How can we understand democracy in a time of environmental crises, wars, and growing social indifference? And what if its foundation is something as basic as breathing?
These questions will be addressed in the international academic arena by Dr. Lenart Škof, Dean of the ISH Faculty, who will appear as a guest lecturer at the prestigious Harvard University . As part of the Interdisciplinary Perspectives seminar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, he will deliver a lecture titled “Democracy as Shared Breath: Vulnerability, Ethics, and Religion in the Public Space”.
Democracy as “shared breathing”: a new philosophy of coexistence
In the lecture, Dr. Škof develops an original concept of democracy as “shared breathing” (co-breathing), which stems from his so-called respiratory philosophy. He foregrounds the idea that breathing—as a fundamental life experience—is also an ethical and political space in which relationships between people are formed.
In doing so, he draws on Richard Rorty’s neo-pragmatism and understands philosophy as a form of cultural politics. He interprets democracy as a community of vulnerable beings, where it is precisely the experience of vulnerability that enables genuine ethical coexistence—while at the same time requiring protection from the influences of capital, systemic violence, and political numbness.
From the “politicene” to the right to breathe: the ethics of the future
A special emphasis of the lecture is the development of the field of critical respiratory studies, which treats breathing and the atmosphere as key political spaces. Within this framework, Škof analyzes the contemporary era, which he calls the “politicene”—a time marked by various forms of “atmospheric violence,” from police chokeholds to polluted air, industrial suffocation, and wartime pandemics.
As a counterweight to these trends, he advocates the idea of a universal right to breathe, also developed by the philosopher Achille Mbembe, and opens the question of the future of religion in a post-Christian world. In this context, he understands religion as a space of shared ethical sensitivity, inspired by John Dewey’s idea of a “common faith”.
An internationally recognized philosopher
Dr. Lenart Škof is the Dean of the ISH Faculty at Alma Mater Europaea University, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, and Head of the Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies at ZRS Koper. His research interweaves American pragmatism, continental philosophy, and Asian intellectual traditions. He is the author of several influential scholarly works, including God and Post-Christianity (2024), Antigone’s Sisters (2021), and Breath of Proximity (2015), and co-editor of a recent monograph on war, trauma, and justice (Routledge, 2025).
His work is also shaped by international experience—among other things, as a Fulbright researcher at Stanford University, where he collaborated with Richard Rorty, and as a Humboldt visiting researcher in Germany.
The lecture at Harvard thus represents not only an important recognition for Slovenian philosophy, but also an invitation to reflect: what does it mean to live—and breathe—together in the world of the future?
