This essay approaches the problem of identity through the figure of the homo clausus. Beginning with debates on personal identity and its contemporary fragility, it turns to the individual as the site where identity is articulated in cultural and social forms. Simmel’s sociology grounds individuality in reciprocal interaction, whereas his philosophy of culture tends to elevate a form of heroic inwardness. Ultimately, viewed through the lens of pure interaction – above all the play of sociability – the closed self appears (...) less as an insulated entity than as one constituted through mutual attunement. (shrink)

A non-dual ontology of Self shares the difficulty of any systematic order: it has presuppositions that it cannot represent within its system. For most theoretical concerns, this problem is trivial. For the non-dual philosophies of Śaṅkara and Nishitani, on the other hand, it points to a central aspect: their thinking rests on a radical turn of experience whose existential dimension cannot be represented in their propositions but can very well be expressed. Along the relationship between personality and impersonality, the contribution (...) will trace this expression and thus point to the fruitful superfluity of a non-dual philosophy that can be exhausted neither in theory nor in practice. (shrink)

Der Beitrag versucht, Grundzüge einer phänomenologischen Propädeutik zu ermitteln, in der nicht das Fremde, sondern zunächst ein horror vacui als Herausforderung interkulturellen Philosophierens zur Geltung kommt. Entlang der Intuition entschiedener Selbstentfremdung, wie sie sich im Philosophieren Eugen Finks und Max Schelers findet, wird dazu eine Schwelle menschlichen Erlebens thematisch, auf der man zwischen Eigenes und Fremdes gerät. Da, wo Phänomenologie als besondere Weise bewussten Erlebens ernst genommen wird, ermöglicht sie, den Grund unserer Behaglichkeit gegenüber solchen Theorien fragwürdig werden zu lassen, (...) in der sich Eigen- und Fremdkultur zueinander in ein konfrontatives oder kommunikatives Verhältnis setzen lassen. (shrink)

This paper takes contemporary attempts to engage South and East Asian philosophies regarding their conceptual resources for addressing environmental philosophical problems as an opportunity to discuss the concept of nature within the tradition of classical Advaita Vedānta. Initially, the ambiguity of the European concept of nature and corresponding equivalents in the Indian context are outlined. Subsequently, a widespread interpretation is reconstructed, which regards Śaṅkara’s non-dual Vedānta as an illusionistic variant of akosmian monism and cites this ontology as evidence that such (...) an understanding of nature can only lead to alienation from and contempt for the natural world. Even if this interpretation proves correct under certain conditions, it overlooks the fact that the ambiguity embedded in the Western term “nature”—as the totality of phenomena (jagat, prakṛti, nāmarūpa, māyā) on the one hand, and as the essence of this totality (svabhāva) on the other—in Śaṅkara’s Vedānta does not pertain to an ontological problem but to a methodological strategy of non-dual philosophy. (shrink)

An interview with Theodoros Terzopoulos about theater and the impersonal.