HICO Agenda
— Upcoming events
Lecture by Charlotte Alderwick (UWE Bristol): Schelling, Freedom, and Exhibition: a Response to Stern
Monday 7 July, 4pm
Faculty Room, Blandijn
In his 2023 article ‘Schelling on Freedom, Evil and Imputation: a Puzzle’, Robert Stern argues that (contra what he terms the ‘standard account’) the conception of freedom that Schelling puts forward in the Freedom essay is not an account of freedom as constituted by choice, but as constituted by acting in accordance with essence. Stern takes my reading of Schelling as representative of the standard view; I aim to clarify that I agree with Stern’s claim that Schelling’s account is essentialist. However, I argue that there is an important nuance here in Schelling’s view that is missed on Stern’s account: Schelling is providing both a theory of freedom in general and an account of specifically human freedom. I therefore argue that Stern is right to claim that Schelling’s account of freedom in general is essentialist, however, in the case of human freedom, this account gives way to a view which is closer to existentialism.
I further argue that Stern’s account fails to make sense of the conception of choice at play in the Freedom essay and demonstrate that any successful reading of Schelling’s view of freedom must be able to give an account of how choice works here. To do this, I draw on a reading of Schelling as implying something akin to a virtue ethics, and use the concept of ‘exhibition’ borrowed from Schelling’s Naturphilosophie to sketch the outline of my positive account.
CfA: Workshop “Lebensphilosophie and the Sciences.”
Ghent University (Belgium), 11-12 September 2025
Lebensphilosophie or “Philosophy of Life” as a movement in the history of philosophy is difficult to characterize. Many of the philosophers associated with the movement (such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, or Eucken) never identified their own work by using the term, and as such the movement has largely been used by later authors in order to draw attention to shared features of their thought. One such shared feature that is often cited is a general anti-scientific tendency. This stress on the aspects of Lebensphilosophie that are critical of science has led many of its students to overlook Lebensphilosophie’s origins in developments in the natural and human sciences of its time. For this reason, little attention has been paid to the movement’s epistemology and its philosophy of science, with its general reception largely limited to its moral and practical dimensions. This workshop aims to contribute to closing this gap through a better understanding of the philosophy of science and epistemology at stake in Lebensphilosophie.
This workshop invites contributions on the epistemology and philosophy of science of authors associated with Lebensphilosophie. In addition, it invites contributions on such authors’ conceptions of Nature, of Life, and of the Human Being, with a particular interest in how they understand life’s and humanity’s place in nature, and the relevance of the study of nature and of life to our understanding of humanity, and vice versa. Lebensphilosophie was not the only philosophical movement of its time which engaged with these topics: at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, philosophers of other schools, such as neo-Kantianism, critical theory, phenomenology, existentialism, and logical or empirical positivism actively engaged with and position themselves towards Lebensphilosophie’s conception of Nature, Life and the Human Being. One crucial stake in this discussion was over the possibility of a philosophy of nature or “Naturphilosophie” and hence the relationship between philosophy and the sciences. For this reason, we are also interested in contributions that address the reception of Lebensphilosophie’s treatment of these issues, such as Heinrich Rickert’s attack on the “fashionable Lebensphilosophie” and Helmuth Plessner’s incorporation of Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie into his own philosophical anthropology. In other words, we welcome contributions on philosophers of life, on philosophers who deal with philosophy of life and closely related topics, as well as on contemporaries (late 19th, early 20th century) who deal with the discussion on the place of (natural) philosophy in relation to the life- and human sciences. We strongly encourage individuals from underrepresented groups to submit.
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Andreas Vrahimis (HU Berlin & Paderborn University/University of Cyprus)
Dr. Maurizio Esposito (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Dr. Boris Demarest (LMU-München/Universiteit Gent)
TBA
How to Submit?
Submission Deadline: June 27
Notification of Acceptance: July 18
Send anonymized abstracts (PDF-format) with the title “Abstract_LebensphilosophieandtheSciences” (both title of pdf & subject matter of e-mail) to: dries.josten@ugent.be
Scientific committee:
Prof. Giuseppe Bianco (Cà Foscari University)
Prof. Charles Wolfe (Université de Toulouse Jean-Jaurès)
Prof. Matthias Wunsch (Universität Rostock)
Prof. Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Universiteit Gent)
Dr. Boris Demarest (LMU-München/Universiteit Gent)
Dr. Andrea Mina (Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder))
— Past events (Academic year 2024-2025)
Lecture by our honourable member Miglena Dikova-Milanova (UGent): Rewriting the Sublime: Kantian Echoes in DeLillo, Knausgaard, and Bulgakov
Thursday 8 May, 4pm
Faculty Room, Blandijn
Registration is not required: HICO welcomes all!
Including coffee break and refreshments, generously provided by HICO
The aesthetic concept of the sublime emerges across philosophical and literary contexts, assuming diverse theoretical and fictional forms. One of the most structured and influential expositions on the sublime is found in Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy and earlier essayistic writings. The presentation explores Kant’s struggle to define and articulate the language of the sublime while analysing how Don DeLillo’s White Noise, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle, and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita rework, ironize, and reinterpret Kantian narratives. Additionally, it examines the distinctions and intersections between philosophical and fictional expressions of sublime experiences. Rather than a purely aesthetic category, the sublime is presented as a dynamic interaction between the inner and outer world, exposing the hidden processes of emotion and thought when individuals confront the limits of reality. The presence of the sublime in philosophical and fictional narratives is not incidental; rather, these narratives strive to reveal, comprehend, and transcend the boundless and the unknown through distinct yet interconnected strategies.
Collab HICO/Sarton: Yearly HICO flagship event: Alex Klein (McMaster University):
Thursday 20 March, 4pm
Faculty Room, Blandijn
Nationalism and Naturalism: On Russell and James
A growing body of scholarship reconstructs and celebrates Russell’s move to something like naturalized epistemology around 1919 (e.g., Kitchener 2007, Levine 2008). The pressures that are typically cited as having pushed Russell away from foundationalism and towards a view of philosophy as continuous with science (especially with psychology) include issues in philosophy of mathematics and a “felt inadequacy of his earlier theories of judgment” (Kitchener). One outgrowth of this shift is Russell’s development of a form of neutral monist metaphysics the basics of which he derived (on his own telling) from William James.
In this talk, I will argue that Russell had already taken a naturalistic turn in his political philosophy at least as early as 1915. In his "Principles of Social Reconstruction" and in essays collected in "Justice in War-Time," Russell argued that effective resistance against nationalist bellicosity required a more psychologically adequate account of human “impulse.” "It is not by reason alone,” he wrote, "that wars can be prevented, but by a positive life of impulses and passions antagonistic to those that lead to war.” Here, too, James lurks in the background, as Russell cites “The Moral Equivalent of War” as the best available diagnosis of the problem. My discussion can be treated as a case study in the need to keep social and political settings in view when considering epistemological or even metaphysical developments in the history of philosophy.
Alexander Klein is Canada Research Chair and Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University, where he is also Director of the Bertrand Russell Research Centre. His work on James includes a forthcoming monograph entitled "Consciousness Is Motor: William James on Mind and Action" (OUP).
Including a free reception at 6pm, kindly provided by: HICO and Sarton Centre.
Online reading group: Language and Thought Before and After Kant
Our honourable members Alice Cambi and Levi Haeck are pleased to announce an online fortnightly reading group, “Language and Thought Before and After Kant”, starting on 19/02/2025. The reading group is organized by the Linguistic Kant Consortium, a newly established research initiative within the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium. It brings together a PhD and a Postdoctoral project, both funded by the Flemish Research Council (FWO), obtained by Alice Cambi and Levi Haeck respectively, under the supervision of Professor Gertrudis Van de Vijver.
The central aim of the consortium is to explore the intersection of Kant’s transcendental philosophy and philosophy of language and/or linguistics. This area of study has seen a growing wave of interest in recent years, though there remains a scarcity of resources for scholars and students working on Kant’s philosophy. The Linguistic Kant Consortium seeks to address this gap by (a) organizing the aforementioned fortnightly reading group dedicated to Kant's reflections on language, as well as his intellectual sources (e.g., Locke, de Condillac, Rousseau), key interlocutors (e.g., Herder, Hamann), and the developments in post-Kantian philosophy (e.g., von Humboldt, Hegel). To enrich the discussions, the reading group will also (b) feature regular lectures by leading experts, who will provide valuable insights and context to the texts under review.
The first lecture will be delivered by Professor Klaas Willems, who will talk about “Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Kantian philosophy of language” (see below).
All interested students and colleagues are warmly invited to join for the discussions (a) or lectures (b). To be included in the mailing list, receive the Teams link, and the schedule of the reading group, send an email to Levi.Haeck@UGent.be.
Lecture by Klaas Willems (UGent): Wilhelm von Humboldt's Kantian Philosophy of Language
Wednesday 19 February, 4pm
Faculty Room, Blandijn
Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1767-1835) philosophy of language integrates, transforms and extends central aspects of the transcendental (‘critical’) philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Humboldt incorporates ideas from a whole range of predecessors (Aristotle, Leibniz, Monboddo, Condillac, Herder, Fichte, among others), but his most systematic guide is Kant, in particular the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781/1787), the Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790) and Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798).
While there are only few comments on language in Kant’s writings, language is Humboldt’s main object of enquiry. Yet in many respects Humboldt remains faithful to Kant’s transcendental perspective, to the extent that Humboldt can be considered the preeminent – and perhaps the only true – representative of a Kantian philosophy of language. I will focus on Humboldt’s integration and transposition of key concepts in Kant’s philosophy such as Anfang and Ursprung, Synthesis of Verstand (Kategorien) and Sinnlichkeit (Anschauung), Schematismus and Einbildungskraft, Gemeinsinn, Urteil and Begriff, Organ and System. I will also pay particular attention to the terms Zeichen, Sprache and Symbol in both Kant’s and Humboldt’s writings.
In and through his philosophy of language, Humboldt provides an important complementary contribution to Kant’s central concern with knowledge, i.e. the possibility and Begründung of objective experience and Erkenntnis. One of Humboldt’s principal claims is that speakers’ subjectivity in the speech act (das jedesmalige Sprechen) is an irreducible aspect of that knowledge. To conclude, I will therefore consider the question whether, for Humboldt, language constitutes a Bedingung der Möglichkeit der Erkenntnis in Kant’s sense.
Lecture by our honourable member Louis Schreel (UGent): From Transcendental to Dynamical Structuralism: The Fate of the Transcendental in Deleuze and Petitot
Tuesday 3 December, 4pm
Room 0.5, Blandijn
Registration is not required: HICO welcomes all!
Including coffee break and refreshments, generously provided by HICO
Abstract: In his early, programmatic essay “How do we recognize structuralism?” (1967), Deleuze presents a confrontation between structuralism and transcendental philosophy with the aim of demonstrating (1) how structuralism transforms transcendental philosophy, and (2) how a new transcendental structuralism becomes compatible with contemporary ideas in topology and dynamical systems theory concerning self-organization, singularities, complexity, etc. Concerning the first point, the key innovation of structuralism is the idea that the constitution of meaning in language does not presuppose an ideal, transcendental subject. Instead, linguistic structure is conceived as a transcendental field without a subject, which is generative of both meaning and subjectivity. Deleuze’s second key idea in this essay is that the foundations of structuralism are not only transcendental but also topological, and not logical. As such, psychic structure should be conceived as a topological, spatial order defined by differential relations of emergence and divided by a system of energetic differences and singularities, which organize the structural space.
The aim of this talk is to evaluate these two key ideas underlying Deleuze’s transcendental structuralism: how does structuralism transform transcendental philosophy, and how should the foundations of structuralism be conceived topologically? To address the second question, I will turn to Jean Petitot’s dynamical structuralism, which has meticulously developed Deleuze’s proposal of a topological foundation. The key issue then becomes the naturalization of transcendental, constituent structure: either one conceives the foundations of structuralism and transcendental philosophy in a purely logicist manner, thereby adopting a resolutely dualist stance and leaving the naturalization of structure wanting, or one conceives these foundations in a dynamical and topological manner, thereby naturalizing constituent structure in physical, morphological and ultimately symbolic terms.
Lecture by Stephen Mulhall (University of Oxford): Scepticism in philosophy, the arts, and religion: Wittgenstein, Cavell, Nietzsche
Tuesday 1 October, 4pm
Faculteitszaal
Registration is not required: HICO welcomes all!
Including coffee break and refreshments, generously provided by HICO
Abstract: In this lecture, taking my basic orientation from Stanley Cavell's readings of Wittgenstein, I will argue that Western European modernity exhibits a distinctively melodramatic dimension, one that displays itself in philosophy, the arts (including opera, film, painting and literature) and religion, and that indicates a heightened sceptical anxiety about making ourselves intelligible to others, and to ourselves. Against this background, Nietzsche's work appears simultaneously as symptom, diagnosis and critique.