Abstract
The current climate crisis confronts us with a deep discrepancy between knowledge and action. Therefore, this article is looking for a readjustment of the relationship between science and society. The positivist self-understanding of science and its fragmented organizational form lead to a marginalization of ethical questions. Instead, sustainability calls for a re-examination of the preconditions and embedding contexts of supposedly value-free research. Faced with the increasing complexity of the modern world, ethics must spell out a new “grammar of responsibility” that addresses the prevalent “declamatory overload of responsibility”. Ethicists can fulfil this role by uncovering and regulating conflicting goals and dilemmas. Instead of playing the role of “marginal echo chambers”, universities ought to assume their social responsibility as structural policy actors. This article suggests a methodology of responsible research as a specific ethical contribution to the model of “transformative” and “catalytic” science for a “post-normal age”. True to their founding mission, academia should herald a “New Enlightenment” that is more self-reflexive regarding its own practical and ethical preconditions, foundations, and consequences. This article presents a possible practical method for fostering the dialogue between the natural sciences and the humanities and to link research, education, practice, and social communication in new ways. It is concluded that a foundation of a whole-rationality approach with a multidimensional understanding of wisdom and, respectively, rationality and sagacity is necessary for sustainable universities.
Highlights
The argumentation of this article was developed in five steps: (1) In the present situation of climate change and the great acceleration in the epoch of the Anthropocene, humanity is running out of time
(2) There is a wide call for a new role of science in society which is discussed under different headlines, e.g., transformative, responsible, public, sustainable, or catalytic science
There is often a lack of scientific research about moral dilemmas on the way to a sustainable society. To deal with this adequately, sustainability science in the Anthropocene that recognizes the claim of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) needs a comprehensive ethically founded reorientation as well as a transdisciplinary approach that establishes an inclusive relationship between intellectuals, politics, and the public sphere
Summary
The current situation of global society in the upheaval of modernity is marked by a discrepancy between knowledge of probable future disasters and a lack of adequate reaction of today’s society. Precarious is the increasing distrust of international cooperation and of the ethical universalism of human-rights-based political liberalism [2,3,4] Against this background, the role, communication conditions, and tasks of science in political discourse are changing. This article stimulates a debate with an understanding of ethics as “philosophy of science” and a norm–theoretical analysis of different ways by using the terms “responsibility” and “freedom” It explores, in a theoretical and practical way, whether and how universities can contribute to a sustainable society under changed conditions of communication. The understanding of rationality and the associated current debate about the relationship between science and society in times of climate change as well as the “post-factual” weakness of trust in reason and democracy are analysed. Owing to the above-mentioned reason, the considerations are divided into five parts (a–e): (a) The current situation of science between the role of observer and actor is presented at first in Section 2. (b) Section 3 will describe the need to change the cultural patterns and guiding values of society, so that universities can become driving forces for a cultural revolution. (c) The methodology of how this change can take place follows in Section 4, and (d) the vision of a “New Enlightenment” ends the line of argument in Section 5. (e) In the final section, Section 6, all arguments are summarized together with discussion from a different point of view from that of the authors, as well as other issues not considered in this article
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