Papers by Bert van den Bergh
Een oude tekst uit het archief over de voorgeschiedenis van Sein und Zeit. Inmiddels zijn er meer... more Een oude tekst uit het archief over de voorgeschiedenis van Sein und Zeit. Inmiddels zijn er meer vroege teksten van Heidegger gepubliceerd, dus in die zin is dit artikel achterhaald, maar de verschuiving die erin ter sprake komt verdient wellicht nog steeds de aandacht.
International Workshop UC Louvain "Resonance: the Concept’s Political Uses and Potential" 12/13 September, 2023
Hartmut Rosa presents resonance as ‘the other of alienation’. In his resonance theory however bot... more Hartmut Rosa presents resonance as ‘the other of alienation’. In his resonance theory however both resonance and alienation are double-faced concepts, so to say. Alienation is presented as an avoidable and a necessary phenomenon. And resonance occurs on the basis of alienation – in a dialectics in which the alien (das Fremde, das Andere) is acknowledged and accepted as the other – but resonance also creates the possibility of such a dialectics, as ‘deep resonance’ (Tiefenresonanz). “At the root of resonant experience lies the shout of the unreconciled and the pain of the alienated”, Rosa writes. But also: “resonance denotes a primary relation to the world”, and: “what is yet mute can only be ‘affected’ or adaptively transformed on the basis of a prior or deep-seated, dispositional faith in resonance”. Can the two faces of the two key concepts of Rosa’s resonance theory be reconciled? Or is there a unresolvable tension involved here between the unconciliatory attitude of Critical Theory and the search for original experience of phenomenology?
Juni, 2023
Elke van Buggenhout (muzikant; piano-improvisatie & muziektherapeut) en Bert van den Bergh (filos... more Elke van Buggenhout (muzikant; piano-improvisatie & muziektherapeut) en Bert van den Bergh (filosoof & psycholoog) vatten in het voetspoor van fenomenologische benaderingen depressie op als een verstoring van de elementaire afstemming tussen (in)dividu, wereld en ander. Het fenomeen depressie voert in die opvatting naar de bodem van de menselijke existentie en zodoende naar het hart van onze hedendaagse cultuur. In dit licht verbinden zij een oneigentijds muziektheoretisch perspectief met kritische muziekfilosofische duidingen van onze westerse muziekcultuur. Voorts slaan zij een brug naar cultuurtheoretische interpretaties van onze laatmoderne cultuur als geheel, die op verschillende wijzen en in diverse sferen grondig ‘ont-stemd’ kan heten. Zij doen dit alles uitgebreid in een binnenkort te verschijnen essay, waarvan in dit artikel de hoofdgedachten zijn gevat.
30 May, 2023
Bijdrage FESTSCHRIFT ter gelegenheid van het emeritaat van Jos de Mul als hoogleraar Wijsgerige a... more Bijdrage FESTSCHRIFT ter gelegenheid van het emeritaat van Jos de Mul als hoogleraar Wijsgerige antropologie en haar geschiedenis Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, over Gerrit Achterberg en het (een-na-)laatste woord.
14 January, 2023
Do we need to focus on empowerment of students by strengthening their personal leadership capacit... more Do we need to focus on empowerment of students by strengthening their personal leadership capacities? I have strong doubts about that...
9 February, 2023
How does (Christian) religion manifest itself today? In very different forms... Three small examp... more How does (Christian) religion manifest itself today? In very different forms... Three small examples.
Studiedag Zonnelied/Belgische School voor Psychoanalyse - 28april, 2022
Werpt een andere duiding van het fenomeen depressie niet meteen ook een ander licht op onze laatm... more Werpt een andere duiding van het fenomeen depressie niet meteen ook een ander licht op onze laatmoderne cultuur? En omgekeerd: kan een bepaalde interpretatie van wat de laatmoderniteit ons in cultureel opzicht brengt niet een verhelderend licht werpen op wat wel wordt aangeduid als ‘de depressie-epidemie’, of liever gezegd op depressie als – in de woorden van de World Health Organization – één van de "leading causes of disablity worldwide"?
https://www.routledge.com/Emotions-in-Culture-and-Everyday-Life-Conceptual-Theoretical-and-Empirical/Jacobsen/p/book/9781032073385, 2022
Depression as a mental disorder is nowadays commonly understood – via the DSM – as the flipside o... more Depression as a mental disorder is nowadays commonly understood – via the DSM – as the flipside of the dominating liberal idea of authentic self-realization. Depression, this way taken as the emotion of extreme sadness, as lack of motivation and initiative, is considered to be a disorder that needs to be tackled by action techniques of empowerment and remobilization. However, if one zooms in on the experience of depression, on a deeper level the phenomenon called ‘depressive disorder’ is not so much extreme sadness or radical inhibition but a state of existential isolation. This state of isolation is closely connected to the type of subject that prevails in contemporary ultraliberal culture as the leading idea: a mobile, empowered, autonomous, resilient, isolist subject. This type of subjectivity easily leads – considering the global depression ‘pandemic’ – to a state of existential isolation or elementary distunement. The techniques that are needed on this deeper level are not so much action but passion techniques, aiming not for empowerment and remobilization but for reconnection and resynchronization, or in other words, for restoring a basic sense of belonging. In this chapter we will start by examining why the emotion of depression has been colonized by medical thinking. We will then show that depression instead could be perceived as existential isolation in contemporary society – as a sense of disconnection to the world. We will end by discussing what this could entail for the understanding of the emotion of depression in our day and age.
Boom psychologie & psychiatrie, 2022
De derde maandag in januari de meest deprimerende dag van het jaar? Dat gaat wat ver...
Aristoteles in actie: Praktische wijsheid voor professionals in het onderwijs, 2019
De huidige maatschappelijke en professionele context zou vragen om een focus op zogeheten 21st ce... more De huidige maatschappelijke en professionele context zou vragen om een focus op zogeheten 21st century skills, dat wil zeggen vaardigheden die matchen met de hedendaagse 'netwerksamenleving'. Maar wat bindt die skills, zo luidt dan de vraag, wat vormt het kloppende hart van het betreffende beroep? Het antwoord op die vraag wordt gegeven via het aristotelische begrip 'phronésis'. Wat houdt deze 'praktische wijsheid' vandaag de dag in?
Een immense blinde vlek, 2019
Hoe verschijnt de gedeprimeerde mens op het komende Depressiegala? Vermoedelijk opnieuw als flexi... more Hoe verschijnt de gedeprimeerde mens op het komende Depressiegala? Vermoedelijk opnieuw als flexisolist...
Lezing ter gelegenheid van het 10-jarig bestaan van psychotherapeutisch centrum ELIM; Antwerpen 1... more Lezing ter gelegenheid van het 10-jarig bestaan van psychotherapeutisch centrum ELIM; Antwerpen 10 februari 2017
Minister Kamps 'emotieloosheid' als manifestatie van de pseudoneutraliteit van het neoliberaisme
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Papers by Bert van den Bergh
This volume describes and analyses a series of emotions prevalent in everyday life and culture, with each chapter exploring the main facets of a particular emotion and considering the ways in which it manifests itself in and informs our culture and lives. Considering our expression, conception, management and sanctioning of emotions, and the ways in which these have changed over time, as well as the ways in which we can theorise particular emotional states, authors ask how certain emotions are linked to culture and society and what roles they play in politics and contemporary life. With examples and case studies taken from research into media, culture and social life, Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, psychology, media and cultural studies and philosophy with interests in the emotions.
This interpretation deviates from the common public as well as the prevailing scientific understanding of depression. In the public debate, depression is usually understood from the dominant ‘neoliberal’ or ‘ultraliberal’ perspective as individual pathology which constitutes a threat to the (global) Market: it means unproductiveness and immobility, so the opposite of the desired subjectivity. The depressed person is not enterprising, dynamic, flexible and interactive.
In the scientific discourse depression mostly comes to the fore as a (neuro)biologically rooted (brain) disease, and thereby also as individual pathology. From brain disease to participation disorder, from individual pathology to social pathology: it is not so much the individual who is in disorder but it is her or his world relationship which is disturbed. The alleged brain disease in reality is an existential disturbance which is masked by the former label and thereby taken away from the individual. This turnes depression into a ‘stolen disorder’..
This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clinically in terms of individualized symptoms and responded to discretely, as though for the most part unrelated to each other. However, these diseases also have a social and cultural profile that transcends their particular symptomologies and etiologies. Anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s are diseases related to disorders of the collective esprit de corps of contemporary society.
Multidisciplinary in approach, the book addresses questions of how these conditions are manifest at both the individual and collective levels in relation to hegemonic biomedical and psychologistic understandings. Rejecting such reductive diagnoses, the authors argue that anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other contemporary epidemics, are to be analysed in the light of individual and collective experiences of profound and radical changes in our civilization. A diagnosis of our times, Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents
will appeal to a broad range of scholars with interests in health and illness, the sociology of medicine and contemporary life.