14 March 2019, Spinoza Lectures, Catherine Malabou

Abstract:
What has become of mutual aid, a key concept in traditional anarchism, and profoundly analyzed by Kropotkin? Being currently left aside by both post-anarchist thinkers and post-structuralist philosophers because of its supposed naturalist and rationalist grounding, it seems to live a new life under the name of «effective altruism» (Singer, Parfitt). Effective altruism opens the prospect of a decentralized morals, in which the issues of justice and the good are not referred to overarching values, but determined horizontally, out of a form of calculation. Is effective altruism a political promise or a social scandal?