A philosopher excavates the origins of our state of permanent crisis and charts a more promising path forward.

Crises abound, so many that it can be easy to lose perspective. In this event, Miguel de Beistegui will trace the intellectual development of ideas about crisis and identify four distinct forms a crisis might take: crises of deviation, exception, contradiction, and extinction. Drawing on a range of examples (from economic crises to social uprisings, pandemics, and ecological devastation) and discourses (from ancient medicine to legal theory, political economy, philosophy, the earth sciences, and ecocriticism), he will offer new conceptual tools for both understanding and avoiding the dangers of our crisis-saturated time.

Miguel de Beistegui is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, and honorary professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. His new book, A Philosophy of Crisis, will be published in December by the University of Chicago Press.

Alexis Papazoglou is Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. He was previously senior editor for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway. He is also host of the podcast, “The Philosopher and the News”.

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