Idealismekredsens blog

Translating Hegel
The Phenomenology of Spirit and Modern Philosophy

Conference at the Goethe Institute, Stockholm
September 5-7, 2008

What is the place of Hegel’s philosophy, in particular, his main work, The Phenomenology of Spirit, in contemporary thought? Should we “translate” the concepts of German Idealism – subject, substance, spirit, negativity, to name but a few – into modern terms, and if so, which terms would be the most relevant: phenomenology, deconstruction, critical theory, analytical philosophy? Or does such a translation in fact amount to a flattening of historical depth, a foreshortening of perspective that deprives thought of its productive distance and difference in relation to the present? Could “translating” in fact be taken as something other than a mere transposition of one vocabulary into another, i.e., can it allow for a kind of transformation of both the present and the past?

The conference brings together eminent Hegel scholars from Germany, the U.S., France, Finland, and Sweden, and is taking place on the occasion of the publication of the first Swedish translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, by Brian Manning Delaney and Sven-Olov Wallenstein, to be published by Thales.

For further information, see: www.hegel.se

Friday
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
On Hegel’s Claim that Self-Consciousness is ‘Desire in General’ (‘Begierde überhaupt’)
Robert Pippin (Chicago)

Saturday
10:00 – 11:00
The Self-Consciousness of Consciousness
Walter Jaeschke (Bochum)

11:00 – 12:00
Hegel’s Theory of Freedom
Terry Pinkard (Georgetown)

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
From Finite Thinking to Infinite Spirit: How to Encounter Hegel after Heidegger’s Translation?
Susanna Lindberg (Helsinki)

2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: Some Problems and Perspectives
Carl-Göran Heidegren (Lund)

3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
The Place of Art in the Phenomenology
Sven-Olov Wallenstein (Stockholm)

Sunday
10:00-11:00
Understanding as Translation: How to Read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer (Leipzig)

11:00-12:00
From Gewissheit to Infinity
Staffan Carlshamre (Stockholm)

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Hegel and Exposure
Victoria Fareld (Gothenburg)

2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Title to be announced
Brian Manning Delaney (Stockholm)

3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
French Losses in Translating Hegel: A Heuristic Benefit?
Jean-Pierre Lefebvre (Paris)

Sponsored by the Goethe Institute, Instituto Cervantes, Södertörn University College, the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen), and the Swedish Hegel Society.

Free admission. The number of seats is limited. In order to guarantee a place, please email: hegel@stockholm.goethe.org

Goethe-Institut, Bryggargatan 12 A, Stockholm. Metro: T-centralen.

Map: http://tinyurl.com/562tbh

Se plakat for konferencen her.

Nedenstående burde være interessant for kredsens medlemmer. Jeg har læst et par artikler af Adrian Piper, som var ganske glimrende, og nu har hun så skrevet et (efter alt at dømme monumentalt) tobinds-værk, der med inspiration fra Kant kritiserer tidens dominerende humeanske tilgang til fornuft, normativitet, etik, fornuft og det menneskelige selv. Og den kan kvit og frit downloades fra nettet. 

Adrian M. S. Piper

Rationality and the Structure of the Self

A Two-Volume Study in Kantian Metaethics

Adrian Piper’s practice as a first-generation Conceptual artist in the 1960s led her to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; and this, in turn, to an in-depth study of philosophy that culminated in a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard and a successful academic career as a professor of philosophy. Though Piper has referred to this as her “day job,” she has also often said that her philosophical work is the theory that her artwork puts into practice. That theory is now available in its entirety in her Rationality and the Structure of the Self. Volume I: The Humean Conception critiques the prevailing desire-centered conception of the self, and Volume II: A Kantian Conception develops an original Kantian alternative. Encompassing the history of moral and political philosophy as well as engaging head-on with contemporary debates in ethics, economics and philosophical psychology, Piper’s two-volume project has been praised by philosophers as “groundbreaking,” “very powerful,” “original and important,” “brilliant,” “indispensable,” and “a highly significant contribution.” Art professionals will find it equally useful for understanding Piper’s unique contribution to Conceptual art and to art theory more generally.

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Rationality and the Structure of the Self

Volume I: The Humean Conception

The Humean conception of the self consists in the belief-desire model of motivation and the utility-maximizing model of rationality. This conception has dominated Western thought in philosophy and the social sciences ever since Hobbes’ initial formulation in Leviathan and Hume’s elaboration in the Treatise of Human Nature. Bentham, Freud, Ramsey, Skinner, Allais, von Neumann and Morgenstern and others have added further refinements that have brought it to a high degree of formal sophistication. Late twentieth century moral philosophers such as Rawls, Brandt, Frankfurt, Nagel and Williams have taken it for granted, and have made use of it to supply metaethical foundations for a wide variety of normative moral theories. But the Humean conception of the self also leads to seemingly insoluble problems about moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification. Can it be made to work?

Rationality and the Structure of the Self

Volume II: A Kantian Conception

Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. They also supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified agency. The Kantian conception solves certain intractable problems in decision theory by integrating it into classical predicate logic, and provides answers to longstanding controversies in metaethics concerning moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification that the Humean conception engenders. In addition, it sheds light on certain kinds of moral behavior – for example, the whistleblower – that the Humean conception is at a loss to explain.

Both volumes of Rationality and the Structure of the Self, plus seven press readers’ reports, are available for free download at:

http://www.adrianpiper.com/rss/index.shtml

CFP: Transcendental Philosophy: Its History and Nature

Annual Conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy 2009
14th-17th April 2009 Manchester Metropolitan University

Thinking about the notion of the “transcendental” in the history of philosophy touches on a number of distinct topics that have proved of central significance. These include the understanding of the a priori, the nature of necessity claims in experience, the question of the nature of experience itself and its possibility, and the understanding of what is  essential in claims of knowledge.

Whilst transcendental philosophy as a venture has tended in recent years to be identified with the Kantian project it is not exclusively connected to it since successors to Kant have contested the understanding and significance of the transcendental. Included amongst alternatives to the Kantian conception are those of the German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling and Hegel) all of whom have either described themselves or been described by others as transcendental philosophers. Similarly the revival of interest in Kant in the late nineteenth century produced significant revisions in the understanding of transcendental methods and arguments. The traditions of European philosophy include significant re-inventions of the concept of the transcendental in the works of Husserl, Derrida and Deleuze and the analytic tradition includes such transcendental projects as those of Wilfrid Sellars and Peter Strawson.

By contrast, in considering the place of the concept of the transcendental in philosophy it is also important to consider its usage prior to the work of Kant in, for example the medieval tradition of describing the transcendentals as providing us notions that exceed those of categorial determination.

In responding to this topic contributors might focus, inter alia, on any of the following:

Transcendental philosophy: its nature and scope; Transcendental arguments; the nature of transcendental idealism; the viability of transcendental realism; transcendental phenomenology; the role of the transcendentals in medieval philosophy; transcendental
empiricism; transcendental philosophy and metaphysics; the synthetic a priori; transcendental deductions; transcendental psychology; analytic philosophy and the transcendental; the intuition of essences; categorial intuition; transcendental subjectivity; science and experience; transcendental apperception; transcendental imagination; transcendental logic; the logic of experience; transcendental ontology; transcendental pragmatism; semiotics and the transcendental; transcendental dynamics; mathematics and experience; nature and world; mind and world; transcendental aesthetics; transcendental dialectic; transcendental methods.

Please send abstracts to the following:

Gary Banham, Reader in Transcendental Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University (g.banham@mmu.ac.uk)

James Clarke, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of York (jac505@york.ac.uk)

Via mere eller mindre lyssky kontakter og hårdt fodarbejde af visse af Generalsekretariatets medlemmer er det lykkedes at overtale den verdensberømte slovenske filosof mm. Slavoj Zizek til at give et foredrag for Kredsens medlemmer.

SLAVOJ ZIZEK
“Kant and Hegel and the antinomies”

Mødesal 1
Studenternes Hus
Frederik Nielsens vej
Fredag den 15. august kl. 13-16

Mød op og få Sandheden forklaret af Mesteren selv. 

Alle er velkomne.

Nedenstående burde være af interesse for Kredsens medlemmer.

PH.D.-GRADEN
OFFENTLIGT FORSVAR

Ph.d.-studerende Henrik Jøker Bjerre

Med henblik på erhvervelsen af ph.d.-graden i filosofi forsvares ph.d.-afhandlingen

”Kantian Deeds”

Onsdag d.13. august 2008 kl. 13 prc.
i
Richard Mortensen Stuen
Studenternes Hus
Frederik Nielsensvej

Bedømmelsesudvalget:
Lektor Morten Haugaard Jeppesen, Institut for Filosofi og Idéhistorie, Aarhus Universitet (formand).
Lektor Mladen Dolar, Department of Philosophy, University Ljubljana, Slovenien.
Lektor Thomas Wallgren, Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Hovedvejleder:
Lektor Steen Brock, Institut for Filosofi og Idéhistorie, Aarhus Universitet.

Afhandlingen er fremlagt på Afdeling for Filosofi