Sustainability. Another concept that the COVID-19 epidemic has worn down to a point where it is useless. The virus has taken us beyond sustainability. The virus is unsustainable. There is someone who is more unsustainable that the unsustainable species par excellence: Homo sapiens. The virus not only marks the “end” of our presumption, but also wipes out the idyllic fable of cosmic balance and harmony. The new present is unsustainable. What is needed is an idea of fragility, of fear and death. Living in unsustainable times. Living in a present where unsustainability is a new and terrible situation in which to live. What remains of the human language when faced with a radically alien form such as the virus? Will we be able to support the thought of unsustainability? Felice Cimatti, a philosopher of language, considers the matter with Laura Boella, a moral philosopher.

Felice Cimatti teaches Philosophy of Language at the University of Calabria. His latest book is Il postanimale. La natura dopo l'Antropocene (Derive Approdi). He conducts the programme on philosophical and spiritual thought Uomini e Profeti broadcast on Saturday mornings on RAI RADIO 3.

Laura Boella was a professor of Moral Philosophy and Environmental Ethics at the University of Milan. She has extensively studied and translated the ideas of György Lukács and Ernst Bloch, later shifting her focus to twentieth-century feminist thought, in particular with the work of Hannah Arendt, Ágnes Heller, Jeanne Hersch, Simone Weil, Maria Zambrano and Edith Stein, examining the contributions of these thinkers and writers in  a large number of dedicated publications. She has also developed the theme of intersubjective relationships, of empathy and of affinity, proposing a critical comparison between current scientific study and the point of view of phenomenology.

The event is part of the series ENDLING E ALTRE COSE PERDUTE, by lacasadargilla.
ENDLING E ALTRE COSE PERDUTE is an exploration of themes regarding the concept of “end”, viewed in its broad sense as extinction of species and society, but also of memory, time and relations. Extinction is not related exclusively to the classic idea of the extinction of species, of all those delicate and complex organisms that make up our planet, but also the “dead ends” of our lives, failed relationships and alliances, of our past and of a future that we can only catch a glimpse of. The Earth is our field of action, the only concrete place to experience life as we know it, the first field of study of the complex systems that provide the foundations of relationships, imagination, anthropologies and ecosystems that resist - barely surviving - geological, biological and human mutations.