Category Archives: Guests

Amy Dahan

Dahan2Trained as a mathematician, a philosopher and a historian, Amy Dahan is renowned for her work on climate change, which led her to be an important expert in France around the COP21. She published in 2015 with  Stefan Aykut, Gouverner le climat ? 20 ans de négociations climatiques (Ruling Over Climate? 20 Years of Climatic Negotiations). A researcher at Center Alexandre Koyre (CNRS), she has published many books and articles on the history of sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries, with special emphasis on determinist chaos. She is a member of the Ethics Committee of the French National Scientific Research Center, and of the scientific committee of the International Human Dimension Program on Global Environment Change.

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Arnaud François

FrancoisArnaud François, born in 1978, is a professor of philosophy at the University of Poitiers. He is the author of several books and articles on Bergson, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as well as of works on the philosophy of health. He is currently exploring, at the junction between philosophy and literature, the work of Émile Zola. He is, with Ondřej Švec, co-president of the Organisation Francophone pour la Formation et la Recherche Européennes en Sciences humaines (OFFRES), an academic collaboration network in Central and Eastern Europe.

Petr Kouba

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPetr Kouba teaches at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, Prague and works at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Phenomenon of Mental Disorder (2006 in Czech, 2011 in German, 2015 in English) and Exodus without Moses. Roma emigration as a Political Problem (2015, in Czech). He also co-edited Dynamic Structure (2007 in English), Medicine in the Context of the Western Thought (2008 in Czech) and Franz Kafka: Minority Report (2010 in Czech and 2011 in English).

Andrzej Leder

Leder2A philosopher, a psychoanalyst and a philosophical essayist, Andrzej Leder focuses on the question of the philosophical position of psychoanalytical thought. He writes on contemporary fears, with the insight provided by his medical and psychiatric experience. Andrzej Leder works at the Institute of Philosophy at the Polish Academy of Sciences, researching philosophical foundations of modern culture. After publishing on Freud and Heidegger (Nauka Freuda w epoce Sein und Zeit, 2007), his latest book is entitled Prześniona rewolucja. Ćwiczenie z logiki historycznej (An Over-Dreamed Revolution. Exercises in Historical Logic, 2014). He is also famous for his articles in the Polish magazine Krytyka Polityczna.

Jan Sokol

SokolFormer Minister of Education of the Czech Republic, Jan Sokol is known for his public commitment. In his younger years, he worked as goldsmith and precision mechanic. His interest in philosophy has led him to teach in the Czech Republic and outside, and to translate from French and German philosophy (Lévinas, Blondel, Foucault, Teilhard, Derrida, Rosenzweig, Gadamer and so forth). He explores philosophy in its everyday dimension, as demonstrated in his last book published in English, Thinking about Ordinary Things (2013). Among his latest publications, he published in 2014 his Etika, život, instituce on personal freedom and its institutional support. He currently teaches at the Charles University.

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Josef Vojvodík

VojvodikJosef Vojvodík explores 20th century Czech and world literature (especially German) and its relationships to philosophy, psychology and the fine arts. He is known for defending the hidden value of Biedermeier art. He teaches at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University. He has published several books, the last of which on Pathos in Czech art, poetry and aesthetics (Patos v českém umění, poezii a umělecko-estetickém myšlení čtyřicátých let 20. století, Argo, 2014). He’s also published a Glossary of Catchwords of the Czech Avant-Garde (FF UK, 2011).

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Emil Višňovský

visnovsky_841fa5c649Emil Višňovský is a specialist of Anglo-American philosophy (among others, John Dewey), and works on the philosophy of mind. He has published several books and articles on the pragmatist trend (his latest, in 2014, entitled Nové štúdie o pragmatizme & neopragmatizme). He is currently engaged in a research project in Slovakia on the Analysis of Philosophical and Ethical Dimesions with Respect to Human Enhancement. He is the vice-president of the Social sciences and humanities of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

 

 

Jiří Přibáň

pribanTrained in law, Jiří Přibáň has published extensively in social theory and sociology of law, legal philosophy, constitutional and European comparative law, and theory of human rights. He is an editor of the Journal of Law and Society and a regular contributor to the Czech and international media, and is known for his comments on Czech and European politics. He currently teaches law at Cardiff university. He is the acclaimed author of Právní symbolismus (Filosofia, 2007) – in English: Legal Symbolism, On Law, Time and European Identity (Ashgate, 2007).  His last book, Obrana ústavnosti aneb česká otázka v postnacionální Evropě deals with the “Czech question” in post-national Europe (Slon, 2014).

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Josef Fulka

FulkaJosef Fulka explores the link between French theory and psychoanalysis (Psychoanalýza a francouzské myšlení, 2008), and is also famous for his many translations of 20th century French philosophy (Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, Balibar). His last book deals for instance with Barthes’s thought (Roland Barthes: od ideologie k fantasmatu, 2010). He teaches philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities (Charles University, Prague) and works as a researcher at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. His interests cover the philosophy of 18th and 20th century, literary theory, psychoanalysis and sign language linguistics.

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David Lengyel

LengyelDavid Lengyel explores as a philosopher the work of several film directors, among whom Hungarian Béla Tarr, on whom he has published a book entitled « Trembler pour l’autre ». Pour une éthique du cinéma (‘Fearing for the Other’. For Cinema Ethics, Palio, 2015). He is also a film critic for French magazines, and teaches Central European cinema at the Inalco in Paris.

Miroslav Marcelli

MarcelliMiroslav Marcelli is a philosopher and is famous for his translations of Michel Foucault’s works in Slovak. He spent some years in France and in Oxford. He has written several books and articles on Foucault (Michel Foucault alebo stať sa iným, 1995) and Roland Barthes (Príklad Barthes, 2001). Lately he’s explored the philosophy of urban life and architecture (Mesto vo filozofii, 2011) . He teaches both at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in Prague and at the Comenius University in Bratislava.

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Silvia Gáliková

GalikovaLecturer and tutor at the Department of Philosophy, Trnava University, Silvia Gáliková has been exploring issues around consciousness at the crossroad between science and philosophy, trying to bridge the gap between the brain activity and the intimate experience of thinking (Philosophy of Consciousness; Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2013). She is a member of the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

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Michał Kozłowski

Kozlowski2Michał Kozłowski is a philosopher and a sociologist, specialized in the so-called French theory (Foucault, Bourdieu, Derrida). He teaches modern philosophy at Warsaw University. He is the co-founder of the magazine Bez Dogmatu (Without Dogma) and is a member of the REASOPO (Réseau européen d’analyse des sociétés politiques / European Network of Analysis of Political Societies).

Read his latest article on “Youngsters and refugees, or how exile changes eastern Europe” in Open Democracy online.

More on Bez Dogmatu here.

Sylva Fischerová

FischerovaIf teaching  Ancient Greek literature and philosophy at the Charles University in Prague, Sylva Fischerová has been writing poetry since her childhood, and is a major figure of contemporary Czech literature (her last collection of poems is entitled Sestra duše, 2015—and some of her previous poems can be read in English since the publication of the 2010 volume The Swing in the Middle of Chaos. Her collection of new poems was edited by Callypso under the title Stomach of the Soul (2015).

Read her 2010 interview in English about her poetry here.

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Corine Pelluchon

Pelluchon2A Professor of philosophy at the Franche-Comté University (in Besançon), Corinne Pelluchon focuses on political philosophy and ethics. Her many publications encompass many topics, from medical ethics to the animal question (Eléments pour une éthique de la vulnérabilité. Les hommes, les animaux, la nature, 2011), and the philosophy of environment. She lately focused on the question of the body and life (Tu ne tueras point. Réflexions sur l’actualité de l’interdit du meurtre, 2013 and  Les Nourritures. Philosophie du corps politique, 2015).

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