Do We still Need God?

Lecture: Do We still Need God?

Lecturer: Cinzia Sciuto (MicroMega / mediacampus Frankfurt)

Date: Friday, November 17, 2023, h. 6:30pm

Place: Monte Verità (Ascona), Auditorium

Cycle: Eranos-Jung Lectures 2023 - The Great Worksites of Contemporaneity. Looks at the Knots of the Present

Language: Italian

Chairperson: Fabio Merlini (Eranos Foundation, Ascona; SFUVET, Lugano)

Discussion with the audience and aperitif to follow

The recording of the conference can be viewed on the official YouTube channel of the Eranos Foundation.

Lecture Presentation

In its history, humanity has resorted to the idea of God mainly for two reasons. The first that of providing an explanation for the existence of the world and life, particularly human life. The second to provide a foundation for moral action. In this lecture, we will try to ask two questions respectively about each of these two aspects: 1) In the face of the enormous progress of science, which, as in concentric circles, is increasingly extending its explanatory capacity for existence and life while simultaneously reducing the ground of explanation left to religions, do we still need to resort to the idea of God to explain the existence of the world and life? 2) Do we still need religion as the foundation of our moral action? Do we need God to do good? In short, will it be true that "if God does not exist, everything is permitted"? Or will it not be instead that precisely as long as there is God everything will be allowed?

Lecturer' Bio-bibliography

Cinzia Sciuto, essayist and journalist, is co-director of "MicroMega". Born in Sicily in 1981, she studied Philosophy at the University "Sapienza" of Rome and at the Humboldt Universität in Berlin. Since 2015 she lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He collaborates with several German newspapers, including "Die Tageszeitung", "Lettre International", and "Faustkultur" and teaches Politics at the mediacampus Frankfurt. His publications include La terra è rotonda. Kant, Kelsen e la prospettiva cosmopolitica (2015) and Non c’è fede che tenga. Manifesto laico contro il multiculturalismo (2018; revised new edition, 2020; also translated into German). She works mainly on secularism, the relationship between democracy and religions, multiculturalism, human rights, and feminism. Since 2020, she has been the scientific director of the "Giornate della laicità" in Reggio Emilia.

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To mark the 90th anniversary of the Eranos Conferences (1933-2023), the Foundation wanted to question some leading figures in today's cultural world, asking them to present the projects and issues on which they are working. The idea is to bring into dialogue at a distance qualified gazes on the nodes of our present, to highlight their risks, opportunities, and prospects. Not, of course, to listen to the last word on what is happening today, but rather to enter their laboratories of thought and try to focus on a kind of ongoing geography of the present time: to orient ourselves, to find ourselves, to map out possible virtuous paths-despite the disorientation and uncertainty that characterizes us, in an age that is very rich in technological resources, but very poor in future perspectives. Rather than inviting them to reflect on a guiding theme, as is the Eranos-Jung Lectures usual practice, we wanted to offer the lecturers the chance to present to the audience the issues they are working on, to see how the gaze on an object is constructed, through what sensibility, what concerns, what desire for understanding, and what method. And, of course, what passion. It will be a journey that will allow us to visit some “great worksites of contemporaneity” dedicated to different thematic areas: i.e., the state of health of our democracies; the fate of the “book” object and interiority in the time of endless distraction and social media; the reality of the metaverse, the overcoming of the human, and the resources of mysticism; the sonic perceptive in a society that continually solicits the sense of hearing; the solitude of the artist in the glittering world of the commodification of creativity; the drifts of the divine; and the meaning of making culture. In essence: a journey outside and inside ourselves.