Humanity’s Pact for Survival: Eighteenth Century Narratives of Crisis as the Foundation for Improving Humans Beings’ Relationship with Nature

Application summary

This project focuses on European narratives of crisis (including pandemics) in the long eighteenth century Europe. It will historicise different accounts of knowledge and condensed knowledge in crisis narratives. The aim is to build a European outlook of what kind of knowledge can allow human beings to advance in their process of self-consciousness which, according to Vico and Kant, enhances the ability of human beings to improve their relationship with their fellows in their societies and environments. The acceleration of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian Attack on Ukraine have been listed as the main causes of the current global crisis. However, this is not the first time in history that natural disasters and wars coincide in time, creating a widespread sense of crisis that emphasises individuals’ selfishness and their inability to think about the present and future wellbeing of the humanity. Chronicles of crises, memoirs, personal diaries, but also philosophical constructions have left testimony of how people have faced them, pointing to human awareness. Human consciousness is a type of knowledge that only generates in times of crisis. It has been theorised as the necessary impulse that emancipates people from states of imbecilitas, barbarism, ignorance, backwardness, or individualism, springing a new beginning for societies, and more meaningful ways of relating to social groups and nature. This project will be implemented over four and it will require three field research trips of three-four weeks to Naples and Palermo, France and Lisbon and Germany and Sweden. This project will produce four peer-reviewed articles, one edited volume in year 3: Historicising Crises in Early Modern Europe resulting from the proceedings of the conference organised in year 1; and a monograph in year 4: Humanity’s Pact for Survival: Eighteenth Century Narratives of Crisis as the Foundation for Improving Humans Beings’ Relationship with Nature.