Current self-understanding debates in Western societies are shaped by crisis discourses that often employ religious-apocalyptic symbolism. The future, it seems, can often only be conceived in European discourses in terms of the catastrophic. Such thinking about the future has implications for present actions and calls into question our traditional ethical guiding concepts. Who can still take responsibility for the future when catastrophe seems inevitable? This volume brings together the contributions from the interdisciplinary final conference of the research college "The Crisis of the Future" at the Center for Religion, Economy, and Politics in Basel. The texts address, from an ethical perspective, the questions that current forms of future discourse raise.