Conference
University of Konstanz / Bischofsvilla (Otto-Adam-Straße 5, 78457 Konstanz) + Hybrid
Zoom: https://uni-konstanz-de.zoom.us/j/64083493901
Organized by
Albert Dikovich (University of Konstanz) & Sebastian Luft (University of Paderborn)
In cooperation with the Dr. K. H. Eberle Research Center “European Cultures in a Multipolar World”, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Centre for Cultural Inquiry (ZKF)
The conference will address skepticism regarding Enlightenment notions such as historical progress and rational social organization as well as concepts that emerged in response to the rise of fascism and the breakdown of the international order following World War I during the 1930s and 1940s. It will focus on phenomenologists, pragmatists, and Neo-Kantians, who are viewed as inheritors of the transatlantic Enlightenment project. These thinkers sought to make reason and trust in society’s potential for progress resilient in the face of historical developments that contradicted previous expectations and threatened to undermine their ideals and values. The conference will explore historiographical perspectives on philosophers as agents within specific political contexts, as well as systematic reconstructions of normative arguments articulated during the intellectual struggles of the time. Ultimately, the conference aims to draw lessons for the historical challenges we face today.
Conference Program
Thursday, March 12
9.00-9:45-
Opening remarks by the organizers Albert Dikovich and Sebastian Luft
Panel 1: How Could it Come to This?
9:45-11:45 -
Henriikka Hannula: State, Society, Historicity in Cassirer and Heidegger
Nathan Crick: The Totalitarian Propaganda of Democracy: John Dewey on the Corruption of Cooperative Intelligence
11:45-12:15-
Pause
12:15-13:15-
Julia Jansen: Truth and Lies in a Non-Factual Sense: Husserl’s Notion of Evidence and Contemporary Public Discourse
13:15-14:30-
Lunch
14:30-15:30-
Sofia Danailov: Stimmung and Collapse: Heidegger on Affective Disruption and the Meaning of Reason
Panel 2 : Defending Reason
15:30-16:30-
Laura Bieger: The Feeling of Rationality, According to William James
16:30-16:45-
Short pause
16:45-18:30-
Marco Cavallaro: “Ein zufälliger Grünfleck in der Weltwüste?” Husserl’s Quest for a Rational Culture
Boda Liu: Husserl’s Understanding of Myth and his Universalism(s)
20:00-
Dinner (location to be determined)
Friday, March 13
9:00-11:00-
Carlos Morujão: Europe as a Problematic Concept
Elisabeth Theresia Widmer: Legal Positivism in Austrian Neo-Kantianism
11:00-11.15-
Short pause
11:15-12:15-
Gerhard Thonhauser: Antifascist Heideggerianism
12:15-13:30-
Lunch
Panel 3: Rational Hope
13:30-15:30-
Dina Serra da Luz Mendonça: Layered Theory of Emotions and Rational Hope –Translating Dewey’s Insights Across the Times
James Dodd: Patočka on the Catastrophe of Europe and the Future of Reason
15:30-16:00-
Pause
16:00-18.00-
Anna Lisa Sander: Rational Hope in Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
Closing discussion, informations on the planned publication
Kontakt: albert.dikovich@uni-konstanz.de
