March 2, 2024

Praxis Seminar: Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy 2023/24, Session 12

Jamila Mascat

Utrecht University

If I Can’t Speak For You, It’s Not My Revolution! Feminist Politics Between the Personal and the Political

5 March 2024, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

 

Abstract

In the genealogy of feminist and postcolonial critique, the act of “speaking for” another – that is, representing their voice on their behalf – has long been condemned as a violation, undermining the legitimacy and agency of marginalized subjects. However, as Adrienne Rich perfectly phrases it in her “Notes towards a Politics of Location” (1984), if “You cannot speak for me,” “I cannot speak for us,” and the use of pronouns becomes a “political problem,” feminist praxis risks being reduced to a collection of “ego-histories” and “singular pasts” (Traverso, 2022). Drawing from the predicament of pronouns as it emerged in contemporary feminist politics, the paper critically engages with the role of personal experience, first-person accounts, and individual feelings in feminist narratives. In conclusion, it advocates for revisiting the Hegelian form of the concrete universal to rethink radical feminist partisanship.

February 16, 2024

Praxis Seminar: Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy 2023/24, Session 11

Carmen Madorrán Ayerra

Autonomous University of Madrid

Human Needs: Between Social Foundation and Ecological Ceiling

27 February 2024, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

 

Abstract

We are experiencing a multiple crisis that goes well beyond the economy. It also concerns finance, employment, health, society at large, ecology, energy and democracy. Rather than undergoing a specific crisis, we could say that the present is crisis. A defining feature of this moment is precisely that it is geared to change—once a certain threshold is crossed, business as usual is no longer possible. The social and ecological unsustainability of our present cannot be solved with small adjustments: almost everything will have to change. In this lecture, in order to think about the possibilities of a good life on Earth I would like to focus on the notion of human needs. It is key to assess what we really need in a context of social and ecological unsustainability. This is where the notion and approach of ecological humanities takes significance—with particular attention to the role of philosophy.

 

 

 

February 15, 2024

Praxis Seminar: Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy 2023/24, Session 10

José Miranda Justo

Praxis-CFUL

A «Viúva Negra» da Filosofia: Haverá Lugar para Falar de um Conceito de Heterogeneidade em Filosofia?

20 February 2024, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

 

Abstract

Entendendo, em termos deleuzianos, a tarefa própria da filosofia como criação de conceitos,
mas pensando, por outro lado, os conceitos como entidades vivas e em devir constante
dentro de um plano de consistência, no qual se articulam com outros conceitos em
processos transformativos de colaboração/conflito, a minha apresentação visa perguntar se
a noção de heterogeneidade pode ser entendida como um verdadeiro conceito. Para
responder a esta questão darei alguns passos exploratórios. Primeiramente, começarei por
confrontar a heterogeneidade com duas outras figuras da diferença com as quais é
frequentemente confundida: a diversidade e a multiplicidade. Ver-se-á assim qual o modo
de agir próprio das heterogeneidades. Seguidamente, tratar-se-á de mostrar que, em
filosofia, a heterogeneidade, enquanto dispositivo heurístico, permite – em primeiro lugar –
exercer uma vasta quantidade de tarefas eminentemente críticas fundamentalmente
dirigidas contra as nefastas consequências da vocação profundamente «unitarista» da
tradição filosófica. De um modo geral, o tópico da heterogeneidade introduz uma crítica
frontal de todos os mecanismos organicamente redutores no seio das discursividades
filosóficas. De seguida, procurará evidenciar-se que a consideração de um espaço filosófico
para a heterogeneidade permite introduzir no trabalho filosófico dimensões de infinitude
potencial que apontam no sentido de um horizonte irremediavelmente mutante das
investigações nos diversos terrenos da filosofia prática e, ao mesmo tempo, dotado de uma
«abundância» previamente indeterminada. Esta abundância indeterminada abre igualmente
o caminho para uma compreensão da criação do radicalmente novo, designadamente – mas
não apenas – em arte. Finalmente, procurarei responder (provisoriamente) à difícil questão
de saber se a heterogeneidade tem uma ontologia própria ou, ao menos, uma inscrição
ontológica determinada/determinável. A tentativa de encarar este problema levar-me-á por
fim a defender que a heterogeneidade é e não é um conceito filosófico no sentido
introduzido no início da apresentação.

February 1, 2024

Praxis Seminar: Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy 2023/24, Session 9

Fabienne Brugère

University of Paris 8

From Care Ethics to Care Politics in the Neoliberal Moment?

6 February 2024, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

 

Abstract

Care can be defined in different ways. In English, it refers first and foremost to the banality of “take care”, which is equivalent to “au revoir” or “à bientôt” in French. From the point of view of the activities themselves, we can take care of a child both “to take care of” and “to care about”. We care for a child, we look after him, we are concerned about him. Care begins with interpersonal relationships that seem to combine dispositions and activities, through an anchoring in ordinary life. But, understood as an ethics and then a politics, it becomes institutional, confronted with national and global crises of care: for example, the crisis of the welfare state (Urban Ward, 2020) which empties collective solidarity of its meaning, and the crisis of migrant reception in Western countries, which turns precarious foreigners into unofficial care workers (Hamington, 2010; Morgan, 2020). How can we characterize this transition from banal interpersonal relations to an ethics and a politics at a time when capitalism has taken on the face of the “neoliberal” moment (Foucault, 1979)? How is it possible to combine an ethics and a politics, a care for the self and a care for others (Foucault, 1984; Benhabib, 2004)?

January 21, 2024

Individuating Simondon

Reading Group as part of the Praxis-CFUL activities

 

Working language: English

Organizer: Dr. Ricardo Mendoza-Canales (rcanales [at] letras.ulisboa.pt)

Where: Room B112.H (Library Building)

When: Thursdays, from 14h00 to 16h00 (according to the calendar below)

NEW! during the 2nd semester, the sessions will take place on FRIDAYS, from 14h00 to 16h00

To participate, please send an e-mail to the convenor expressing your interest in taking part in the RG.

 

 

For decades, Gilbert Simondon was just a name mentioned in a handful of footnotes in influential books by Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard or Herbert Marcuse. Although he belonged to the same generation of first-line French philosophers such as Deleuze, Foucault, or Derrida, Simondon remained almost unknown, far from fame and recognition. He soon gained a reputation as a philosopher of technology with the publication of his first and best-known work, Du mode d’existence des objects techniques (1958), which corresponds to his secondary doctoral dissertation defended that same year; but since it wasn’t a hot topic at the time, his work remained merely as a distant reference, only accessible in the French-speaking milieu. This, together with the vicissitudes of the publication of his main doctoral dissertation, L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et information (split and published in two separate parts with a gap of more than thirty years between them), and the fact that Simondon’s intellectual interests were not part of the mainstream philosophies of his time and thus moved in a different direction from those of his contemporaries, confabulated against him to remain confined to a restricted field of research, so that his philosophical project, until very recently, could never be appreciated in its radical unity, consistency, breadth and depth.

Nowadays, the sustained publication of his unpublished works (accompanied by an important rhythm of translations into the most widely used philosophical languages) has made available to scholars a wider scope of his entire philosophical project, which, in a nutshell, consists in reassessing the relationship between nature and culture, describing it as process in which life and being are part of a one single operation of becoming. This ambitious task demands a profound reformulation of every philosophical field concerned with this relationship: metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, aesthetics, philosophical anthropology. By restoring the centrality that the paradigm of technique plays in shaping all human interaction with the world, Simondon rejects the primacy of substantialism and the hylomorphic scheme (matter-form interaction) as the bedrock of the classical Western metaphysics. Conversely, he pleas for a theory of individuation in terms of information, in which being is in a continuous process of becoming through operations of structuring and amplification.

 

The purpose of this reading group is to introduce and deepen our understanding of Simondon’s theory of individuation. To this end, we will close-read in its entirety his major work, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information. The goals are: 1) to unravel together the dense web of concepts unfolded in this work (such as individuation, singularity, pre-individual, ontogenesis, operation, metastability, transduction, modulation, allagmatics, transindividuality, etc.); 2) to explore the ontological, ethical, political, and aesthetic consequences of thinking of individuation as a process that takes place in different regimes of reality (physical, biological, psychic, social); and 3) to grasp the significance of this philosophy of nature and a “genetic encyclopedism” that Simondon advocates, as well as its implications in our digital age and technological environment.

The English translation is strongly recommended as primary reading, as the sessions will be conducted in English:

Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information. Vol. 1. Taylor Adkins (trans.). Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press, 2020.

 

Other editions/translations:

(Original French edition) L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et information. 2eme. ed. Paris: J. Millon, 2013.

(Spanish) La individuation a la luz de las nociones de forma e información. 2a. ed. Pablo Ires (trad.). Buenos Aires: Cactus, 2013.

(Portuguese) A individuação à luz das noções de forma e informação. Luís Eduardo Ponciano Aragon e Guilherme Ivo (trad.). São Paulo: Editora 34, 2020.

(Italian) L’individuazione alla luce delle nozioni di forma e di informazione. 2a. ed. Giovanni Carrozzini (trad.). Milano: Mimesis, 2020.

 

 

Program

 

Session 1 | 7 December 2023

Introduction (pp. 1-17)

 

Session 2 | 14 December 2023

Part I. Chap. 1. Form and Matter. I: “Foundations of the Hylomorphic Schema: Technology of Form-Taking” (pp. 21-36)

 

Session 3 | 18 January 2023

Part I. Chap. 1. Form and Matter. II: “Physical Signification of Technical Form-Taking” (pp. 37-47)

 

Session 4 | 25 January 2024

Part I. Chap. 1. Form and Matter. III: “The Two Aspects of Individuation” (pp. 47-54)

 

Session 5 | 2 February 2024

Part I. Chap. 2. Form and Energy (pp. 55-94)

 

Session 6 | 16 February 2024

Part I. Chap. 3. Form and Substance. I: “Continuous and Discontinuous” and II: “Particle and Energy” (pp. 95-125)

 

Session 7 | 23 February 2024

Part I. Chap. 3. III: “The Non-substantial Individual: Information and Compatibility” (pp. 126-164)

 

Session 8 | 15 March 2024

Part II. Chap. 1. Information and Ontogenesis: Vital Individuation. I: “Principles toward a Study of the Individuation of the Living

Being” (pp. 167-180)

 

Session 9 | 22 March 2024

Part II. Chap. 1. Information and Ontogenesis: Vital Individuation. II: “Specific Form and Living Substance” (pp. 180-208)

 

Session 10 | 5 April 2024

Part II. Chap. 1. Information and Ontogenesis: Vital Individuation. III: “Information and Vital Individuation” (pp. 208-225)

 

Session 11 | 12 April 2024

Part II. Chap. 1. Information and Ontogenesis: Vital Individuation. IVa: “Information and Ontogenesis” (pp. 225-244)

 

Session 12 | 19 April 2024

Part II. Chap. 1. Information and Ontogenesis: Vital Individuation. IVb: “Information and Ontogenesis” (pp. 244-256)

 

Session 13 | 26 April 2024

Part II. Chap. 2. Psychical Individuation. I: “Signification and the Individuation of Perceptive Units” (pp. 257-272)

 

Session 14 | 3 May 2024

Part II. Chap. 2. Psychical Individuation. II: “Individuation and Affectivity” (pp. 272-291)

 

Session 15 | 10 May 2024

Part II. Chap. 2. Psychical Individuation. IIIa: “Psychical Individuation and the Problematic of Ontogenesis” (pp. 291-308)

 

Session 16 | 17 May 2024

Part II. Chap. 2. Psychical Individuation.  IIIb: “Psychical Individuation and the Problematic of Ontogenesis” (pp. 308-326)

 

Session 17 | 24 May 2024

Part II. Chap. 2. Psychical Individuation.  IIIb: “Psychical Individuation and the Problematic of Ontogenesis” (pp. 308-326)

 

Session 18 | 31 May 2024

Part II. Chap. 3. Collective Individuation and the Foundations of the Transindividual. I: “The Individual and the Social, Group Individuation” (pp. 327-344)

 

Session 19 | 7 June 2024

Part II. Chap. 3. Collective Individuation and the Foundations of the Transindividual. II: “The Collective as Condition of Signification” (pp. 344-355)

 

Session 20 | 14 June 2024

Conclusion (pp. 356-380)

 

 

November 29, 2023

Praxis Seminar: Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy 2023/24, Session 7

Paolo Furia

University of Turin

The Substantivity of Landscape. Learning from the Andes?

5 December 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

 

Abstract

In this talk will offer some arguments with a view to overcoming an “aestheticized” conception of landscape, which has been prevalent particularly in European and, to some extent, North American philosophical aesthetics. The main feature of such conception is the reduction of the concept of landscape to a construct based on the isolation of the aesthetic properties of a given portion of space from other kinds of properties, such as geographical, political or ecological ones. I will devote the first part of the talk to reconstructing the main pillars of the “aestheticized” conception of landscape, relying on the influential essay by Joachim Ritter (1963) and the criteria identified by Augustin Berque for the identification of so-called “landscape cultures” (2008). In the second part I will focus on some characteristics of the Andean landscape, referring as much to a field experience lived as part of a visiting period at the Universidad Nacional de Huancavelica and the Universidad para el Desarrollo Andino, as to the philosophical, anthropological and geographical debate around the concept of landscape in the Andean “cosmovision.” In the third and last part I will show how the “aestheticized” conception of landscape is inadequate to understand the landscape culture of the Andean world, in which the aesthetic function, far from being denied, is nonetheless found integrated with other dimensions of spatial reality, such as geographical, ethico-political and ecological. Of such insertion of the aesthetic into the ethical and ecological sphere I will try to show, in conclusion, the intimate urgency in the time of the Anthropocene.

 

 

November 25, 2023

Praxis Seminar: Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy 2023/24, Session 6

Dirk Michael Hennrich

Praxis-CFUL

Posthuman Landscapes: Pathways through the Anthropocene

28 November 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

 

Abstract

The future habitability of landscapes in the context of the current dramatic climate changes worldwide depends on a fundamental paradigm shift in our ethical and political relationships. The Anthropocene, which must be understood not only as a geological phase of natural history but also as a civilizational phase of human history, is characterized by extreme anthropocentric action. Still not officially recognized as a new geological epoch, the term Anthropocene is to be understood above all as an operative term that encourages us to think about the human himself and his future on earth. It is a term that complements the term Gaia and is inextricably linked to Earth system science and the problem of climate change. My lecture assumes that thinking about posthuman landscapes, as a common ground for a future ethics and politics beyond the Anthropocene, must follow a double approach; on the one hand, the Philosophy of Landscape and, on the other, the Animal Philosophy.  The landscape, understood as the specific environment and biome in which humans are inserted alongside all other forms of life; and the non-human beings, the radical alterity and origin of human self-constitution and self-reflection.  Both philosophical disciplines question the relationship of humans to the non-human without closing themselves off to the question of technology.

 

 

November 18, 2023

Praxis Seminar: Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy 2023/24, Session 5

Jan Straßheim

University of Hildesheim

Misunderstanding as the Basis of Social Action: Alfred Schutz’s Pragmatic Phenomenology

21 November 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

 

Abstract

According to social phenomenologist Alfred Schutz (1899-1959), individual perspectives and social structures shape one another through the medium of action. His view implies a central place of social action, i.e., action inherently oriented towards other people. Common sense, as well as influential social philosophers (e.g., Habermas, Searle), stress “understanding” as the basis of social action. However, Schutz’s analysis can help us see that misunderstanding plays an even more fundamental role that is often overlooked. What is ordinarily called “understanding” builds on several interrelated levels of misunderstanding. Most fundamentally, the tension between the selectivity of action and the fullness of “lived experience” (Bergson) is a fruitful “self-misunderstanding.” Selectivity enables individuals to mutually coordinate their actions by ignoring most of what they are or could be. Socially shared “types” channel such coordination by abstracting away from contextual and individual differences. However, unlike “rules,” types are flexible and allow us to tap back into the fullness of lived experience to recover these differences. Action is an essentially open process which, in social action, involves a plurality of perspectives. This openness and plurality make social action a critical medium in which fundamental misunderstandings constantly motivate, test, and fine-tune understanding.

 

 

November 16, 2023

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit – 1st cycle

Reading Group as part of the Praxis-CFUL activities
Working language: English
Organizers: Dr. Mariana Teixeira (mariana.o.teixeira@edu.ulisboa.pt) and MA Silvia Locatelli (locatelli.silvia.96@gmail.com)
When: twice a month on Fridays, from 16:00 to 18:00 GMT (according to the program below)
Format: hybrid
Where: Room B112.H (Library Building of the Faculdade de Letras – Universidade de Lisboa) and online (meeting link shared via email)

Attendance is free and open to the public. Please register via email: praxis.reading.group.hegel@gmail.com

 

DESCRIPTION

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is one of the most important – and difficult – texts in the history of philosophy, with its original mode of narrative that focuses on the development of human consciousness and spirit over time, introducing the idea of dialectical progression where ideas and concepts evolve through contradiction.

Since its first publication in 1806-1807, it has captivated generations of philosophers and social theorists, having influenced many schools of thought, such as Marxism, existentialism, feminism and contemporary critical theory. But its importance can also be attested by the passionate responses it provoked among its critics, from Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to more recent approaches, such as post-structuralism.

Through the collective reading of the integral text of the Phenomenology, we will attempt in this Reading Group to understand how action and knowledge develop in the course of the search for truth: of oneself and of the world, and in relation with otherness. We will follow the journey of consciousness through the many figures it encounters – including, for instance, the much discussed figures of the master-slave dialectics, the struggle for recognition, the unhappy consciousness, Antigone, and the beautiful soul – in order to grasp the role of experience in the consciousness’s path towards absolute knowing and to unveil the book’s critical potential.

The edition to be consulted will be Terry Pinkard’s recent translation: Hegel, G.W.F. 2018 [1807]. The Phenomenology of the Spirit. Trans. and ed. Terry Pinkard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
PROGRAM (1st cycle) 
 
Session 1 | 24 November 2023
Presentation of the Reading Group
 
Session | 15 December 2023 [CANCELLED]
 
Session 2 | 12 January 2024
Preface, part 1, pp. 3-25 (§§ 1-39)
 
Session 3 | 26 January 2024
Preface, part 2, pp. 25-46 (§§ 40-72)
 
Session 4 | 9 February 2024
Introduction, pp. 49-59 (§§ 73-89)
 
Session 5 | 23 February 2024
I. Consciousness: Sensuous-certainty, pp. 60-68 (§§ 90-110)
 
Session 6 | 15 March 2024
II. Consciousness: Perceiving, pp. 68-79 (§§ 111-131)
 
Session 7 | 22 March 2024
III. Consciousness: Force and understanding, pp. 79-101 (§§ 132-165)
 
Session 8 | 12 April 2024
IV. Self-Consciousness (The truth of self-certainty): A. Self-Sufficiency and Non-Self-Sufficiency of Self-Consciousness; Mastery and servitude, pp. 102-116 (§§ 166-196)
 
Session 9 | 19 April 2024
IV. Self-Consciousness (The truth of self-certainty): B. Freedom of Self-Consciousness; Stoicism, Skepticism and Unhappy consciousness, pp. 117-135 (§§ 197-230)
 
Session 10 | 3 May 2024
V. Reason: A. Observing reason:  a. Observation of nature, pp. 136-174 (§§ 231-297)
 
Session 11 | 17 May 2024
V. Reason: A. Observing reason: b. Observation of self-consciousness: Logical and psychological laws and c. Observation of self-consciousness: Physiognomy and Phrenology, pp. 174-203 (§§ 298-346)
 
Session 12 | 7 June 2024
V. Reason: B. Actualization of rational self-consciousness through itself, pp. 203-226  (§§ 347-393)
 
Session 13 | 21 June 2024
V. Reason: C. Individuality, which, to itself, is real in and for itself, pp. 226-252 (§§ 394-436)
November 2, 2023

Praxis Seminar: Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy 2023/24, Session 4

Irene Viparelli

University of Évora

“Diferença Marxiana” e Singularidade de L. Althusser

14 November 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

 

Abstract

A publicação póstuma dos manuscritos de L. Althusser tem acarretado uma Renaissance dos estudos dedicados ao filosofo francês. Neste contexto, a presente intervenção visa em primeiro lugar apresentar os principais enfoques da mais recente bibliografia sobre Althusser. De acordo com Montag (Althusser and His Contemporaries. Philosophy’s Perpetual War, Duke University Press, 2013) há duas abordagens produtivas ao pensamento de Althusser: por um lado, a publicação dos escritos sobre o “materialismo aleatório” tem permitido leituras que tendem a inserir a reflexão althusseriana no contexto filosófico da época, destacando a proximidade com o horizonte pós-estruturalista. Seria, assim, a pertença à especifica “conjuntura teórica francesa” que garantiria o persistente interesse teórico do pensamento de Althusser. Por outro lado, a publicação dos textos políticos sobre a “crise do marxismo” tem originado interpretações que fazem da reflexão de Althusser uma “intervenção na conjuntura política”; uma resposta teórica aos problemas colocados pelo estalinismo e pela “crise do marxismo”. Nesse quadro, o interesse da teoria de Althusser seria, no fundo, enraizado na sua indissolúvel inatualidade. A presente intervenção procura apresentar uma diferente hipótese de leitura que, mantendo organicamente ligadas as dimensões teórico-filosófica e política, visa realçar a especificidade da posição de Althusser relativamente ao horizonte pós-estruturalista, i. e., uma “diferença marxiana” que representa a singularidade do seu pensamento.