Innovationen und Reproduktionen in Kulturen und Gesellschaften (IRICS) Wien, 9. bis 11. Dezember 2005

   
 
S E C T I O N S
 

OPEN AND CLOSED SYSTEMS: The Improbable Way towards an Equilibrium

Chair of the section/Suggestions, Abstracts, Contributions to:

Manuel Durand-Barthez (Toulouse)

 
Speakers >>
   
 

ABSTRACT:

"There is the economic value system of business is business, there is art with its l’art pour l’art, architecture with its functionalism, there are military, technological and athletic value systems - each of them ‘unfettered’ in its autonomy, each resolved to push home with radical thoroughness the final conclusions of its logic and to break its own record. And woe to the others, if in this conflict of systems that precariously maintain an equilibrium, one should gain the preponderance and overtop all the rest, as the military system does in war, or as the economic system now is doing, a system to which even war is subordinate, - woe to the others!" The discussion is based upon the three closed systems analyzed by Hermann Broch in his novel The Sleepwalkers (1930-1932) and in his essay about Hofmannsthal (1947-1948). How can we consider the actuality of these autonomous systems? Is it positive to speak, as Broch does, about a " decay of all values," and what is, in fact, positive ? Should we be resigned to undergo a shattered world of Sachlichkeit (relevance, objectivity, impartiality, realism, matter-of-factness, functionalism), or should we approve the opinion of the Swedish sociologist and journalist Göran Rosenberg, who analyzes these paradoxes in such a way: "There is of course a perfectly normal state of mind between confusion and certainty, between despair and bliss, and that is - uncertainty, ambivalence, ambiguity. Which I think, happens to be the true human condition, at least more true than the long-lived Western fiction of a human march towards fulfillment and certainty. " [The Heritage of a Century, Helsinki Forum (2001)].


ReferentInnen / Speakers

  • Endre Kiss (Budapest): Das Offene und das Geschlossene in Hermann Brochs Philosophischer Diskurs  [ABSTRACT]
  • Véronique Liard (UCO Angers): Zerfall der rationalen Werte, Aufgaben des Irrationalen: Brochs Dichtung als Versuch einer Sinngebung  [ABSTRACT]
  • Ester Saletta (Universität von Bergamo, Italien): Brochs und Jelineks "Babel": Ein geschlossenes Wertsystem"  [ABSTRACT]
  • Hans-Edwin Friedrich (Institut für Deutsche Philologie, München): Der "einheitliche und einheitssetzende Grundgedanke des Ganzen". Totalität und Essayismus in Hermann Brochs "Huguenau oder die Sachlichkeit"  [ABSTRACT]
  • Gunther Martens (Deutsches Seminar - Universität Gent): Argumentation in Brochs Fiktion  [ABSTRACT]
  • Wolfgang Müller-Funk (Institut für Germanistik - Universität Wien): Hermann Brochs Wertetheorie im Kontext der kulturellen Wende  [ABSTRACT]
  • Jacques Pelletier (Université du Quebec, Montreal): Broch and Marxism: an oblique relation | Broch et le marxisme: un rapport oblique  [ABSTRACT]
  • Christian Sinn (Universität Konstanz /Universität Erfurt): Hermann Brochs Werttheorie  [ABSTRACT]
  • Doren Wohlleben (Universität Augsburg): Hannah Arendt - Hermann Broch: ethisch-poetische Korrespondenzen und Divergenzen  [ABSTRACT]
  • Vincent Ferré (Paris XIII): Is the Zerfall der Werte an essay? Essayismus and its consequences on theory in Die Schlafwandler  [ABSTRACT]

Innovations and Reproductions in Cultures and Societies
(IRICS) Vienna, 9 - 11 december 2005

H O M E
WEBDESIGN: Peter R. Horn 2005-09-21