InterPhil: CFP: Grand Inquisitors
__ Call for Papers Theme: Grand Inquisitors Subtitle: Dostoevsky and Tarkovsky and the Western Philosophical Tradition Type: Interdisciplinary Conference Institution: Russian Cultural Centre Location: London (United Kingdom) Date: 21.–22.9.2020 Deadline: 8.5.2020 __ The philosophical genius of both Fyodor Dostoevsky and Andrei Tarkovsky was immediately apparent. Of Dostoevsky’s first novel, Poor Folk (1846), renowned literary critic Vissarion Belinsky proclaimed to the young novelist: “To you, an artist, the truth has been revealed and proclaimed; it has come to you as a gift. So cherish your gift, remain faithful to it, and be a great writer”. Similarly, of Tarkovsky’s debut film, Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Ingmar Bergman wrote: “My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease”. Despite turbulent careers compounded by often deleterious relationships with the Russian state, both Dostoevsky and Tarkovsky are considered grandmasters of their respective arts. This conference considers the strong philosophical consonance between Dostoevsky and Tarkovsky, their engagement and confrontation with the modern Western philosophical tradition, and the nature of the religious existentialism that grounds their most significant works. Tarkovsky’s philosophical indebtedness to Dostoevsky is summarily epitomised in a diary entry dated to April 30th, 1970: “Dostoevsky could become the whole point of what I want to do in cinema”. Dostoevsky’s own artistic purpose was fundamentally defined by a spiritual epiphany he experienced during his imprisonment in Siberia. The transformation of Dostoevsky’s literature upon his return to European Russia occurred in part due to his new-found spiritualism and in part owing to his new philosophical bearings. On February 22nd, 1854, while imprisoned in Siberia, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother requesting books by Vico and Ranke, as well as “the Koran, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and…without fail…Hegel, especially Hegel’s History of Philosophy. My whole future is bound up with that”. Hegelianism had permeated the Russian intelligentsia since the 1840s. The spread of German Idealism, borne itself through Cartesian subjectivity and Kantian transcendental logic, contaminated Russian high society with ideals of atheism and nihilism. It was such ideals that Dostoevsky’s major novels, upon his return to writing, aimed at overthrowing. Dostoevsky developed, across his literature and political writings, a religious existentialism that would have a profound influence on major subsequent philosophers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. Through his characters, Dostoevsky subverts the modern dictates of science and reason in order to comport his readers toward an understanding of human authenticity, that is, toward self-mastery and self-control, itself grounded in the religious experience. Faith and spirituality were predominant themes in Dostoevsky’s major novels of the 1860s and 70s and in Tarkovsky’s films from 1966 to 1986. Echoes of Dostoevskyan religious existentialism reverberate throughout Tarkovsky’s oeuvre, while the fundamental aspects of the human condition explored in such works as The Idiot, Demons, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov resonate with Tarkovsky’s own character studies in Stalker, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, and The Sacrifice. Like Dostoevsky, Tarkovsky stood against the tides of rationalism and idealism, proclaiming that “knowledge distracts us from our main purpose in life. The more we know, the less we know. Getting deeper, our horizon becomes narrower. Art enriches man's own spiritual capabilities, and he can then rise above himself, to use what we call 'free will’”. Like Dostoevsky, Tarkovsky sought to emancipate the human condition from its material and epistemological bonds and turn it towards a mode of spiritual authenticity. This conference aims at exploring not only the resonance of the philosophies of Dostoevsky and Tarkovsky but also considers the broader philosophical tradition within which both artists stand. That is to say, how are we to understand the literature of Dostoevsky and the cinema of Tarkovsky within the broader canon of the history of philosophy? If, for instance, Dostoevsky himself effected through his writings manifest shifts in contemporary philosophical thought, particularly in the realm of existentialism, to what extent is Tarkovsky engaging with such developments in his own time? This leads to an inevitable comparison of Dostoevsky and Tarkovsky’s treatment of the ‘West’ and its impact of its principles on the Russian state. For Dostoevsky, this meant the encroachment
InterPhil: CFA: Summer Course on The Diversity of Human Rights
__ Call for Applications Theme: The Diversity of Human Rights Subtitle: Human Rights Between Morality, Law, and Politics Type: Summer Course Institution: Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik Location: Dubrovnik (Croatia) Date: 31.8.–4.9.2020 Deadline: 15.4.2020 __ Course Description "Human rights are universal, egalitarian, and categorical and refer to fundamental interests of individual human beings. They are historical responses to particularly grave experiences of injustice and threats; they are declared by political actors and institutionalized in legal orders. Regarding their normative implications, they are morally justifiable. Hence, they entail political, legal, and moral dimensions which stand in complex relations towards each other yet cannot be reduced to one of them" (Georg Lohmann). Georg Lohmann is the founding figure of our course "The Diversity of Human Rights" and its spiritus rector since almost twenty years. As the title he gave to the course already indicates, Lohmann rejects any reductionist approach of human rights not only concerning their content but also with regard to the different disciplinary perspectives we need to study them appropriately. He is convinced that the different types or generations of human rights - civil, political, social and cultural rights - also reflect their complex nature as morally justified, politically interpreted and legally enforced claims of individuals. With this year's topic we directly address Lohmann's central research topic and thus want to honor our colleague and friend as a distinguished human rights scholar. Based on the conviction that recognition in science and philosophy shall take the form of argumentative exchange, we invite human rights scholars from different disciplines and schools of thought to contribute to this conference and to present papers on the complex relations between morality, law, and politics. Welcome are contributions which either discuss Lohmann's research directly or take a different stance on the fundamental issues regarding our topic. Examples of relevant questions could be: Is a naturalistic theory, according to which we have human rights simply in virtue of being human, appropriate to capture the nature of human rights? Or should we favor some political or practice-dependent conception instead? Are human rights claims hold exclusively against states of state-like political institutions, or are other agents also bound by human rights obligations? Is a state-centered approach of human rights still the prevailing opinion in International Law? Is the constitutionalization of international law still a realist utopia despite the recent backlash against globalization and multilateral forms of cooperation? Do human rights necessarily include a right to democratic governance? Can Habermas' thesis of a co-originality of human rights and democracy be defended against liberal and republican alternatives? Is there a way to reconcile the universality of human rights with the particularity of rights to citizenship and of the specific experiences that give rise to concrete human rights claims? The annual course "The Diversity of Human Rights" addresses different problems within the human rights discourse. The participants come from various countries and bring in different disciplinary competences relevant for human rights theory and practice. The course aims at an interdisciplinary debate, especially between philosophy, jurisprudence, and political science. Furthermore, the course intends to establish a dialogue between academic researchers and human rights activists from the region. The organizers invite researchers as well as human rights activists coming from all fields and disciplines, to send in abstracts that deal with some of the problems and tensions indicated above. From the abstract, the relation to the course's topic should emerge clearly. The course will give room for the presentation of papers and will include workshops especially designed for students and young researchers to present their work in progress. Each director will invite excellent students to participate in the course. The course language is English. The course fee paid to the Inter-University Centre will be around 50,- Euro. Deadline: April 15, 2020 Email: arnd.pollm...@berlin.de or bernd.lad...@fu-berlin.de Organizers Prof. Dr. Elvio Baccarini, University of Rijeka Prof. Dr. Bernd Ladwig, Free University Berlin Prof. a.D. Dr. Georg Lohmann, University of Magdeburg Dr. Ana Matan, University of Zagreb Prof. Dr. Corinna Mieth, University of Bochum Prof. Dr. Christian Neuhäuser, University of Dortmund Prof. Dr. Arnd Pollmann, Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin Contact: Prof. Dr. Arnd Pollmann Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin Email: arnd.pollm...@berlin.de Prof. Dr. Bernd Ladwig Free University Berlin Email: bernd.lad...@fu-berlin.de
InterPhil: CONF: Contributions to African Phenomenology
__ Conference Announcement Theme: Contributions to African Phenomenology Type: International Colloquium Institution: University of Fort Hare University of Pretoria North-West University Centre for Phenomenology in South Africa (CPSA) Location: Chintsa (South Africa) Date: 5.–6.3.2020 __ African phenomenology is an emerging subfield within the broader domain of African and Africana philosophy. The phenomenological method, with its various approaches to studying the meaning of human experience, has been a cornerstone in the thought of African Philosophers such as Paulin Hountondji, Tsenay Serequeberhan and D.A. Masolo, and proponents of Africana Philosophy such as Frantz Fanon, Lucius Outlaw and Lewis Gordon. While this philosophical approach has most evidently informed such thinkers, their contributions are often ‘siloed’, separated from, or neglected in the larger discursive terrain of African/Africana philosophy, postcolonialism/decolonisation, and the global phenomenology movement. The purpose of this colloquium is to explore contributions of African phenomenology to African/Africana philosophy, postcolonial/decolonial discourse, and deliberations within the international phenomenological community. The event will be centred around four keynote speakers, speaking individually, and with response papers tailored to their specific papers. Keynote speakers: Lewis Gordon (University of Connecticut) Paulin Hountondji (Université Nationale du Bénin) Rozena Maart (University of KwaZulu-Natal) Achille Mbembe (Wits University) Respondents: Chris Allsobrook (University of Fort Hare); Thabang Dladla (University of Limpopo); Louise Du Toit (Stellenbosch University); Patrick Eldridge (University of New Brunswick); Schalk Gerber (Stellenbosch University); Albert Kasanda (Czech Academy of Sciences); M. John Lamola (University of Pretoria); Rianna Oelofsen (University of Fort Hare); Bernard Matolino (University of KwaZulu-Natal); Keo Mbebe (University of Pretoria); Uchenna Okeja (Rhodes University); Abraham Olivier (University of Fort Hare); Alena Rettova (University of London); Justin Sands (North West University); Pedro Tabensky (Rhodes University). Venue: Crawford Beach Lodge in Chintsa, South Africa Organisers: Abraham Olivier (UFH), Justin Sands (NWU), Malesela J. Lamola (UP), Keo Mbebe (UP) Program frame: Day 1: 14:00-14:15 Opening 14:15-16:15 Session one: Achille Mbembe 17:00-19:00 Session two: Rozena Maart Day 2 9:30-11:30: Session three: Paulin Hountondji 13:00-15:00 Session four: Lewis Gordon 15:30-16:30 Session five: Panel discussion with keynotes and summative response by Mogobe Ramose 16:30 Close Contact: Abraham Olivier Department of Philosophy University of Fort Hare Chris Hani Building East London South Africa Email: aoliv...@ufh.ac.za __ InterPhil List Administration: https://interphil.polylog.org InterPhil List Archive: https://www.mail-archive.com/interphil@list.polylog.org/ __
