Responsibility, the theme 2026
What one generation owes to the other
“What one generation owes to the other” this idea sums up well what this immense and rich topic of Responsibility means.
Responsibility is less of a question than it is a response, or rather a whole group of responses, that either individually or collectively we owe to the “Other”, or to the other’s community, for today or for tomorrow. “Sponsio”, “spondere”, to stand as a guarantor, to promise, to commit oneself. The Latin-rooted word provides endless possibilities for reflection and debates at the “Cité de la Réussite. Keep in mind that in Hebrew, the word responsible (ahraï) includes at the same time “other” (aher) and the word “brother” (ah). Therefore, to be responsible not only means to do unto the other, but to be the other’s brother.
Responsibility brings us back to the subject of free will, the difference between freedom of action and thought from that of determinism; questions that have been challenging philosophers for 23 centuries. Do I have free will that allows me to be a free human being, therefore responsible? And responsible to whom, the spiritual question? Or am I a product of determinism, constrained by compulsive forces, stronger than I am and therefore I am exempt from my own actions?
The context under which our modern society finds itself confronted to these questions, this will be the subject of the debates executed at the "Cité de la Réussite” in 2006.
On the one hand, due to the increase of modern societies’ power (scientific and especially technological) assumes a natural development in regards to its global responsibilities, which could itself in fact, turn out to be contradictory to the needs for freedom, emancipation and progress. How do we find the right equilibrium between “freedom and responsibility”?
World-wide problems, the complexity of modern societies, duty to interfere, the state of the ecological system on the planet, massive technological and scientific changes, evolution in the ways of consummation, decaying of social ties; everyone of these ideas necessitates us to all become involved as a whole, toward the coming future.
The idea of responsibility takes us back to the fundamental values of humanity, liberty, equality, solidarity and to fraternity.
It is because the theme of Responsibility goes with all other topics brought up, that we found it to be essential to place it at the centre of the debates at the "Cité". It concerns us all individually and collectively, as citizens of the world and it strappingly challenges all of those who are in a position of "Responsibility" this includes equally the economic or political leader to the artist, the philosopher or the scientist.
