Freedom of the Mind - In Defense of the Objectivity of the Humanities

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 15
Room: 
Auditorium A
Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 5:30pm
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Date: 
Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 5:30pm

In his talk, Markus Gabriel, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bonn and Member of the IAS CEU Academic Advisory Board will sketch the outlines of a view of human mindedness which he calls „neo-existentialism“. Neo-existentialism offers an anti-naturalist framework for thinking about the human being according to which the human mind is not an element or object that belongs to the natural order. This does not mean that it is an illusion, fiction or social construction of some kind. Rather, neo-existentialism can serve as the basis for an enhanced understanding of the full-blown objectivity of the humanities and their irreducibility to the processes of knowledge-acquisition constitutive of the natural sciences.

Markus Gabriel holds the chair in epistemology, modern, and contemporary philosophy at the University of Bonn. He is director of the International Centre for Philosophy and the interdisciplinary Center for Science and Thought at Bonn and a recurring visiting professor at Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne. His most recent publications include Fields of Sense. A New Realist Ontology (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) and Why the World does not Exist (Translated by Gregory S. Moss, Polity Press, 2015; first published in German as Warum es die Welt nicht gibt (Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin, 2013).
A reception will follow.