Dependency, Autonomy and the Politics of Survival1

I would like to begin with my reflections on the significance and meaning of this occasion. We have gathered to commemorate Eric Miller's life and work, which I intend to address by examining certain concepts and ideas central in his oeuvre and closely associated with his name and legacy. The main theme around which I will construct my comments is that of ‘dependency and autonomy’, or as Eric put it, fully intentionally, ‘from dependency to autonomy.’

One cannot possibly commemorate Eric by compliantly submitting a scholarly resumé of what he said and wrote and discussing its importance. Eric would scoff at that, and quite correctly consider it as expressing a worshipful and dependent relatedness. Even though he is not here, I have no wish to incur the critical, pithy, and incisive comment with which he would reject such an implicitly subservient and admiring attitude. Eric's memory and unique sensibility would indeed be much better served by forcefully and forthrightly grappling with his concepts and trying to work them out, even when this may mean disagreeing with him.

Eric's legacy suggests that people, events and social processes are not to be taken at face value. One's responsibility and its autonomous exercise are fully discharged only by contemplating these in a questioning and critical manner. It is in this spirit that I must ask myself - and you - the following questions: Why me? What is the meaning of the decision to invite me, of all the numerous people one could think of, to give the first memorial lecture dedicated to Eric Miller? What do I represent and carry in this connection? And what possible meaning might it have, not only in terms of Eric, but in the wider social sense?

Whatever the conscious reasons for inviting me were, there are certainly also less conscious ones. As I have no idea what the former might have been - I never asked - I, therefore, treat all the dynamics