On Monday, December 15, ENS de Lyon will confer a Doctor Honoris Causa degree on Professor Hartmut Rosa, a philosopher and a sociologist at the University of Jena. The ceremony will be followed by a lecture: “Acceleration, Alienation and Resonance: Forms of Connecting with the World”. The event will be livestreamed on the website of ENS de Lyon.
Hartmut Rosa is internationally recognized for his book Acceleration (2010), which has expanded our understanding of the common yet analytically complex phenomenon of the accelerating pace of life—the widespread feeling that “everything keeps speeding up,” driven in part by technological innovation. He later provided a conceptual response to this form of alienation, “resonance,” understood as a dynamic and responsive way of engaging with the world that enables individuals to feel genuinely alive.
Following in the footsteps of Abhijit Banerjee, a Nobel Prize in Economics winner, mathematician Paul Seymour, an eminent specialist in graph theory and algorithmic science, and Dennis Meadows, whose landmark report The Limits to Growth had just marked its 50th anniversary, who were distinguished in 2023, Hartmut Rosa will become the 26th recipient of an honorary doctorate from ENS de Lyon. He will also be the second German scholar to receive this award, after physicist Eberhard Bodenschatz (2015), a leading expert on turbulence, and the third philosopher, following Stanley Cavell (2010), one of the major voices of contemporary American philosophy, and Theo Verbeek in 2011, a prominent Dutch specialist of the controversies of Cartesianism. He will likewise be the third sociologist to be so honored, in the footsteps of Pinar Selek in 2013 – who is well known for her advocacy for the rights of women and Kurds – and Li Peilin in 2018, who contributed to the creation of a French-Chinese International Laboratory dedicated to post-Western sociology.
According to President Emmanuel Trizac, conferring this degree on Hartmut Rosa reflects the school’s mission statement as a leading research institution serving the public interest: “At a time when scientific rationality is challenged and the free circulation of words and ideas is impeded, research and education, along with the link between science and society, remain central to generating and sustaining resonance.” Across the STEM disciplines, as well as in humanities and social sciences, ENS de Lyon is recognized for its academic excellence, international openness, and commitment to diversity, innovation, and research addressing societal challenges. The school has recently established or reinforced partnerships with major international universities and launched the Observatory for Equal Opportunities in collaboration with nine other leading institutions.
Press Contact: Aude Riom, Head of Communications, email: aude.riom [at] ens-lyon.fr , tel.: +33 6 30 14 08 38