16052g
Seminar
WiSe 23/24: Nature + Power (Englisch)
Federica Gregoratto
Comments
How do we explain tensions and conflicts between human beings and social groups, and between individuals and social “structures”? Why does human beings’ relation to nature seem so fraught and complicated? What does it mean to dominate ‘external nature’, our environments, but also our ‘internal nature’, our pre-reflexive affects and impulses? Are these questions interconnected, and how? While such issues have been at the center of Western thought at least since the beginning of modern times, today, in the age of the climate disaster and of a global health crisis, they have become even more pressing and thorny. The course intends to philosophically investigate two notions, nature and power, that are key to grasp the problems at hand. To paraphrase Theodor W. Adorno in “The Idea of Natural History” (1932), we will try to read nature from power, and power from nature. The course addresses this tangle by concentrating on one essential text in this tradition, namely Theodor W. Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik der Aufklärung, 1947). We will also take a closer look at some of the figures that have inspired the book, like Homer’s Odysseus and de Sade’s Juliette. Finally, we examine Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s interpretation of antisemitism in light of other theories and more recent discussions. close
16 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Tue, 2023-10-17 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2023-10-24 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2023-10-31 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2023-11-07 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2023-11-14 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2023-11-21 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2023-11-28 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2023-12-05 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2023-12-12 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2023-12-19 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2024-01-09 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2024-01-16 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2024-01-23 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2024-01-30 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2024-02-06 14:00 - 16:00
Tue, 2024-02-13 14:00 - 16:00