Institute of Modern Languages Research
Process Philosophy | 7
Dr Johan Siebers
(IMLR, School of Advanced Study)
This seminar investigates the relation between thought, spontaneity and movement - in short, living thought, or thought thinking experience. Spontaneity and movement are nothing fixed, and so it seems that a philosophical understanding of them must also itself be, at least to some extent, a fluid, moving or spontaneous understanding. What is required, it seems, is an unprincipled, an-archic form of thought: '"life" cannot be a defining characteristic. It is a name for originality, and not for tradition' (Whitehead). Perhaps we are moving outside of the realm of conceptual, discursive reason when we try to think spontaneous movement: 'process cannot be directly thought due to the static, form-endowing character of reason, anymore than permanence can be directly felt, due to the dynamic, form-excluding character of intuition' (David Hall). It could be that the awareness of movement leads us to draw quite specific limitations to what philosophical understanding can achieve and to open our minds to other forms of thought, or else it may lead us to review our understanding of philosophical thinking itself.
The relation between the moving character of experience and the static nature of conceptual thinking has been at the basis of the development of philosophy since the Presocratics. It is central to the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and determines much of Hegel's conception of the dialectic. In process philosophy we find another, distinctive, way of thinking through this relation.
'In Hegel, as in the landscape of process, things change incessantly (...) so it becomes above all important to learn that concepts are fluid here' (Bloch). Or is there a possibility for non-conceptual thought, or even for a non-verbal philosophical practice referring more to seeing than saying, such as for example the therapeutic character of philosophy in the later Wittgenstein, or aspects of Zen practice.
What, finally, are the implications of the questions process philosophy addresses for our own lives?
The seminar will explore the following themes:
Intuition and reason, concept and experience
What is creativity?
Music, spontaneity and enslavement: Adorno and the dialectics of Jazz
The language of process
Process metaphysics and the farewell to metaphysics
Process east and west
Each theme is allocated in principle two sessions, but as the form of the seminar aims to follow the content, changes are not excluded and the understanding sought is itself a developing, spontaneous and hopefully collective process.
German Philosophy seminar series
