The Tanner Lectures on Human Values are presented annually at a select list of universities around the world. The University Center serves as host to these lectures at Princeton, in which an eminent scholar from philosophy, religion, the humanities, sciences, creative arts or learned professions, or a person eminent in political or social life, is invited to present a series of lectures reflecting upon scholarly and scientific learning relating to “the entire range of values pertinent to the human condition.”
The 2023 lectures take place on November 9 and 10.
Lecture I: Beyond the Unipolar Moment
Nov 9, 2023, 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm | Friend Center, Lecture Hall 101
In this lecture, Tooze will locate the first phase of global climate politics in the unipolar moment of the 1990s.
Lecture II: Polycrisis
Nov 10, 2023, 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm | Friend Center, Lecture Hall 101
In this lecture, Tooze will address a series of questions about the 2015 synthesis of the Paris Climate Accords and SDG targets.
Abstract: In the last 25 years the concept of the Anthropocene has emerged as a master category for thinking the contemporary environmental crisis. As much as it has energized the humanities and social sciences, the concept has been criticized for falsely postulating a collective human agent of environmental destruction. In the 2023 Tanner lectures, Adam Tooze will historicize this debate, placing it in relation to the struggle over global development. Born in the era of the first Cold War the vision of a comprehensive environmental transformation in the service of humankind needs to be placed now in relation to a new era of comprehensive global development, great power competition and polycrisis.