Professori emeritus Manfred Frankin (Tübingenin ylipisto) vierailu Turun yliopistossa 24.-25.4.
Professori Frank on johtava varhaisromanttisen filosofian tutkija, jonka kiinnostuksen kohteisiin kuuluu myös tämänhetkinen analyyttinen mielen filosofia (philosophy of mind) ja sen yhteys klassiseen filosofiaan, erityisesti juuri romantiikan aikakauden filosofiaan.
Professori Frank pitää torstaina 24.4. klo 16-18 Janus-salissa (Kaivokatu 12, nivel) luennon aiheesta ”What Does That Mean: Early Romantic Philosophy?”
Perennial prejudice wants us to believe that early romantic philosophy developed in the footsteps of Fichtean foundationalism. We call ‘foundationalist’ a position which thinks knowledge grounded in an ultimate certitude. In Fichte’s case this was supposed to be an ‘absolutized Ego’. The prejudiced serpent continues to whisper: ‘Attention, Fichte’s philosophy marks the highest peak of subjectivity’s totalitarian seizure of power (Machtergreifung) over Being or différance. And early romantic philosophy is just an (immature) upshot of Fichtean subjectivistic dazzlement.’ It is demonstrated in this lecture that we have excellent reasons for trusting a recently developed research method called Constellation Research. Partially based on lately disclosed new source-text bases, it has entirely changed our view of Early Romanticism as a philosophical movement. We now see clearly that (and why) it was skeptical against foundationalist pretensions, respectful of subjectivity without promoting it to a ‘highest point of philosophy’, ironical with regard to ultimate knowledge claims, ontologically realistic, and pretty more modern than most of us thought it is.
Vieralu jatkuu samana päivänä, to 24.4 klo 18-20 yleisen kirjallisuustieteen seminaarihuoneessa (E 223) professori Frankin seminaarilla, jossa keskustellaan hänen kirjoituksestaan ”Zeit und Selbst”. Seminaarin keskustelukieli on englanti. Tekstiä käsitellään tätä ennen yhdessä prof. Liisa Steinbyn johdolla tiistaina 15.4. klo 16-18 yleisen kirjallisuustieteen seminaarihuoneessa E223. Myös tämä esiseminaari, jossa valmistellaan yhdessä professori Frankille tehtäviä kysymyksiä, on kaikille avoin.
Vierailu jatkuu siten, että prof. Frank pitää perjantaina 25.4. klo 14-16 Publicumin luentosalissa IV luennon aiheesta ”From Fichte’s ’Original Insight’ to a Moderate Defense of Self-Representationalism”.
“Self-representationalism” is a relatively recently explored view on the nature of occurrent mental states which we are used to calling “conscious”. Some of its main representatives, Charles Siewert, Terence Horgan, Uriah Kriegel and Kenneth Williford have recently proved curious about classical phenomenology and even some achievements of the so called ‘Heidelberg School’. With some important differences of emphasis and interpretation, these authors think that (1) all consciousness is representational or intentional, and that representation or intentionality is, in general, the appropriate basic term for any philosophy of mind. And secondly they maintain that (2) those and only those acts or experiences may pass for “conscious” that, in addition to their intentional (or representational) object, co-represent themselves. This co- (or peripheral) representation of the conscious episode itself does not, on this view, come about by a different, higher-order act or by an inner duplication (“reflection”), but is, rather, thought to be “built-into” the primitive experience itself (hence the appellation “Same-Order Theory”). This form of self-awareness is supposed to be “ubiquitous”, occurring wherever mental states occur as conscious events.
Self-representationalism thereby embraces a basic conviction of Fichte as it was presented in Henrich’s ground-breaking text on “Fichte’s Original Insight” (in 1966). Differently than Fichte, self-representationalists keep sticking to ‘representation’ as the basic core concept in understanding the problem of self-awareness – and thereby adopt the erroneous “reflection model of self-consciousness”. This is what the lecture turns against, defending a ‘pre-reflective’ model of self-awareness. Constructing his argument on the thought of Michael Tye, Tyler Burge and Jean-Paul Sartre, a model is proposed in which the non-objectuality and transparency of self-awareness appears compatible with a concept of representation of outer reality.