22. i 23. svibnja 2018. na Filozofskom fakultetu u Rijeci gostovat će Gregor Moder, profesor sa Odsjeka za filozofiju Sveučilišta u Ljubljani.
U utorak 22. svibnja, u predavaonici 107 u 16:15 održat će predavanje pod nazivom Louis Althusser and the Materialism of Knowledge, a 23. svibnja, u srijedu, predstavit će svoju knjigu Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity te održati istoimeno predavanje u predavaonici 801 u 10:15.
Louis Althusser and the Materialism of Knowledge
Within the contemporary debates on the philosophical legacy of the Enlightenment an important place is occupied by Marxist thinker Louis Althusser. He is best known for his theory of ideology, according to which the very existence of ideas and ideologies is something material, something practical, and even something ritual; ideas do not belong to some supra-material, spiritual world of mind or consciousness, they exist in the actions of subjects. While this theory, based on Marx’s teachings, has been very influential and productive, it has long been recognized by Althusser himself as fundamentally flawed: if ideology is omnipresent historical reality, as Althusser maintains, it becomes virtually impossible to formulate an emancipatory project – a task which is paramount for enlightenment. In this lecture, we will look into certain concepts, especially in late writings of Althusser, which nevertheless enable us to formulate a theory of the transformation of the ideological landscape without sacrificing the core thesis of the material existence of ideology.
Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity
Gregor Moder’s Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017) is a lively entry into current debates concerning Hegel, Spinoza, and their relation. Hegel and Spinoza are two of the most influential philosophers of the modern era, and the traditions of thought they inaugurated have been in continuous dialogue and conflict ever since Hegel first criticized Spinoza. Notably, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German Idealists aimed to overcome the determinism of Spinoza’s system by securing a place for the freedom of the subject within it, and twentieth-century French materialists such as Althusser and Deleuze rallied behind Spinoza as the ultimate champion of anti-Hegelian materialism. This conflict, or mutual rejection, lives on today in recent discussions about materialism. Contemporary thinkers either make a Hegelian case for the productiveness of concepts of the negative, nothingness, and death, or in a way that is inspired by Spinoza they abolish the concepts of the subject and negation and argue for pure affirmation and the vitalistic production of differences. Hegel and Spinoza traces the historical roots of these alternatives and shows how contemporary discussions between Heideggerians and Althusserians, Lacanians and Deleuzians are a variation of the disagreement between Hegel and Spinoza. Throughout, Moder persuasively demonstrates that the best way to read Hegel and Spinoza is not in opposition or contrast but together: as Hegel and Spinoza.
Gregor Moder doktorirao je filozofiju na Sveučilištu u Ljubljani gdje radi kao predavač. Član je uredničkog odbora časopisa Problemi, te autor monografija Comic Love: Shakespeare, Hegel, Lacan (2015.), kao i Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity (Northwestern UP, 2017.), ali i urednik, uz Jamilu Mascat, zbornika The Object of Comedy (Palgrave Macmillan, u pripremi 2018.).
Predavanja će se održati na engleskom jeziku u sklopu kolegija «Tematska uporišta kulturalnih studija», «Francuska socijalna teorija I», te «Kulturalna povijest modernog i postmodernog doba» pri Odsjeku za kulturalne studije.