Conference: Transcending Europe, 12.-13. april, Helsinki; CHANGE OF PROGRAM

11.04.2012

Transcending Europe

NB. KEYNOTE ADDRESS OF DENIS GUÉNOUN IS CANCELLED

for health reasons !!!!

conference starts on tursday 12 april at 13.00

A conference organised by the University of Helsinki Network for European Studies project “Rethinking Cultural Diversity in Europe”

Date: 12. - 13. april 2012

Place: University of Helsinki

Today's Europe is a unique transnational whole. It results from a history of colonialization in the name of universal reason, and it could ambition to provide a model of political community for future globalization. Today, however, it is at pains with its universality: it appears too universal to satisfy particularistic passions within, and too singular to match the generality of globalization. This is why Europe needs to deal with the problematics of universality and particularity – already on a fundamental conceptual level.

The aim of the colloquium Transcending Europe is to examine Europe as a philosophical paradox of a situated idea. On the one hand, "Europe" stands for an idea of scientific and humanistic universality, that was most importantly articulated by Edmund Husserl (whose texts on Europe have recently been published into Finnish as Uudistuminen ja ihmisyys and Eurooppalaisten tieteiden kriisi ja transsendentaalinen fenomenologia). On the other hand, by definition universality cannot be localized, except when it is understood as a simple project of hegemony, that Europe has given up. The paradoxes of such a situated or a limited universality have recently been adressed in philosophy in particular by Denis Guénoun (Hypothèses sur l'Europe : un essai de philosophie, presently being translated into English) and Rodolphe Gasché (Europe, or the Infinite task. A Study of a Philosophical Concept). They examine Europe as a philosophical concept, idea, or figure, as a kind of a singular universal which is not to be understood as a model, that could be used as a source of identification, but rather as a hypothetical, regulative or a virtual principle that has also ethical and political dimensions. Put in this way, the idea of Europe is not a particular surreptitiously imposing itself as a global universal framework of thought, but a desire of universality that can only be realised as a constant self-transgression and openness towards what is other to it.

The conference Transcending Europe looks for new philosophical articulations of European universality, its way of being supranational without being global and of being ideal without being merely cultural.

The keynote speakers of the conference are Rodolphe Gasché and Denis Guénoun. –

DENIS GUÉNOUN HAS BEEN OBLIGED TO CANCEL HIS CONFERENCE FOR HEALTH REASONS.

conference webpage:

http://blogs.helsinki.fi/culturaldiversity/?page_id=208

Free entrance, no registration.

For further information, contact Susanna Lindberg () or

Tuomas Parsio ()

Program:

thursday 12. april, venue Porthania P III

• 10-12 keynote address Denis Guénoun: Active or passive transcendence?

CANCELLED!!!

•13-14 Sergei Prozorov, What is the Other of Europe