The lecture compares the attitude towards one's death and annihilation of the world in the philosophy of the 18th century French metaphysical egoism with Louis Althusser's metaphysical stratagem behind his "suicide," as it can be reconstructed on the basis of his posthumously published autobiography L'Avenir dure longtemps. Just as, for the egoist philosopher, his own death entailed the annihilation of the world and the people in it who he believed existed solely in his mind, so for Althusser the destruction of others, that is those in whose mind he believed he existed, entailed his own death.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 39242850The lecture treated the notions of impermanence and death in the Chinese and Japanese philosophical realms, particularly in connection with the Buddhist concept of emptiness and the Daoist answers to the problem. Methodological problems were mentioned and two ways of approaching the theme proposed: logically discursive and meditative mystical. The switch of consciousness was suggested as an essential condition for liberation of the Ego and its illusions. The classical Daoist work Lie Zi was analyzed and contrasted with the answers given to that problem in the Graeco-Judeo-Christian tradition.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 39420514