"Postponed to mid October until further notice"

Roundtable with Jens Hanssen (professor and director of OIB), Sami Khatib (research associate, OIB), Nadia Bou Ali (associate professor, AUB, director of CHLA), Marie Sanazaro (assistant professor, CHLA, AUB), and Rana Bizri (lecturer, CHLA, AUB)

For attending, please register at sek@dont-want-spam.orient-institut.org
 

In his article “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” published in 1784, Immanuel Kant makes a strong point for the freedom of public speech: “The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among mankind; the private use of reason may, however, often be very narrowly restricted, without otherwise hindering the progress of enlightenment. By the public use of one's own reason I understand the use that anyone as a scholar makes of reason before the entire literate world. I call the private use of reason that which a person may make in a civic post or office that has been entrusted to him.” The public use of reason defines scholarly practice at its core; it cannot be restricted with regard to responsibilities, duties or obligations that one may have in one's assigned position or post, within or without academia. These responsibilities, duties and obligations constitute the restricted realm of freedom that Kant calls the "private use of reason." By contrast, the unrestricted freedom of the public use of reason is at issue when one acts, writes and speaks as a scholar and scientist, addressing the public, i.e. “the entire literate world.” Regardless of its specific juridical form, today the public use of reason is both protected and restricted within the realms of academic freedom and freedom of speech. In this roundtable, we discuss how the dialectics of freedom and restriction has changed today in light of undesired, denied or disavowed realities that challenge the views and alliances of state actors who claim to protect academic freedom.

 
This event is part of the lecture series (Ringvorlesung)
“Kant and the Non-European: Critique, Justice and Freedom”

On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Königsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) and the Center for Critical Humanities for the Liberal Arts (CHLA) of the American University of Beirut are organizing a series of lectures and panel discussions on key Kantian concepts, their legacies and circulations. The lecture series is scheduled for the entire academic year 2024-2025, on site in Beirut, Berlin, Cairo, and online. 
 

Kant is widely considered to be the key figure of modern continental philosophy, giving rise to the notion of subjectivity and departing from a medieval worldview of non-scientific metaphysics based on theology. Kant’s famous “Copernican turn” and his claim on objective validity of subjective cognition still inform the philosophical discourse of the 21st century. Kant coined the concept of critique and made it the key term of his critical philosophy, conceiving critique as a positive activity of inquiry and reasoning. 
 

We are interested in more recent accounts of Kant’s limited, i.e. Eurocentric, notion of universality and how historical and epistemic limitations of his age are ingrained in his notions of anthropology, history and teleological progress. At the same time, we discuss the radical potentials of some of his key concepts (e.g. sensus communis, public use of reason, aim of nature, radical evil), which resist their full historicization within the context of Enlightenment thought and early German Idealism.
 

Overall, this series of lectures and panels also attempts to bring the Kantian legacy of continental philosophy in conversation with modern Arabic intellectual history. Of particular interest is the Nahda, the period and project of cultural effervescence from the beginning of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century. Depending on one’s interpretation, it represents the beginning of a still "unfinished" Arab drive for enlightenment and emancipation, or it marks the colonial end of an independent cultural development. Either way, the Nahda represents a kind of Archimedean point for Arab modernity on which truth claims about the Arab past and future have been balanced ever since.
 

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