25 April 2016

Prof Dr Andreas Pečar
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Institute of History

Frederick II as a philosopher. Enlightened social criticism as a means of self-presentation

As a person, the Prussian King Frederick II was first and foremost embedded in the ruling family, more precisely the Hohenzollern dynasty. As king, he was also a prominent participant in European royal society. In his contribution, Andreas Pečar examines how Frederick's self-stylisation as a philosopher - as a self-chosen practice of subjectivation - was used by him in certain communicative contexts to detach himself from the usual social fields of reference (nobility / dynasty / princely society) and instead to pursue his communitisation with another group: the circle of philosophes in the learned public. The lecture will discuss what advantages Frederick may have hoped to gain from this kind of self-presentation and what consequences it had.

02 May 2016

Prof Dr Thomas Bedorf
Open University in Hagen, Institute of Philosophy

Politics, affects and ambivalent identities

The political promise of being able or allowed to act autonomously or make sovereign decisions depends, among other things, on answering the questions of who we are, where we are speaking from and where we want to go: in other words, the question of identity or identifications. Identities, especially collective ones, are affectively grounded and supported, not merely cognitive knowledge or volitional decisions. Political affects demarcate, set in motion and create continuity. Although it is possible, it is by no means certain that they lead to freedom or autonomy. Identity-forming political affects remain ambivalent.

23 May 2016

Prof. Dr Daniel Wrana
University of Teacher Education FHNW, Institute for Primary Education

On the discursive practice of positioning in fields of knowledge

In the educational science debates of recent years, the concept of subjectivation has established itself as one that cannot and should not replace the concept of education, but specifies it in terms of a certain cultural studies research programme. With the concept of subjectivation, processes and constellations of education can be described against the background of praxeological and discourse-theoretical analyses. A central figure of thought here is that educational processes take place in relations of recognition and that the subject only becomes such by making itself recognisable within the horizon of the norms of recognition and yet forming a difference to them. This figure of thought will be developed in the lecture and taken further from a discourse-analytical perspective and illustrated using empirical material from professional research. In particular, it will be shown to what extent this process of recognition not only implies a positioning in relation to norms, but also a positioning in a field of knowledge that provides different interpretations of what - in this empirical case - is appropriate professional behaviour on the part of female teachers. In this perspective, subjectivation thus also involves a singularly realised difference to the given, but also a positioning and thus a commitment within fields of knowledge.

06 June 2016

Dr Sandra Janßen
University of Oldenburg, DFG Research Training Group "Self-Formations"

Total democracy versus mass delusion. On the psycho-political overcoming of National Socialism according to Hermann Broch

The 1930s and 1940s are not only politically characterised by the 'total'; psychological and philosophical subject concepts of this period also refer back to this term. The thesis that an epistemic connection can be assumed between the two will be pursued in the lecture using the example of the Austrian writer Hermann Broch. Broch, for whose aesthetic theory the concept of "totality" has played a decisive role since the 1930s and who at this time also developed a psychological subject model that operated with a concept of ego expansion through world transformation, turned to social-theoretical and political issues in the 1940s with the same conceptual armoury. As a persecutee of the Nazi regime who had to flee to the USA after the annexation of Austria, he reflected on the possibility of overcoming the fascist danger in two ways: on the one hand, by means of a "mass delusion psychology" that sought to explain the emergence of such movements, and on the other, by considering a conceptual re-foundation of democracy. However, the fact that in the one case the "ecstatic" transgression of the ego and in the other the "dictatorship of humanity within a total democracy" provide the guiding formulas suggests ambivalences, which the lecture will explore.

13 June 2016

Prof Dr Hauke Brunkhorst
European University of Flensburg, Institute of Social Sciences and Theology, Department of Sociology

Self-determination through deliberative democracy

Hauke Brunkhorst attempts to strengthen three theses using two historical examples (French Revolution 1848, new social movements since 1968). The three theses separate the theory of deliberative democracy from all variants of empiricist or decision-theoretical theories of democracy as well as from the old European theory of democracy as mere majority rule. Moreover, they mark the equidistance of deliberative democracy from modern liberalism (Constant's 'freedom of the moderns') and from old European republicanism (Constant's 'freedom of the ancients'). In contrast, the theory of deliberative democracy asserts an internal reference to the truth of egalitarian self-legislation (1). It presupposes the abolition of the idealistic dualism of reason and reality (2), and it grounds legislative decision-making procedures (law-making and concretisation) in public debates and social struggles (3).

27 June 2016

Prof. Dr Reinhard Schulz
University of Oldenburg, Institute of Philosophy

Collective consciousness in the space between practical certainty of life, self-care and reification

The assertion that even in modern Western culture our relationship to the world is primarily a practical one is by no means breaking new philosophical ground. Nietzsche, philosophical hermeneutics, Wittgenstein's concept of language games and pragmatism are the main sources of evidence that all rational cognition is preceded by a complex perception of the world that combines emotional, cognitive and volitional elements. Scientific objectivity then appears secondary as the result of a life-world abstraction and the "spectator model" of cognition becomes the occasion for philosophical criticism. Whether 'collective consciousness' is a successful choice of term to describe a practical relationship to the world that connects people will be discussed below.

We try to see ourselves through the eyes of others, but because this is not possible in principle, the concept of 'collective consciousness' inevitably has a virtual dimension according to the understanding discussed here. This virtuality or symbolic embodiment will be explored in the lecture on three levels: the level of collectively shared feelings, the level of collectively practised self-care and the level of collectively used mass media.