Summer semester 2021
Philosophy of Culture – its German-Jewish History
This seminar will take place in the context of the anniversary year 1700 years of Jewish life in German-speaking lands.
Where philosophy is articulated in the name of culture it has consequences which are reflected in thinking about things and interpretations, facts and truth claims. The pioneering philosophers of the first cultural studies around 1900, including Ernst Cassirer, Georg Simmel, Sigmund Freud or Walter Benjamin, did not deal with eternal entities but was engaged with contingent objects. They inquired under which specific conditions and contexts these came into existence. Such objects require interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary cooperation, historical and systematic approaches and methodological self-reflexivity.
The seminar will focus on Ernst Cassirer. On the one hand, selected texts will be examined to see to what extent contexts from Jewish religion, ethics and tradition were taken up and transformed. On the other hand, it is also to be asked to what extent the experience of being addressed as Jewish by the society has informed these philosophical approaches.
1st meeting: Tuesday, May 4, 2021, 2 pm.
Online class.
For registration please contact Prof. Dr. Christine Blaettler (blaettler@philsem.uni-kiel.de) by no later than May 3, 2021.