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.

Las reticencias de Hegel sobre la viabilidad de la democracia en el estado moderno pueden explicarse parcialmente como una "querella de palabras", ya que él entiende ese término en el sentido original griego. Cuando se atiende al final del capítulo VI de la Fenomenología del espíritu, y se traduce en sentido secularmente "político" la doctrina del "perdón de los pecados", sustituyendo al "Dios reconciliador" por una conciencia colectiva, formada a partir de aquellos espíritus escogidos que Nietzsche denominara como "buenos europeos", se advierte entonces la posibilidad, no sólo de cerrar satisfactoriamente el curso fenomenológico de la conciencia moral, sino también y sobre todo de aplicar esa concepción a un problema acuciante como el de la futura -y tan controvertida- Konstitution europea, en cuanto plasmación de la interna "Constitución" [Verfassungl de la actual Unión, sin que pueda ser entendida en consecuencia aquélla como una imposición externa sobre ésta.Hegel's hesitancy over the viability of democracy in the modern state may be partially explained as a "dispute of words", since his understanding of the term corresponds to the original Greek meaning. On examining the end of Chapter 6 of the Phenomenology of the Spirit, the doctrine of the "forgiveness of sins" may be interpreted in a secular "political" sense, substituting the "reconciliation God" with a collective conscience, formed from the chosen spirits that Nietzsche calls "good Europeans". It is then noted that not only is it possible to satisfactorily close the phenomenological course of the moral conscience, but also and above all, this conception can be applied to such a pressing problem as that of the future -and controversial- European Konstitution, as an expression of the internal "Constitution" [Verfassung] of the present day Union. The former cannot therefore be understood as an external imposition on the latter.

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.

The daily and necessary recollection of the terrorist threat on a global scale entails on the power’s side the strengthening of the surveillance of citizens, precisely in the name of a need for better security measures in favour of the citizens , which results on the citizen’s part in an always stronger repression of the admission of suffering . In the globalised society, the other’s suffering has become incomprehensible. The current anti-terrorist rhetoric consists in turning the loss of the feeling of the alterity into an illusion of tolerance. Maybe this is the reason why neither the State nor the “honest” citizen would benefit from praying: “but deliver us from our daily terrorism.”.