Jos de Mul, Michel Houellebecq’s tragic humanism. Invited lecture in the series Personhood, Law & Literature III organized by the Human Philosophy Project (Warsaw University & Oxford University). Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Room 4, roundfloor. April 7, 2016, 5-8 PM.

Various authors, including Friedrich Nietzsche and George Steiner, have argued that the tragic worldview, as we find it expressed in Greek tragedy, has become an entirely incomprehensible phenomenon for (post)modern man. The claim defended in this article radically opposes this view. It is argued that tragedy can still teach us something today, and maybe even more so now than in the many intervening centuries that separate us from her days of glory in the fifth century bce. The tragic reveals itself once more in (post)modern society, and nowhere more clearly than in technology, the domain in which we believed the tragic had been domesticated or even eliminated. Referring to the tragic humanism in Michel Houellebecq’s novels The Elementary Particles and The Possibility of an Island it is argued that it is precisely in (post)modern (bio)technologies that we experience the rebirth of the tragic.

Jos de Mul, Playful Identities. From narrative to ludic identity formation. (Invited) Public lecture at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Room 4, groundfloor. April 5, 2016, 6:30-8:00 PM.

Digital media technologies increasingly shape how people relate to the world, to other people and to themselves. This prompts questions about present-day mediations of identity. This lecture explores the notion of play as a heuristic lens to look at changing media practices and identity construction. Playful media culture is analyzed far beyond its apparent manifestation in computer games. The central argument of the lecture is that play and games nowadays are not only appropriate metaphors to capture post-modern human identities, but also the very means by which people reflexively construct their identity.

Department of Philosophy of Culture of the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw together with The Humane Philosophy Project
invite for lectures and seminars by

Professor Jos de Mul

(Erasmus University Rotterdam)

who will be the guest of our Institute in the first week of April.

The plan of his visit is as follows:
Tuesday (5^th of April) 
1:15 – 3pm (Institute of Philosophy, room 4, ground floor)
open guest lecture Europe, the tragic continent
6:30 – 8pm (Institute of Philosophy, room 108, I floor)
guest lecture on the seminar Imagination and Identity (conducted by dr P. Bursztyka).
The lecture will be entitled: Playful Identities. From narrative to ludic identity formation

Thursday (7^th of April)
5 – 8pm (Institute of Philosophy, room 108, I floor)
Seminar: The tragic humanism of Michel Houellebecq.
This seminar is a part of the seminar series: Personhood, Law & Literature. Humane Philosophy and the Idea of the Tragicorganized by The Humane Philosophy Project.
Contact: dr Przemysław Bursztyka (Dit e-mailadres wordt beveiligd tegen spambots. JavaScript dient ingeschakeld te zijn om het te bekijken.)

Jos de Mul is a Professor of Philosophical Anthropology at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. Among his research interests are metaphysics, philosophy of culture, philosophy of science and epistemology. His publications include: Romantic Desire in (POst)Modern Art and Philosophy (State University of New York Press, 1999) The Tragedy of Finitude. Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of Life, (New Haven: Yale University Press 2004);Cyberspace Odyssey: Towards a Virtual Ontology and Anthropology (Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2010);Destiny Domesticated. The Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Technology (State University of New York (State University of New York Press,  2014).

Jos de Mul, Europe, the tragic continent. Public lecture at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Room 4, roundfloor. April 5, 2016, 1:15-3:00 PM.

In his essay ‘The Idea of Europe’ George Steiner claims that European culture derives from “a primordial duality, the twofold inheritance of Athens and Jerusalem.” For Steiner, the relationship between Greek rationalism and Jewish religion, which is at once conflictual and syncretic, has engaged the entire history of European philosophy, morality, and politics. However, given this definition, at present the United States of America seem to be more European than ‘the old Europe’ itself. Against Steiner, it will be argued that in order to fathom the distinctive characteristic of European culture, we have to take a third European tradition into account, which is inextricably bound up with Athens: the tradition of Greek tragedy. If we may call Europe a tragic continent, it is not only because its history is characterised by an abundance of real political tragedies, but also because it embodies, as an idea and an ideal, a tragic awareness of the fragility of human life. Instead of reducing the ‘idea of Europe’ to a financial and economic issue, Europe should remain faithful to this idea and ideal.

Jos de Mul. Possible printings. On 3D printing, database ontology and open (meta)design. In: B. van den Berg, S. van der Hof & E. Kosta (eds.) 3D Printing: Legal, Philosophical and Economic Dimensions - Information Technology and Law Series. The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2016, 87-98.

3D printing can be approached from a number of different disciplinary angels, as it has possible implications for a great variety of human practices, ranging from the organization of economic production to the domain of legal and regulatory issues. In my talk I will focus on 3D printing from yet another angle: design, more particularly the perspective of open design. In Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing, Lipson and Kurman claim no less than that 3D will  cause “a revolution in the way we make and design things, because of the close connection between the software design of an object […] and its physical manifestation”.[2] Although we should be somewhat skeptical when the word “revolution” in the often hyperbolic discourse on information and communication technologies, it is obvious that 3D printing has the potential to bring about important changes in many domains, including the  world of design. Especially because of its open character, 3D printing challenges traditional design practices. In this chapter, I will investigate some of the implications of the database ontology, which characterizes the open design of 3D printing.

In the announcement of the 2010 Amsterdam conference Redesigning Design, which was organized by Creative Commons Netherlands, Premsela, Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion, and Waag Society, and which resulted in the book Open Design Now. Why design cannot remain exclusive[3]  the present situation in the world of design was described as follows:  “The design industry is going through fundamental changes. Open design, downloadable design and distributed design democratize the design industry, and imply that anyone can be a designer or a producer”. The subtext of this message seems to be that open design - for reasons of brevity I will use this term as an umbrella for the aforementioned developments, thus including downloadable, distributed design and the possibility to  recombine modules to personalized designs and to 3D print them at home or in a specialized shop around the corner– is something intrinsically good, something we should promote. Though my general attitude towards open design is a positive one, I think we should keep an open eye for the obstacles and pitfalls, in order to avoid that we will throw out the designer baby along with the bath water.

This chapter consists of three sections. First I will present a short sketch of open design. As this concept has quite some different connotations and, for that reason, is prone to conceptual confusion, it might be useful to illuminate this tag cloud of connotations. In this first part, I will also summarize some of the objections that can be (and has been) directed against open design.

Jos de Mul. Human Nature after Neo-Darwinism. Lecture and Seminar with prof. Jos de Mul. Radboud University, Erasmus Building E3.12. February 15, 16:00-17.30. 

Contact

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Jos de Mul. Database Identity: between construction and control. Invited lecture at the 1st Thinkers’ Summit of Translingual Communication on Life: Data, Symbol and Wisdom. Beijing: Department of Journalism and Communication. Beijing University, January 10-11, 2016.

Jos de Mul. Encyclopedias, hive minds and global brains. A cognitive evolutionary account of Wikipedia. Invited lecture at the Being Forum 2015. Beijing: Beijing University, November 7, 2015.

The Beijing Forum, initiated in 2004, is an annual event placed under the auspices of the Beijing Municipal Government. It is endorsed by the State Council and the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and co-sponsored by Peking University, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education, and the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies. The November 2015 edition will mark its twelfth successful session.

The Beijing Forum, organized by Peking University, encourages the study of the humanities and social sciences in the Asia-Pacific region. It aims to facilitate international academic exchanges and trans-cultural discussions in order to foster social development, harmony between civilizations, and greater prosperity for mankind.

Held annually in Beijing, a city with a deep cultural tradition, the forum is an international academic event that advocates civilizational harmony, It brings together the world’s most eminent thinkers in order to stimulate the academic and cultural exchanges that are crucial for world peace and social progress. During the past years, the Beijing Forum has gathered a wealth of invaluable suggestions and insights that has helped generate outstanding academic advancement in the Asia Pacific region and around the world. The 2015 annual conference will uphold the Beijing Forum’s reputation, developed over the last decade, as one of the leading academic forums in the world.

Jos de Mul, Human Nature after Neo-Darwinism. Keynote lecture at the Conference Human Nature. Human Philosophy Project. Oxford University & University of Warsaw. Warsaw: September 24, 2015.

On the 24th-26th of September, 2015 the Humane Philosophy Project, in collaboration with the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, the Dalai Lama Centre for Compassion, and the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion will hold a three day conference on the theme 'Human Nature'.

This event will take place at the central campus of the University of Warsaw.

A call for papers can be viewed here.

Jos de Mul, Database Identity: Personal and Cultural Identity in the Age of Global Datafication. in: Wouter de Been, Payal Aurora and Mireille Hildebrandt (Eds.), Crossroads in New Media, Identity and Law. The Shape of Diversity to Come. Personal and Cultural Identity in the Age of Global Datafication. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 97-118. 

This volume brings together a number of timely contributions at the nexus of new media, politics and law. The central intuition that ties these essays together is that information and communication technology, cultural identity, and legal and political institutions are spheres that co-evolve and interpenetrate in myriad ways. Discussing these shifting relationships, the contributions all probe the question of what shape diversity will take as a result of the changes in the way we communicate and spread information: that is, are we heading to the disintegration and fragmentation of national and cultural identity, or is society moving towards more consolidation, standardization and centralization at a transnational level? In an age of digitization and globalization, this book addresses the question of whether this calls for a new civility fit for the 21st century.

Jos de Mul, to begin with, takes the issue of identity head-on in his contribution. He argues that new networked communication technologies are leading to a datafication of identity. New ICTs are transforming traditional ‘narrative identity’ into a more plastic form of ‘database identity.’ Identity as the product of a linear development, as an outgrowth of a particular personal or group history – the bread and butter of the imagined community – is on the wane. Increasingly identity is broken up into machine-readable elements and stored in digital memory banks. This allows for an endless combination and re-combination of features. By itself this process does not necessarily result in a world of freedom and play, however. Although database identities allow for an extraordinary range of choice and are well suited to the freedom and flexibility of postmodern culture, there is a great deal of uniformity in the forms that database identities actually take. Hence, De Mul also addresses the standardization of identity in the prefabricated formats of social media, underlining the new entrapments of the digital age.