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
March
Sociological reflexivity/Philosophical reflexivity
Thursday 04 March 2010
14h Auditorium
Stasis/Rupure 2
Thursday 05 November 2009
14h
In this penultimate seminar of the seminar, we have invited Charles T. Wolfe (University of Sydney) to help us deepen our continuing investigation of the fundamental problematics of contemporary materialism. Since January, we have staked our laboratory on the overturning of the false oppositions, most often represented from a naive empiricist ideology, arising from the subject/object distinction. As it was succinctly put by Marx in the Theses on Feuerbach, materialist thought, "is only conceived in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively." It is in the continuation of this critical mistake that we have, along this year, proposed the obsolescence of this distinction between materialism and idealism itself. With materialism raised up as doctrine, how can this gap that Marx pointed to be overcome? Our invited speaker Charles Wolfe will go straight to the heart of this question by turning back to some earlier debates that followed the inauguration of modern philosophy itself. In this, perhaps both materialism and a positive task of metaphysics can still be revived today.
Abstract:
MATERIALISM AND THE PROBLEM OF THE ETHICAL: LESSONS FROM THE RADICAL ENLIGHTENMENT
Charles T. Wolfe
From Hegel to Engels to Sartre and Raymond Ruyer, to name only a few, materialism is a necropolis, or the metaphysics befitting such an abode. ‘Dead matter’, ‘mechanical, lifeless matter’, ‘brutish’ as Alexander Pope had it, is somehow cruelly used, so the vision goes, by second-rate scientists or their propagandists to strip the living world of its uniqueness, its singularity, and of course its freedom. The themes of de-humanization and of course the hostility to the Scientific Revolution (which knew nothing of materialism!) are not far off. This is a powerful Christian theme (in the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth) and it is again a powerful motif of phenomenology (in Husserl and again, in different form, in the ‘embodied phenomenology’ of Merleau-Ponty and Varela). In the following remarks I aim to challenge this view. First, I try and retrieve some ‘moments’ of radical materialism and show how they in fact defined by their recognition of the existence of organic beings. Second, I examine the implications of these doctrines for ethics: is there any ‘freedom worth wanting’ in a Spinozistic, embodied universe? Third, I suggest some features of the materialist, reductionist standpoint as precisely radical and reconstructive. To the social democrat or the defender of the human soul, materialism will forever be an ugly mistake; but to the lovers of open-ended metaphysical vistas, the situation may be different.
selected related texts by Charles T. Wolfe:
The Death of La Mettrie (A Materialist Death?) link.
De-ontologizing the brain. link.
Un matérialisme désincarné: la théorie de l’identité cerveau-esprit. link.