12h45 - 14h 

D.041 Batîment Dupriez 

Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Louis Larue (Aalborg University)

In this talk, I will analyse a (potential) dilemma for those willing to bring about justice into the world. The dilemma is well illustrated by the tale “the Anarchist Banker”, as told by Fernando Pessoa. Anarchists can achieve nothing, Pessoa tells us, if they don’t have the means to do so; at the same time, acquiring the means implies participating in an unjust system, hence prolonging both the existence of the system and the need to alleviate its unjust effects. The dilemma, in other words, is that you cannot have justice without the means of achieving justice; but you cannot have the means to achieve it without reinforcing injustice. In the talk, I try to make sense of the dilemma and evaluate several ways to escape it.