Symposium: Vladimir Jankélévitch in the 21st centuryisj.acu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/02/IOSJ5563... · INTRODUCTION 01 Description: Vladimir Jankélévitch (1903-85)

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Symposium: Vladimir Jankélévitch in the 21st century

15 - 16 February 2018Level 12, Tenison Woods House, ACU, 8 Napier St, North Sydney

Co-organised by: Marguerite LaCaze, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland Magdalena Zolkos, Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic University

B ABOUT US

01INTRODUCTION

Description: Vladimir Jankélévitch (1903-85) taught at the French Institute in Prague, the University of Toulouse and other universities and then held the chair in moral philosophy at the Sorbonne (1951-78) and published on a range of subjects, especially ethics and the virtues, musical aesthetics, death, and the work of Bergson and Schelling. Researchers of philosophy of music have long read Jankélévitch’s writing on Debussy, Fauré, and Ravel, and his passionate essay ‘Pardonner?’ published in Critical Inquiry in 1996 has provoked a range of responses. Partly inspired by Jacques Derrida’s and Emmanuel Levinas’ discussion of his work, more of Jankélévitch’s texts are being translated into English, thus garnering a wider scholarly interest in the details of his thought. The published translation of his book Forgiveness in 2005, followed by the publication of The Bad Conscience and Henri Bergson in 2015, means that a significant body of his work is available for international twenty-first century readers’ scholarly interpretation and debate, and there has been increasing academic interest in his conceptualizations and philosophical use of forgiveness, apophasis, irreversibility, resentment, repentance, and love. This roundtable aims to further the rebirth of interest in Jankélévitch’s rich, insightful, and beautiful texts.

The papers presented as part of this symposium discuss philosophical problems and concepts in Jankélévitch’s work, its contextualizations and reception within the field of contemporary continental philosophy, as well as the relevance of Jankélévitch’s thought for the current issues of social justice, politics and aesthetics of public memory, temporality and creation.Organisers:Marguerite La Caze, Philosophy, University of Queensland Magdalena Zolkos, Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic University, Sydney.Primary texts:Jankélévitch, Vladimir. 2015a. The Bad Conscience. Trans. Andrew Kelley. Chicago: University of Chicago.—. 2015b. Henri Bergson. Trans. Nils. F. Schott, Durham; Duke University Press. —. 2005. Forgiveness. Trans. Andrew Kelley. Chicago: University of Chicago.—. 2003. Music and the Ineffable, Trans. Carolyn Abbate. Princeton: Princeton University Press. —. 1996. ‘Should we Pardon them?’ Critical Inquiry, 22, 552-572.—. 1959. Ravel. Trans. Margaret Crosland. New York: Grove Press.

02 PROGRAM

Program

Thursday 15 February Chair: Marguerite La Caze

TIME DESCRIPTION

8.45-9.00 Start: Opening remarks and welcomeDirector of the Institute for Social Justice, Nikolas Kompridis

9.00-10.00 Diane PerpichClemson UniversityBad conscience and the face of the Other.

10.00-10.15 Break: Morning tea

10.15-11.15 Paul AtkinsonMonash UniversityVladimir Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson and the emergence of a transitory aesthetics.

11.15-11.30 Break

11.30-12.30 Alexandre LefebvreUniversity of SydneyJankélévitch on Bergson: living in time.

12.30-13.30 Break: Lunch

13.30-14.30 Magdalena ZolkosInstitute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic UniversityThe work of remorse, or Francois Ozon as a reader of Jankélévitch.

14.30-14.45 Break: Afternoon tea

14.45-15.45 José Manuel BeatoUniversity of CoimbraParadoxes of virtue in the moral philosophy of Vladimir Jankélévitch

15.45-16.00 Break

16.00-17.30 Translators and editors panel.Clovis Salgado Gontijo, Andrew Kelly, Alexandre Lefebvre

18:00 Dinner

03PROGRAM

Friday 16 February Chair: Magdalena Zolkos

TIME DESCRIPTION

9:30-10:30 Peter BankiWestern Sydney UniversityHyper-ethical forgiveness and the inexpiable.

10:30-10:45 Break: Morning tea

10:45-11:45 Clovis Salgado GontijoFaculdade Jesuíta de Filosofia e Teologia, FAJEThe philosophy of the je-ne-sais-quoi and the possibility of a non-religious spirituality.

11:45-12:00 Break

12:00-13:00 Marguerite La CazeUniversity of QueenslandI can’t beat it. Dimensions of the bad conscience in Manchester by the Sea.

13:00-14:00 Break: Lunch

14:00-15:00 Andrew KellyBradley UniversityJankélévitch and the metaphysics of humility.

04 PRESENTERS

Abstract: With regard to Bergson’s legacy, Vladimir Jankélévitch claimed that we should not only commemorate his work but try to develop a mode of thinking that is aligned with how “Bergson wanted to be rethought.” Jankélévitch certainly rethinks many of Bergson’s ideas, particularly in his writings on music – from Music and the Ineffable to his texts on fin-de-siècle French composers. One of his main criticisms of music scholarship is that there is too much emphasis on spatial metaphors drawn from the study of the score, rather than on the temporality of listening. This aligns with Bergson’s dismissal of ready-made concepts and structures of representation that retroactively and falsely stand in for an event and are, consequently, misguided in their attempt to explain the plenitude of becoming. For Jankélévitch, music does not signify irrespective of programmatic themes and titles, nor does it reference a particular emotion because its sensual value is revealed in the qualitative variability of its immanent movement. Every aspect of music is integrated, such that it is impossible to change a single note, in pitch or tempo, without a corresponding change in the whole. These features of music are all features of Bergson’s durée, but in referring to the specificity of music, Jankélévitch develops much fuller

aesthetic ideas than his antecedent, who was primarily interested in the metaphysical implications of his musical examples. In this paper, I will work through some of the key aspects of Jankélévitch’s writings on music as a means of rethinking Bergson’s philosophy as an aesthetics. Particular attention will be given to Jankélévitch’s analysis of the role of silence as bounded nothingness and the qualitative differences inherent in the speed of performance. This analysis will be framed by broader questions about the conceivability of a truly transitory aesthetics. Bio: Dr Paul Atkinson teaches within the School of Media, Film and Journalism (MFJ), Monash University, Australia. His published articles address a range of topics including Bergsonism, time and cinema, modernism, visual aesthetics, affect theory and modern dance. He is currently working on a book on Bergson’s aesthetics and a series of articles that explore how processual theories of time can be used to rethink movement, narrative and performance. Specifically, recent work addresses how theories of rates of change can be deployed in understanding visual and medial differences.

Paul Atkinson, Monash UniversityTitle: Vladimir Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson and the Emergence of a Transitory Aesthetics

Presenters

Peter Banki, Western Sydney UniversityTitle: Hyper-Ethical Forgiveness and the Inexpiable

Abstract: Where does the need or longing for forgiveness come from? In a recent interview Avital Ronell described forgiveness as “the last vestige of a vanishing God”. Like God, today one can no longer simply take as given that something like forgiveness exists, or that it takes place in a manner which could be presented as a form of knowledge. And yet, as a need or longing it seems incontestable that forgiveness still remains for many a vitally important concern. In the West, as in all cultures dominated by monotheism, forgiveness has almost always been—and is still—considered to be a praiseworthy, if not sacred value. Even Buddhists, who do not necessarily believe in God, still consider it to be an unquestioned good. In this paper, I will carefully read the ambivalence towards forgiveness of twentieth century French philosopher, Vladimir Jankélévitch, who one day announced that forgiveness had died in the death camps. This is even while in a book published shortly beforehand he had spoken of a hyper-ethics of forgiveness which arises from the unconditional duty of love. Jankélévitch’s ambivalent thinking of forgiveness in relation to the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II is compelling in part because of the central place he gives to the idea

of the inexpiable. An inexpiable crime or wrongdoing is one which cannot be expiated through apology and remorse, or else through the deep work of time. The inexpiable puts into question the habitual presuppositions which subtend the value of forgiveness in Western culture, i.e., that of the autonomous subject who presumably has the capacity to apologize or forgive; the performative utterance, which supposedly effectuates such apology or forgiveness and, most importantly, the idea that through such exchanges suffering and guilt may be brought to a closure or end. I will argue that while the idea of inexpiable helps to deconstruct a certain dominant way of understanding forgiveness, it also opens up entirely different possibilities of thinking about and experiencing it. Bio: Peter Banki is Research Associate in Philosophy at Western Sydney University, Australia. He has published on German romanticism, queer theory, and Holocaust studies and also works as a performer, festival producer, and curator. His book, The Forgiveness To Come: The Holocaust and the Hyper-Ethical, is forthcoming with Fordham University Press (December 2017).

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Abstract: The philosophy of Vladimir Jankélévitch consisted of a laborious and inspired attempt to articulate the problem of virtue(s) from the experience of the irreversibility of time and the mobilization of will in the unique and unrepeatable “instant” of the concrete action (Kaïros). How to meditate the traditional “stable disposition for good” in the imponderability of the instant? How to think the moral excellence without egocentric satisfaction, and its constancy from a stripped and perpetually fresh start? This project and its paradoxes takes Jankélévitch beyond Greek eudaimonism, Kantian deontologism, utilitarianism and contemporary contractualism.Jankélévitch conducts a renewal of the question of virtue(s) of which he draws a subtle table, but above all, he pursues its nature between natural disposition, built “habitus”, games of mirror of volitional consciousness, and drastic efficiency of actions that materialize them. Courage, fidelity, sincerity, modesty, humility, equity, tolerance and love form the nuanced “catalog” presented by Jankélévitch. Values and duties, scattered and conflicting, irreducible among each other, outside the hierarchy of a harmonious logos, affirm themselves competitively as a “plural absolute” in a “shredded

firmament”. Given their opposing claims, it is relevant to identify the metempirical and metalogical impulse of Good. Neither Instinct, pleasure, happiness, or utility can form the basis, motives or criteria of morality - which always stands on a “supernatural” and even “superationel” level. Love, as the synthesis and root of all the virtues, is the dynamic and open foundation of ethics, the pneuma – that is, the living spirit or breath of morals. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to establish the concept and clarify the paradoxes of moral virtue in Jankélévitch’s philosophy. Bio: Full-time researcher with a PhD studentship from F.C.T. (Portuguese national funding agency for science, research and technology) at the “Institute for Philosophical Studies” and at the “Center for Classical and Humanistic Studies” of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Coimbra (Portugal). M.A. dissertation on the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel: “O sentimento ontológico em Gabriel Marcel” (2010). He is currently pursuing a PhD in Philosophy. His dissertation explores the connection between the problem of time and virtue in the philosophy of Vladimir Jankélévitch.

José Manuel Beato, University of CoimbraTitle: Paradoxes of virtue in the moral philosophy of Vladimir Jankélévitch

PRESENTERS

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Abstract: In spite of declaring himself as an agnostic, Jankélévitch borrows many of his main philosophical images, concepts and even his negative approach from worldviews built on the principle of transcendence, such as Neoplatonism and Christian mysticism. This procedure is coherent with his thought, since the philosopher identifies, in some privileged human experiences, features that exceed the static categories of the understanding, the univocal descriptions and definitions of demonstrative language, and the assignable localizations of circumscribed objects. Therefore, love, forgiveness, silence, poetry and music may share with the alleged Absolute an inapprehensive, ineffable and intangible nature. Besides that, they manifest a gratuity, an evanescent quality, and a relevance in regard to common activities which is also typical to mystical experiences and to some biblical revelations recalled by the philosopher (the “soft breeze” that displays the presence of God to the Prophet Elijah; the recognition of Christ in the fraction of the bread by the disciples of Emmaus). The notion of “immanent infinities” that pervades and gives impressive unity to jankélévitchian’s ontology, anthropology, ethics and philosophy of music lead us to reconsider our conceptions of transcendence and spirituality. Could the realities that transcend language and the continuous chain of events be considered as transcendent, even if they do not belong to another ontological plan? Could the recognition of an immanent and overflowing mystery that will never

be surpassed nor named (je-ne-sais-quoi) be understood as a sort of spirituality? This paper intends to check these possibilities, especially relevant to the 21st century crisis of institutional religion, reviewing Jankélévitch’s treatment of ineffability, mystery and grace.Bio: Assistant Professor of the Philosophy Department of the Faculdade Jesuíta de Filosofia e Teologia (FAJE), Clovis Salgado Gontijo has a double formation in Music and Philosophy. Bachelor in Music (Faculdade Santa Marcelina, 1999), Master in Music (Texas Christian University, 2002), Bachelor in Philosophy (FAJE, 2007), and Doctor in Philosophy with an emphasis on Aesthetics and Art Theory (Facultad de Artes, Universidad de Chile, 2014, as a Conicyt scholarship recipient), Clovis devoted his doctoral research to the apparent paradox of a nocturnal art, which is particularly solved in the musical evocation of the nocturnal motif. His dissertation was recently adapted and published as a book under the title Ressonâncias noturnas: do indizível ao inefável (Loyola, 2017). Clovis also pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in the School of Music of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), preparing the Brazilian translation of La Musique et l’ineffable, by Jankélévitch. During one year he has contributed to the Brazilian magazine Família Cristã with a column dedicated to the connections between the arts and spirituality. He presently coordinates the interdisciplinary research project “The ineffable in the aesthetic and spiritual experiences” (FAJE/CNPq).

Clovis Salgado Gontijo, the Faculdade Jesuíta de Filosofia e Teologia (FAJE)Title: The philosophy of the je ne sais quoi and the possibility of a non-religious spiritualityin the moral philosophy of Vladimir Jankélévitch

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Andrew Kelly, Bradley UniversityTitle: Jankélévitch and the Metaphysics of Humility

Abstract: When one reflects on Jankélévitch’s philosophy, one initially might think of his wonderful discussions of forgiveness, the bad conscience, and love. But in this presentation, I will attempt to show that humility is a theme in Jankélévitch’s thought that should receive more attention. This is because there is not only a relation between humility and the virtues in Jankélévitch’s philosophy, but also a strong connection in his works between humility and the metaphysical consciousness. By looking at Jankélévitch’s discussion of a ground/foundation—“fondement” or “Grund”—both in Jankélévitch’s very early monograph on Schelling, but also in his discussion of humility in the much later second edition of the Traité des vertus, I hope to show that humility is one of the lynchpins of Jankélévitch’s entire body of thought. In order to do this, I will begin by discussing the notion of foundation/ground, and then move to three other notions

in Jankélévitch, the organ-obstacle, the other, and the mystery, so as to show how humility can be regarded as the basis (or foundation) of all of these. In the cases of both ethics and metaphysics, the starting point for Jankélévitch, is in consciousness or the conscience (“conscience”). The beginning of a moral conscience and the metaphysical conscience—as well as a proper orientation in/with time—is openness. Humility is an essential aspect of this. In the end, the hope is to tie together the intimate connection for Jankélévitch between ethics and metaphysics.Bio: Andrew Kelley is associate professor of philosophy at Bradley University (Peoria, Illinois, U.S.A.) and currently serves as the chair of the Philosophy and Religious Studies deparment there. He is the translator of two books by Vladimir Jankélévitch: Forgiveness (2005) and The Bad Conscience (2014). He has written articles and book chapters on Jankélévitch, and has begun a book on Jankélévitch’s metaphysics.

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Abstract: In this paper, I interpret Vladimir Jankélévitch’s work on the bad conscience and forgiveness in relation to the film Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016), a meditation on remorse and the difficulty of self-forgiveness for Lee Chandler, a man who lives a monastic life as a janitor in Boston after the tragic death of his three children in a housefire. Many discussions of the film so far have focused on its depictions of grief and trauma, aspects of it that are certainly important. However, a focus on grief neglects the ethical dimensions of the film that Jankélévitch’s intense articulations of the offering of forgiveness and the solitary character of remorse can highlight. His accounts demonstrate the immense complexity of self-forgiveness and the difficult of accepting the generous forgiveness of others, even in situations where the calamity that has occurred is not a result of a deliberate, intentional action. Lee’s remorse dwells in the irreversibility of time and the irrevocability of our acts that Jankélévitch explains, and

goes further in being a remorse that cannot be overcome. The film also enables us to question features of Jankélévitch’s view: that we can undo the consequences of our act or deed, in contrast to the action, and that self-forgiveness is a conceptual impossibility, rather than sometimes an existential one.Bio: Marguerite La Caze is Associate Professor in philosophy at the University of Queensland. Her publications include Wonder and Generosity: Their Role in Ethics and Politics, (SUNY, 2013) The Analytic Imaginary (Cornell, 2002), Integrity and the Fragile Self, with Damian Cox and Michael Levine (Ashgate, 2003) and articles on the work of Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Luce Irigaray, Immanuel Kant, Michèle Le Dœuff, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Iris Marion Young. She held an ARC Australian Research Fellowship (2003-07) and currently holds an ARC Discovery grant ‘Ethical restoration after communal violence: a philosophical account’ (2014-17).

Marguerite LaCaze, University of QueenslandTitle: ‘I can’t beat it’: Dimensions of the bad conscience in Manchester by the Sea.

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Alexandre Lefebvre, Sydney UniversityTitle: Jankélévitch on Bergson: Living in Time

Abstract: In this talk I will set out some of the main themes of Jankélévitch’s Henri Bergson (1930/1959). My overarching interpretation will be that Jankélévitch presents Bergson’s thought as a “philosophy of existence” that aims to bring about a concrete change in the lives of its readers. I begin with an account of the personal relationship between Bergson and Jankélévitch. I then situate Jankélévitch’s book within the broader reception of Bergson’s philosophy and, in particular, compare Jankélévitch and Gilles Deleuze’s interpretations of Bergson. I concludes with an analysis of three central themes in Jankélévitch’s reading of Bergson: naivety, wonder, and simplicity.

Bio: Alexandre Lefebvre is Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations, and the Department of Philosophy, at The University of Sydney. He is author of Human Rights and the Care of the Self (Duke 2018), Human Rights as a Way of Life: on Bergson’s Political Philosophy (Stanford 2013), and The Image of Law: Deleuze, Bergson, Spinoza (Stanford 2008). He is co-editor of The Subject of Human Rights (Stanford 2019), Interpreting Bergson: Critical Essays (Cambridge 2019), Henri Bergson by Vladimir Jankélévitch (Duke 2015), and Bergson, Politics, and Religion (Duke 2012).

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Abstract: The early writings of Emmanuel Levinas have been read almost exclusively from the perspective of how they anticipate central concepts in his later works. This is a reasonable approach insofar as the complex concepts of those mature works can often be found in the earlier ones in simpler, protean forms. At the same time, however, this approach has lead to an overemphasis on those aspects of the early works that come from the phenomenological tradition and from Heidegger in particular. The larger project to which this paper belongs is a reading of the hidden or obscured sources of Levinas’s early thought, especially those from an émigré circle that included Alexandre Kojève and Vladimir Jankélevitch.The focus of the paper will be the specific resonance between Jankélevitch’s notion of bad conscience and Levinas’s notion of the face of the other as calling me to an infinite responsibility. I argue that both thinkers, influenced in different ways by Bergson and Heidegger, are anti-foundationalist about ethics and that for both moral conscience represents a break with the system of ontological meaning. By drawing out points of connection between Jankélevitch

and Levinas, and contrasting them with another French émigré of the same period, Eric Weil (for whom the choice to be rational was the foundational moment of ethical life), we are rewarded with a more compelling picture of the sources informing Levinas’s break with the phenomenological tradition and the development of his highly original philosophy. At the same time, reading Jankélevitch’s work on bad conscience alongside Levinas allows us to hear a novel philosophical critique of traditional systems of ethical thought and to identify a broader anti-foundationalist movement within post-war French philosophy.Bio: Diane Perpich has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and is currently Professor of Philosophy and Director of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Programs in the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities at Clemson University. Her first book, The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas (2008, Stanford), won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2009 award. Her second book, Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology, will be published with SUNY Press in 2018.

Diane Perpich, Clemson UniversityTitle: ‘I can’t beat it’: Dimensions of the bad conscience in Manchester by the Sea.

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Magdalena Zolkos, Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic UniversityTitle: The Work of Remorse, or François Ozon as a Reader of Jankélévitch

Abstract: François Ozon’s film Frantz tells a story of a young French veteran of World War I, Adrien, who is so overwhelmed with remorse for having killed a soldier in battle that he can no longer function in the world. Despite being interpellated by nationalist discourses that not only excuse his deed, but hail him as a patriot and a hero, Adrien is overtaken by what Jankélévitch would call an “inconsolable sorrow of bad conscience.” Adrien’s postwar life is marked by a kind of radical passivity as the remorse provides him with no normative principle for acting, but only tells him, always too late, what it would have been better not to do. Adrien travels to Germany in order to confess his wrongdoing to Frantz’s parents and fiancée, but he falters in the decisive moment, pretending instead to be Frantz’s pre-war friend from the Paris Conservatory, and tells them fabricated memories of their camaraderie. Adrien becomes an object of the Hoffmeisters’s substitutive filial affections and Anna’s erotic fascination, but as Adrien ultimately fails to provide the restitution that they desire, it is Anna who becomes an agent of

ethical action in the film, situated at the crossroads of memory, love and remorse. In the paper I read Ozon’s Frantz alongside Jankélévitch’s philosophy of bad conscience, and suggest that they share an idea of a remorseful subject for whom reparative engagement with the world derives, perhaps paradoxically, from a kind of passivity and endurance (being acted upon, rather than acting). I argue that in order to see remorse in terms of this reparative effect, rather than as an impasse or inaction, it is necessary to acknowledge the surprising proximity of the work, in which the remorseful subject is engaged, and the ethics of suffering in Jankélévitch’s philosophy of bad conscience and in Ozon’s Frantz.Bio: Magdalena Zolkos is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Justice at the Australian Catholic University. She is the author of Reconciling Community and Subjective Life. Trauma Testimony as Political Theorizing in the Work of Jean Améry and Imre Kértesz (Continnuum, 2010) and On Jean Améry: Philosophy of Catastrophe (Lexington, 2011).

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Institute for Social Justice Level 2, 7 Mount Street, North Sydney NSW 2060 E: [email protected] P: +61 2 9739 2789

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