Titel: 9th International French-German Philosophy Colloquium 2003 - What Is a Human Being?
Termin: 13.7.2003 bis 19.7.2003
Veranstaltungsort:
ADAPT.
to the fact that human beings understand themselves as creatures that can ask questions concerning themselves, and
moreover that must do so, i.e. as creatures for whom it is a task to know oneself. The most important and noble object
for human study is thus the human being itself, according to Pascal, Montaigne, Rousseau, Herder and countless others in
a long intellectual tradition. Hence Heidegger explains self-understanding as belonging to the determination of the human,
as that being "for which, in its Being, that Being is an issue". Philosophy is itself a product of the search for the
determination of human being; the essence of human beings is that which philosophy properly searches for, says
Socrates in the Theaetetus, and, for centuries, European philosophy has explored ways of pursuing this task. Indeed,
whether philosophy poses questions of knowledge, action or infinity, according to Kant, these are in the end all questions
about human being.
This understanding of human beings has of course also proved decisive for 20th-century philosophy in many respects.
Plessner's and Gehlen's philosophical anthropology are explicitly concerned with the human being and its peculiarly
ex-centric, dangerously unstable position in nature. Likewise Sartre's existentialism locates human existence in a tragic
divide between thrownness and a compulsion to create oneself. Each of these strands of philosophy, in its own way,
stretches to its utmost limit the ancient topos of the human being as the creature that not only must know itself, but
also must create itself. But in many other debates as well it is the human being that in the end we find ourselves to be
examining: One may think of Cassirer's philosophy of culture, which defines the human being as the creator of
symbolically mediated worlds (animal symbolicum); Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological investigations; and Wittgenstein's
groundbreaking reflections on the zoon logon echon as the animal which only as a participant in social practices is able to
come to the very language upon which it bases its claim to particularity. Behind such prominent questions of existence,
culture, language, practice and body the fourth, last question of Kant crops up.
On the other hand this question has also been problematized in the twentieth century in unprecedented ways. In
contrast to the philosophical motif of active human self-understanding Lévinas insists that the human being is called by
the Other into posing the question concerning itself and and that one cannot on one's own pose this question to oneself.
Derrida has frequently referred to the implicit claim to domination in the question of the human being and to the implicit
hierarchy expressed therein between human beings and animals. Foucault dissected the human being as a historical
effect of specific discursive formations and asked whether one should not rather "give up thinking of man". Philosophy has
always dreamed of trading poor, mortal Adam for a new "Übermensch". These tendencies recur today in biologistic and
technophilic discourses that interpret self-abolition as the true self-creation of human beings, and that interpret
post-humanism or anti-humanism as the fulfillment of humanism.
And yet it seems as though we cannot get rid of the human being so easily. In the last lines of Les mots et les choses,
Foucault confidently proposed his famous wager "that man would be erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of
the sea", but it seems that the face in the sand is still here with us. It is thus time to pose the Kantian question once
again: What is the human being? This question is a part of the self-understanding of philosophy as well. As such it will
continue the tradition of the International French-German Philosophy Colloquium. We invite considerations of the human
being from all philosophical perspectives, as well as discussions of reasons why the question of the human being
continues or does not continue to be an important question.
The International French-German Philosophy Colloquium is intended for philosophers from all career stages and also for
scholars in other disciplines who are working on philosophical subjects, e.g. sociology, political science, literary studies,
art history, et al.
The Colloquium is an international meeting, and the goal is to achieve the greatest possible diversity with respect to the
native languages and intellectual backgrounds of participants. With respect to content the focus is on contemporary
French philosophy, which is discussed in the context of German and Anglo-American philosophy. Languages of the
conference are German, English and French. At least a passive understanding of these three languages is desirable, since
philosophical discussions will be conducted in all three languages.
Participants in the Colloquium may give papers or workshops and/or take part in the discussion without contributing work
of their own in the strict sense. Papers may be presented in German, English or French and are limited to 25-30 minutes.
The scheduling of sessions will depend on the papers and presentations that are selected. There are no prearranged
sections. A workshop entails leading a discussion of a brief set of theses or a text of another author that will be read in
advance.
The Colloquium seeks an atmosphere of intensive philosophical discussion. To this end the number of participants will be
restricted to approximately 25, and the schedule of sessions will entail short paper-reading times and lengthy discussion
periods. In this way a maximal amount of time will be set aside for philosophical discussion.
Kontakt:
Georg W. Bertram
Institut für Philosophie
Universität Hildesheim
Marienburger Platz 2
D-31141 Hildesheim
bertram@rz.uni-hildesheim.de
http://www.uni-hildesheim.de/eviancolloquium/