Contemporary Philosophy of Culture

This course explores the nature of cultural experience – artistic, interpretive, or educational – within the contemporary landscape of technology, virtuality, fragmentation, subjectivity, and globalisation. We question whether a fundamental aspect of our existential and cultural experiences is fading due to the pervasive influence of technology and broader socio-economic shifts. This vital aspect, distinct from self-centered subjectivity, may depend on our capacity for openness to ‘otherness’. The course investigates the relevance of fostering such an ethical awareness in a world dominated by transient, casual modes of self-expression. Ultimately, it asks: do our existential and cultural formations gain meaning only when situated in the context of otherness – be it a community, a person, a field, or a broader social, economic, or political reality? 

Lectures

1. 1. The Integrity of the Person at the Age of Virtual Productivity

   2. Contemporary Education as Mutual Formations in Self-expression

   3. Grace and Trust in the Formation of the Self-identity of Absolute Contradictories: On the Cultural Relevance of the Ethical Phenomenologies of Gabriel Marcel and Nishida Kitaro

   4. Self-Retraction as the Act of Seeing the Taking Place of Meaning - Between Ethics and Zen

   5. Creativity, Technology and Self-awakening to the Other

   6. After the Crisis of Truths in Contemporary Art, The Way to Wisdom

   7. Contemporary Western Culture and the Possibility of a Responsible Humanism

   8. Hope and Despair in Postmodernity

   9. Dwelling in the Light of the Thou, or the Art of the Opening Space: Ethics and Experience in Contemporary Culture

   10. For an Ethics of Hope and Availability in a Multi-Relational Culture