Inside the Bell-Jar Existence, Essence and Exit: Within and Without Eurocentric Modernism (EM)

Speaker: Professor Rajani Kanth, economist, philosopher, and social thinker. Presently an Affiliate at Harvard University, he is Trustee of the World Peace Congress. His most recent books are: Farewell to Modernism (Peter Lang, NY, 2017) and The Post?Human Society (De Gruyter, Warsaw, 2015)

 

Chair: Dr Sudhir Kumar Sopory is an Indian educationist, plant physiologist, scientist and former vice chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University

 

Around the 17th century, post-Renaissance Europe struck upon a brand new model of Societal Being, best described as Eurocentric Modernism. This was first foisted upon itself, and then imposed, largely by force, across the globe that lay within its sphere of influence. It was both a prescriptive ontology and epistemology, i.e., a philosophy, a politics, a societal framework, an economic modus, and a way of living, thinking, and interacting. It is this Paradigm that has brought the entire world today to the brink of various kinds extinctions that we know, or anticipate, so well today: of civility, of legality, of the environment, of the species, and the planet itself. The talk, in broad outline, defines this fateful system, traces its trajectory points to its likely EndGame: and suggests, implicitly, possible salves and escapes