HPhil Seminar: March 2, 2023

The HPhil (History of Philosophy) Research Group of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon announces the 2022/23 edition of its permanent seminar on the history of philosophy, devoted to the presentation of conferences by renowned specialists while also creating opportunities to emerging scholars, aiming to promote advanced studies in groundbreaking debates and the permanent training of its academic community.

In this session of the seminar, Violetta Waibel (Universität Wien) will present a paper entitled “Hölderlin’s Notion of Human Nature: Balance and Tension between Harmony, Wilderness and Creative Spirit” (abstract below). The handout is available here.

The session will take place on March 2, 2023, at 5PM, in the Room C201.J (Room Mattos Romão, Department of Philosophy). The entrance is free.

 

Abstract

Hölderlin’s notion of nature undergoes a remarkable change from his early (1794/95) to has later philosophical thoughts (around 1798/1800). In accordance with Rousseau, nature was considered to be an Ideal and a measure (Maßstab) for human life. The intensified studies of Kant’s teleology, the dialectic of mechanism and teleology, the studies of emotional life, its productive as well as its destructive forces (Schiller, Spinoza) changed Hölderlin’s view on nature. He discovered the dialectical tensions of human life and transformed it into a poetology of organic and aorgic, harmonic and wild, conscious and unconscious forces (“aorgic” being a neologism by Hölderlin) during his work on The Death of Empedocles, his tragic drama, that has come down to our days in fragments. Not only Spinozas theory of emotions became important to Hölderlin but also his Third kind of knowledge, the scientia intuitiva, as a source of creative forces that can be gained after a long dialectic process of practical and intellectual experience.