Inaugural lecture
- 9 November 2021, 6pm
Lecture Hall of Bibliotheca Albertina, Beethovenstraße 6, 04107 Leipzig
The event will be held in compliance with the 2G rule.
To what extent does social theory rely upon abstract philosophical concepts such as possibility and actuality? This paper looks at how certain strands of critical theory, as represented by figures such as Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, revive the problem of how the possible relates to the actual. This question, as thorny as it is traditional, takes on special depth and substance in the context of reflection on currently blocked possibilities of social renewal and transformation. How do possibilities of social change present themselves, how are they suppressed or kept in a state of latency, and how do they become the social fossils of what could have been? Walter Benjamin’s study of the flâneur will serve as an example of how society produces stunted figures and obscure images of what might be different if social relations could be remade in the image of the potential of the forces of production.
Our current Leibniz Professor
Professor Iain Macdonald teaches and researches at the Département de philosophie of the Université de Montréal and is one of the leading representatives of continental philosophy in North America.