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Jan Völker: To end the End
To end the End
(p. 145 – 162)

Jan Völker

To end the End
Philosophy and the Poem in Badiou

PDF, 18 pages

In his article, Voelker examines Badiou’s reinscription of the Platonic distinction between poetry and philosophy, out of which he develops an account of the contemporaneity of philosophy. For Badiou, the author argues, a repetition of this founding gesture of philosophy is necessary. However, this is complicated both by the fact that the Platonic gesture itself does not amount to a simple dismissal of poetry, and that a contemporary reinscription of the distinction between poetry and philosophy takes place in a completely changed situation, namely that of modernity.

  • aesthetics
  • art criticism
  • Walter Benjamin
  • art
  • temporality
  • contemporary art
  • theatre / drama
  • Marcel Duchamp
  • art theory
  • Theodor W. Adorno
  • poetry
  • politics

My language
English

Selected content
English

Jan Völker

Jan Völker

holds a research position at the Collaborative Research Centre 626 at the Freie Universität Berlin. His research and publications focus on Kantian aesthetics, contemporary political philosophy, and the relation of art and politics. He is co-editor of the series morale provisoire at the Berlin based publisher Merve and co-translator of works by Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière. Publications include: Ästhetik der Lebendigkeit. Kants dritte Kritik (2011), »Kant and the ›spirit as an enlivening principle‹« in: Filosvni vesnik (2009).

Other texts by Jan Völker for DIAPHANES
Frank Ruda (ed.), Jan Völker (ed.): Art and Contemporaneity

Frank Ruda (ed.), Jan Völker (ed.)

Art and Contemporaneity

Softcover, 176 pages

PDF, 176 pages

Although art always takes place in time, its manifestations – actual works of art – can be characterized by the specific and close connection they maintain between contemporaneity and timelessness. Their relation to time must be differentiated in a twofold manner: on the one hand, there is the relation to the time in which they are embedded, and, on the other, the relation to the time that they themselves create. In particular historical conditions a specific temporality of the artwork emerges. Both temporalities are superimposed on by one another, namely as a timelessness of artworks as such. The book assembles a variety of thinkers that confront one of the most crucial questions when dealing with the very definition, concept and operativity of art: How to link art to the concept of the contemporary?