November,  21

The Speaker:

Hans-Herbert Kögler is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Florida, Jacksonville, and regular guest professor at Alpen-Adria University, Klagenfurt, Austria. Major publications include The Power of Dialogue: Critical Hermeneutics after Gadamer and Foucault (1996; 1999); Michel Foucault (2nd ed., 2004, 2016); Kultura, kritika, dialog (2006; 2014); the co-edited Empathy and Agency. The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences (2000; 2018); Enigma Agency (2019); the edited Reconceiving Religion in the Postsecular Public Sphere” (2020); an edited volume dedicated to Hans-Herbert Kögler’s Critical Hermeneutics (2022). Numerous essays in critical hermeneutics, critical social theory (Frankfurt School), philosophical hermeneutics, philosophy of language, poststructuralism, cultural studies, and social and political philosophy.

The topic Empathetic Morality, Geopolitical Power & Lasting Peace

How (not) to conceptualize the ‘multipolar world order’ after Ukraine

Abstract:This talk presents follow-up reflections on my lead essay “Democracy or Dictatorship? The Moral Call to Defend Ukraine” in the European Journal of Social Theory (Vol. 26, 4, Nov. 2023). In that essay, I invoke the moral sentiment to assist someone in danger or being attacked as a core phenomenon to ground solidarity. I qualify this sentiment with normative reflections on the need for consequentialist considerations, the recognition of the Other’s status as self-determining subject, and the universalist orientation of the ‘moral call of support.’ This normative scaffold serves to challenge the geopolitical approach that reflects solely the interests of collective players, and to normatively reject demands for an unconditional peace now. These points are developed by analyzing Putin’s imperial strategy, Dugin’s cultural essentialism, and biopolitical war practices. Normative principles are suggested based on the whole complex situation. In this talk, I will reconstruct and deepen the ethical foundation of support & solidarity (including military support) for Ukraine; suggest a theory of power & domination which overcomes the methodological and moral abstractions of geopolitical realism; rehearse the role and critique of Dugin’s Eurasian cultural essentialism in Putin’s neo-imperialist perspective; and briefly discuss the normative principles relevant for a newly emerging world order.

Автор: Козаченко Надія Павлівна

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October,  6, 17 CEST/18 EEST

Speaker: Dr. Tetiana Gardashuk

H.Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, NASU

Title of the talk: "The weaponization of nature as a manifestation of anti-vitality of war"

Abstract. The full-scale Russian aggression in Ukraine (24 February 2022) changed the world drastically. The scale of it and its global impact raised numerous questions concerning human rights, international safety, justice, etc., all requiring solutions both urgent and viable in the long-term perspective. The negative human and environmental impacts of Russian aggression in Ukraine are among them. The war destroys landscapes, ecosystems, habitats, and populations of species. It disrupts the natural life support systems and violates the inherent “Nature’s right to exist” and the principle of biophilia. I consider the war to be an anti-vital phenomenon, and thus a crime against life and “the world as a community” (Mitwelt), which includes both nature and everything which is involved in it [Meyer-Abich, 1993], while peace is a universal and vital value.

One of the particular features of the current war is the severe weaponization (that is the use as a weapon of something that is not conceived under the usual meaning of this word) of different kinds of resources – water, energy, and food.

Since it is not possible within one seminar to analyze in detail all aspects of nature weaponization in the current Russo-Ukrainian war I will focus my presentation on weaponization of water and its multiple negative effects for the environment and humans, as well as on the role of values for valuing and efficient management and protection of water and the equitable and just access to it.

Автор: Козаченко Надія Павлівна

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June, 30, 17 CEST/18 EEST

Speaker: Anda Pleniceanu

Anda Pleniceanu holds a PhD from The Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University, Canada. She conducts interdisciplinary research at the intersection of continental philosophy, aesthetics, and literary theory. Working with the concepts of subjectivity and negativity, she is broadly concerned with the construction of circular systems of thought and aesthetic representation. Her research interests include speculative theory, avant-garde and post-avant-garde aesthetics, French poststructuralism, negative dialectics, and violence. Her dissertation, published under the title You Unseen Cathedrals: A Study of the Conceptual Conditions of Negativity, focuses on the modern and post-modern articulation of the concept of negativity, particularly in relation to the post-Kantian notion of subjectivity."

Title of the talk: Violence: Necessity versus Contingency

Abstract: This seminar presentation is premised on a continuing dialogue with Professor Sergii Shevtsov’s research on the concept of violence. I begin by surveying several points made in his article “On the Ontology of Violence,” such as the inclusion of violence into a dialectical and deterministic framework. As the transference of violence from a socio-historical contexts to philosophy proves to be challenging, I focus on the equation of violence with labor and transformation. I consider this conceptual chain of associations in different contexts, such as Heraclitean thought, Hegelian dialectics, and Marxist critique, and offer a critical perspective on these theories regarding their relationship with violence. I argue that these approaches are not helpful in understanding the particularity of violence in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine because they diminish the excessiveness of violence with a chain of causation that diffuses the gravity of the acts and, consequently, the responsibility of the perpetrators. In addition, following Professor Shevtsov’s example of René Girard’s concept of violence as based on the mimetic nature of desire, I discuss the issues with this approach, which connects modern-day violence with ancestral and mythological violence. I argue that Girard’s approach is similar to Sigmund Freud’s in the latter’s theory of civilisation, which is premised on inherited and embedded violence.

As an alternative to these models of thinking violence, I offer a different configuration based on contemporary and 20th-century French thought. In general, I propose the concept of contingent violence: violence whose only ontological necessity is its very contingency. Although violence can be contextualised, explained, and incorporated at the level of history, ontologically, the eruption of violence does not follow the principle of sufficient reason. My proposition is informed by Quentin Meillassoux’s distinction between contingency and facticity in After Finitude, Time Without Becoming, and The Number and the Siren. By establishing a distinction between existence and ontology, and by offering a different treatment of violence at both levels, my overarching aim is to develop a framework in which violent acts could not be theorised as part of a “natural,” “mythological,” or even “ontological” necessity.

Along with the concept of contingent violence informed by Meillassoux, I will consider Jean-François Lyotard’s idea of the differend (différend in French) with a focus on the posture of the victim of violence and Gilles Deleuze’s concept of cruelty from the Logic of Sense and “To Have Done with Judgement,” which offers a radically different conceptualization of violence, breaking away from the guilt-based dialectical system that ultimately incorporates violence as always-already the responsibility of the victim.

Автор: Козаченко Надія Павлівна

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May, 31, 17 CEST/18 EEST

Speaker: Prof. Olexandr Kulyk (Oles Honchar Dnipro National University)

https://philpeople.org/profiles/oleksandr-kulyk

Title of the talk: 'The Issue of Evil in the Context of Russia’s War against Ukraine'

Abstract: This research is an attempt to address the issue of evil in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine in an analytical way, trying to specify what evil is and check whether this or that feature of evil is applicable to the reality of the war. It is argued that there are the following three conditions that are separately necessary and jointly sufficient for the characterization of something or somebody as evil: the phenomenon needs to be the result or the source of (1) wrongful acts of action or inaction that (2) lead to the ruination of lives of other people and (3) are either planned or foreseen or being the results of willful blindness about consequences of the acts. The research gives arguments in favor of the thesis that many acts of a significant part of the people of contemporary Russia show the abovementioned features. Moreover, it is argued that their evildoing is also characterized by regularity. Then it is argued that evil in Russia’s war against Ukraine exists in the following three modes: the factual evil (acts of ruining lives), the active evil (initiators and implementers of ruining lives and those who actively support them) and the passive evil (those who do nothing to stop the acts that are ruining lives).

Автор: Козаченко Надія Павлівна

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April 26, 17 CEST/18 EEST

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Christoph Lumer

Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Siena (Italy)

http://www.lumer.info, https://docenti.unisi.it/en/lumer

Title of the talk: "Methods in Philosophy – From Applied Philosophy to the Fundamentals".

Abstract: This contribution seeks to give an overview from a normative perspective of methods currently used in philosophy. 'Normative perspective' here means that good methods are presented and justified in detail, while bad ones are criticised briefly - briefly, because the contribution is mainly intended to be constructive. 1. Applied philosophies (e.g. applied ethics) should, according to the idea, actually only apply principles developed on a more fundamental level, i.e. logically derive a decision on certain cases from these principles and empirical situation descriptions. This is explained using the example of welfare-ethical evaluations, especially the ethics of war. Applied philosophies, however, often go beyond this empirical deductive practice. 2. The dispute over methods in philosophy concerns above all the more fundamental parts of philosophy, e.g. the methods to be applied in nomative ethics. Here, for example, the following methods are in conflict: methodological naturalism; various types of intuitionism from reflective equilibrium to certain varieties of experimental philosophy; conceptual analysis including conceptual engineering. A brief critique of such methods with an eye to the goals of philosophy is then followed by the innovative main part of the contribution: the presentation of four ideal types of theory in philosophy together with their methods, which are also implemented in real terms (although seldom purely), but are not theorised in the methodological discussion to date: descriptive-nomological, idealising-hermeneutic, technical-constructive and ontic-practical theories.

Автор: Козаченко Надія Павлівна

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