He is also in the final stages of completing two co-authored books entitled The Erosion of Trust and Truthfulness in the Age of Democratic Uncertainty and We Nuclear People: Responsibility for Nuclear Waste in the Vastness of Time.