- Charles University, Prague, Faculty of Humanities, Faculty Memberadd
- Philosophy, Social Ontology, Levinas, Aesthetics and Politics, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, and 15 moreMichel Foucault, Political Philosophy, Georges Didi-Huberman, Hito Steyerl, Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Vulnerability, Jacques Derrida, Émmanuel Lévinas, Christian Left, Political Theology, Contemporary French Philosophy, and Critical Theoryedit
- Jan Bierhanzl, born in Prague, received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 2012 from Charles University (Prague) and Universi... moreJan Bierhanzl, born in Prague, received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 2012 from Charles University (Prague) and Université de Bourgogne (Dijon, France). He is a researcher in the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. He also teaches as an assistant professor of philosophy at the Charles University. His research focuses on Emmanuel Levinas, ethics, political philosophy and aesthetics. In his last book, he attempted an articulation of ethics and politics in the concept of « weak action » (L’action faible, Paris, Hermann 2018). His current research aims to formulate an « aesthetics of ambiguity » through the analysis of image and music in 20th century thought (Estetika ambiguity, Praha, Karolinum 2022).edit
Introduction to the issue Arts, Ontology and Politics. This text gives a survey of the articles included in the special issue Arts, Ontology and Politics and of the challenges that these articles have to deal with in approaching the... more
Introduction to the issue Arts, Ontology and Politics. This text gives a survey of the articles included in the special issue Arts, Ontology and Politics and of the challenges that these articles have to deal with in approaching the central them.
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In the following paper on the ecofeminist dimension of the considerable work of the feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, I will limit myself to questions and themes that are not purely theological, but which at the same time... more
In the following paper on the ecofeminist dimension of the considerable work of the feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, I will limit myself to questions and themes that are not purely theological, but which at the same time resonate with the themes and questions addressed in contemporary (eco)feminist philosophy, which revolve around issues of structural inequality and structural or systemic violence on the one hand, and the interdependence of lives, precariousness, and vulnerability on the other. Of the classic questions of systematic theology, two seem to me particularly relevant in this regard, namely the question of structural sin and the very understanding of who God/dess is. Structural sin is the subject of the first part of this paper. God/dess in an ecofeminist perspective is the subject of the second part. The third part focuses on theological ethics and specifically on the articulation between the ethics of the ‘preferential option for the poor’, based on liberation theology, and the ethics of ecological sustainability. Finally, I devote the fourth and final section to examples of the concrete everyday spiritual practices of lived Christian ecofeminist spirituality.
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This paper addresses the subject's relationship to visual culture and its norms. I start from the fact that contemporary visual culture presents itself as a constant circulation of images that always bring with them a certain 'politics of... more
This paper addresses the subject's relationship to visual culture and its norms. I start from the fact that contemporary visual culture presents itself as a constant circulation of images that always bring with them a certain 'politics of truth', which includes a normative framing of what is and is not considered human. I propose the possibility of an ethico-political resistance to this framing on the part of the perceiving subject, who is simultaneously shaped by this framing. First, I focus on the problem of the disobedience of seeing as an ethico-political stance towards the 'politics of truth' in the framework of Foucault's thought as it applies to several of Hito Steyerl's artworks ('Politics of Truth' and 'The Courage of Truth'). I next discuss the tension between the circulation of images and the agency of the seeing subject with reference to Judith Butler's ethical and political approach to visual culture, arguing for an ethics of photography that transcends the Foucauldian framework.
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Introduction to the Special Issue: Arts, Ontology, and Politics.
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Ernst Bloch je klasickým filosofem 20. století, kterého proslavila především práce Princip naděje. Jeho myšlení mělo zásadní vliv na tradici neortodoxního marxismu, ale také např. na československý marxisticko-křesťanský dialog. V češtině... more
Ernst Bloch je klasickým filosofem 20. století, kterého proslavila především práce Princip naděje. Jeho myšlení mělo zásadní vliv na tradici neortodoxního marxismu, ale také např. na československý marxisticko-křesťanský dialog. V češtině dosud nebyly dostupné žádné překlady Blochových textů, proto chce výbor tuto mezeru zaplnit. Cílem je zprostředkovat autorovy myšlenky ze zásadních oblastí jeho zájmu, jakými jsou ontologie, náboženství, politická teorie a estetika. Výbor je doplněn úvodní studií, která uvede do základů Blochova myšlení a zasadí vybrané texty do kontextu jeho díla.
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Atonal Music and Infinite Fragmentarity The concept of fragmentarity not only constitutes the central idea of Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of music, but also the whole of his aesthetics, even of his entire ontology –which can already be... more
Atonal Music and Infinite Fragmentarity
The concept of fragmentarity not only constitutes the central idea of Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of music, but also the whole of his aesthetics, even of his entire ontology –which can already be characterized as a Marxist ontology of creative, utopian imagination. In spite of the fact that the focus of his musical interest was chiefly classical, tonal music and that, unlike Adorno, he gave relatively little attention to atonal and dodecaphonic music, we would like to show that Schönberg’s atonal music occupied, by way of the problem of fragmentarity, a specific place in Bloch’s socio-utopian ontology. At the same time, we want to highlight problematic aspects of Bloch’s concept of fragmentarity. This concept is perhaps overly connected with the aesthetics of romanticism, and its use to describe new music is in this way limited. The last part of the text is then a corrective of this position using the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas, especially his aesthetics and some of his notes on the event nature of music. In fact, from the point of view of Levinas’ critique of ontology, Bloch’s fragmentarity too is overly connected with the idea of totality, albeit only utopianly sketched. In the conclusion itself, we will then attempt to point out the possible combination of Bloch’s conception of new music as a fragment and Levinas’ event approach to music in the broader framework of the aesthetics of ambiguity.
The concept of fragmentarity not only constitutes the central idea of Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of music, but also the whole of his aesthetics, even of his entire ontology –which can already be characterized as a Marxist ontology of creative, utopian imagination. In spite of the fact that the focus of his musical interest was chiefly classical, tonal music and that, unlike Adorno, he gave relatively little attention to atonal and dodecaphonic music, we would like to show that Schönberg’s atonal music occupied, by way of the problem of fragmentarity, a specific place in Bloch’s socio-utopian ontology. At the same time, we want to highlight problematic aspects of Bloch’s concept of fragmentarity. This concept is perhaps overly connected with the aesthetics of romanticism, and its use to describe new music is in this way limited. The last part of the text is then a corrective of this position using the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas, especially his aesthetics and some of his notes on the event nature of music. In fact, from the point of view of Levinas’ critique of ontology, Bloch’s fragmentarity too is overly connected with the idea of totality, albeit only utopianly sketched. In the conclusion itself, we will then attempt to point out the possible combination of Bloch’s conception of new music as a fragment and Levinas’ event approach to music in the broader framework of the aesthetics of ambiguity.
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The notion of “weak action” is developed in this paper in an attempt to overcome the schism between the action of a free political subject on the one hand, and their dependency on the support of others and the environment on the other.... more
The notion of “weak action” is developed in this paper in an attempt to overcome the schism between the action of a free political subject on the one hand, and their dependency on the support of others and the environment on the other. is paper focuses foremost on Judith Butler’s later work raising two di erent ques- tions. First, following Butler and her critical reading of Levinas, the problem is raised how and at what price the ethics of vulnerability would be able to become not only the source of a critique of politics, but also the source of a concrete political action. Second, through Butler’s reinterpretation of Arendt’s political thinking, the notion of “action” is enriched by the dimension of vulnerability.
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Dans une volonté de renouer avec le dialogue entre phénoménologie et marxisme, très fructueux notamment dans les années 1960 et 1970, nous tenterons, dans cette étude comparative, de regarder de plus près l’une des tournures qu’il a... more
Dans une volonté de renouer avec le dialogue entre phénoménologie et marxisme, très fructueux notamment dans les années 1960 et 1970, nous tenterons, dans cette étude comparative, de regarder de plus près l’une des tournures qu’il a prises, à savoir la question du rapport entre praxis et temporalité, notamment telle qu’elle est traitée dans La dialectique du concret (1963), œuvre maîtresse du philosophe tchèque Karel Kosík (1926-2003), philosophe marxiste fortement influencé par la phénoménologie heideggerienne, et dans Totalité et infini d’Emmanuel Levinas, phénoménologue qui s’inspire, pour traiter le problème du rapport entre le temps et l’œuvre, du marxisme utopique d’Ernst Bloch.
Open access: https://books.openedition.org/enseditions/16974
Open access: https://books.openedition.org/enseditions/16974
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Before scrutinizing the ideological content of Levinas’s concept of the feminine, from his being inspired by Léon Bloy, in greater detail and considering the possibility of going beyond this in literature and in philosophy, we will... more
Before scrutinizing the ideological content of Levinas’s concept of the feminine, from his being inspired by Léon Bloy, in greater detail and considering the possibility of going beyond this in literature and in philosophy, we will attempt to retrace the relations between philosophy, literature, and religion that allowed Levinas as a reader of Bloy to achieve a new style of thought, that is, a new philosophical intelligibility, in accordance with the progressive development of his work.
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The chapter deals with a Levinasian interpretation of the motive of the Face in the work of Adriena Šimotová.
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Jan Bierhanzl discusses the way Levinas inspires the work of Judith Butler. Since Precarious Life (2004) the stress of Butler’s analysis moves from the problems of discursive construction of gender and sex to an ethics of the... more
Jan Bierhanzl discusses the way Levinas inspires the work of Judith Butler. Since Precarious Life (2004) the stress of Butler’s analysis moves from the problems of discursive construction of gender and sex to an ethics of the precariousness of life, for which Levinas’s ethics of vulnerability represents a key reference. Starting with reconstruction of the core of Levinas’s ethics, Jan Bierhanzl proceeds to interpret the relational framework that Butler calls „the structure of address“ to show in what way Butler accomplishes a cultural and political transposition of this relational ethics.
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Ve své knize Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly se Judith Butlerová zaměřuje na pojetí jednání u Hannah Arendtové a v polemice s ní podstatně přehodnocuje zejména úlohu těla a tělesnosti v politice. Shromáždění jako vtělený a... more
Ve své knize Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly se Judith Butlerová zaměřuje na pojetí jednání u Hannah Arendtové a v polemice s ní podstatně přehodnocuje zejména úlohu těla a tělesnosti v politice. Shromáždění jako vtělený a plurální performativní akt, jehož součástí je i solidarita na dálku, implikuje podle Butlerové nové chápání arendtovského veřejného prostoru jakožto prostoru zjevování, odhalování osoby, bez něhož by nebylo politiky.
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Následující text se věnuje problému slabého jednání, a to z hlediska dvou otázek: kromě problému, jak eticky oslabit pojem politického jednání, se zabýváme tím, jak by se etika zranitelnosti (Levinas) mohla stát zdrojem nejen kritiky... more
Následující text se věnuje problému slabého jednání, a to z hlediska dvou otázek: kromě problému, jak eticky oslabit pojem politického jednání, se zabýváme tím, jak by se etika zranitelnosti (Levinas) mohla stát zdrojem nejen kritiky politiky, ale také konkrétního jednání (Butler).
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Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts are usually interpreted as a transitional work between different elements of Feuerbach's and Hegel's philosophy which are still strongly present in the work of young Marx, and between Marx's... more
Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts are usually interpreted as a transitional work between different elements of Feuerbach's and Hegel's philosophy which are still strongly present in the work of young Marx, and between Marx's mature historical materialism. In the present text, we will try to show (with reference to the recent discussions on "young Marx", especially in the French context by Pierre Rodrigo), that the Manuscripts, in fact, contain an ontology that cannot be reduce either to a mere residuum of classical German philosophy, or to a materialist conception of social life. We shall try to describe this original ontology as an ontology of the sensible, or as an ontology of the finitude of human sensibility.
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The concept of femininity plays a foundational role in Levinas’ conception of sociality throughout his work. Despite the various different forms that this concept assumes in Levinas’ ontology and ethics, we attempt to show, in agreement... more
The concept of femininity plays a foundational role in Levinas’ conception of sociality throughout his work. Despite the various different forms that this concept assumes in Levinas’ ontology and ethics, we attempt to show, in agreement with several feminist interpreters, that in the background to this development one can perceive a certain ideological content which is fundamentally unchanging and which is not called into question, in a philosophically satisfactory way, in any of the author’s texts. The tension between the ideological and ontological content of the concept of femininity will ultimately be the key to a possible philosophical overcoming of this ideological content when Levinas’ thought is treated as a whole.
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“The conception of human rights,” writes Hannah Arendt in the Origins of Totalitarianism, “founded on the presumed existence of a human being as such, has always collapsed when those who declared those rights first met with people who... more
“The conception of human rights,” writes Hannah Arendt in the Origins of Totalitarianism, “founded on the presumed existence of a human being as such, has always collapsed when those who declared those rights first met with people who had really lost all their qualities and specific relations – excepting that they were still people.” Giorgio Agamben, appealing to this insight, shows us how supposedly sacred and inalienable human rights are, in reality, always dependent on the rights of citizens of some or other state. A person who has lost all qualities except their humanity thus becomes bare life rather than a being bearing rights. Today it is more and more the refugee who becomes this bare life, excluded from the state system – the one who at least for a time appears as a person bereft of the mask of citizenship, which otherwise always provides a cover for one’s face. The refugee, by severing the bond between person and citizen, is a limit concept, which on the one hand presents a disturbing element in the organisation of the national state, while on the other hand also enables the renewal of political categories.
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Persisting in ambiguity is at the heart of our experience with works of art. Ambiguity is embedded in the genre and content, in the movement between philosophical investigation and artistic expression, in the tension between aesthetic... more
Persisting in ambiguity is at the heart of our experience with works of art. Ambiguity is embedded in the genre and content, in the movement between philosophical investigation and artistic expression, in the tension between aesthetic attitudes focused on beauty and ethical and political attitudes. In the individual chapters devoted to the works of Adriena Šimotová, atonal music or contemporary political video art, Bierhanzl is mainly departing from the underlying themes of aesthetic-philosophical considerations of E. Levinas, J. Butler and M. Foucault and shows the artwork as a reflection of the prevailing conditions and as the creation of a new, purely aesthetic reality irreducible to historical and social determinations.
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"La responsabilité éthique n'est-elle pas dans cette pure possibilité du non-sens, dans le grain de folie, car 'sans cette folie…recommencerait l'essence' (Autrement qu'être, p. 85)? L'efficacité heuristique de cette question s'affermit... more
"La responsabilité éthique n'est-elle pas dans cette pure possibilité du non-sens, dans le grain de folie, car 'sans cette folie…recommencerait l'essence' (Autrement qu'être, p. 85)? L'efficacité heuristique de cette question s'affermit continûment au fil de la lecture de Jan Bierhanzl. Levinas pense dans cet écartement (équivoque? ambiguïté? amphibologie?) et donc dans la maintenance d'un certain non-sens. N'est-ce pas à ce prix seulement que l'éthique est sauvable, si je puis dire, et donc aussi le sujet disloqué dans l'interlocution de la responsabilité - soit au prix d'un surplus de non-sens sur le sens (Autrement qu'être, p. 186)?"
Extrait de la préface de Gérard Bensussan
Extrait de la préface de Gérard Bensussan
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Cet essai part de la necessité de mettre en rapport l’articulation de l’éthique et de la politique levinassiennes avec les "philosophies sociales" plus ou moins explicitement présentes dans son œuvre. Seront ainsi convoqués les concepts... more
Cet essai part de la necessité de mettre en rapport l’articulation de l’éthique et de la politique levinassiennes avec les "philosophies sociales" plus ou moins explicitement présentes dans son œuvre. Seront ainsi convoqués les concepts d’exclusion et de biopolitique chez Foucault, le concept de culpabilité originaire de Heidegger, la lecture féministe de Levinas et le travail comme autoproduction chez Marx. La recherche d’une "politique faible”"qui serait, pour une part, présente au cœur même de la philosophie de Levinas, à savoir dans son éthique de la vulnérabilité, et qui, pour une autre part, rendrait justice à la vulnérabilité de la subjectivité éthique vis-à-vis de l’histoire et de la société, nous sera l’occasion de reprendre, dans un deuxième temps, deux pensées contemporaines de l’action politique: l’ontologie faible de Giorgio Agamben et la tentative de Judith Butler de surmonter le schisme entre l’action et la dépendance.
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Štěpán Kubalík: "Byť některá oprávněná očekávání zůstávají nenaplněna, kniha představuje pozoruhodný příspěvek k výkladům Levinasovy filosofie, zároveň nabízí přesvědčivé interpretace jednotlivých uměleckých děl. Autor při výkladu prací... more
Štěpán Kubalík: "Byť některá oprávněná očekávání zůstávají nenaplněna, kniha představuje pozoruhodný příspěvek k výkladům Levinasovy filosofie, zároveň nabízí přesvědčivé interpretace jednotlivých uměleckých děl. Autor při výkladu prací Adrieny Šimotové, Hito Steyerlové i atonální hudby zohlednil také existující relevantní přístupy, přičemž jejich vzájemná konfrontace ve výsledku vede k tomu, že kniha nabízí řadu cenných vhledů. V těchto dvou tematických oblastech je kniha nejsilnější a kvůli nim bezpochyby dává smysl věnovat jí pozornost."
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Recenze knihy Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence. An Ethico-Political Bind (London: Verso 2020).