Papers by Christiane Frey
in: Monatshefte, Volume 105, Number 3, Fall 2013, pp. 376-388
http://mon.uwpress.org/content/1... more in: Monatshefte, Volume 105, Number 3, Fall 2013, pp. 376-388
http://mon.uwpress.org/content/105/3/376.abstract?related-urls=yes&legid=wpm;105/3/376
Abstract
The invention of the microscope and its adoption into widespread use from the mid-seventeenth century on affected the way natural philosophers and writers thought about observation. But instead of retracing the microscope’s enhancement of the visible, this essay explores how, under the impact of the microscope, the relationship between knowledge and the visible is repeatedly renegotiated and displaced in natural philosophy and poetry. Robert Hooke’s ethos of observation limits knowledge to the realm of the visible; Leibniz reintroduces the invisible into knowledge while setting new limits between human and divine knowledge; Brockes develops new figures of limitlessness. These and other examples show how the look through the microscope could lead to divergent and even contradictory epistemic consequences. (CF)
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in: Stimmung: Zur Wiederkehr einer ästhetischen Kategorie. Ed. Gisbertz. München: Fink 2011, pp. ... more in: Stimmung: Zur Wiederkehr einer ästhetischen Kategorie. Ed. Gisbertz. München: Fink 2011, pp. 75-94.
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in: Kulturen des Wissens im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Ulrich J. Schneider. Berlin/ New York 2008, pp. ... more in: Kulturen des Wissens im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Ulrich J. Schneider. Berlin/ New York 2008, pp. 391-398.
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Workshops by Christiane Frey
http://deutscheshaus.as.nyu.edu/object/io_1408029742325.html
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Crossmappings by Christiane Frey
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Conference Organization by Christiane Frey
In the second decade of the fourteenth century, Dante wrote the Monarchia, a treatise of politica... more In the second decade of the fourteenth century, Dante wrote the Monarchia, a treatise of political theology deeply rooted in the philosophy of his time, yet conspicuously original in its treatment of secular and ecclesiastical authority. Immediately attacked by the Church, and later banned until 1881, the treatise was long relegated to the margins of the history of political theory. In 1993, Claude Lefort re-established the importance and contemporary relevance of the treatise in an extensive introduction, entitled ‘La modernité de Dante’, for a French translation of the Monarchia.
The symposium takes its cue from Lefort’s suggestive invitation to reconsider Dante’s endorsement of a ‘temporal monarchy’, that is, a secular order restricted to humankind’s common pursuit of earthly happiness and hence fully independent from the Church. Lefort sketches the political reception of Dante’s treatise, referenced by humanist advisors of princes, jurists of absolutist rule, and historians of nation-states alike, which, for him, testifies to a profound historical eccentricity of Dante’s conception rather than a teleology inherent to the modern history of the West. For Lefort, ‘the past always interrogates our present’.
But how can a text of many context-bound contestations such as the Monarchia interrogate present political circumstance? Can Lefort’s reading serve as a model of a historically reflected political philosophy? How to account for historical efficacy without risking a reamalgamation of history and ideas into a redemptive philosophy of history? How to make sense of the entanglement the Monarchia posits between knowledge, happiness, and politics? What is Dante’s conception of the common, what its relation to an essentially collective knowledge that can only be pursued in universal peace?
The symposium brings together scholars from different fields in order to reconsider the Monarchia in dialogue with Lefort’s suggestions and discuss its potentials and limits for imagining politics today.
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Edited Volumes by Christiane Frey
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Conference Presentations by Christiane Frey
Södertörn University, Stockholm, June 8–10, 2022
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Papers by Christiane Frey
http://mon.uwpress.org/content/105/3/376.abstract?related-urls=yes&legid=wpm;105/3/376
Abstract
The invention of the microscope and its adoption into widespread use from the mid-seventeenth century on affected the way natural philosophers and writers thought about observation. But instead of retracing the microscope’s enhancement of the visible, this essay explores how, under the impact of the microscope, the relationship between knowledge and the visible is repeatedly renegotiated and displaced in natural philosophy and poetry. Robert Hooke’s ethos of observation limits knowledge to the realm of the visible; Leibniz reintroduces the invisible into knowledge while setting new limits between human and divine knowledge; Brockes develops new figures of limitlessness. These and other examples show how the look through the microscope could lead to divergent and even contradictory epistemic consequences. (CF)
Workshops by Christiane Frey
Crossmappings by Christiane Frey
Conference Organization by Christiane Frey
The symposium takes its cue from Lefort’s suggestive invitation to reconsider Dante’s endorsement of a ‘temporal monarchy’, that is, a secular order restricted to humankind’s common pursuit of earthly happiness and hence fully independent from the Church. Lefort sketches the political reception of Dante’s treatise, referenced by humanist advisors of princes, jurists of absolutist rule, and historians of nation-states alike, which, for him, testifies to a profound historical eccentricity of Dante’s conception rather than a teleology inherent to the modern history of the West. For Lefort, ‘the past always interrogates our present’.
But how can a text of many context-bound contestations such as the Monarchia interrogate present political circumstance? Can Lefort’s reading serve as a model of a historically reflected political philosophy? How to account for historical efficacy without risking a reamalgamation of history and ideas into a redemptive philosophy of history? How to make sense of the entanglement the Monarchia posits between knowledge, happiness, and politics? What is Dante’s conception of the common, what its relation to an essentially collective knowledge that can only be pursued in universal peace?
The symposium brings together scholars from different fields in order to reconsider the Monarchia in dialogue with Lefort’s suggestions and discuss its potentials and limits for imagining politics today.
Edited Volumes by Christiane Frey
Conference Presentations by Christiane Frey
http://mon.uwpress.org/content/105/3/376.abstract?related-urls=yes&legid=wpm;105/3/376
Abstract
The invention of the microscope and its adoption into widespread use from the mid-seventeenth century on affected the way natural philosophers and writers thought about observation. But instead of retracing the microscope’s enhancement of the visible, this essay explores how, under the impact of the microscope, the relationship between knowledge and the visible is repeatedly renegotiated and displaced in natural philosophy and poetry. Robert Hooke’s ethos of observation limits knowledge to the realm of the visible; Leibniz reintroduces the invisible into knowledge while setting new limits between human and divine knowledge; Brockes develops new figures of limitlessness. These and other examples show how the look through the microscope could lead to divergent and even contradictory epistemic consequences. (CF)
The symposium takes its cue from Lefort’s suggestive invitation to reconsider Dante’s endorsement of a ‘temporal monarchy’, that is, a secular order restricted to humankind’s common pursuit of earthly happiness and hence fully independent from the Church. Lefort sketches the political reception of Dante’s treatise, referenced by humanist advisors of princes, jurists of absolutist rule, and historians of nation-states alike, which, for him, testifies to a profound historical eccentricity of Dante’s conception rather than a teleology inherent to the modern history of the West. For Lefort, ‘the past always interrogates our present’.
But how can a text of many context-bound contestations such as the Monarchia interrogate present political circumstance? Can Lefort’s reading serve as a model of a historically reflected political philosophy? How to account for historical efficacy without risking a reamalgamation of history and ideas into a redemptive philosophy of history? How to make sense of the entanglement the Monarchia posits between knowledge, happiness, and politics? What is Dante’s conception of the common, what its relation to an essentially collective knowledge that can only be pursued in universal peace?
The symposium brings together scholars from different fields in order to reconsider the Monarchia in dialogue with Lefort’s suggestions and discuss its potentials and limits for imagining politics today.