Félix Duque

The following text revolves around a contrast in the form of a chiasm: the human skin of the word is the word of human skin, of its orifices and crevices. Halfway between a phenomenology of the life-world and quasi-surrealistic automatic writing, we attempt per impossibile to restore its rights to the living and speaking body, to allow the ear to speak, the eye to smell, and the hands to look – an exercise in synesthesia not devoid of a certain irony. In the process, the rules of writing are rendered as flexible, not to say evanescent, as they were in the beginnings of writing. Thus written language twists and turns against itself and, in accordance with the teachings of the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus, becomes a spur for oral, and corporeal communication, rather than simply replacing it. This is why we ask the reader to let himself be carried along by the flow of language, instead of attempting intellectually to recombine the fixed, rigid, clear and distinct units of meaning that serve to transform living speech into an instrument of domination.

Nowadays, the question about the possibility of speaking about “art” in the context of a massive evolution of audiovisual technologies, and their comprehensive influence in a globalized world, is at stake. In this sense, contemporary art, despite its similarities with technique’s modus operandi, does not work with the goal to facilitate humankind access to natural and artificial resources. On the contrary, art fosters the viewing of the indisposition, opacity and retractability of those very same materials of which the works are made. In summary, while technique opens new spaces, designates places and creates networks of meaning, contemporary art however, shows how those opening processes are tangled with the creation of marginality, within and against the ideological investments on certain political axis of power.

El ensayo se propone ofrecer una visión de conjunto de la obra de Martin Heidegger, centrada en el problema de la verdad del ser, verdad que brilla en la actitud del «estar-ahí a la muerte», en la obra de arte como cruce en quiasmo y enel ensamblaje cósmico de la Cuadratura. Se hace resaltar así la fuerte unidad que preside el camino del pensar heideggeriano, más allá de las consabidas, didácticas y artificiosas divisiones, vueltas y contravueltas; más allá, tanihién de interpretaciones externas y forzadas.The aim of this paper is to offer a thematic re-examination of Heidegger’s work focused on the question of being’s truth. A truth which is shining in the attitude of the Da-sein zum Tode, in Ihe work of art as a chiasmatical interference and also in the «World-Cross-Notching» of the Geviert, in order to bring out the strong unity of te Heideggerian way of thought, which is far away of the «didactical» and made-up academical divisions, tums and retums, also beyond of wrested, external interpretations.

El ensayo intenta fijar la deriva de las imágenes modernas del mal, según los estereotipos que el arte y la educación han ido fijando en el imaginario colectivo burgués, y pretende mostrar una progresiva desustancialización de tales figuras, viradas hacia lo cómico y grotesco, a la vez que, precisamente por ello, crece el sentimiento de horror y de angustia ante una oscilación frente a la cual el ciudadano «normal» no sabe literalmente a qué atenerse. En este esbozo de una lógica del exceso, se examinan las figuras decimonónicas de lo criminal, lo fantasmal y lo satánico, las cuales retornan ulteriormente en la llamada postmodernidad como terrorismo, drogadicción y travestismo.

Even though Kant, because of his modus operandi, has been saluted as the renewer of dialectic method (after mature Plato), nonetheless his ars exponiendi, as apparent, for example, in the subjective deduction of categories, has always been characteristically dual (noumenon/phenomenon, understanding/sensibility, theory/praxis, etc.) or fourfold (as in the antinomies, eventually liable to be reduced to two pairs in conflict). However, in the second Critique a notable contradiction arises in a judgment that is pretendedly analytic and also the consequence of the categorical imperative commanding that every man be treated as an end in himself (as representing humanity in his person). There, it is said that such consideration occurs at the same time and in the same regard as the use of man as a means. Far from treating this contradiction as a mere mistake, this article tries to unfold the fruitfulness of that contradictory judgment in order to reconcile the world of politics, based on the spheres of work and private property (characteristic of the realm of means), with the world of morality (beyond mere ethics).With the purpose of elucidating this point, we will resort to the ‘useful fiction’ of a ‘stepmother Nature’ (in the mundane) and to the heterogony of ends, which transform the external freedom (first and most important of passions) into a reflexive and Law-bounded freedom, open to condolence and sacrifice.

In this essay Europe is initially featured as the great cruise ship in Federico Fellini’s film “E la nave va”: a ship full of people, at the mercy of stormy seas, with more people ready to come aboard. Actually Europe’s problem is in keeping together demos and ethos, the whole of individuals and populations, and their effective social and cultural commonality. Therefore, rather than pursuing the images of an improbable collective unity, Europe can be depicted as a fleet of small autonomous ships that, together, follow the same direction cooperating among themselves.

Hegel. La Odisea del Espíritu reúne la totalidad de las conferencias pronunciadas en el congreso homónimo que, coordinado por Félix Duque, se celebró en el Círculo de Bellas Artes y la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid entre el 28 de mayo y el 1 de junio de 2007 con motivo del segundo centenario de la publicación de "La Fenomenología del Espíritu". El congreso reunió a los mayores especialistas en la obra del pensador alemán y el resultado es una aportación de primer orden a los estudios hegelianos, un libro de referencia imprescindible para quien quiera adentrarse en el magma de ideas y sugerencias de su libro capital. Incluye ensayos de Félix Duque, Volker Rühle, Walter Jaeschke, Jorge Pérez de Tudela, José María Ripalda, Eduardo Álvarez, Dietrich Von Engelhardt, Antonio Gómez Ramos, Klaus Vieweg, Ángel Gabilondo, Jacinto Rivera de Rosales, Paolo D'Angelo, Christoph Jamme, Vincenzo Vitiello y Klaus Düsing. Como el lector, hoy, podrá apreciar, los ensayos están hogaño ordenados como antaño se sucedieron las sesiones del Congreso, es decir: cada articulista interpreta y escribe para su coleto y el de sus lectores un capítulo o tema de la obra. Y así se va siguiendo con regular obediencia la sobresaltada vía de las experiencias de la conciencia, o sea: tal como la obra fue concebida entre -Hegel dixit- dolores del parto de un mundo nuevo que, de no haberse malogrado tan pronto, habría hecho de aquélla, efectivamente, palabra de ayer. Del "Preámbulo" de Félix Duque.