Zona Zaric
ParisMeet Zona Zarić, a researcher in moral and political philosophy at ENS Ulm...
Studies, readings, projects... Here is her account!
Could you introduce yourself? What are you currently doing?
I have been living in Paris for four years and I am as much in love with this city today as I was on the very first day. I come from the former Yugoslavia, a country whose disintegration is at the heart of my current research. Having lived through the Yugoslav wars and witnessed the process of dehumanising the Other — which was both cause and consequence — my project slowly took shape. It culminates in the development of a political-philosophical framework that makes it possible to move beyond an abstract cosmopolitanism — one that affirms a common humanity, a shared destiny, and the equal moral worth of human beings, yet tragically fails more often than not to win support — and towards a felt apprehension of these ethical and existential truths, one capable of being mobilised to bring about genuine societal change.
I am in the fourth — and hopefully final — year of my doctoral thesis in moral and political philosophy at the Philosophy Department of ENS Ulm. I also co-lead the seminar Soin et Compassion : Le sujet, l'institution hospitalière et la Cité, within the Chair of Philosophy at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris.
What memories do you have of your studies and your teachers?
At a decisive moment in my career, a pivotal encounter made it possible for me to be answering you today, from Paris, as a doctoral student. It came at just the right time, when the natural continuation of my law studies was this transition into philosophy: I met Cynthia Fleury. I was then doing a Master's in international relations at the American University in Paris, and her interest in my path and the confidence she placed in me opened up a road rich in encounters — including that with the man who would become my thesis supervisor, Marc Crépon.
I will never forget the day I received his email telling me that my application to the École Normale Supérieure on the rue d'Ulm had been accepted. Since then, I have been living my dreams, thanks to this institution and everything that being part of the ENS makes possible. What an extraordinary richness! It helps me move forward every day, both professionally and personally. I am building the most wonderful memories — ones that will stay with me for ever.
Which philosophical book have you been particularly passionate about? Is there an author you fell in love with at first sight?
Without any hesitation: reading the works of Emmanuel Levinas, and above all Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. It captures so well what it means to be human, the nature of subjectivity and the relationship to others. Subjectivity is for the other, not for oneself. It is in this responsibility — which does not depend on reciprocity — that I become a subject. In other words, it is in feeling close to another that I feel responsible. Ethics, understood as responsibility, is where the very knot of the subjective is tied. As Dostoevsky put it: We are all responsible for everyone and everything, and I more than anyone else.
Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence is THE great book of subjectivity, but Levinas is obviously no Enlightenment philosopher. For him, individual autonomy is not the supreme value — the other, the face of the other, arrests my freedom, inhibits it, even alienates it, thereby allowing a suspension of its natural attitude; for to think of the other is to step outside oneself and outside any cultural or historical context.
I believe that in an age of interchangeability and universal replaceability, reading Levinas could be immensely valuable and liberating.
What are your research projects and interests?
I am seeking to rescue compassion from the noise of public debate, giving it political content by virtue of its role in underpinning moral reasoning and the sense of social responsibility directed towards the common good. By virtue of its ubiquity and immediacy — as a universal lived experience — compassion offers a way out of Hobbes' logic of the war of all against all, and allows us to move towards the collective project of living with and for others.
My doctoral thesis examines how compassion might be mobilised as the foundation of both a shared societal vision and a solidarity-based way of living together — one nourished by the moral sensibilities of our cultures, while drawing on a long-standing questioning of how to confront and transcend division and the denial of a common humanity, both of which are engendered by the construction of otherness and essentialised identities.
I also wish to reflect on the possibilities of a discourse that allows compassion to become eloquent and to unfold within social relations. In what sense could compassion be a driving force behind a rehumanisation of politics? Advances in robotics, particularly in artificial intelligence and transhumanism, are also compelling us to rethink the place of emotions in our society and the foundations of our humanity. Might compassion be the very guarantor of our humanity and our sociability?
Compassion generates exchanges; it is the foundation of the human bond. My task is to give it — or rather restore it — its rightful place at the very heart of our society. I hope that my ambition and my energy will prove equal to the urgency I feel in rediscovering the values of solidarity, and in the need to acknowledge our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I won't stop until I reach the Panthéon!
Thank you, Zona, for sharing your story!
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