Katja Diefenbach

European University Viadrina

Unemployed positivity. Deleuze and Agamben as readers of Spinoza

28 March 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Referring to Bataille’s figure of unemployed negativity, Agamben develops a theory of the autonomy of impotentiality or non-doing. It is based on the idea that the possible is not determined by its actualization, but rather by the capacity of not doing something or of not thinking something, by deactivation or becoming inoperative. By explaining that all potentiality is impotentiality and all capacity essentially passivity, Agamben follows Heidegger’s interpretation of the first sections of the ninth book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In a formidable short-circuit, he relates this interpretation to Spinoza’s notion of potentiality in the Ethics understood, in the same uncanonical way, as self-contentment, Sabbath and inaction. The lecture discusses the extent to which Deleuze’s vitalist reading of Spinoza contradicts Agamben’s perspective point by point and arrives at a different notion of politics and resistance.

Hélder Telo

University of Beira Interior

Cuidado e Verdade na Ética: Um Diálogo entre Platão, Heidegger e Foucault

21 March 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

O cuidado e a verdade podem facilmente ser pensados como sendo apenas capítulos especiais e separados da ética. Nesse caso, eles estariam associados a alguns deveres, sobretudo na relação com outros, mas não estariam profundamente interligados e não teriam impacto profundo na compreensão da própria ética. No entanto, são vários os autores que apontam para uma conexão profunda entre a esfera da ética (entendida num sentido ora mais estrito, ora mais lato), o cuidado e a verdade. O objetivo desta apresentação é delimitar um campo de pesquisa desta conexão profunda com especial foco nas discussões de Platão, Heidegger e Foucault. Para isso, começar-se-á por considerar os diferentes modos como estes três autores pensam o cuidado de si e de outros como algo que depende do desenvolvimento da relação com a verdade e, ao mesmo tempo, concebem a relação com a verdade como algo que se constitui ou desenvolve por meio do cuidado. Com base nisso, refletir-se-á então sobre algumas das implicações éticas dessa conexão e como ela pode ocupar um papel central na própria ética.

Dirk Michael Hennrich

Praxis-CFUL, University of Lisbon

The Hyperbolic Realm of Violence. Remarks on Benjamin, Fanon, and Arendt Today

14 March 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Violence, in its many expressions and manifestations, continually cuts through our existence. As social and political beings, the central powers that influence our everyday life are, in Walter Benjamin’s terms, the violence that establishes the law and the violence that preserves the law, which can only be replaced by pure and divine anarchic violence. Frantz Fanon, in the wake of colonial violence and strongly influenced by Georges Sorel, sees the need for radical violence in the decolonial process. The relationship of colonial violence with decolonial violence must be reciprocal until victory, yet the war continues after the liberation of other future-generating forms in the people and for the people and, so to speak, as the ongoing struggle for utopia. Hannah Arendt, on the other hand, explores her concept of violence not in opposition to law but in relation to power, as a response to the student movements of the 1960s. Incredible parallels can be drawn to the present, such as the response to structural and systemic violence in universities and the response to the predatory violence of states and industrial conglomerates against the Earth’s biosphere. The present attempt consists of a further approach in which the various forms of violence are divided into: i) one that unifies, ii) one that separates, and iii) one that exaggerates, that transgresses the measure, which, as Benjamin showed, intervenes and disintegrates social and moral relations. Using ancient Greek terms, a distinction is made between symbolic violence, diabolical violence and hyperbolic violence, with the aim of bestowing hyperbolic violence the seal of the present. The questions to be resolved are numerous, but first it will be important to distinguish and describe the three aforementioned forms of violence to understand how the dominant one of our present can be recognised and countered in the process of a certain decolonisation of thought.

Fernanda Henriques

University of Évora

A invisibilidade das mulheres: desafios epistemológicos e éticos

7 March 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time —, rtc. GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon

Abstract

A reflexão articular-se-á em torno da ideia de que há uma invisibilidade estrutural no aparecer de ser mulher, por um lado, e, por outro, de que tal situação exige uma resposta epistemológica e ética. Nesse sentido, haverá na exposição um duplo movimento: (1) o da configuração da própria questão da invisibilidade e das suas implicações no saber de si das mulheres, por um lado, identificando diferentes dimensões da designada invisibilidade estrutural —a maneira como vemos o que vemos, o défice informacional de género, etc.— e, por outro, questionando as implicações que tal situação tem no empoderamento das mulheres; e (2) o da busca de um comportamento de resistência a que a figura da rememoração dá forma, explorando a perspetiva da hermenêutica fenomenológica de Paul Ricoeur para mostrar que é legítimo e possível narrar o nosso passado de outras maneiras e que fazê-lo é um imperativo de justiça.

Jörg Volbers

FU Berlin

Our Technological Form of Life. Wittgensteinian Lessons on the Moral Dimensions of AI

28 February 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

Abstract

Technologies with so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI) are a world-wide reality and do already deeply pervade daily life. Yet in contrast to other technologies, AI is employed for a quite distinct type of tasks, such as recognizing faces or diagnosing diseases, all of which involve some kind of judgment. Passing these tasks to machines raises a special kind of moral problem: How can we rely on such an AI-guided process, given that this guidance is made by an automaton which cannot be made accountable for what it decides? In response to that problem, it is often suggested to refer to regulations. A burgeoning industry of AI ethics spends its time devising rules, principles, or ethical frameworks, to which an ethically well-behaved AI should defer. I will argue, however, that we should see this problem as an instance of the so-called “problem of other minds”: The ’reasoning’ of AI machines is constitutively incomprehensible to us (“black box”), and yet we are forced to interact with them. In this view, it is a mistake to believe that ethical rules could somehow turn AI into ethically responsible machines. For this reason, we should be wary of the current attempts to treat AI as a problem of regulation only, nor can we ever hope to solve it by gaining a better epistemical insight into the inner workings of artifi cial mind (so-called “explainable AI”). Rather, it manifests the challenge to understand ethics, and morality, as a practice, or a “form of life,” as Wittgenstein calls it.

Ferruccio Andolfi

University of Parma

Detractores e defensores da compaixão*

14 February 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Os filósofos em geral têm sido cautelosos ao tratar da questão da compaixão. Isto é particularmente notório do lado racionalista da filosofia: de Sócrates aos estóicos, de Spinoza a Kant. A virtude terapêutica do conhecimento em relação ao mal, concebido como ignorância, tem sido oposta à sensibilidade incontrolada que se expressaria nesse movimento da alma. A transposição mais conhecida do tema religioso e sapiencial da compaixão para o campo da filosofia moral ocidental deve-se a Schopenhauer, que recorre a fontes tanto cristãs como budistas. A apresentação reconstrói esta posição, mas também denuncia os seus limites: em primeiro lugar o de não considerar a sua ligação com o instinto de felicidade. Além disso, na proposta de Schopenhauer, ela enquadra-se num sistema metafísico que não considera a pertença de cada ser a si próprio como egoísta e, portanto, imoral e está orientado para uma intimidade fusional dos seres. A tese apoiada, com Simmel, é que a compaixão, pelo contrário, só pode ser real na condição de que a distinção entre os seres seja mantida.

* Apresentação em italiano com disponibilização do texto em tradução portuguesa.

Reading Group in the scope of Praxis-CFUL activities

Working language: English

Organizer: Silvia Locatelli (locatelli.silvia.96 [at] gmail.com)

When: Tuesdays from 14h-16h, according to the calendar below

Where: Sala Pedro Hispano (Department of Philosophy)* (to be confirmed)

Description

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes) represents one of the main texts for getting in touch with Hegelian systematic thought. Through the integral reading of the text, in this Reading Group an attempt will be made to understand how action and knowledge on the part of consciousness (or Spirit) develop in the course of the search for truth (of oneself and of the world). In this way, in the Phenomenology Hegel posits not only a reflection on knowledge, but also on the relationship with otherness and the active action of consciousness to reach its fulfillment.

Within the Praxis research group, the reading of this text will ensure a deeper understanding of the formation of the subject as a conscious and willing being, which begins to be possible with the figure of Antigone, who puts an end to the ethicality of the Greek state. This 2º Semester (2022/23) will be devoted to the first half of the book.

The edition to be consulted will be Terry Pinkard’s recent translation:

Hegel, Georg W.F. (2018). The Phenomenology of the Spirit. Trans. and ed. by Terry Pinkard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Program

Session 1 | 14 February 2023

Preface (pp. 3-46)

Session 2 | 7 March 2023

Introduction (pp. 49-59)

Session 3 | 14 March 2023

A. Consciousness (I-II) (pp. 60-79)

Session 4 | 28 March 2023

A. Consciousness (III) (pp. 79-101)

Session 5 | 18 April

B. Self-Consciousness (IV.A.) (pp. 102-116)

Session 6 | 2 May 2023

B. Self-Consciousness (IV.B.) (pp. 117-135)

Session 7 | 9 May 2023

C. (AA) Reason (V. A. a) (pp. 136-174)

Session 8 | 16 May 2023

C. (AA) Reason (V. A. b & c) (pp. 174-203)

Session 9 | 23 May 2023

C. (AA). Reason (V. B.) (pp. 203-226)

Session 10 | 30 May 2023

C. (AA) Reason (V. C.) (pp. 252)

Luca Possati

University of Porto

Quantum Technologies and the City: Exploring the Ethical and Social Implications of the Applications of Quantum Technologies to Urban Design

7 February 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

In this presentation I intend to understand the ethical and social impact of quantum technologies (QTs) applied to urban design and in particular to the problem of infrastructure maintenance. Infrastructure maintenance has a highly ethical dimension because there is a moral duty to repair and modify structures that support social life. The ethical consequences of poor maintenance not only affect the life of a society but also have a differential impact on social groups. QTs offer very important resources to improve the maintenance of urban infrastructures. Due to their nature, these technologies can have significant ethical and social impact, both in a positive and negative sense, on the evolution of urban design. For this reason, QTs require a new approach to the ethics of technology that is more sensitive to the differences and identity of the social groups that animate the urban context. In the case of QTs, the ethics of technology must go beyond the distributive paradigm and the ideal of impartiality to instead assume an approach more centered on oppression, violence, domination, and the relationship between social identities.

Reading Group in the scope of Praxis-CFUL activities

Working language: English or Portuguese, depending on attendance

Organizers: Maribel Sobreira (maribel.sobreira [at] campus.up.pt) & Sara Romão
(sromao [at] campus.up.pt)

When: Tuesdays from 14h-16h, according to the calendar below

Where: Hybrid Format. In person: Sala Pedro Hispano (Department of Philosophy) / Zoom link (contact organizers)

Abstract

The philosophical questioning around the concepts of place and space has occupied a central position in contemporary literature. Nonetheless, it can become a slippery road since the use of spatial terminology is frequently unexamined and widely spread, fitting different meanings and scopes. To add to the confusion, both the concept of space and place try to make themselves distinct from one another and make a claim for their prevalence in the discussion. This Reading Group aims to explore this tension and primal connectivity between both concepts, in hopes of feeding a debate around both as topics of aesthetic and political discourse.

In its first series, we will focus particularly on exploring the relationships between space, place and gender. The objective is to analyze these concepts in the light of an aesthetical and political construction of relational sites.

Program

Session 1 | 21 March 2023

Heidegger, M. (2005). §§22-24. In: Ser e Tempo. São Paulo: Vozes, 149-163.

Session 2 | 11 April 2023

Massey, D. (1994). “Politics and Space/Time,” in: Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 249-271.

Session 3 | 2 May 2023

Irigaray, L. (2004). “How can we live together in a lasting way?,” in: Key Writings. London: Bloomsbury, 123–133.

Session 4 | TBC
Federici, S. (2011). “Feminism and the politics of the commons,” in The Commoner, January 4.