Slavoj Žižek – “The Rise of Obscene Masters” – Morning Session (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.)

Siegfried Zelinski – “Materiology and Variantology” – Afternoon Session (3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.)

Slavoj Žižek – “The Rise of Obscene Masters” Morning Session (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.)

Siegfried Zelinski – “”Materiology and Variantology”” – Afternoon Session (3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.)

Carlos Amorales – Morning (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.) and Afternoon Session (3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.)

Avital Ronell – Morning (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.)  and Afternoon Session (3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.)

Pressed by contemporary ruthlessness we want to learn from philosophy, literature, film and the arts how to configure the tyrannical temptations of the human frame. The marginalization of Plato’s “democratic soul” will lead an investigation into patriarchal crime scenes double-headed by Freud and the Ancients in their effort to manage human waywardness, sadistic excess, incessant trespass and violent slams. Melanie Klein’s thinking of the “bad breast,” destructive drives, and the premises of reparative justice will power our discussions of lawless abandon. Above all, participants will be supplied with materials for their projects and intellectually-pitched aspirations.

Miran Božovič -Morning (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.)  and Afternoon Session (3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.)

The course will explore the implications of various literary works for the history of philosophy. Works discussed will include: 17^th– and 18^th-century Cartesian and Spinozistic novels by G. Daniel and Simon Tyssot de Patot; 18^th-century erotic novels Thérèse Philosophe (1748) by d’Argens [?], and The Indiscreet Jewels (1748) by Diderot; two materialist novels Rameau’s Nephew (1774) and Jacques the Fatalist (1778) by Diderot, and his philosophical comedy D’Alembert’s Dream (1769); Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) and Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata (1889). Some of these works discover the most abstract and sublime metaphysical principles in entirely ordinary, everyday situations, that is, the principles for which even the thinkers who first established them were not always able to provide convincing examples. Other works try to answer the question: What might philosophy have been like in certain most distant and inaccessible eras of human history? Still other works raise the question: What sort of philosophical theory would have been likely to arise in the mind conscious of its departure from the body in the fleeting moment of death? Furthermore, some works tackle the question: What sort of metaphysical theory would be developed by the mind after its separation from the body, that is, in the long centuries of its disembodied existence? And, finally, some literary works constitute, in their own right, new and previously unknown chapters in the history of philosophy. In short, in the light of these literary works, the history of philosophy as we know it would have to be substantially revised if not entirely rewritten.