Abbt
Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Philosophisches Seminar » Allgemein » Prof. Dr. Georg Kohler (emeritiert) » Abbt
Current research project
| Title / Titel | The Dialectics of Forgetting: the Rupture as a Condition of Understanding in Literature and Philosophy since the Enlightenment | ||
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| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||
| Original title / Originaltitel | Dialektik des Vergessens. Der Bruch als Bedingung für das Verstehen in Literatur und Philosophie seit der Aufklärung | ||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | The trust which Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant, Hume and Shaftesbury bring to the relationship between forgetting and understanding is subsequently lost and resurfaces only in contexts critical to the Enlightenment, for example in Nietzsche, Benjamin and Derrida. The close relationship between Enlightenment demands of people to abstract as much as possible from themselves as well as from the conditions that determine us when making a judgment, and the ability to forget oneself, is suppressed by the appreciation of the historical consciousness in the 19th century and by the breakthrough made by psychoanalysis in the 20th century. In light of this background, forgetting appears as a philosophical antagonist and comes under the suspicion of circumventing the work done by thought and consciousness-raising. Under the impression of the experiences of the Second World War, forgetting is ultimately moved very close to suppression and is highly suspicious not only philosophically, but especially politically. In this way, the sensorium for the fundamental relationship between thought and being able to forget is lost for the large part. This project follows the trail of forgetting in literature and philosophy, and shows, in its first step, the different displacements ongoing in these areas, displacements which are outlined for understanding in relation to the significance of the rupture. Part of this project also seeks to pinpoint the reasons why we have philosophically marginalized forgetting, understood as an abstraction, in this way. The second step involves reformulating the significance of forgetting for understanding, and thereby taking into account the dialectics of forgetting. The focus is, therefore, on including the danger as well as the essential potential of the rupture in a communicative concept. On the one hand, this research project thereby makes a contribution to the history of the idea of forgetting and, on the other, formulates a deployment-related contribution to successful mutual understanding. Weitere Informationen |
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| Keywords / Suchbegriffe | Forgetting, understanding, communication, rupture, literature, philosophy; Vergessen, Verstehen, Kommunikation, Bruch, Literatur, Philosophie | ||
| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
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| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
SNF (Personen- und Projektförderung), Others Habilitation, Stipendium für fortgeschrittene Forschende und Research Fellowship, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaft Wien |
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| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | Dec 2006 to Feb 2013 |