Permanent Lectures Series

The Philosophy and Literature network held a series of graduate and post-graduate public lectures, as well as lectures by invited speakers, focusing various issues in the Humanities, mostly questions in philosophy and literature and in philosophy of art. This Series was replaced in 2011-2012 by the Philosophy and Literature Workshop.

 

2009-2011 

30 Sept 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

 Alberto Arruda «Intenções, regras e atitudes na Estética de Wittgenstein» («Intentions, rules and attitudes in Wittgenstein's aesthetics»)

I plan to discuss the concepts of intention, rule and attitude in art, as according to a reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Aesthetics. The possibility of making sense of each of these concepts will be explored through the private language argument, which will make describing relationships between these concepts possible. Finally, I will offer a hypothesis for the particular use Wittgenstein makes of the concept of intention in the Lectures on Aesthetics.

  

 

28 Oct 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID 

 Sara Eckerson «Phantasms in Music»

I plan to present an overview of Aristotle’s account of the faculty of phantasia as presented in De Anima and De Insomniis. Using the concepts of phantasia and phantásmata, I will talk about the relation of these to Aristotle’s use of homoiois (resembling / likeness) in the Politics. This relation is made in attempts to show how music can be called mimetic and how melodies are afforded the descriptions Aristotle makes in the Politics, saying melodies have imitations or likenesses (homoiois) of virtues.

      

 

11 Nov 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

Bernardo Palmeirim «Poesia como Terapia» («Poetry as Therapy»)

I shall discuss the usefulness and epistemological value of poetry, and put forth the argument that its finality is that of spiritual therapy. The faculty of attention will be presented as the philosophical link required to justify the teleology of poetry, which a comparison of the practices of poetry and prayer can serve to illustrate. I will also try to show how certain rhetorical effects and modes of reading can train our ability for self-reflection, objectivity and universality.

     

 

24 Nov 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

Ana Cláudia Santos «Livros para Filósofos» («Books for Philosophers»)

On the first part of the paper, I will discuss Plato's and Rousseau's arguments against poetry, starting from their particular projects (Plato's public education of the citizen, Rousseau's domestic education of the individual). On the second part, Allan Bloom's conception of "books for philosophers" will enable me to bring in the idea that neither Plato's Republic nor Émile are to be regarded as political or educational manuals, but as contemplative works which vindicate a philosophical kind of life. Finally, I will try to explain how that involves a special notion of "Art".

      

 

6 Jan 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

Carlos A. Pereira «Metáforas e Semelhanças» («Metaphors and Similatities»)

Donald Davidson’s controversial view on metaphors will be the starting point for a discussion of this philosopher’s description of interpretation. This description will be considered along with the way we interpret unfamiliar words according to Aristotle, thus exploring the sense in which “a  good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars” (Poet. 1459a).

   

 

31 Mar 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

Frederico Pedreira «Estrangeiros na língua materna» («Foreigners in their own language»)

The presentation part of the creative utterance concept from Deleuze, related to the artist that puts language in a permanent state of disequilibrium, turns him into a foreigner in his mother tongue. This idea is articulated in the dislocation of the Identity and the questioning of our cognitive relation with words, through a designed disintegration of language. Brett Bourbon’s study about how we deal with the nonsensical, and what we extract from it, is introduced. Some of the discourses analyzed are from Joyce, Beckett, Cassavetes, José Cardoso Pires (from De Profundis, Valsa Lenta) and Nuno Bragança.

   

 

21 Apr 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

Pedro Tiago Serras «Caeiro sob o espéculo de Sartre: As (as)simetrias de Caeiro e Roquentin» («Caeiro through Sartre's monocle: The Assymetries between Caeiro and Roquentin»)

If Roquentin represents a reflexive conscience that turns to itself and that concomitantly reflects itself, Caeiro projects the exteriority of things in his interiority, by getting out of himself (suspending himself), through this exterior, returns again to himself, making a circular movement whose arriving point is equivalent to the desire that motivated his point of departure, traveling through things in search of what he was expecting a priori to find. Being the I, therefore, anterior to the éclatement of the “out there”, the other intercalates itself between he and himself only to confirm the coincidence of both. These two, in the case of Roquentin, are not superimposable, the latter being a metaphor that operates on the former. But, so that Caeiro can find himself through the recreation of the language that creates him, it is necessary that he is established from the beginning, turning himself into what he was already –  a pour-soi that chose to try to build a en-soi on itself. The difficulty in Caeiro does not spring from the absence of conceptual attributions to things, but from that in which the individual (Caeiro) finds himself transformed in the inexistence of those same links of significance. Roquentin differs from the Pessoan poet, in that he confines within himself, with all the human inherent costs, the impossibility of a utopian en-soi.

    

 

28 Apr 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

Jorge Uribe «Sobre uma Edição das Trovas do Bandarra: Fernando Pessoa poeta do mito nacional» («On an edition of the Trovas do Bandarra: Fernando Pessoa, poet of the national myth»)

Beginning with the editorial projects that Fernando Pessoa organized, but did not conclude, of an edition of the Trovas do Bandarra to be published by Olisipo, some of the reflections on the prophetic interpretation will be presented: the idea of genius and Sebastiansism as the foundation of the national identity. Materials from Pessoa’s trunk will be presented, along with a possible reconstruction of the history of investigation that gave Pessoa the necessary tools so as to make an edition and present his own interpretation of the Trovas.

5 May 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

Nuno Amado «Danto e Interpretação» («Danto and Interpretation»)

In his essay “Appreciation and Interpretation”, Arthur C. Danto suggests that it is difficult to know what it is that we should appreciate of a specific work before we know how it is that this work should be interpreted. Among other things, this suggestion functions as a result of the institutional theories of art, in particular that of George Dickie, for whom a work of art is defined by its capability to be a candidate for being aesthetically appreciated. Danto’s proposal is ontological and has, by virtue, to defend that not all of the properties of an object are properties of the work of art in which this object transfigures. Interpretation, therefore, is the act by which material objects transform themselves into works of art and this act determines that the properties the object should be considered part of the work of art. Considering interpretation is that which constitutes a work of art, there is no artwork without interpretation and if an artwork is not interpreted well, it is misunderstood. Resulting from this, for Danto, is an artwork does not contain within itself the possibility of infinite interpretations and what exists is only one correct interpretation of an object as a work of art.

     

 

19 May 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

João Trinité Rosa «A fotografia preserva memórias?» («Does photography save memories?») 

Photography as a cultural practice is closely related to the idea of preserving memories. This ideia is linked to some of photography’s specific properties (such as indexicality, resemblance and reproductability). The main purpose of this conference is to dispute the commonly accepted view of photography as a safe way to preserve our memories. I’ll (1) try to say what is a ´memory´, how memories form, which mental processes are involved; and finally (2) discuss how can photography be conceived in this context. Does photography really helps us preserving our memories?

 

Carlos A. Pereira «Ficção, arte e estados mentais» («Fiction, art and mental states»)

I will argue for a particular description of irrational mental states apropos of an account and analysis of the recent history of the problem commonly called "the paradox of fiction". This kind of mental states will be understood in the context of causal relations that are undetermined beforehand, independent of acts of will and retrospectively intelligible under descriptions typically about causes and effects. In the first part of my presentation I hope to answer the question that triggered the paradox mentioned above: "How does fiction cause effects?" In the second part, I will introduce a different question: "Why does art cause effects?" The differences between this question and the former will translate into the different kind of answer and concern with which I will conclude my presentation.

   

 

4 Jun 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

António Marques Linguagens da memória: Os casos de Proust e Wittgenstein

 

 

16 Jun 10am 4.03 FCSH.ID

Telmo Rodrigues «"Conversa" sobre poesia com música («"Conversation" on poetry with music»)

In the introduction of Pursuits of Happiness, Stanley Cavell describes, among other things, two essential preoccupations:  “why” to study cinema and “how” to do it. What will be shown is that Cavell’s answers and hesitations towards the necessity of a profound study into cinema for its inclusion in the academic world can be used to answer the same doubt about the study of poetry and pop music and help deal with the “outrage” of including these materials in conjunction with literary works.

 

Pedro Farinha Gomes «Vida e Morte: práticas com células humanas» («Life and Death: practices with human cells»)

In the scope of the problem of representation, possible perspectives related to the effects of the practices in BioArt will be discussed, establishing a chronology beginning with the utilization of daily objects in cubist collages and ‘assemblages’, hyper-realist sculpture, etc.

 

23 Jun 10am-5pm 1.06 FCSH.ID

Pedro Sepúlveda «O livro de Caeiro» («Caeiro's Book»)

Pessoa created and planned that which would be his master Alberto Caeiro’s book of poems, a project that was never concluded. Starting from an analysis of the plans for editing and publishing Caeiro’s work, for the most part unpublished, we will reflect on the importance of this Pessoan literary universe, such as the reasons that are in the foundation of the impossibility for these plans to concretize. We find at the heart of the problem of publication, the most profound matter in the impossibility of construction of that which would be Caeiro’s book. We aim to debate, such as in Caeiro’s case, the particular and decisive manifestation of three difficulties implied in the notion of ‘book’: authorship, the fragment as opposed to the totality, and materiality opposed to ideality.

 

Sara Eckerson «Coherency and origin: consideration of a non-metaphysical analysis of aesthetic concepts in Beethoven»

In this conference I plan to present aesthetic reflections on art of the Sturm und Drang movement, later developed by the Frühromantiker (early Romantics), as they relate to Beethoven. What will be given more consideration are reflections on: “organicism”, a “common origin” as described by Johann Gottfried Herder, and the conception of the “whole” as developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Included will be a brief summary of Beethoven’s inclination towards chromaticism in his music, the affect of this shift, and its impact on other composers (specifically Wagner). Also considered will be excerpts from E.T.A Hoffmann’s writing on Beethoven, and how taking into account metaphysical approaches to Beethoven’s music may teach us something about the non-metaphysical.

 

Joana Cordovil Cardoso, «Histórias de Indivíduos» («Stories of individuals»).

The apparently neutral word “individual” as meaning something close to “unity” or “non-dividable” has recently been questioned by both literary and ethical theorists. In this conference, we shall examine the more important points made by some of those authors (such as Nancy Armstrong or Alasdair MacIntyre) about the origin and relevance of this notion. It will be suggested that the implications of describing human beings as “individuals” go beyond the scope of Philosophy and/or Literature, and have been contaminating the debate about their relation.

 

 

Tiago Guerreiro Silva, «Críticas à Utilidade da Leitura» («Criticizing the utility of reading»)

In the first part of the presentation, arguments against reading by Michel de Montaigne, Thomas de Quincey, and Arthur Schopenhauer will be discussed, with foundation in essays by these authors. In the second part, we will effectively weigh the relation between excessive reading and knowledge based in the distinctions between erudition and wisdom (Montaigne), and between “literature of knowledge” and “literature of power” (Thomas de Quincey). Finally, it will be observed how reading literary texts can be considered a useless activity or prejudicial to one’s intellect.