PhD Candidate and Teaching Fellow in Comparative Literature and Culture, Queen Mary University of London. My dissertation on Alexandre Kojève's Aesthetics is funded by the London Arts & Humanities Partnership (2020-2024). Supervisors: Galin Tihanov
This brief report looks back at the international conference Images of the Ideal, held in Berlin ... more This brief report looks back at the international conference Images of the Ideal, held in Berlin in May 2024 to celebrate the centenary of the Soviet philos-opher Evald Ilyenkov (1924–1979). The event highlighted that Ilyenkov is becoming an important voice in contemporary discourses on philosophy of culture, social and critical theory, psychology and education, materialism, AI and automation, ecology and the political economy of capitalism.
Brecht’s collages tell history not from the standpoint of the victor, the ruling class, but from ... more Brecht’s collages tell history not from the standpoint of the victor, the ruling class, but from that of the defeated, from below. They lend their voice to the forsaken, minor, oppressed. His collages spark revolutionary hope: “Don’t start from the good old things,” as he liked to say, “but the bad new ones.” And if only for one sticky moment, damaged life has proved that it is alive.
Tyrants at Work: Philosophy and Politics in Alexandre Kojève, 2024
The role of work in Kojève’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel is relatively well-explored. Ho... more The role of work in Kojève’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel is relatively well-explored. However, many interpreters have stopped at the master-slave dialectic: masters do not work and slaves work for them. Introducing the concept of inoperativity, Giorgio Agamben has rightly emphasised that there is more at stake; this paper takes up where Agamben left off. Closely analysing Kojève’s texts, letters and manuscripts from the 1930-50s, it reconstructs his philosophy of inoperativity. At the end of history, the posthuman subject rises from the ashes of its sublated animality.
Filosofia: An Encyclopedia of Russian Thought, 2024
Famous for his analysis of Marx's dialectical method, Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov (1924-1979) was ... more Famous for his analysis of Marx's dialectical method, Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov (1924-1979) was one of the most influential thinkers of the late Soviet era. His radical fusion of Spinoza, Hegel, and Marx transformed Soviet intellectual life in the 1950-70s. Ilyenkov's work sought to reinvent the study of materialist dialectics in the Soviet Union, challenging its inherited foundations in the state doctrine of dialectical materialism (Diamat). His broad interests include political economy, logic, cybernetics, science fiction, epistemology, and aesthetics. On his 100th anniversary, Ilyenkov continues to shape Marxist philosophy, radical pedagogy, activity theory, and psychology globally.
This paper analyzes Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève's dialogue with proponents of Heg... more This paper analyzes Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève's dialogue with proponents of Hegelianism and phenomenology in Soviet Russia of the 1920-30s. Considering works by Dmytro Chyzhevsky, Ivan Ilyin, Gustav Shpet, and Alexandre Koyré, I retrace Hegelian themes in Kojève, focusing on the relation between method and time. I argue that original reflections on method played a key role in both Russian Hegelianism and Kojève's work, from his famous Hegel lectures to the late fragments of a system. As I demonstrate, Kojève's Hegelianism was significantly shaped by his encounter with Ilyin's 1918 commentary on Hegel, a detailed study of the relation between method and the experience of time. However, in Kojève's hands, Ilyin's ideas were transformed, some radicalized, others abandoned. Comparatively reading texts by these thinkers in their respective contexts, I resituate and evaluate claims that Hegel's method was less dialectical than phenomenological. I finally argue that early Soviet Hegelian discourses not only shaped the trajectory of Kojève's Hegelianism but also radically anticipated concepts of time in French post-structuralism.
One of the most influential Soviet philosophers, Evald Ilyenkov is usually not read as an ecologi... more One of the most influential Soviet philosophers, Evald Ilyenkov is usually not read as an ecological thinker. In fact, he never wrote about ecology as such. However, his project of “intelligent materialism” holds numerous interesting potentials for ecology today. Ilyenkov was uniquely invested in exploring the interactions between humans and their environment in socialism, both philosophically and through his work in deaf-blind education. While Ilyenkov’s 1960 landmark study Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital is still appreciated, his radical theory of personality as a collective thinking body is less well-known.
Bespaloff was a brilliant and original thinker, among the first wave of existentialists in France... more Bespaloff was a brilliant and original thinker, among the first wave of existentialists in France. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Gabriel Marcel all admired her. A professional dancer and choreographer, she had finely tuned ears for the musicality of philosophical writing. For Bespaloff, philosophy is a dynamic, sensual activity of listening to and engaging with the voices of others, including those long dead. In dialogue with Homer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger, she found her own voice. At the heart of Bespaloff’s world is an original conception of time shaped by embodiment and music: the instant is a silent pause that suspends history’s repetitive rhythm. Through our bodies, we experience that break from history as a brief moment of freedom.
Marxism & Sciences: A Journal of Nature, Culture, Human and Society, 2024
Today, Ilyenkov’s theory of subjectivity can be brought into dialogue with a more recent shift to... more Today, Ilyenkov’s theory of subjectivity can be brought into dialogue with a more recent shift towards non-human agency, ecology and the Anthropocene. His sci-fi book On Idols and Ideals (1968), for example, features extraterrestrial, more-than-human thinking bodies, such as in- telligent machines or conscious mold. Cybernetics and systems theory were very much en vogue in Soviet debates of the 1950s. Ilyenkov was a critical voice in those debates, invested in defending the superiority of human thinking against artificial, computational intelligence. While some of Ilyenkov’s anthropocentric positions need to be updated from today’s view, his concerns regarding cybernetics and AI still feel fresh.
n the first two installments of our series on East European Intellectual History, we traced the c... more n the first two installments of our series on East European Intellectual History, we traced the cultural exchanges between Western and Eastern Europe. We analyzed how these translated and evolved during the global context of the Cold War. Our series touched upon some of the problematic taxonomical and geopolitical issues in “East European” Intellectual History. However, one crucial, contested factor in the region is yet to be explored: Russian nationalism. As Russia’s violent, full-scale invasion of Ukraine is about to enter its third year, we decided to dedicate our third and final installment to the complex legacies of Russian nationalism. We believe that intellectual history holds much potential for critically investigating the past and present of nationalism and imperialism in Eastern Europe.
Wagner’s compositional method, to create a flow of leitmotifs, shaped Eisenstein’s own experiment... more Wagner’s compositional method, to create a flow of leitmotifs, shaped Eisenstein’s own experiments with dialectical montage. Similarly, Ilyenkov’s Wagner demonstrated “the absolute inevitability of the logic of decomposition, however, not by means of strict concepts, but by means of sensual-emotional images, equally strict in their necessity, their movement, their evolution, their development, accomplished through collisions [stolknoveniia], both external and internal – psychological.” That notion of collision, or shock, was of course crucial to Eisenstein’s montage technique. There is another striking parallel between Eisenstein and Ilyenkov: under the influence of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, both worked towards reconstructing the method of Marx’s Capital.
Kojèves Schrift über die »Welt« ist ebenso Kommentar zur modernen Physik wie Pamphlet gegen den I... more Kojèves Schrift über die »Welt« ist ebenso Kommentar zur modernen Physik wie Pamphlet gegen den Idealismus der Marburger Schule (Kojève war wie Heidegger und Benjamin abtrünniger Student des Neukantianers Heinrich Rickert). Der junge Kojève steht im Banne Hegels: die Physik seit 1926, schreibt er, ist »eine Physik, die sich selbst versteht (Hegel)«. Die neueste Physik ist – im hegelianischen Jargon – »für sich« das, was sie »an sich« ist.
That is why his work turned out to be a kind of Phenomenology of Spirit for the entire nineteenth... more That is why his work turned out to be a kind of Phenomenology of Spirit for the entire nineteenth century—a process of successive shifts of one state of this spirit into another, and each of these states is nothing but an extremely, acutely generalised and typical way of seeing the world as a human individual, pulled into the meat grinder of the bourgeois-capitalist transformation of all interpersonal relations.
This brief report looks back at the international conference Images of the Ideal, held in Berlin ... more This brief report looks back at the international conference Images of the Ideal, held in Berlin in May 2024 to celebrate the centenary of the Soviet philos-opher Evald Ilyenkov (1924–1979). The event highlighted that Ilyenkov is becoming an important voice in contemporary discourses on philosophy of culture, social and critical theory, psychology and education, materialism, AI and automation, ecology and the political economy of capitalism.
Brecht’s collages tell history not from the standpoint of the victor, the ruling class, but from ... more Brecht’s collages tell history not from the standpoint of the victor, the ruling class, but from that of the defeated, from below. They lend their voice to the forsaken, minor, oppressed. His collages spark revolutionary hope: “Don’t start from the good old things,” as he liked to say, “but the bad new ones.” And if only for one sticky moment, damaged life has proved that it is alive.
Tyrants at Work: Philosophy and Politics in Alexandre Kojève, 2024
The role of work in Kojève’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel is relatively well-explored. Ho... more The role of work in Kojève’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel is relatively well-explored. However, many interpreters have stopped at the master-slave dialectic: masters do not work and slaves work for them. Introducing the concept of inoperativity, Giorgio Agamben has rightly emphasised that there is more at stake; this paper takes up where Agamben left off. Closely analysing Kojève’s texts, letters and manuscripts from the 1930-50s, it reconstructs his philosophy of inoperativity. At the end of history, the posthuman subject rises from the ashes of its sublated animality.
Filosofia: An Encyclopedia of Russian Thought, 2024
Famous for his analysis of Marx's dialectical method, Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov (1924-1979) was ... more Famous for his analysis of Marx's dialectical method, Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov (1924-1979) was one of the most influential thinkers of the late Soviet era. His radical fusion of Spinoza, Hegel, and Marx transformed Soviet intellectual life in the 1950-70s. Ilyenkov's work sought to reinvent the study of materialist dialectics in the Soviet Union, challenging its inherited foundations in the state doctrine of dialectical materialism (Diamat). His broad interests include political economy, logic, cybernetics, science fiction, epistemology, and aesthetics. On his 100th anniversary, Ilyenkov continues to shape Marxist philosophy, radical pedagogy, activity theory, and psychology globally.
This paper analyzes Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève's dialogue with proponents of Heg... more This paper analyzes Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève's dialogue with proponents of Hegelianism and phenomenology in Soviet Russia of the 1920-30s. Considering works by Dmytro Chyzhevsky, Ivan Ilyin, Gustav Shpet, and Alexandre Koyré, I retrace Hegelian themes in Kojève, focusing on the relation between method and time. I argue that original reflections on method played a key role in both Russian Hegelianism and Kojève's work, from his famous Hegel lectures to the late fragments of a system. As I demonstrate, Kojève's Hegelianism was significantly shaped by his encounter with Ilyin's 1918 commentary on Hegel, a detailed study of the relation between method and the experience of time. However, in Kojève's hands, Ilyin's ideas were transformed, some radicalized, others abandoned. Comparatively reading texts by these thinkers in their respective contexts, I resituate and evaluate claims that Hegel's method was less dialectical than phenomenological. I finally argue that early Soviet Hegelian discourses not only shaped the trajectory of Kojève's Hegelianism but also radically anticipated concepts of time in French post-structuralism.
One of the most influential Soviet philosophers, Evald Ilyenkov is usually not read as an ecologi... more One of the most influential Soviet philosophers, Evald Ilyenkov is usually not read as an ecological thinker. In fact, he never wrote about ecology as such. However, his project of “intelligent materialism” holds numerous interesting potentials for ecology today. Ilyenkov was uniquely invested in exploring the interactions between humans and their environment in socialism, both philosophically and through his work in deaf-blind education. While Ilyenkov’s 1960 landmark study Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital is still appreciated, his radical theory of personality as a collective thinking body is less well-known.
Bespaloff was a brilliant and original thinker, among the first wave of existentialists in France... more Bespaloff was a brilliant and original thinker, among the first wave of existentialists in France. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Gabriel Marcel all admired her. A professional dancer and choreographer, she had finely tuned ears for the musicality of philosophical writing. For Bespaloff, philosophy is a dynamic, sensual activity of listening to and engaging with the voices of others, including those long dead. In dialogue with Homer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger, she found her own voice. At the heart of Bespaloff’s world is an original conception of time shaped by embodiment and music: the instant is a silent pause that suspends history’s repetitive rhythm. Through our bodies, we experience that break from history as a brief moment of freedom.
Marxism & Sciences: A Journal of Nature, Culture, Human and Society, 2024
Today, Ilyenkov’s theory of subjectivity can be brought into dialogue with a more recent shift to... more Today, Ilyenkov’s theory of subjectivity can be brought into dialogue with a more recent shift towards non-human agency, ecology and the Anthropocene. His sci-fi book On Idols and Ideals (1968), for example, features extraterrestrial, more-than-human thinking bodies, such as in- telligent machines or conscious mold. Cybernetics and systems theory were very much en vogue in Soviet debates of the 1950s. Ilyenkov was a critical voice in those debates, invested in defending the superiority of human thinking against artificial, computational intelligence. While some of Ilyenkov’s anthropocentric positions need to be updated from today’s view, his concerns regarding cybernetics and AI still feel fresh.
n the first two installments of our series on East European Intellectual History, we traced the c... more n the first two installments of our series on East European Intellectual History, we traced the cultural exchanges between Western and Eastern Europe. We analyzed how these translated and evolved during the global context of the Cold War. Our series touched upon some of the problematic taxonomical and geopolitical issues in “East European” Intellectual History. However, one crucial, contested factor in the region is yet to be explored: Russian nationalism. As Russia’s violent, full-scale invasion of Ukraine is about to enter its third year, we decided to dedicate our third and final installment to the complex legacies of Russian nationalism. We believe that intellectual history holds much potential for critically investigating the past and present of nationalism and imperialism in Eastern Europe.
Wagner’s compositional method, to create a flow of leitmotifs, shaped Eisenstein’s own experiment... more Wagner’s compositional method, to create a flow of leitmotifs, shaped Eisenstein’s own experiments with dialectical montage. Similarly, Ilyenkov’s Wagner demonstrated “the absolute inevitability of the logic of decomposition, however, not by means of strict concepts, but by means of sensual-emotional images, equally strict in their necessity, their movement, their evolution, their development, accomplished through collisions [stolknoveniia], both external and internal – psychological.” That notion of collision, or shock, was of course crucial to Eisenstein’s montage technique. There is another striking parallel between Eisenstein and Ilyenkov: under the influence of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, both worked towards reconstructing the method of Marx’s Capital.
Kojèves Schrift über die »Welt« ist ebenso Kommentar zur modernen Physik wie Pamphlet gegen den I... more Kojèves Schrift über die »Welt« ist ebenso Kommentar zur modernen Physik wie Pamphlet gegen den Idealismus der Marburger Schule (Kojève war wie Heidegger und Benjamin abtrünniger Student des Neukantianers Heinrich Rickert). Der junge Kojève steht im Banne Hegels: die Physik seit 1926, schreibt er, ist »eine Physik, die sich selbst versteht (Hegel)«. Die neueste Physik ist – im hegelianischen Jargon – »für sich« das, was sie »an sich« ist.
That is why his work turned out to be a kind of Phenomenology of Spirit for the entire nineteenth... more That is why his work turned out to be a kind of Phenomenology of Spirit for the entire nineteenth century—a process of successive shifts of one state of this spirit into another, and each of these states is nothing but an extremely, acutely generalised and typical way of seeing the world as a human individual, pulled into the meat grinder of the bourgeois-capitalist transformation of all interpersonal relations.
Robert and Elizabeth Chandler’s brilliant new translation of Chevengur is based on a version rece... more Robert and Elizabeth Chandler’s brilliant new translation of Chevengur is based on a version recently reconstructed from Platonov’s manuscripts. With plenty of irony and dark humor, Platonov’s masterpiece captures the delirious time after the October Revolution. Chevengur can be rediscovered today as an ecological parable reflecting on the brutal extractivism of Soviet socialism, and on temporality and nonhuman subjectivities. It is both a picaresque satire and a horrific account of collectivization.
Since Antiquity, the sun has been tied up with earthly and divine authority. The solar god Sūrya,... more Since Antiquity, the sun has been tied up with earthly and divine authority. The solar god Sūrya, a Hindu deity, was worshipped in sun temples across India. In the fourth century, under Roman Emperor Julian's rule, the ancient Helios, like Sūrya depicted with a radiant crown and a horse-drawn chariot, became the central divinity.
Contemporary perceptions of the Russian Revolution are shaped by iconic shots from Sergei Eisenst... more Contemporary perceptions of the Russian Revolution are shaped by iconic shots from Sergei Eisenstein’s October (1928), a surrealist evocation of historical events, commissioned by Stalin to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 1917 revolution. Eisenstein’s montage culminates in the storming of the winter palace, a violent symphony of destruction. Communist revolution, as Eisenstein suggests, is the dialectical collision of contradicting images that radically trans- forms both the world and our perception of it; to put it in a nutshell: images make revolutions. Along similar lines, The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures, edited by Aga Skrodzka, Xiaoning Lu, and Katarzyna Marciniak, aims to grasp communism through the prism of its visual cultures. Gathering research from various academic disciplines, the volume examines communist imagery as a transnational phenomenon throughout the 20th century.
Practicing the Good is both a stimulating introduction into Soviet Marxism and a persuasive criti... more Practicing the Good is both a stimulating introduction into Soviet Marxism and a persuasive critique of contemporary anti-capitalism’s thirst for acceleration, atomization, and alienation. While opening up many new territories of critical debate, this book will most likely be read controversially. In fact, Chukhrov’s attempt to reclaim the forgotten emancipatory aspects of Soviet socialism can be misconceived as a somewhat romanticizing view on historical socialism. While a critical stance toward some of Chukhrov’s claims is certainly productive, such a misconception could not be further from what her impressive book actually offers. To conclude, Practicing the Good is an invaluable read for anyone interested in how Soviet Marxism of the 1960-70s can re-evaluate our view on contemporary capitalism.
In Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky (1988), French philosopher Michel Henry argues that Kandins... more In Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky (1988), French philosopher Michel Henry argues that Kandinsky’s abstract art “ceases to be the painting of the visible.” Instead, Kandinsky’s paintings reveal the invisible essence of life. In a similar vein, Klaus Kienzler’s new book opens with Paul Klee’s famous claim: “Art does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible.” At the crossroads of phenomenology, art theory and existential thought, Kienzler explores three artists who embody the transition to modernism like no others: Paul Cézanne, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky. Engaging with their artistic visions as a phenomenologist and theologian, Kienzler examines the ways in which each artist deals with time (Zeit) and motion (Bewegung), two phenomena that already played a central role in Kienzler’s previous book on the theologian Klaus Hemmerle. Rooted in the tradition of German phenomenology, Kienzler was over many years part of the German-French circle around Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Ricœur and Bernhard Caspar. A professor of fundamental theology in Augsburg, Kienzler is, unlike other members of this circle, virtually unknown in the Anglophone world. As his new book demonstrates, Kienzler’s perspective on phenomenology is less academic than it is enriched by his personal experience. The reader who expects a concise study that engages with recent scholarship on art and phenomenology will thus be disappointed.
Survival - The CRMEP Graduate Conference 2023, The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University London, 2023
Shortly after Ukrainian-French philosopher Rachel Bespaloff's suicide in 1949, Jean Wahl publishe... more Shortly after Ukrainian-French philosopher Rachel Bespaloff's suicide in 1949, Jean Wahl published fragments from her final, unfinished project. It was dedicated to a theme that occupied Bespaloff throughout her life: the instant or how to attain freedom in times of war. In his preface, Wahl describes the world his close friend had just left as "a kind of hell." Bespaloff called her generation one "which history forced to live in a climate of violent death."
Futures & Ideals: Ilyenkov’s Philosophy of Development, University College London, 2022
In this talk, I offer a fresh reading of Ilyenkov's transitional essay "On the Dialectic of the A... more In this talk, I offer a fresh reading of Ilyenkov's transitional essay "On the Dialectic of the Abstract and the Concrete in Scientific Thought," first published in Voprosy filosofii in 1955. My talk is based on a commentary, co-written with Trevor Wilson, that accompanies a forthcoming English translation of the essay. Ilyenkov's first major publication, this text served as a stepping board for future work on logic and abstraction in Marxist philosophy, culminating in Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's Capital several years later. I first contextualise the essay in Soviet Marxist scholarship of the 1950s, then give a brief overview on some of its major discourses, such as the dialectic of concreteness, Ilyenkov's notion of "conscious materialism," and his analysis of social interconnectivity. Finally, I emphasise that the essay's radical potential can only be grasped when read in dialogue with four of Ilyenkov's crucial interlocutors: Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and Lukács. A particularly interesting document of Ilyenkov's intellectual trajectory, the article contains both the essential seeds of his mature philosophy and the fecund ambivalence of an early work.
(Counter-)Archive: Memorial Practices of the Soviet Underground, Technische Universität Dresden
One of postmodernism's myths is the claim that radical novelty became impossible in late capitali... more One of postmodernism's myths is the claim that radical novelty became impossible in late capitalism. Everything, as new as it may seem at first sight, is a mere repetition of what we already know. After the end of the avant-garde-often mournfully equated with the end of art-there can be nothing new. In this postmodern climate of sample and sameness, art has finally exhausted its possibilities. While modernism was driven by an insatiable desire for utopia, totality, and radical transformation, contemporary art plays the same old record without hope for an alternative future. Postmodernism's advocates, including Jean-François Lyotard, Mark Fisher and Frederic Jameson, stretched this myth into whole theories of contemporary culture (see Fisher 2009; Jameson 1991; Lyotard 1984). In their view, contemporary art is a pastiche that perpetuates the past without any utopian resort. Drawing on Fisher's famous question, we might tentatively ask again: Is there really no alternative? In her recent study of late Soviet culture, Keti Chukhrov offers a convincing model to unveil the shortcomings of contemporary cultural theory (Chukhrov 2020). In a bid to reanimate Soviet artistic practices and theories from the 1960-70s, Chukhrov claims that postmodernism can only be overcome by integrating non-Western experiences, including the Soviet one (still neglected by theorists in the West). This paper takes Chukhrov's claim as an invitation to rethink postmodernism's myth of artistic exhaustion in the light of theories and practices that emerge from the Soviet underground. More precisely, I analyze Russian philosopher, media theorist, and critic Boris Groys's notion of "negative adaptation" as an attempt to rethink novelty under postmodern conditions. With respect to the specific cultural context, Moscow Conceptualist circles in the late Soviet period, I elucidate how Groys's concept of novelty is entwined with archival and memorial practices. I further suggest that Groys's aesthetics can help us to overcome the postmodern aporia of artistic exhaustion. At the example of late Soviet art, primarily the work of Dmitri Prigov, I demonstrate that negative adaptation is a complex artistic strategy of recycling and ironic distortion. I will conclude my analysis of novelty as a memorial practice with a brief outlook on Groys's theory of the archive as a projection into the future. Before delving into my analysis of Groys's theory, I would like to open my paper with a brief overview of theories of novelty in Soviet culture.
Seminar for advanced BA and MA students. Designed and co-taught by Isabel Jacobs and Yelizaveta L... more Seminar for advanced BA and MA students. Designed and co-taught by Isabel Jacobs and Yelizaveta Landenberger, Humboldt University of Berlin, Department of Slavic and Hungarian Studies, Summer Term 2024 (May/June).
Seminar for advanced BA and MA students, co-taught with Yelizaveta Landenberger. Department of Sl... more Seminar for advanced BA and MA students, co-taught with Yelizaveta Landenberger. Department of Slavic and Hungarian Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin.
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At the crossroads of phenomenology, art theory and existential thought, Kienzler explores three artists who embody the transition to modernism like no others: Paul Cézanne, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky. Engaging with their artistic visions as a phenomenologist and theologian, Kienzler examines the ways in which each artist deals with time (Zeit) and motion (Bewegung), two phenomena that already played a central role in Kienzler’s previous book on the theologian Klaus Hemmerle. Rooted in the tradition of German phenomenology, Kienzler was over many years part of the German-French circle around Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Ricœur and Bernhard Caspar. A professor of fundamental theology in Augsburg, Kienzler is, unlike other members of this circle, virtually unknown in the Anglophone world. As his new book demonstrates, Kienzler’s perspective on phenomenology is less academic than it is enriched by his personal experience. The reader who expects a concise study that engages with recent scholarship on art and phenomenology will thus be disappointed.