Hartmut Rosa. Unavailability. Philosophical reading seminar

With the turn to the modern subject, apostrophized by Kant as Copernican, the world becomes its object: the object is what the subject has under control. When man becomes its "ruler and owner" (Descartes), nature loses its magic and mystery. The larger and more expansive the radius and reach of the all-constituting and controlling subject, the more available a world laid out as a buffet, which one need only access with a good appetite. But is such a land of milk and honey a dream or rather a nightmare of a narcissistic modernity, in which the world atrophies into an echo chamber because it finds no counterpart in the object? Is that which, despite everything, remains outside and left over, when everything that can be done is done and everything that can be enforced is enforced, not what really matters to us? Shouldn't there be, as in the children's book, "more than everything"? And isn't the snow cannon a poor surrogate for longing when we wish for a white Christmas? At least that's the view of sociologist and resonance theorist Hartmut Rosa, for whom "our relationship to snow [...] reflects the drama of the modern relationship to the world as if in a crystal ball": "liveliness, contact and real experience" only arise "from the encounter with the unavailable. A world that was completely known, planned and controlled would be a dead world. This is not a metaphysical insight, but an everyday experience." The reading seminar provides an opportunity to reflect together on this everyday experience without shying away from metaphysical insights on the basis of Rosa's brilliant essay.literature basis: Hartmut Rosa: Unverfügbarkeit, Residenz Verlag 2018

Course leader: Dr. Rößner, Christian. Dr. Lic. Christian Rößner is the administrator of the Chair of Philosophy at the Faculty of Theology in Trier and a member of the Young Academy of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz.Annegret Wolfram has many years of experience as a course leader in the field of literature and philosophy. More at www.literaturferien.de