Centre of German Studies
JNU
Philosophy Colloquium
Invites you to the opening lecture of the lecture series on: ‘The Idea of a Synthetic Philosophy’
Babu Thaliath
Centre of German Studies, SLL & CS, JNU
on
The Synthetic Philosophy
My lecture is an attempt to introduce the idea of a synthetic philosophy. In all its origins or cultural sources, philosophy proves itself more or less consistently as a fundamental science that searches for the possibility of binding knowledge, i.e. the synthetic-cognitive nexus between the subject and the object, whereby the object to be known clearly indicates the world or our environment. In concrete terms, philosophy is characterised from the outset by the human mind’s quest to find adequate cognitive access to objective reality, which manifests itself in man’s incessant cognitive struggle with worldly reality. This binding function of knowledge argues for a fundamental synthesis in knowledge between the human mind and the given world, and thus for a synthetic philosophy. In my lecture, I try to show how the original synthetic nature of philosophy is subject to a historicity, i.e., to certain historical transitions, as best exemplified in the transition from the medieval to the early modern period, and thereby exhibits a tendency towards the analytical. Cartesian modernity famously prompted the advent of the philosophy of mind and, in contrast, the equally historic advent of the axiomatic sciences. Both were originally conceived within the framework of a unified mechanical philosophy, although a clear divergence between the philosophy of mind and that of the body cannot be overlooked. These binary currents were based on a unifying strategy of modernity, namely, the final resolution of the mental and phenomenal aporias, inherited from the scholastic philosophy, through a philosophical and scientific axiomatics. This strategic axiomatics of modernity, however, ultimately proves to be an axiomatic masking or concealment of ‘living’ aporias, which are therefore historically destined to resurface or resurrect. The idea of a synthetic philosophy should resume or take into account the incessant aporias, so that the factum of the object – the world in general – can participate directly in a referential way in the processes of philosophical and scientific cognition and, when necessary, dictate to the knowing subject the missing, even historically and paradigmatically suppressed, knowledge or possibilities of knowing.
Time and Date: 4.00 p.m., Monday, 18th November 2024
Venue: Committee Room (212)
School of Language, Literature & Culture Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
