Öffentliche Vorträge
Einige Veranstaltungen der Summer School "Menschenbilder" stehen allen Interessierten offen:
"Theologie als Bildwissenschaft“
("Iconic turn in Theology – and by Theology")
Prof. Dr. Philipp Stoellger (Systematische Theologie und
Religionsphilosophie, Universität Rostock)
16. Juni um 20 Uhr, Alte Aula
Like the linguistic and the cultural turn, the iconic turn is a
challenge for theology. Therefore it is an unavoidable task to answer
this challenge. On the one hand, theology has to take part in the
actual discourses in iconic theory (like Boehm, Belting, Bredekamp;
Nancy, Latour, Didi-Huberman, Marin and many others). On the other hand
theology has to look for its own voice in these discourses. This voice
may be found (and founded) by the iconic impact in theology´s own
traditions. At this point protestant theology raises a problem because
its main traditions (mainly in the reformed, partly the Lutheran
churches) are iconophobic. The jewish background is actually aniconic.
The catholic tradition in contrast is quite iconophil. Is it possible
to find a protestant perspective in between aniconic, iconophobic and
iconophil attitudes?
One way to find this perspective is its connection to the theological
topoi of incarnation and/or of crucifixion. The dominant reason for
religious icons and the theological “licence” for iconophils is the
incarnation: when God became man he became visible. Therefore
visibility is a legitimate medium of religious practices. But the
question remains if there are particular protestant reasons for
visibility and icons. May the crucifixion bear reasons for
iconicity?
A second way to find a critical and constructive perspective could be
inspired by some present concepts in iconicity: the visual between
visible and invisible (Didi-Huberman), the iconic criticism (Boehm),
the hermeneutics of iconoclashes (Latour) and iconicity as medium of
the imaginary (Nancy). These references may be evaluated for a theory
of iconicity in a protestant perspective.
"Das 'Leben' der Bilder -
und die Kunst der Bild-Überwindung in Mythos, Robotik und
Gentechnologie" ("The ‘Living’ Image – or
how to Overcome the Picture.
Myths, Robotic and Gene
Technology")
PD Dr. Christiane Kruse (Kunstgeschichte, Philipps-Universität
Marburg)
18. Juni um 20 Uhr, Ernst-von-Hülsen Haus, Konzertsaal, Biegenstr.
11
The western cultural history of pictures has always been concerned
with the question how to overcome the artefact or the picture, i.e. how
to invent new technologies imitating or simulating the natural world.
The talk refers to what I call the transiconic impulse in
ancient and modern art technology beginning with Pygmalion’s sculpture,
a work of perfect mimesis. In the age of new technologies, clones or
nanotechnology, we now seem to enter a new state of mimesis. Dolly or
Polly, the first sheep-clones, has realized an old dream of the human
being: the creation of artificial life. Soon it may be possible to
create men of our own image. The different phenomenon of the artefact
intended as ‘living’ being shows a general aspect of western visual
culture depending on Platon’s dichotomic concept of art and
nature, death and life, appearance and reality etc. The picture, the
work of art, the clone, I will show, live between these dichotomies
their own lives – in our imagination.
"Man as man's model – Human models in our
scientific self-interpretation"
Prof. Dr. Paul Ziche (History of Modern Philosophy,
Universität Utrecht, Niederlande)
23. Juni um 20 Uhr, Ernst-von-Hülsen Haus, Konzertsaal, Biegenstr.
11
Given both man's complexity and our apparently intimate familiarity
with his capacities, it seems to be an attractive strategy to model the
more complex human achievements through man himself: For Augustine has
the soul a head as well as feet, Descartes and Kepler study vision by
placing a human-like observer, as it were, inside the head, and more
modern presentations of neuroscience often visualize processes in the
brain through homunculi. The philosophy of mind, however, has argued
forcefully against this type of visualization; modeling man through man
seems a blatant case of circular reasoning. It seems, on the other
hand, almost impossible to understand the human capacity for
self-reflective thinking in other terms than through a self-duplication
of man into a subject and an object. The lecture will explore these
conflicting attitudes with regard to the self-modelling of man through
man, and will discuss the plausibility of this strategy, with a focus
on historical and contemporary modelling strategies in the natural
sciences.
