Listening Exercises: Towards an Ethics of Silent Resistance

Is it possible to be in the world without being devoured by it, to care without getting lost, to contribute sincerely without projecting yourself over others? Public philosophers Miriam Rasch and Costica Bradatan invite you to a conversation about alternative ways of engaging.

Outside forces determine to a great extent how we relate to the world. Although we might not always feel the need to do so, technology, events, and others close and far continuously urge and pressure us to participate, to express, to engage – often head first – with consequences that are not necessarily beneficial, to the world or ourselves. Retreating from the world is and has been the most radical remedy, but what other, less radical strategies might be pursued, and what might be gained and lost by them?

About the speakers

Costica Bradatan is a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Amsterdam. He is Professor of Humanities at Texas Tech University and the author of Dying for Ideas (Bloomsbury, 2018; published by Ten Have as Sterven voor een idee) and In Praise of Failure (Harvard University Press, 2023). He is also the Philosophy/Religion editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB) and writes regularly for such venues as New York Times, Washington Post, TLS, Literary Review, Commonweal, and Aeon.

Miriam Rasch is a philosopher and writer, currently a Dutch Foundation for Literature fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Amsterdam. Her books are Zwemmen in de oceaan: Berichten uit een postdigitale wereld (De bezige Bij, 2017) and the prizewinning Frictie: Ethiek in tijden van dataïsme (De Bezige Bij, 2020), and Autonomie, een zelfhulpgids (Prometheus, 2022).

Merlijn Olnon (moderator) is manager Public Affairs at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) and the founding editor and publisher of the Dutch Review of Books.