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What is SIF?

"SIF" stands for "Středoevropský Institut Filosofie" ("The Central-European Institute of Philosophy"). The Institute promotes philosophy and transdisciplinary research. It achieves its goals through a specific curriculum and research, emphasizing the transdisciplinary and intercultural aspects and international cooperation. Furthermore,it hosts workshops and conferences,participates in several publishing activities and promotes the exchange of students and professors.

Differential Anthropology: World-antecedence, Coexistence and Nature in Eugen Fink and Jan Patočka

A bilateral German-Czech research grant project “Differential Anthropology: World-antecedence, Coexistence and Nature in Eugen Fink and Jan Patočka” supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Czech Science Foundation (project no. 24-13817L). Supervised by Professor Alexander Schnell at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal and Professor Hans Rainer Sepp at the Charles University, Faculty of Humanties.

October 2024 – September 2027

Abstract

In the context of a renewed interest in philosophical-anthropological issues, the problem whether a super-ordinated structure of the world exists has attracted specific interest from the “New Materialisms”. This project aims to contribute to this discussion with the perspective of a Differential Anthropology based on Eugen Fink and Jan Patočka. Both conceive of the human being in terms of its differential relation to the world. As a superordinate third, the world relates the human being to itself while remaining positively ungraspable for understanding. Its difference grounds the human being and his world-relation. Thus, both authors share paradigmatic interests of the New Ontologies and Materialisms: to refuse reducing world to the perspective of human beings and to undermine rigid nature-culture dualisms. In contrast to the latter, they avoid the false alternative of understanding world as either irreducibly superordinate or reduced to human beings. Differential Anthropology thus is an original, systematic position allowing for a critique of current approaches.

Short project description

The partial projects are brought together by their objective of reconstructing a differential Anthropology based on Eugen Fink und Jan Patočka under the systematic aspects of “world-antecedence”, “co-existence” and “nature” and to further highlight it as a fruitful position in the debate on the relation of human being and world. With that, a bridge between Phenomenology and Anthropology is built. This allows a reformulation of the question of the human subject from the perspective of world-belonging (see Karel Novotny’s and Cathrin Nielsen’s partial projects). On the other hand, the project proves the long-neglected compatibility of phenomenological approaches with New Ontologies and New Materialisms (“material turn”), which also speak out against reducing the world to a human perspective. In doing so, the critical discussion further shows a variety of conceivable, methodologically fundamental (project Alexander Schnell), as well as conceptional shortcomings or dilemmas of Object Oriented Ontology (project Hans Rainer Sepp), to which a differential Anthropology may offer a creative corrective. Based on Fink (projects A. Schnell, C. Nielsen, Sandro Herr) and Patočka (project K. Novotný, H. R. Sepp, Lutz Niemann) world may be conceived in a way that allows the affirmation of a relation to it as a whole, this, however, in a differential manner so that the particularity and diversity of access as well as the inexhaustibility of its relation are underlined. 

This opens a way to conduct philosophical-anthropological research in the 21st Century that shows the human being in its subjectivity with respect to a superordinate reality. The closer investigation of the difference-philosophical approach to world presented here is promising since it can be made fruitful as a unifying link between different worlds, nature and the human being, which does not endanger their diverse life forms (project S. Herr). This shows very clearly in a critical dialogue with neo-materialistic concepts of world (on Haraway and Latour see project L. Niemann; on Barad see project C. Nielsen).

Autour du concept de l'institution

L’oeuvre de Maurice Merleau-Ponty en débat

Prague, le 5 février 2024, de 10 au 17 houres
dans Akademické konferenční centrum, Husova 4a, Praha 1

détails ici

Die Grenze denken

Kolloquium am 07. und 08. Dezember 2023

Středoevropský institut pro filosofii (SIF) | Mitteleuropäisches Institut für Philosophie
Univerzita Karlova, Fakulta humanitních studií a Filosofický ústav Akademie věd České republiky

Ort: Akademisches Konferenz-Zentrum
der Akademie der Wissenschaften der Tschechischen Republik,
Husová 4, Prag 1

das Programm herunterladen

Hedwig Conrad-Martius. Max Scheler. Surrealismus

Workshop am 13. und 14. Oktober 2023

Středoevropský institut pro filosofii (SIF) | Central-European Institute for Philosophy
Univerzita Karlova, Fakulta humanitních studií
Pátkova 2137/5, 182 00 Praha 8 – Libeň

Das Programm herunterladen

Faces of Nature in Contemporary Phenomenology

CHALLENGES OF ECOLOGICAL ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

October 5-6, 2023
Vila Lanna, V Sadech 1/1, Praha

Download the program

Download the poster

New books on philosophy of Jan Patočka

Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences,
and the Central-European Institute of Philosophy

invite to a presentation of new books on the philosophy of Jan Patočka:

James Dodd, The New School for Social Research, New York:
The Heresies of Jan Patočka. Phenomenology, History, and Politics, Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, Mai 2023

and

Karel Novotný, Institute of Philosophy, The Czech Academy of Sciences:
Život a svět. Fenomenologie Jana Patočky (Life and World. Phenomenology of Jan Patočka), Červený Kostelec, Nakladatelství Pavel Mervart, October 2023

Venue: Akademické konferenční centrum, Husova 4a, Prague 1

On Wednesday, October 4, at 5 pm.

Fink und die Französische Phänomenologie

Internationales Forschungskolloquium
29.–30. September 2023
Villa Lanna, Prag

Plakat

Programm

Approches étique de la nature et la phénoménologie francaise

Workshop Organized by the research project
“Face of Nature in Contemporary French Phenomenology”
(GAP 21-22224S) at the Czech Academy of Sciences,
Institute of Philosophy, Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Program

Jan Patočka Memorial Medal for Hans Rainer Sepp

On May 5th, 2022 Hans Rainer Sepp received the Jan Patočka Memorial Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences for his long-term contribution to the development of research in the field of philosophy.

The Jan Patočka Memorial Medal is awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences to both Czech and foreign scholars who have significantly contributed to the advancement of science. The first Jan Patočka Memorial Medal was awarded in 1997 to commemorate the 90th anniversary of prof. Jan Patočka’s birth and the 20th anniversary of his death. More information on the medal is available here: The Jan Patočka Memorial Medal – Akademie věd České republiky.

Faces of nature: phenomenology and ecology

Workshop Organized by the research project
“Face of Nature in Contemporary French Phenomenology”
(GAP 21-22224S) at the Czech Academy of Sciences,
Institute of Philosophy, Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy

See the program