Zoom: https://umac.zoom.us/j/92096145103

Password: 319356

Abstract

The majority of both traditional and contemporary object-oriented ontologies rely on the presumption that reality has a selfsame structure that exists independently of the human mind, but nonetheless corresponds more or less exactly to the way in which human beings experience reality. In the present world, however, this view is being challenged from two sides: on the one hand, the calls for a “posthuman” or “post-anthropocentric” approach question the validity of privileging the human perspective against other living species, together with whom we are facing an ecological catastrophe, while on the other hand, the ever more intelligent forms of technology — and modes of surveillance and control that they make possible — infringe on the limits of human social agency in new and unpredictable ways. The talk will propose a systematic view on how to overcome the privilege of the human viewpoint by a reshuffling of our ontological and epistemological discourses through a dialogue of Western philosophical minority traditions and Asian thought, aiming at a radical process philosophy.

Bio

Professor Rein Raud (born 1961) is the Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies and Cultural Theory at Tallinn University. He is the author of “Being in Flux: A Post-Anthropocentric Ontology of the Self” (Polity 2021), on which his lecture strongly relies, as well as “Asian Worldviews: Religions, Philosophies, Political Theories” (Wiley 2021), “Meaning in Action: Outline of an Integral Theory of Culture” (Polity 2016) and a large number of articles on comparative philosophy, notably on the thought of Dōgen.