In this intensive seminar, Michael Marder proposes nothing less than a model for interpreting Hegel’s Phenomenology, his dialectical philosophy in general, and our historical actuality. A guiding thread of the seminar is the Hegelian concept of Wirklichkeit, which—though usually translated as “reality,” “actuality,” or “effectivity”— is a rendition of Aristotle’s energeia. Marder’s suggestion, then, is to re-read The Phenomenology from the stand- point of Wirklichkeit, which he translates as “energy- actuality,” while registering those moments in the dialectic when the apparent loss of the actual in processes he variously terms virtualization or desubstantivation hold the promise of recovering the energy that has been spent. This exegetical exercise will be accompanied by attempts to elucidate the historical ontology of the present: our perception that we live at a time of entropic inertia when everything has been already said and done; the ascend- ency of “virtual reality,” which seems to contradict this perception, and the primacy of possibility over actuality in our practical relation to what is and in thinking (e.g., existentialism); the subsequent, at once ideal and real, dematerialization of the world into streams of unfulfillable potentialities, fluxes, and processes devoid of any fulfillment, associated with “flows of desire” and cash flows. Rather than actuality, it is pure potentiality that appears to carry the day in contrast to the lesson of the Hegelian dialectic, which situates such empty abstractions at the initial and least energy-saturated stages of spirit’s unfolding.

Michael Marder is Ikerbasque Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz. His work spans the fields of phenomenology, environmental philosophy, and political thought. He is the Associate Editor of ‘Telos: A Quarterly Journal of Critical Thought’ and the author of twelve books, including ‘Heidegger: Phenomenology, Ecology, Politics’ (2018), ‘Energy Dreams: Of Actuality’ (2017), ‘Dust’ (2016), ‘Pyropolitics: When the World Is Ablaze’ (2015), ‘Phenomena-Critique-Logos: The Project of Critical Phenomenology’ (2014), ‘Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life’ (2013), ‘The Philosopher’s Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium’ (2014), ‘Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt’ (2010) and ‘The Event of The Thing: Derrida’s Post-Deconstruc- tive Realism’ (2009).

Registration is free, but limited to the number of seats available. Please send an email with a short CV to info@maumaus.org until 15.03.2019. Confirmation of registration will be sent by email. The seminar will be in English.