Author: cful

Marco Maurizi

Lombardo Radice Institute/University of Rome “Tor Vergata”

What is Animal Freedom? Political Perspectives for the Critique of Anthropocentrism

15 November 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The theory of liberation and animal rights develops in a period of decline of the Marxist left and in line with the establishment of neo-liberal hegemony. Consequently, the classic utilitarian approaches, those founded on moral rights or on the juridical implementation of the animal condition, but also the kind of liberal-oriented eco-feminism of the 1980s do not seem to take into due account the economic structure of capitalist society. Though the highly industrialized and anthropocentric nature of real socialism has partly justified the disinterest in classical antispecism for the class struggle, the lack of a serious analysis of capitalism and its intrinsic tendencies makes any theoretical definition and practical defense of animals and animality problematic. By judging class relations irrelevant with respect to the “domination of man” over the animal world, classic animal liberation theories have worked with abstract and static concepts of “animality” and “humanity” often falling behind the profound insights into the relationship between humanism and nature proposed by Marx and Engels themselves. Is it possible to overcome the traditional anthropocentric orientation of the Left to make room for a discourse that does not exclude animal liberation from the overall project of emancipation of the working class? This paper will try to criticize the limits of liberal animalism and Socialist anthropocentrism by resorting to the theses defended by Adorno and Horkheimer in their Dialectic of the Enlightenment, while expanding Marx’ and Engels’ insights on the dialectic of nature. We will try to show how the elaboration of different and dialectical concepts of “nature” and “animality” is essential to correctly set these questions and establish a new way to articulate the relationship between animal liberation, critical theory, and eco-socialism.

James S. Pearson

Praxis-CFUL | University of Lisbon

Monsters of our Own Making: The Political Value of Illusory Dystopias

25 October 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy) | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Dystopian fears currently loom large in the public imagination. In this talk, I examine whether it might be politically valuable for people to fear illusory dystopian scenarios. The dominant view among contemporary political theorists is that members of a polity should only fear real dangers – that is, credible threats, which are based on facts and evidence. On this view, which I call the credibilist view, widespread fear of imaginary threats causes political harm. There is reason to believe, however, that it may in fact be politically beneficial for citizens to fear illusory dystopias under certain conditions. I refer to this competing position as the illusionist view. The first point that speaks in favour of the illusionist stance is that recent political theorists have convincingly demonstrated that pursuing illusory – i.e., infeasible – utopias can promote collective flourishing. Given that utopias are to a certain extent structurally symmetrical with dystopias, we might then reasonably expect illusory dystopias to be just as valuable as their utopian counterparts. To test this hypothesis, I consider the two strongest pieces of evidence that might be cited in support of the illusory view.  First, philosophers and social psychologists have argued that collective fear of hell (perhaps the illusory dystopia par excellence) can foster social cooperation and compliance. The second piece of potential evidence is to be found in the field of international relations (IR). Certain IR theorists (e.g., Thomas Christensen) maintain that political leaders can enhance national cohesion by inspiring the citizenry with a dystopian fear of foreign invasion and occupation – and this is said to hold even where there is no real threat. If groundless fears of hell and foreign occupation can promote the commonweal, then the illusionist view would appear to be correct. I scrutinize these two pieces of evidence, finding them to be too contentious to vindicate the illusionist view. It does follow, however, that we should therefore endorse the credibilist view. Although the current evidence in favour of the illusionist position remains weak, stronger evidence may still be forthcoming. In light of this possibility, we should refrain from automatically dismissing dystopian fears that lack credibility since they may still prove to serve our collective interests.

Daniela Voss

University of Hildesheim

The Machinic Unconscious: Deleuze, Guattari, Spinoza

18 October 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy) | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

How can we desire our own repression? This is according to Deleuze and Guattari the “fundamental problem of political philosophy […] precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly” (Anti-Oedipus, p. 29). Spinoza posed this question for the first time in the Theological-Political Treatise, and since then it has been taken up by various thinkers, for instance, Wilhelm Reich. Yet attempts to solve this paradox commonly make use of the concept of ideology, assuming that the masses have been deceived. By contrast, Deleuze and Guattari propose a ‘materialist psychiatry’ that overcomes the dichotomy between the rationality of social production and the irrationality of imaginary production. This paper sketches out their approach to this problem by focusing on their concepts of the unconscious and of desire, and in doing so we will return to Spinoza’s thought.

Mariana Larison

CONICET/University of Buenos Aires

Tempo e revolução: Que ideia de práxis?

11 October 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy) | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Na segunda metade do século XX teve lugar uma releitura da obra de Maquiavel em autores de diferentes correntes de pensamento que, movidos por diferentes interesses, se viram na necessidade de pensar especificamente sobre o problema da fundação de uma nova ordem política. No pensar o totalitarismo, no pensar a democracia, no pensar a política, no pensar contra Hegel, no pensar com Marx ou sem Marx, emergiram da Europa e da América novas interpretações do florentino que disputam o sentido da instituição da ordem política. Nesta apresentação, o meu interesse será aprofundar apenas numa das muitas leituras da fundação política de Maquiavel na segunda metade do século passado, nomeadamente, a proposta de Merleau-Ponty. O objetivo consistirá em analisar alguns dos problemas fundamentais que surgem da análise da noção de revolução baseada em Maquiavel, assim como pensar as possibilidades que esta oferece para apreciar com clareza o vínculo profundo que se estabelece entre fundação e tempo, o que alguns chamam instituição.

Bolsa de Investigação Pós-doutoral (BIPD), no âmbito do projecto de I&D “Tradução Anotada das Obras Completas de Aristóteles” (PTDC/FER-FIL/0305/2021), do Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, financiado por fundos nacionais da FCT/MCTES

Referência: CFUL_55_2022_BIPD_ProjectoCWA6_Julho

• ACTA N.º 1
• AVISO DE ABERTURA
• EURAXESS NOTICE (Offer ID: 842216)

Prazo de candidatura: 10/10/2022 a 11/11/2022

O CFUL acaba de abrir novo concurso para atribuição de uma Bolsa de Investigação (BI) para Estudante de Mestrado.

Bolsa de Investigação (BI) para Estudante de Mestrado, no Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, financiada por fundos nacionais da FCT/MCTES, através do projecto UIDP/00310/2020

Referência: CFUL_58_2022_BI_EstudanteDeMestrado_Programatico_Setembro

• ACTA N.º 1
• AVISO DE ABERTURA
• EURAXESS NOTICE (Offer ID: 842853)

Prazo de candidatura: 10/10/2022 a 21/10/2022

Susanna Lindberg

Leiden University

From Technological Humanity to Bio-technical Existence

4 October 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy) | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

In this conference, I will present the end results of a forthcoming book titled From technological humanity to bio-technical existence (SUNY 2023). The concrete motivation of this book is the rapid extension of the field of what I call anthropotechnics. This word designates in a general manner the technologies that are used, not simply on the nonhuman nature around us, but on the human being itself. We know how modern, technology, fulfilling the Cartesian project of becoming “masters and possessors of nature”, has ended in the mega-phenomenon called the anthropocene. Anthropotechnics returns this project on the human being itself and thinks of the human being as the master and possessor of its own nature. This is how all problems that have been generated by the Cartesian project concerning nonhuman nature not only find their echo in the case of the human being, but are also amplified, because the human being is not only the object of anthropotechnical elaboration but also its subject. As the object of anthropotechnics the human being can cultivate itself but also ends by exploiting and polluting itself; as the subject of anthropotechnics it is the responsible of all these effects, so that we might no need  an ecology of the “human nature” under the pressure of anthropotechnics. In this conference I do not answer to such conrete ethico-political questions, however, but I investigate the philosophical presuppositions of the phenomenon of anthropotechnics. How has the human being come to treat itself as an object of technical production? Since when it thinks of itself essentially as a technician? I condensate the philosophical presuppositions on the expression technological humanity, and I show how it has evolved notably in the works of Plessner, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Stiegler, Agamben and Hayles. They have discovered the importance of technics to the becoming of the human, but they have also shown how technics hollows out humanity – or how the concept of ‘technics’ allows showing the hollowness of the term ‘humanity.’ Technological humanity is therefore not an ideal figure that this philosophical discussion aims to erect, but is on the contrary an ambient and distorted image of the human that philosophy reveals in order to undo, dismantle, and deconstruct it. In this conference, I underline the deconstruction of the idea of technological humanity and present the notion of bio-technical existence that – as I claim – emerges as its condition. With the notion of “bio-technics” I want to show how not only how life is conceived of in technical terms today and how contemporary technics tends to imitate life. I also want to show on a fundamental ontological level how technics belongs to life, being its own way of reaching itself.

Inferential Constraint and If φ ought φ Problem

Una Stojnić

Princeton University

23 September 2022, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The standard semantics for modality, together with the influential restrictor analysis of conditionals (Kratzer 1986; 2012) renders conditional ‘ought’ claims like (1) trivially true:

1. If John’s stealing, he ought to be stealing.

While this might seem like a problem specifically for the restrictor analysis, the issue is far more general. For any account must predict that modals in the consequent sometimes receive obligatorily unrestricted interpretation, as in (1), but sometimes appear restricted, as in (2):

2. If John’s speeding, he ought to pay the fine.

And the problem runs deeper, for there are non-conditional variants of the data. Thus, the solution cannot lie in adopting a particular analysis of conditionals, nor a specific account of the interaction between conditionals and modals. Indeed, with minimal assumptions, the standard account of modality will render a massive number of claims about what one ought to, must, or may, do trivially true. Worse, the problem extends to a wide range of non-deontic modalities, including metaphysical modality. But the disaster has a remedy. I argue that the source of the problem lies in the standard account’s failure to capture an inferential evidence constraint encoded in the meaning of a wide range of modal constructions. I offer an account that captures this constraint, and show it provides a general and independently motivated solution to the problem.

Evento organizado pelo Professor Olavio Calabria, membro associado do CFUL e presidente da Seção Regional do Cerrado da Sociedade Kant Brasileira,  que contará com a participação dos Professores Adriana Veríssimo Serrão e Leonel Ribeiro dos Santos, membros plenos do CFUL e do prof. Ubirajara Rancan Marques, também membro associado do CFUL.

Encontra-se aberto concurso para a atribuição de 3 Bolsas de Iniciação à Investigação (BI) para Estudante de Mestrado, no Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, financiada por fundos nacionais da FCT/MCTES, através do projecto UIDB/00310/2020

Referência: CFUL_38_2022_BII_EstudanteDeMestrado_Base_Junho

Prazo de candidatura: 05/07/2022 a 18/07/2022

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