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In Search of the Other – Vilém Flusser and Dialogical Life / In the Shadow of Post-History – Introduction to the Philosophy of Vilém Flusser

How does the philosophy of Vilém Flusser present the subject of moral values? Can we talk about Vilém Flusser’s ethics? Who is the Other and how do we engage with him/her? Flusser’s philosophy, especially the notion of dialogue, attempt to give an answer to these fundamental existential, moral, and social questions that our postmodern world is confronted with. Interestingly enough, Flusser’s philosophy describes the experience of meeting the Other starting out from a reflection on media.

In Search of the Other (PDF 464.13 KB)

O inóspito: uma pequena arqueologia do conceito de espaço no pensamentode Vilém Flusser

The article proposes an archeology of the concept of space in Vílem Flusser’s thinking. To do so, it reflects on the inhospitable, which refers to space and spatiality. In its Latin etymology, the word comes from hospitalitas, and carries the meaning “condition of the outlandish”, the traveler, the enemy, the nomad. Thus, we think about the inhospitable as a quality of space that houses the hostile, subjecting us to the condition of foreigners who feel the hostility in the space we inhabit. For Flusser, humanity has gone through three major catastrophes, all related to the concept of space. The first is the hominization, a result of the abandonment of the treetops by an animal that came to terms with the ground, making itself more vulnerable to predators. The second is the civilizing process, which ocurred ten thousand years ago, when nomadic man sits and stays earthbound; space is limited and increasingly filled up with others, the guests, who are at heart, hostile. It is the problem of the other. After those ten thousand years of a sedentary lifestyle, our home became so inhospitable that we went back to being nomads; we are confronted by the inhospitable “within ourselves”, subsequently, inaugurating the third catastrophe.

O inóspito (PDF 178.01 KB)

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