Mardi 7 mai à 16h30 en salle U/V, nous aurons le plaisir de recevoir Sandra Lehmann, venue spécialement de l’université de Vienne où elle enseigne pour nous parler, en anglais, de sa métaphysique de l’existence. Voici le résumé de son intervention [attention, la séance est bien à 16h30 exceptionnellement !] :

Sandra Lehmann
« The metaphysics of existence »

« In classical philosophy of existence, there are two ways to elaborate the problem of existence. First, existence refers to the finitude and contingency of human life that, accordingly, escapes the account of supratemporal or metaphysical reason.

Second, existence escapes the rational account but this is so because existence forms an absolute aspect of being which remains unassailable by reason. The finite character of being is a result of the mediation of reason and the absolute. However, finite temporality is not being’s definite form.

In my lecture, I will develop further the second line of existential philosophy whose starting point is the later philosophy of Schelling. The basic question is the following: What is the ontological status of the statement that there is something? In fact, the questioning has to describe an arc here between the apparently simple meaning of that-it-is and the complex problem of what that-it-is does imply for an understanding of the being of beings as such.

I will approach this question by addressing two other questions that lead right into its heart.

First, if we take the insight of classical philosophy of existence serious that existence or that-it-is escapes the rational account how can there be an access to it? In order to answer this question, I will draw on the concept of reality belief that was first highlighted by David Hume in his “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” and again emphasized by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in his discussion of Kant’s critical philosophy.

Secondly, we have to ask for the content of being qua existence. If reality belief has a direction that towards which it is directed cannot be empty. Rather, there has to be content, yet, it escapes the rational form. I will propose to understand this content as absolute, but non-phenomenal. Obviously, this is a strong metaphysical statement and I will have to show what, in my view, justifies the aggregation of existence and metaphysics that I propose. »

Les enregistrements de la dernière séance sont disponibles en téléchargement dans la section Séances, et en streaming ci-dessous.

Asya Passinsky, « The ontology of social objects »

Enregistrement de l’exposé