The topic of “the new” is in modern philosophy always connected to the question of orientation in time/space. As soon as Descartes declared the need to ground metaphysics anew, he was faced with the question of orientation. The same problem is present in Kant, the philosopher of the Enlightenment: how can we orientate ourselves in thinking? How do we know that mankind does progress in history? Is there only one or many futures? Despite fierce critique of both Descartes and Kant, the same topics still persist in contemporary philosophy in the guise of questions of creativity, invention, and time. The future is radically disjunctive; it can go in many ways (Derrida: avenir/futur). It is in this context that we find the need to reinvent the public and the future (Deleuze’s peuple-à-venir, Derrida’s démocratie-à-venir, etc.)
Peter Klepec works as Senior Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU), Ljubljana, Slovenia. His main areas of research are French contemporary philosophy, German Idealism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, critique of ideology.
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Friday I
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Public in the Making? A Philosophical Point of View