This year, the “Alfons Auer Ethics Prize” from the University of Tübingen goes to the literary and cultural studies professor Leela Gandhi. In particular, the award honors her innovative work on postcolonial ethics and political theory. Based on the approaches of Mahatma Gandhi, whose descendant she is, she develops a creative ethic that works critically and constructively on new forms of non-violence and on overcoming the damage and injuries that colonialism left behind in post-colonial worlds.
As an excellent thinker and open discussion partner, her work is also of fundamental importance for Christian theological ethics, according to the justification of the Catholic Theological Faculty. Leela Gandhi developed a postcolonial theory, the challenge of which theology also had to face: if theological ethics wanted to live up to its claim of inclusivity that included all people at all times, it was important that they listened to the postcolonial criticism of their own colonialism.
The public ceremony for the handover will take place on Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. in the lecture hall of the Theologicum (Liebermeisterstr. 12). The interested public is cordially invited.
The laudation will be held by Professor Ulrike E. Auga from the Institute for Missiology, Ecumenism and Religious Studies at the University of Hamburg. Leela Gandhi himself will give a keynote address on “ The challenges of postcolonial theories for ethics and possible perspectives for a postcolonial ethics ”.
Leela Gandhi (born in Mumbai) has been researching and teaching as “ John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English ” at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island (USA) since 2014. She holds a PhD from Balliol College , Oxford University and has taught at the University of Chicago , La Trobe University (Melbourne , Australia) and the University of Delhi . Gandhi became internationally known above all for her fundamental works on postcolonial theory and politics, on democratic practice and on postcolonial communitization. She publishes the academic journal Postcolonial Studies , which she co-foundedand serves on the editorial board of the electronic journal Postcolonial Text . She is also a senior fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University . Leela Gandhi is the great-granddaughter of freedom fighter and civil rights activist Mahatma Gandhi.
The Alfons Auer Ethics Prize
The Alfons Auer Ethics Prize is awarded by the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen and is dedicated to the theologian Alfons Auer (1915-2005). He was the founding director of the Catholic Academy of the Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese (1951-1953), held the chair for moral theology at the University of Würzburg (1955-1965) and was professor of moral theology at the University of Tübingen from 1966 until his retirement in 1981.
Auer is considered one of the most important German-speaking moral theologians of the 20th century, who strived for a dialogue between church and world in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. Characteristic of his ethical approach was the central position of human reason in questions of Christian morals, which he anchored in a positive view of man and creation. Previous winners have been the Canadian social philosopher Professor Charles Taylor (2015), the human rights activist Heiner Bielefeldt (2017) and the Irish politician and former President Mary McAleese.
The prize was donated by the entrepreneur Siegfried Weishaupt on the occasion of Auer’s 100th birthday. Weishaupt is the managing partner of Max Weishaupt GmbH. The global company with 3,000 employees and its headquarters in Schwendi, Swabia, was founded by his father Max Weishaupt, Honorary Senator of the University of Tübingen. Weishaupt has also been a passionate art collector for more than 50 years. The “Siegfried and Jutta Weishaupt Collection” has been on display at the Kunsthalle Weishaupt in Ulm since 2007.
