International Summer School 2008
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the Federal Foreign Office
14th-27th June 2008
Images of Human Nature
Leonardo Da Vinci, Studies of Embryos (detail)
c.1510-13, Pen over Red Chalk
12 x 8" (30.5 x 20 cm)
Royal Library, Windsor Castle
The second International Summer School organized by the Graduate Center
for Humanities and Social Sciences takes place in Marburg from the 14th
until the 27th of June 2008. In cooperation with the Images of Human
Nature Project (Projekt Menschenbilder) of the Faculty of Protestant
Theology of the Philipps-Universität Marburg, international graduate
students, against the background of their various dissertation
projects, will get the opportunity to debate the state of the latest
research with acclaimed experts and introduce their own projects. The
Summer School is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds
from the Federal Foreign Office.
The importance of images for common orientation, communication, and
humanity`s self-understanding is increasingly recognized and debated in
the last two decades. The so-called “iconic turn” (Gottfried Boehm)
will be examined and explained from the perspective of various academic
fields, such as art history, media sciences, communication science,
philosophy, psychology, semiotics, computer science, ethnology and many
more. But even within these disciplines several basic approaches are
once again in competition with each other, so that the visual media
sciences must be spoken of in the plural. Images already structure
cognition and recognition, such that our self-perception is
characterised by visual images. On this basis Hans Belting developed
the concept of a (critically discussed) “Image Anthropology” which
attempts to determine the fundamental significance of the image for the
human being. Meanwhile, the gap between iconological image
comprehension in a narrow sense and the metaphorical meaning of images
is being bridged. Images in this sense mean concrete depictions of
“patterns of action” and “expectations of action”; therein founding its
normative dimension, as well as founding its orientating functions. The
excellence of the concept of an “image of mankind” lies in that its
ambiguity allows the various aspects of the image and image application
to shine through. The expression of an “image of human nature“ shows
that the concept of image connects different dimensions such as
descriptiveness and normativity, presentation and cognition,
individuality and universality with each other. The multitude of
various aspects leads once again to the problem that can only be worked
on through a multitude of perspectives and disciplines; still, if the
collective purpose of research ought not to be lost from sight then
these ought to be included in collective interdisciplinary dialogue.
Therefore within the two week Summer School, central and fundamental
questions will be discussed on in collective meetings while specific
problems will be pondered in specific subject groups.
