Eve Poirer will present 'Plausible Abstractions: The role of fiction, truth and history in Genealogy and State of Nature Philosophy'. Everyone welcome!

Abstract

What is the place of historical truth in Genealogy? Why appeal to State of Nature stories even when we know they could never have happened? How far can philosophy abstract from reality while still having explanatory relevance? Pulling from Bernard Williams, Nietzsche, Nozick, Foucault and others, I will attempt to tackle some of these questions: exploring broadly the interaction between supposedly true historical happenings and fictional abstractions in Genealogies and State of Nature stories. I will discuss the purposes for which Genealogy is employed, the way in which State of Nature stories attempt to abstract from history, and the importance of 'plausibility' or 'conceivability' in the explanatory relevance or effectiveness of Genealogy. From this, I hope to suggest some conclusions about the appropriate and inappropriate use of Genealogy. That said, this is a work very much in progress on a very broad topic, so I hope that there will be further conclusion to be found in the discussion.

Teams link

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3aa49e6af9675349fda02fee164134326a%40thread.tacv2/1696871238131?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2209bacfbd-47ef-4465-9265-3546f2eaf6bc%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22fdb1bbe9-d582-4ba3-8da8-3fb0a6c42dc8%22%2c%22MessageId%22%3a%221696871351606%22%7d

Our next postgraduate Work in Progress (WiP) seminar is taking place this Thursday 23rd November from 5-6:15 PM in S2.77 and on Teams. Fridolin Neumann will present 'Heidegger on Kant and Ontological Intuition'. Everyone welcome!

Abstract:

In the 1920s and 1930s, Heidegger intensively engaged with Kant’s philosophy in a way that he himself acknowledges as “violent” since it always attempts to capture the unsaid in the written word. My talk revolves around a crucial claim Heidegger makes about Kant’s theory of cognition, evoking discomfort in every loyal Kantian: “knowing is primarily intuiting [Erkennen ist primär Anschauen].” I argue that in order to understand what is at stake here this claim must be interpreted along the lines of Heidegger’s distinction between ontic and ontological cognition (that is, cognition of entities on the one hand and cognition of being transcendentally determining our encounter with entities on the other hand). As I propose, the supposed primacy of intuition mainly refers to ontological cognition and hereby offers an account of human responsiveness to ontological norms which determine our ontic experience of entities in the first place. In Heidegger’s account, this (ontological) responsiveness is cashed out in terms of intuition which is structurally similar to (ontic) intuition involved in sensible perception. I proceed by first elaborating on the distinction between ontic and ontological cognition to then argue why Heidegger’s thesis about intuition should be understood as referring to the latter. After that, I sketch what it means to understand ontological cognition in terms of intuition.

Our first postgraduate Work in Progress (WiP) seminar of the term is taking place this Thursday 11th January from 5-6:15 PM in S2.77 and on Teams. Aurian De Briey will present 'From Heidegger's social ontology to his answer to the technological challenge'. Everyone welcome!

Abstract:

In Der Spiegel Interview, Heidegger acknowledges his difficulty in providing a political answer to the technological challenge he depicts in The Question Concerning Technology. I aim to make sense of such difficulty by going back to Being and Time where lies Heidegger’s social ontology and ideal of authenticity. I argue that such an ideal, when translated in collective terms, is one of mere co-existence, where individuals can at best all be authentic alongside each other but never build together a common good. I then show how this feature is transferred in Heidegger’s critique of technology which is one of the way we see the world and then to his solution to it which is a praise of art.

Teams link:

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3aa49e6af9675349fda02fee164134326a%40thread.tacv2/1704723859142?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2209bacfbd-47ef-4465-9265-3546f2eaf6bc%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22fdb1bbe9-d582-4ba3-8da8-3fb0a6c42dc8%22%7d