For this year’s World Philosophy Day we asked some leading philosophers “What is the biggest philosophical question for the 21^st century?”. 

Noam Chomsky, Naomi Oreskes, Tommy Curry, Raymond Geuss, Lori Gruen, Hilary Lawson, Julian Savulescu, John Tasioulas, Raymond Tallis, Carissa Véliz, Bernardo Kastrup, Sophie Grace Chappell, and Joanna Kavenna give answers that touch on the urgent questions to do with the survival of humanity and the planet, as well as philosophy’s eternal questions on the nature of reality. 

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Noam Chomsky

Can humans overcome the enormous gap between their moral-technological capacity to destroy and their moral capacity to control this impulse?

The question was posed, starkly, 77 years ago, when the atomic age began, and it was clear that technology would soon advance to the stage when Oppenheim’s invocation of the phrase “the destroyer of worlds” would be all too appropriate.  Unknown then, the world was also entering a new geological epoch where humans could destroy the environment that sustains life.  Both threats have sharply increased since, rendering the question to a level never before contemplated.

Noam Chomsky is a philosopher, linguist, political activist, and social critic. He is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and laureate professor at the University of Arizona. 

Naomi Oreskes 

Will we successfully address the climate crisis or not?

The fate of billions of people on Earth, as well as nearly all non-human species, depends on the answer. Right now, the biggest obstacle to action is not lack of scientific knowledge. Nor is it lack of adequate and affordable technology. We have known for decades that damaging, man-made climate change was underway, and we now have the technologies we need to go the lion’s share of the way towards eliminating carbon pollution from most energy use.