Workshop-Reihe des Teilprojekts C9 des Sonderforschungsbereichs 626 „Ästhetische Erfahrung im Zeichen der Entgrenzung der Künste“

 

Concept of the Workshop-Series:

The series of workshops examines the nature of thought as well as the relationship between nature and thought. Based on developments in “analytic” and “continental” philosophy that are addressing anew Kant’s transcendental philosophy and the history of post-Kantian thought in general, this research seminar engages with the question of how the relationship between mind and world is conceptualized in contemporary thought: in metaphysics and in relation to recent developments in cognitive- and neurosciences. In interrogating key issues of contemporary philosophical research, such as the relationshipbetween concepts and objects or between (philosophical, scientific, or aesthetic) representation and reality, we seek to re-define the relation between science and metaphysics, epistemology and ontology, and to approach the epistemic and ontological constitution of thought and of objectivity.

The examination of the nature of thought implies not only the question of the epistemological and scientific descriptions of cognition, but, furthermore, that of the metaphysical conditions of the possibility of thinking as such. This workshop series, which will result in a publication, addresses the materialistic and naturalistic status of thought and analyzes reductionist and deterministic explanations of mind and world. Nevertheless, it aims to make possible speculative metaphysical models based on realist and materialist conceptions of thinking and nature that take into account, for instance, aesthetic experiences (sensible perception and sensual encounters) that cannot be exhaustively explicated within a thoroughly scientific framework. Accordingly, in challenging the question of realism and materialism the workshops intends to extend the theoretical implications that these various research programs delineate to fields that exceed the proper domain of philosophy.

This series of workshops brings together researchers from various different philosophical fields (contemporary metaphysics, history of philosophy, philosophy of science, analytic philosophy, epistemology) in order to interrogate the (natural or material) constitution of thought in order to ask: Can thought be naturalized, can mind be reduced to neurological processes in the brain? And, consequently: what is the relationship between science and philosophy? Even if the contemporary natural sciences provide the epistemic authority for philosophy: what are philosophy’s conceptual capacities and speculative recourses that makes it possible to establish modes of thought that exceed empirical constraints?

 

About this Workshop:

This essay develops Derrida’s logic of the trace in relation to the philosophical problem of time and the revival of “life” as a central category in contemporary thinking. Through a critical interrogation of Bergson and Heidegger’s conceptions of temporality, I show how the logic of the trace articulates an originary co-implication of the organic and the inorganic, the event and the machine. Refuting any vitalist conception of life—as well as any conception of an inherent dynamism of life—the deconstructive logic of the trace allows one to reckon with the philosophical implications of Darwinism.

 

- registration prior to the workshop required via email -

 

Contact:

armen.avanessian@gmx.net

 

Organisation:

Armen Avanessian and Tobias Huber

 

 

Further workshops and lectures:

 

Graham Harman (American University Cairo)

April 11, 19:00-20:30

Lecture: “Strange Realism” (Haus der Kulturen der Welt)

April 12, 11:00-14:00

2. Workshop: “Speculative Realism Without Materialism” (SFB 626)

 

Quentin Meillassoux (École Normale Supérieure)

April 19, 19:00-20:30

Lecture: “Iteration and Repetition. Ontology of the Meaningless Sign“ (Haus der Kulturen der Welt)

April 20: 11:00-14:00

3. Workshop (SFB 626)

 

Ray Brassier (American University Beirut)

May 4, 11:00-14:00

4. Workshop: “Representation and Picturing” (SFB 626)

May 4, 19:00-20:30

Lecture: "That Which is Not" (Haus der Kulturen der Welt)

 

Iain Hamilton Grant (University of the West of England)

May 10

5. Workshop, 11am-14pm (SFB 626)

May 11, 19:00-20:30

Lecture: „Origins of Dynamics“(Haus der Kulturen der Welt)