In the beginning of march 2017, the director of CERI - SK Dr. Primož Repar atended the ceremony at the University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra (Slovakia) where prof. Abrahim Khan was awarded with the title Doctor honoris causa. Prof. Khan was involved in many activities of the CERI - SK institute and we congratulate him for the honor that he received.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Organizers: Publishing house KUD Apokalipsa and Central European Research Institute Soeren Kierkegaard Ljubljana
Coorganizer: Cankarjev dom
Škocjan, Trieste, Slovenia, Italy - from 2nd to 4th of September
Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, Slovenia - 5th to 6th of September
Topic: Courage to Act
This theme, inspired by Kierkegaard thinking, will be connected also with other selected personalities who could be valuable for reflection about our topic:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), Václav Havel (1936-2011), Paul Tillich (1886-1965), and Andrej Tarkovski (1932-1986).
In the past two weeks the Slovenian culture scene has been shocked because of the hunger strike of the director of Zavod KSEVT Miha Turšič. We are receiving a lot of questions from Slovenia and abroad about the status of Slovenian culture. The Institute of Soeren Kierkegaard is following these events with concern, and in a large part all of this is the consequence of a well established practice of degrading the field of culture in Slovenia. Miha Turšič has summed up demands of his hunger strike in three points. The first two demands are connected directly to the problem concerning Zavod KSEVT and the third point is demanding that the national budget for culture be restored to a 2%, rather than a 0,4% reduction which is the case now. The Institute of Soeren Kierkegaard sees in the first two demands a symptom of the current inadequate handling of innovative cultural institutions in Slovenia. The third demand is in large part the cause of the first two, although not everything is connected to financial problems. There is also a problem in that the bureaucratic way of thinking is applied to fields in which it does not belong, and that is the field of creativity. Because of this we have decided to send a letter to the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, urging them to learn from the exposed case in order to understand the real situation from our perspective in the field of culture. We are also calling upon them not to allow the further destruction of culture, and especially not to push artists over the edge of their capabilities. In the attachment you will find the letter that we have sent to the Government of the Republic of Slovenia.
Translation:
Let us not become a society of extremes!
The decreasing support in the field of culture is ever more disturbing. Due to the recent reduction in the national budget for culture as many organizations pointed out, the support we have had is on the brink of collapse. We see the hunger strike of Miha Turšič as an almost inevitable step, and the situation in the culture center KSEVT is just a reflection of many similar problems affecting Slovenian culture, humanities and art. The Institute of Soeren Kierkegaard has also become a target of bureaucratic entanglements and blackmailing from local authorities, and we are asking ourselves which national institution can we rely on and trust to help us resolve our disputes in a rational and dialogical way. In the actual paradigmatic case it is not clear why it has come to such drastic measures, and why we cannot work together to resolve our differences in a cultivated and tolerant way. After the protest session of the National Council for Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, its petition and many letters of support, the budget for culture received a smaller budget reduction than previously predicted. There seems to be a trend that politicians detect only extreme measures, and these practices are followed by other bureaucrats. We have received many questions of concern from our international partners, but sadly we cannot say to them that the problem is of minor consequence. The problems, long-standing and urgent, need to be addressed holistically.
This is why we see the decision of Miha Turšič as a final warning that the depletion, neglecting and accusing of culture has gone too far. Therefore we call upon all responsible that they resolve the exposed situation and at the same time rethink the future systematic steps of the dialogue with culture producers. We have many mechanisms for cooperation, and we can use and respect them together or we risk becoming a barbaric society that communicates only though extreme situations. And culture is the main tool to prevent this from happening. We most sincerely hope that you will understand.
KIERKEGAARD'S YEAR 2023
9th INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL SYMPOSIUM OF MIKLAVŽ OCEPEK
THE 11th INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL CONFERENCE AND WORKSHOP OF SØREN KIERKEGAARD
CALL FOR PAPERS
Organizer: Central European Research Institute Soeren Kierkegaard, Slovenia
Co-organizer: KUD Apokalipsa, Slovenia
Co-organizer of the international conference: Cankarjev dom Ljubljana
Creative center Krušče, Krušče: from the 9st to the 13th of June, 2022
Cankarjev dom Ljubljana: from the 14th to the 16th of June, 2022
School of Philosophy Unije: from the 18th of June to the 25th of June, 2022
The symposium is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of KUD Apokalipsa, the 10th anniversary of the Central European Research Institute Soeren Kierkegaard and the 500th anniversary of the birth of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662).
The theme: How to encourage the individual in the apocalypse to make an existential turn towards a new oikonomia of relationships?
After the apocalypse, even death itself is veiled, and man, with his/her constitution, surrenders more and more to the namelessness of fate. Modern technical civilisation is ominously revealed in a kind of civil war of false value systems which only conceal the abolition of man in the face of the idea of production and consumption, which makes him a machine and abolishes all dignity for all living creatures. Only the single individual can resist this limitless usurpation, by self-reflecting on his/her own situation and thus opening the way to communion. The modern individual is a dividuum that feeds its dividuality on self-consumption, self-promotion/selfovertaking, consumerism and mass non-culture.
Kierkegaard has beautifully shown that the single individual cannot be embodied in something mass, because the mass always flees from the particular. The existential revolution that we predicted a decade ago as a spiritual transformation can thus not take place under one or another kind of compulsion (ideology, political conviction), but only through an evolutionary growth of understanding that is reflected in acts of love. For a society that is uniformed brings about a unity that is massed, and sociability expresses duality, a dialogue, a conversation between two, face to face. The views are personally experienced, and in this sense are rooted and grounded in a true tradition.
Only this can lead to the common good.
To express this politically, it is therefore necessary to provide the conditions for the possibility of a genuine dialogue between those who are shocked, but in a mutually reconcilable, yet necessarily radical, way. Only in this way will we also be able to listen to those who think differently or to help a concrete neighbour in need. This openness to dialogue is also a farewell to the need for social power as power, in the name of a celebration of sociability that awakens the sincerity of the individual in a noble desire for radical reflection. In doing so, we are always confronted with the transcendent, where the restlessness of existence invites us to live fully. Today, the individual is lulled to sleep in an apparent democracy. The new oikonomia of relationships cannot do without the fundamental value that only the self-reliant individual can give.
This fundamental attitude requires of us a radical personal definition of the reality of the ordering of the world in which we live. Therefore, the perspective of practice, which is theoretically declared and practically repressed, must be turned from this despair to expectation and realisation. The transcendence of the meaning of one's personal existence gives a new existence, and this is why existential communication is necessary. Thus, personal responsibility comes up against the face of one's fellow man. Anything else is the arbitrariness of pseudo-existence, which can bring out the worst in man. Kierkegaard and Pascal are thus to be taken extremely seriously in their concern for the neighbour, according to that fundamental question when I ask myself whether I look at the community of the world of all living creatures with the gaze of life or death, the oikonomia of the responsibility of the particular or the orgiastic of the multitude.
Once we understand our position, we will also have a new criterion for our own action. It is subjective, a criterion that requires passionate thinking, where the question is always to understand oneself in one's own existence and at the same time to double it by concrete action: "Whoever thinks existence without thinking it passionately is as if he did not think it at all, as if he had forgotten the most important thing - that he himself is existent." (Kierkegaard, Postscript, 242)
This means a deepening of experience in an existential turn that cannot persist in mere thinking or avoid the political sphere as a dimension of existence. To be open-minded and open-hearted is thus to "will the good" and brings unity of thought and action.
We will set up our reflections by continuing them with the Philosophical School of the Unije: How to promote, by means of the existential communication, the responsibility of the single individual for an oikonomic democracy for the blessings (Salighed) and prosparity of the community of single individuals.
The knowledge that is indispensable for man is to know himself. (Pascal, Thoughts, & 144) According to Climacus (Kierkegaard, Postscript), the individual is faced with the task of becoming a subjective thinker. The secret of this thought lies in the paradoxicality of existence itself, attuned to the transcendence of the absolute. The question arises of how to turn thought in order to think both sides simultaneously in the dialogue of community (as subjects, persons, responsible individuals) and act accordingly for the universal well-being of coexistence.
Participants are expected to send their application with a short CV in English, with the title of the paper no later than the 15st of December, 2022 to the address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. In addition to a short description, the CV should also contain contact information (e-mail address, phone number).
The deadline for submitting abstracts is the 20th of January, 2023. Please note the following when submitting your abstract:
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- size: 12;
- line spacing: 1.5;
- max. 1.300 characters.
The deadline for submmitting the paper, of up to 20.000 characters, is the 15th of April, 2023. Papers that will meet the criteria of appropriate quality, prescribed stylistic provisions and citation methods, will be published in the journal Kierkegaard in 2023. The provisions are as follows:
- font: Times New Roman;
- size: 12;
- space lining: 1.5;
- citation style: Surname, N. (Year): Title. City: Publishing House.
Additional information: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
ABSTRACTS
The 10th International Philosophical Conference and Workshop of Søren Kierkegaard
Igor Bijuklič (SI)
Dwarf Titans: Günther Anders and the Promethean gap as a new position of man in the technical age
For Günther Anders, one of the more original thinkers of the metamorphosis of the human psyche in the technical age, year 1945 marked the beginning of a new era in which the human condition fundamentally changed. The omnipotence of humanity appears in reverse, not as creation from nothing, but as reduction to nothing. The ability to set in motion processes on earth similar to those that take place on the surface of the sun, that is to say, the ability for humanity to produce its own end, inaugurates the "dwarf titans". With the advent of modern technology for Anders, an unbridgeable gap is created between the various human capacities, most markedly between what we can produce (technically conceive, invent) and, on the other hand, the human capacity for imagination. Human imagination, perception, emotion, language become extremely limited in the face of the almost infinite effects of our technical achievements. Within this modern schizophrenia, this new conditio humana, which Anders calls the "Promethean gap" (Prometheische Geffäle), imagining the ultimate effects of our own doing is no longer so easily attainable. Even more, within the technical division of labour and responsibilities, is no longer our task and concern. The oversized and the unimaginable are inscribed in our technical doing, and so it can easily happen that the most horrifying and terrible things no longer arouse our concern and emotion. How, if at all, is it possible to bridge this gap?
Keywords: Günther Anders, modern technic, titans