Culture and society

RAFAEL GARCÍA ALONSO
Lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid and of the C.R.I.F. Las Acacias (Madrid)

INTRODUCTION TO JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET’S AESTHETIC

José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) wanted to integrate fundamental ontological research in his work with an analysis of the special characteristics of his time. The spectator that he often alludes to is this “observant friend” who, armed with some profoundly significant methodological notions, perceives inquiringly and shrewdly what his immediate reality is and tries to diagnose its course. As a result he is able to wonder about the vital characteristics of art and at the same time study the wide variety of realities, that are even divergent and contradictory, which mankind has called art. As a thinker who paid great attention to the circumstances and sensibilities of each period in history, he questioned, especially in the 1920s, what role art played in the collective life of his historical period and what role it should play.

Day: 1st of February 2006
Time: 5 pm

Day: 2nd of February 2006
Times: 11 am and 5 pm

Day: 3rd of February 2006
Time: 11 am

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JOSÉ LUIS PARDO
Philosophy Lecturer at the Complutense University in Madrid

POLITICS AND AESTHETICS IN THE PERIOD OF INVERTED PLATONISM

In 1967, the French thinker Gilles Deleuze took up Nietzsche’s instruction “to invert Platonism” once again to describe how modern art operates, in a description that is in keeping with some highly significant works from popular culture that appeared at the same time. The programme designed with this slogan, however, aims to go beyond the arts: Inverted Platonism may be the movement that our thinking needs to become definitively modern. In this movement, the category of enactments no longer falls within the dialectic between originals and copies, but aims precisely to eliminate this, and challenge both notions at the same time. Perhaps this is the time to ask ourselves about the legacy of that project.

Days:
13th and 14th of February 2006
Times: 11 am and 5 pm


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