A qui s’adressent les requêtes qui nous touchent? Appel des choses et urgence écologique

Abstract

In this paper, I would like to retrace the way in which Waldenfels works on the distinction between things and humans. Through the responsive point of view, this relation is marked by a radical ambivalence, and the attribution of identities can only happen during the responding process itself, not before. This leads to a practical kind of uncertainty that underlies every cultural categorization. In the second part of my paper, I would like to show the implications of this theory for ecological questions. I aim to suggest that the responsive point of view allows us to consider a form of community, not made of specified beings with different qualities, but of responding parts of the same responsive and “pathic” event. What we share with things and with nature is the necessity to respond to some emergencies that bind us together in the same practical situation.