Philosophy Conferences and Calls for Papers

Experience and Experiences

Begins: Sun, 15 Jul 2007

Ends: Fri, 20 Jul 2007

Location:

Hildesheim

Germany

Last date for paper submission: Thu, 15 Mar 2007

Link: www.uni-hildesheim.de/eviancolloquium

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Georg W. Bertram, Institut für Philosophie, Universität
Hildesheim, Marienburger Platz 22, D-31141 Hildesheim, Germany
evian@uni-hildesheim.de

We have experiences, and we gain experience. We experience the world in its colors and forms, sounds and smells, and are more or less experienced in our dealings with the changing circumstances of life. Experience is irreplaceable and every human being must gain and learn from experience for him- or herself. Experiencing and being experienced are part of what it is to be human and to develop as a human being. For this reason philosophy has reflected on the nature and role of experience in every conceivable aspect: in aesthetics (from Dewey to Adorno and Derrida), in religion (from Schleiermacher to James and Taylor), in morality (from Aristotle to Lévinas and Butler), in knowledge (from Locke and Kant to McDowell), and in politics (from Burke to Arendt and Agamben).

But the concept of experience is not only one of the most important concepts of philosophy – it is also one of its most slippery. One can find already in Aristotle the dual aspect of experience, to which the title of this year’s colloquium alludes. For ‘empeiria’ can mean both the quality of being experienced, which is acquired through practice and consists in the mastery of practical skills, as well as the experiences that we have and collect in our encounters in the world, experiences that Aristotle characterizes in terms of the knowledge of the particular. Experience (as it is understood particularly in Hegelian thought) can also describe, however, the dialectical process through which there is a mutual and dynamic modification of our knowledge of things and the skills and standards we apply in knowing them.

How then should we explain the nature of experience? Is experience exclusively a matter of sensibility, as Locke, Russell, and Evans would have it? Or is it essentially conceptually structured, as Kant, Sellars, and McDowell argue? Does experience serve as the foundation of all theories (Carnap), the basis of their refutation (Popper), or is it rather a construct (Feyerabend)? Should we understand experience as always already modified by media and technology, and thereby as something historically contingent (Lyotard and Latour)? Do the conditions of modernity threaten us with a loss of experience in the sense that it is withering away more and more (Benjamin) or being fundamentally transformed (Baudrillard)? Is experience in itself connected with self-experience, and can we understand experience apart from some context of social practices that shapes how we come to understand things? How do the language of experience and the experience of language condition each other, in the sense in which Wittgenstein and Gadamer consider these aspects of experience? What is the substrate of experience: the res cogitans of Descartes, the expressive body as described by Merleau-Ponty, or the habitus that Bourdieu draws to our attention? And how can we understand the striving after a mode of experience that transcends the subject, in the way that Nietzsche, Foucault, and Bataille have in mind? In addition to individual experience, are there also forms of experience that collectivities essentially enjoy, or at least ones that can only be ascribed to collectivities?

The 13th International Philosophy Colloquium Evian invites presentations that are devoted to investigating the concept of experience in systematic ways. It aims to provide a setting in which participants can discuss whether to understand experience as mediated or unmediated, conceptual or sensory, linguistic or prelinguistic, subjective or intersubjective, foundational or subversive, passive or active, practical or theoretical, etc. In the spirit of the principal aim of the Colloquium past and present, we seek to garner (post)structuralist, hermeneutical, phenomenological, and analytical answers to such questions in both their differences and convergences, as well as to bring them into a systematically fruitful dialogue.

The International Philosophy Colloquium Evian addresses philosophers who are interested in engaging in discussions that transcend the confines of any particular school of thought in philosophy. It is conceived as a setting in which the division between continental and analytic philosophy is overcome. Passive mastery of the three languages of the Colloquium (French, German, and English), at least sufficient so as to follow presentations and discussions in each of them, is indispensable and a necessary condition of participation!

Call for Papers

We request proposals for presentations (maximum length: one page), along with a short CV (maximum length: two pages), by March 15th, 2007. Please send these documents via e-mail to the following address: evian@uni-hildesheim.de

For information about the character and history of this Colloquium, along with all of its organisational and logistical details, please visit our trilingual homepage: www.uni hildesheim.de/eviancolloquium

Organizers:
Georg W. Bertram (Hildesheim), Stefan Blank (Berlin), Robin Celikates (Gießen), David Lauer (Berlin)

In cooperation with Karin de Boer (Groningen), Karen Feldman (Berkeley), Jo-Jo Koo (Pittsburgh), Christophe Laudou (Madrid), Jérôme Lèbre (Paris), Diane Perpich (Clemson), Hans Bernhard Schmid (Basel), Chris Doude van Troostwijk (Strasbourg / Amsterdam)