Skip to main content

CGS organises a lecture by Dr. Adam Knowles

CGS organises a lecture by Dr. Adam Knowles

Event From Date
Event End Date
Event Title
CGS organises a lecture by Dr. Adam Knowles
Event Details

Centre of German Studies
JNU


Invites you to a lecture by

Adam Knowles 


Drexel University and IIT Delhi

Heidegger and the Question of Silence


According to the philosophical doxa, Martin Heidegger is first and foremost a thinker of being. Indeed, Heidegger himself seemed to confirm this well-established assumption by referring repeatedly to the question of being as the sole question that drives his thinking. In this talk, I seek to counter this basic assumption about Heidegger by arguing that a different question holds together the many paths of his thinking. Heidegger, I will argue, is first and foremost a thinker of silence, i.e. a thinker for whom the fundamental ontological questions cannot even be posed until philosophy has reoriented itself in its relationship to language. By inhabiting a space of silence carved out within words, Heidegger’s philosophy is rooted in the failure not to communicate itself. 


As a thinker of silence who himself was unresponsive to or even contributed to structures of silencing, there are significant ethical stakes to casting Heidegger as a thinker of silence. This is only intensified by the fact that the silence is the predominate theme which holds together Heidegger’s often diffuse Black Notebooks from 1932 to 1945, which wind through many forms of unsayability, withdrawal, and stillness. How do we read Heidegger’s silences? Did Heidegger merely cultivate a practice of philosophical silence directed towards nothing, or was there something which his thinking sought to be silent about? 

 

Adam Knowles is Assistant Teaching Professor at Drexel University (USA) and Visiting Faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. His book Heidegger’s Fascist Affinities: A Politics of Silence will be published by Stanford University Press in March 2019. He is translating Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, 1942-1948 for Indiana University Press.


Date & Time

Monday,25thFebruary 2019,4 p. m.

Venue

Committee Room (331), SLL & CS New Block
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.