Event Description
Defined by Soviet scholars in the 1970s, the philosophical label 'cosmism' brings together a group of authors at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Nikolai Fedorov (1829–1903), Vladimir Vernadsky (1853–1945), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) and Konstantin Tsiolkovskii (1857–1935). Cosmism links the intellectual heritage of these authors around a common idea — their eschatological conception of scientific progress, highlighting the ability of human activity to regulate the Earth system and orient the development of the universe in the service of a salvation project. This paper explores the Soviet genesis of cosmism to show how it was consolidated as a school of thought reinvested today by various ideological entrepreneurs — ranging from Russian conservatives to Western transhumanists — to deconstruct the science/religion dualism constitutive of Western modernity.
Event Speaker
Juliette Faure, Research Associate at Sciences Po
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. For more information, please visit the series webpage. Hosted by the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at New York University.
