Seminars
February
The Singular, part I
Tuesday 05 February 2008
15:00 Auditorium, Jan van Eyck Academie
March
The Singular, part II
Tuesday 04 March 2008
15.00 h Auditorium, Jan van Eyck Academie
April
The Singular, part III
Tuesday 01 April 2008
14:00 h Auditorium, Jan van Eyck Academie
May
The Dual, part I
Tuesday 06 May 2008
14:00 h Auditorium, Jan van Eyck Academie
June
The Dual, Part II
Tuesday 03 June 2008
14:00h Auditorium, Jan van Eyck Academie
July
The Dual, Part III
Wednesday 02 July 2008
14:00 auditorium
September
The Multiple, Part I
Tuesday 09 September 2008
17h30 room 204
November
The Universal, Part I
Tuesday 04 November 2008
15:00 h Auditorium, Jan van Eyck Academie
December
Versus Laboratory 2008 final triple session: Alliez, Riha, multiple, universal
Monday 01 December 2008 - Sunday 02 November 2008
Auditorium
January
Versus Laboratory 2009 Presentation - Matter Matters
Thursday 15 January 2009
13h45 Jan van Eyck Academie
February
Negation/Consistency 1
Thursday 05 February 2009
1030h-1230h auditorium
March
Negation/Consistency 2
Wednesday 11 March 2009
1030h-1230h auditorium
April
Negation/Consistency 3
Thursday 09 April 2009
1030h-1230h auditorium
May
Matter/Knowledge 1
Thursday 21 May 2009
14h-16h RM 204
June
Imagination/Dialectic 1
Sunday 14 June 2009
14h-18h RM 204
September
Imagination/Dialectic 2
Thursday 03 September 2009
14h-15h Auditorium
October
Stasis/Rupture 1
Thursday 08 October 2009
14h Auditorium
November
Stasis/Rupure 2
Thursday 05 November 2009
14h
December
Stasis/Rupture 3
Tuesday 01 December 2009
14h
February
Historical contingency/Subjective necessity
Wednesday 03 February 2010
10h30-12h30 Auditorium
April
Index, Suject, Form of Life
Thursday 08 April 2010
14h Auditorium
May
Sociological reflexivity/Philosophical reflexivity
Thursday 27 May 2010
14h Auditorium
Stasis/Rupture 1
Thursday 08 October 2009
14h Auditorium
In the last session, we examined how a materialist model of rupture, contingency and epochality remains to be completely unearthed from the theological legacy of contemporary thought through the figure of St. Paul. In this session, we remain within the framework of rupture and contingency via a look at the writings of John Locke and the complex nexus of problems encountered at the dawn of modern liberal theory.
Our guest Oliver Feltham has recently published the book Alain Badiou: Live Theory (Continuum, 2008) in which he reads Badiou’s roughly forty years of work as a commitment to seeking out and experimenting with the models and the modeling of change. In this recent turn to Locke (and 17th century philosophy in general), he initiates a new mode of research by thinking through models of change in history of philosophy. In this session, Feltham will share the progress of this new project by discussing some passages from Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Whereas contemporary theorists have turned back to the 17th century by way of Spinoza (Deleuze, Negri, Macherey) and Leibniz (Simondon, Serres), the turn to Locke should provide another avenue to address common problems of action, individuation and relation. On the one hand, the inheritance of a metaphysical overdetermination on the conception of action constrained the foundation of political action to the various models of unity or individual will. On the other, Locke’s own historical situation, writing in the aftermath of the tumultuous English Civil War, must have surely exposed the thinker to deep inadequacies of such a framework. Bracketing the standard readings of Locke’s metaphysics of action and its foundational status for classical liberalism, in what ways can we encounter the crisis of “action” in Locke’s writings? Further, how can we evaluate the effect of a historical condition of the content of philosophical discourse on change?
ABSTRACT:
“What is political action? The limits of sovereign action and contractual action in Hobbes and Locke”
One epochal problem – posed from politics to philosophy – in the seventeenth century is the problem of collective political action. How can action with more than one agent be thought? What does it mean for a parliamentary assembly to act in politics after the death of the king? Does this require a different conceptualization of action? Do all of the inherited Aristotelian or Cartesian oppositions such as that between activity and passivity stand? In grappling with this problem seventeenth century philosophers generate models of collective action, both explicit and implicit. However these models are severely limited by having been developed within by the general framework for action. For example, Hobbes, in developing his model of sovereign action, insists that only a unity can act, that a multiplicity cannot act. Moreover, these models were already inadequate to what was being thought in politics about action during the English civil War by the Leveller agitators in the New Model Army. Challenges were thus posed to philosophy that have not yet been completely heard never mind picked up. This paper begins to respond to this challenge by tracing the limits of Hobbes and Locke’s conceptions of collective action.
texts:
Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding: Part II, Ch.21§72, Ch.22, Ch.27, Ch.28, Part III, Ch.9. link.