European College of Liberat Arts, Berlin
International Summer University 2008
The Mantle of the Prophet: Demons, Saints and Terrorists
On the very day of Dostoyevsky' s funeral, in January 1881, his good friend, the philosopher Vladimir Solovyev, called the deceased novelist a "prophet", a theme that has been repeated over and over again with regard to the fall of the tsarist monarchy and the Russian Revolution, to Communism, Fascism and other forms of totalitarianism. In reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11 the French philosopher André Glucksman published an essay under the title Dostoyevsky in Manhattan.
Based on a real case of political murder, the so-called "Nechaev Affair", Demons, more than any other of Dostoyevsky’s novels, probably deserves to be characterized as "prophetic". During the six weeks programme of the summer university students and faculty will explore some of its numerous moral, religious and political implications as, for example, the historical and metaphysical roots of terrorism, its various embodiments from state terror to individual violence and, more generally, the “death of God”, the “deification of man”, nihilism and existentialism.
In addressing these issues, students and faculty will discuss a variety of philosophical, literary and historical texts, including such authors as Albert Camus (The Stranger), Blaise Pascal (Pensées), Heinrich von Kleist (Michael Kohlhaas), Serguei Nechaev (Catechism of a Revolutionary), Carl Schmitt (Theory of the Partisan), Friedrich Nietzsche (on nihilism), Schopenhauer (on Religion) and Plato (Gorgias). The text-based core component of the curriculum is complemented by the visual (films, museum visits, art history) and component visits in and around Berlin.
The six-week long Summer University begins on July 7th 2008 and ends on August 15th 2008.
Deadline for applications: April 10th 2008 (date of arrival at ECLA)
http://www.ecla. de/academics/ isu/
[sursa study-x]
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