Jon Stewart


Ph.d., Dr. habil. theol. & phil.
Institute of Philosophy
Slovak Academy of Sciences

 
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Institute of Philosophy
Slovak Academy of Sciences               

Institute of Philosophy
Slovak Academy of Sciences
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811 09 Bratislava
Slovak Republic

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News

Just Published:


A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age DenmarkStewart-Danish Hegelianism-1

Vol. 1: The Heiberg Period: 1824-1836

2nd Revised and Augmented Edition
Leiden: Brill
Date of Publication: March 2024

This is the first of a three-volume work dedicated to exploring the influence of G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophical thinking in Golden Age Denmark. The work demonstrates that the largely overlooked tradition of Danish Hegelianism played a profound and indeed constitutive role in many spheres of the Golden Age culture.

This initial tome covers the period from the beginning of the Hegel reception in the Danish Kingdom in the 1820s until the end of 1836. The dominant figure from this period is the poet and critic Johan Ludvig Heiberg, who attended Hegel’s lectures in Berlin in 1824 and then launched a campaign to popularize Hegel’s philosophy among his fellow countrymen. Using his journal Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post as a platform, Heiberg published numerous articles containing ideas that he had borrowed from Hegel. Several readers felt provoked by Heiberg’s Hegelianism and wrote critical responses to him, many of which appeared in Kjøbenhavnsposten, the rival of Heiberg’s journal. Through these debates Hegel’s philosophy became an important part of Danish cultural life.

Read more here.

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A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark

Vol. 2: The Martensen Period: 1837-1841Stewart-Danish Hegelianism-2

2nd Revised and Augmented Edition
Leiden: Brill
Date of Publication: March 2024

This is the second volume in a three-volume work dedicated to exploring the influence of G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophical thinking in Golden Age Denmark. The work demonstrates that the largely overlooked tradition of Danish Hegelianism played a profound and indeed constitutive role in many spheres of the Golden Age culture. This second tome treats the most intensive period in the history of the Danish Hegel reception, namely, the years from 1837 to 1841. The main figure in this period is the theologian Hans Martensen who made Hegel’s philosophy a sensation among the students at the University of Copenhagen in the late 1830s. This period also includes the publication of Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s Hegelian journal, Perseus, and Frederik Christian Sibbern’s monumental review of it, which represented the most extensive treatment of Hegel’s philosophy in the Danish language at the time. During this period Hegel’s philosophy flourished in unlikely genres such as drama and lyric poetry. During these years Hegelianism enjoyed an unprecedented success in Denmark until it gradually began to be perceived as a dangerous trend.

Read more here.

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Forthcoming Soon:

A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark

Vol. 3: The Martensen Period: 1837-1841

Leiden: Brill
Date of Publication: Spring 2025

This third tome covers the most exciting and dynamic time in the Danish Hegel reception from 1842 to 1855. This heterogeneous period saw the emergence of several new figures, many of whom were associated with the left-Hegelian school. This period is best known for the publication of the pseudonymous works of Søren Kierkegaard. The present tome places these famous works in the context of other contemporary Danish discussions about Hegel’s philosophy. It shows that many of Kierkegaard’s criticisms had been raised by other Danish thinkers before him and that a large part of his polemical campaign was aimed at the leading figures of the previous periods of the Danish Hegel reception, namely, Johan Ludvig Heiberg and Hans Lassen Martensen.


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Annual Book Prize of SAV Publication Prize-2024
the Slovak Academy of Sciences

September 18, 2024

The book An Introduction to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment and Romanticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022) was awarded the annual book prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the category "Top Scientific Publications-Scientific Monographs."

Read more here.


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Podcast Interviews:

Interviews on A History of Nihilism in the Nineteenth Century

Hermitix (March 13, 2024):

On Spotify

On Youtube


New Books Network
(August 9, 2023):

Listen to the Interview here


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Recently Published:


Encounters with Nineteenth-Century Continental Philosophy

Encounters with 19th c. Cont.Phil.


Edited by Patricia C. Dip and Jon Stewart
Leiden: Brill 2024

With figures such as Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Marx, Engels, and Nietzsche, the nineteenth century was a dynamic time of philosophical development. The period made lasting contributions to several fields of philosophy. Moreover, it paved the way for the development of the social sciences at the turn of the twentieth century. This volume is dedicated to exploring the rich tradition of nineteenth-century Continental philosophy in its different areas with the main purpose of highlighting the importance of this tradition in the development of the leading streams of thought of the twentieth and twenty-first century.



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Koren Translation of

An Introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion:
The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment and Romanticism

Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022. xiii + 277pp.

Korean translation: 헤겔 <종교철학> 입문, trans. by Jeong Jin-Woo, Seoul: Dongyeon 2023.


Intro to-Korean translation











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Koren Translation of
Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity

Korean translation-Coursear book















https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=821164319794824&set=a.552807936630465

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Japanese translation of
Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered


published by 萌書房 Kizasu Shobo

Stewart, Japanese translatio














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Other News:

Annual Book Prize of Academy Award, 2023
the Slovak Academy of Sciences

September 18, 2023

The book An Introduction to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment and Romanticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022) was awarded the annual book prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the category "Top Scientific Publications-Scientific Monographs."

Read more here.



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Filozofia-2023-5
New Editor-in-Chief of the Journal
Filozofia

See “Editorial: A View to the Future,” vol. 78, no. 5, 2023, Filozofia, pp. 317-320.









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New series-BrillNew Series:

New Research in the History of Western Philosophy (Brill)

Today research in the history of Western philosophy is a global phenomenon. The series features the work of leading scholars from the different subfields, regardless of where they are found in the world. Philosophy is a discipline substantially enriched by a broad dialogue of perspectives that transcend the local contexts — the series New Research in the History of Western Philosophy provides a forum for this dialogue. The series also strives to showcase the modern importance and relevance of the history of Western philosophy to pressing issues of our day. It seeks single-author monographs and collected-author volumes that demonstrate that the texts, figures, and debates from the Western philosophical tradition are still very much alive not only in the academic field of philosophy but also in many other areas beyond its conventional boundaries. The series welcomes new approaches and studies on lesser-known figures and texts.





Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2023

The twentieth century is the period best known for thematizing the issue of nihilism with, for example, the works of the existentialists. For this reason, most philosophical or literary histories of this topic start with Nietzsche and move on from there. This study aims to show that the background for the tradition of twentieth-century nihilism was already well established in the nineteenth century. The thesis of the work is that the true origin of modern nihilism can be found in the rapid development of the sciences in the Enlightenment that established a new secular worldview that gradually displaced the old religious one. The modern scientific view presented a picture of human beings as increasingly small and insignificant in the vastness of space and time. This led to discussions about and literary portrayals of different issues related to nihilism in the first half of the nineteenth century, long before Turgenev and Nietzsche made the term fashionable. Drawing on the importance of Enlightenment science, this work tries to gain insight into the nature and development of nihilism in the nineteenth century.

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The Modern Experience of the ReligiousThe Modern Experience of the Religious-cover

Series: New Research in the History of Western Philosophy, volume 1

Volume Editors: Nassim Bravo and Jon Stewart

The articles in The Modern Experience of the Religious, edited by Nassim Bravo and Jon Stewart, explore the many ways in which religion was impacted by the emergence of modernity, particularly after the Enlightenment, which underscored the centrality of human reason and thus called into question traditional forms of religiosity. Modernity raised several questions that are studied by the authors of this volume: What should be the role of religion in a secular or pluralistic society? How does the human being relate to God? Can instituted religion be compatible with modern values such as civil liberties, pluralism or environmentalism?




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Moller Immortality

Poul Martin Møller's "Thought on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality" and Other Texts 

Translated and edited by Finn Gredal Jensen and Jon Stewart

Leiden: Brill 2022

A classicist, philosopher, and poet, Poul Martin Møller was an important figure in the Danish Golden Age. After the early death of his wife in 1834, Møller was plunged into an extended period of depression. This traumatic event led him to think more profoundly about the question of the immortality of the soul. Møller had long been interested in Hegel’s philosophy, and this same issue was central to the then current debates in the Hegelian school. In 1837 he published his most important philosophical treatise, “Thoughts on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality with Regard to the Latest Literature on the Subject.” This work gave an overview of the German debates about the issue and Møller’s own critical evaluation of them. It was read and commented upon by the leading figures of the Golden Age, such as Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Frederik Christian Sibbern, and Søren Kierkegaard. It proved to be the last important work that Møller wrote. He died in March of 1838 at the age of 43.

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An Introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: Philosophy of Religion

The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment and Romanticism

Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022

This work attempts to give a basic introduction to Hegel’s religious thinking by seeing it against the backdrop of the main religious trends in his own day that he was responding to, specifically, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The study provides an account of the criticism of religion by key Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Lessing, Hume, and Kant. This is followed by an analysis of how the Romantic thinkers, such as Rousseau, Jacobi and Schleiermacher, responded to these challenges. For Hegel, the views of these thinkers from both the Enlightenment and Romanticism tended to empty religion of its content. The goal that he sets for his own philosophy of religion is to restore this lost content. A detailed account is given of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion with an eye to the issue of the content of religious faith. It is argued that the basic ideas of the Enlightenment and Romanticism are still present today and that this remains an important issue for both academics and non-academics, regardless of their religious orientation.

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Hegel’s Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution
  

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021

The book is the category winner in philosophy
in the 2021 Prose Awards
of the Association of American Publishers
Read more about the award here


See the homepage of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

See the homepage of the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences


The book has been awarded the 
Slovak Academy of Sciences Prize
for Scholarly work for 2021
Jon Stewart Prize 2022

June 30, 2022


Many students who attended Hegel’s lectures in Berlin in the 1820s recalled with nostalgia in later life the stimulating intellectual environment that radiated from the ideas they heard in his lecture hall. This atmosphere still existed a decade after his death, as zealous students continued to flock to Berlin to study with Hegel’s students in the 1840s. Over the coming decades these students would come to constitute the leading lights in Continental philosophy in the nineteenth century: Feuerbach, Bauer, Kierkegaard, Engels, Marx, Bakunin, and others. The present work is an introduction to the history of this development. It takes as its point of departure two concepts that originated in Hegel’s Jon Stewart, Hegel's CenturyPhenomenology of Spirit, namely, alienation and recognition. Hegel’s students of both the first and the second generation all appropriated these concepts, among others, and applied them indifferent contexts. It is argued that the broad constellation of problems surrounding these rich ideas can be seen as providing a central theme of philosophy in the nineteenth century. The work also sketches how these concepts constituted a broader cultural phenomenon as they spilled over into a number of other fields as well, including religion, politics, literature, and drama. Later in the twentieth century they were also taken up in the then budding social sciences, especially sociology and psychology. These concepts thus represent a key element in the nineteenth century’s contribution to the history of philosophy.

Download the flyer here


Reviews


"It is often thought that Hegel's philosophy fell into a rather deserved obsolescence by the middle of the nineteenth century. But Hegel's Century shows that even while Hegelianism waned, Hegel's concerns with alienation and recognition continued to set the agenda for European philosophy, both inside and outside the universities. It offers a magisterial yet accessible guide to those thinkers, mystics, and revolutionaries who appropriated these Hegelian themes for radically new purposes."

Mark Alznauer - Northwestern University


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“In this wide-ranging and important study, Jon Stewart provides a convincing account of Hegel’s influence on the philosophy that came after him, focusing on the themes of alienation and recognition. Following these themes through a range of central thinkers, from Heine through to Engels, he shows how the shadow cast by Hegel was a long one – and that we are living with these issues still. Stewart is an engaging, well informed and perceptive guide to this central tradition in the history of ideas, and will bring the debates alive for a range of different audiences.”
Robert Stern, University of Sheffield

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“Among other things, this book is to be celebrated for its clarity and breadth of exposition. In an age of increasing academic specialization, Stewart shows great range in tackling such a broad theme from such an intellectually active century. This work spans the fields of at least philosophy, theology, literature, and political theory, and displays a commanding knowledge of central texts from the period and the socio-historical context in which they appear.”

Hegel’s Century is a great book for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and even professors who would like to get a better sense of Hegel’s impact on the philosophical world, or would like to know a bit more about the intellectual climate of the nineteenth century. Its analyses are clear and instructive, and I will continue to use it in my classes.”
Joshua Wretzel, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 30, April 2022, pp. 1-4.




Download Recent Articles




“The Crisis of Modern Nihilism and its Source,” Fifteen Eighty Four, April 4, 2023 (online journal).


"The Complexity of History of Reception: Hegel, Heiberg, and the Nature of Philosophical Inquiry," Scandinavica, vol. 61, no. 1, 2022

Notes to a Marxist Phenomenology: The Body and the Machine in Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai. Philosophia, vol. 67, no. 1, 2022 (special issue, Hand—Work/Labor—Matter, ed. by Jaroslava Vydrová and Michal Lipták), pp. 75-99.
Download the article as pdf.

Kierkegaard como hegeliano,” El Arco y la Lira: Tensiones y Debates Filosóficos, no. 9, 2021, pp. 161-167. 

El concepto de realidad en Kierkegaard y la influencia de Schelling,” El Arco y la Lira: Tensiones y Debates Filosóficos, no. 9, 2021, pp. 33-47.


"Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion as a Phenomenology," in Filozofia, vol. 75, no. 5, 2020, pp. 386-400.


"The Crisis of the Danish Golden Age as the Problem of Nihilism," in The Crisis of the Danish Golden Age and Its Modern Resonance, edited by Jon Stewart and Nathaniel Kramer, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2020 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 12), pp. 123-168.


For more downloadable articles click here.



Recent Publications
The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Existentialism

Edited by Jon Stewart

Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2020

This Handbook explores the complex relations between two great schools of continental philosophy: German idealism and existentialism. While the existentialists are commonly thought to have rejected idealism as overly abstract and neglectful of the concrete experience of the individual, the chapters in this collection reveal that the German idealists in fact anticipated many key existentialist ideas. A radically new vision of the history of continental philosophy is thereby established, one that understands existentialism as a continuous development from German idealism.



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The Emergence of Subjectivity in the Ancient and Medieval World:
An Interpretation of Western Civilization

Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020


This work presents a philosophical analysis of the development of Western Civilization from antiquity to the Middle Ages. It traces the various self-conceptions of the different cultures from ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Christendom. The thesis is that as human civilization took its first tenuous steps, it had a very limited conception of the individual. Instead, the dominant principle was the wider group: the family, clan or people. Only in the course of history did the idea of individuality begin to emerge. The conception of human beings as having an inner sphere of subjectivity subsequently had a sweeping impact on all aspects of culture and largely constitutes what is today referred to as modernity.

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The Crisis of the Danish Golden Age and Its Modern Resonance

Edited by Jon Stewart and Nathaniel Kramer

Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2020

(Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 12)

 

The historical circumstances of the Danish Golden Age are well known: the Napoleonic Wars, the bombardment of Copenhagen, the state bankruptcy in 1814 with the ensuing financial crisis, the Revolution of 1848, and the establishment of a parliamentary democracy in 1849. There were peasant reforms, religious upheavals, and changes in class and social structures. These events constituted the milieu in which the Golden Age was born and developed. The guiding idea of the present volume is that these different crises served not just as a backdrop or as obstacles but rather as catalysts for the flowering of culture in the Golden Age.

Despite their many debates and polemics among themselves, the leading figures of Golden Age Denmark were generally in agreement about the fact that their age was in a state of crisis. The dramatic events spilled over into the various cultural spheres and shaped them in different ways. The articles in this volume trace the different crises as they appear in literature, criticism, religion, philosophy, politics and the social sciences. The contributing authors draw compelling parallels between the perceived crisis of the Golden Age and the acute issues of our own day. The articles collected here thus together show the continuing relevance of the Golden Age for readers of the twenty-first century.




Recent Events


Seminar dedicated to exploring the book

Hegel’s Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021.

January 19, 2023

Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts

Read more here



An Analysis of the Religion of the Maya: A Hegelian Approach based on the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and the Lectures on the Philosophy of Art

Critics have argued that the development of the world religions that Hegel sketches in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion is a crass expression of 19th-century Eurocentrism. This criticism aims to undermine Hegel’s claim about the necessity of this development. If one wanted to defend Hegel against this charge, it would be necessary to explore other religions that he failed to treat and to see to what extent, if at all, they can be said to fit into his scheme of the development of world religions. If his theory is really universal as he claims, then we would expect to find this same kind of development in other religions, besides the ones that Hegel himself was familiar with. In the present paper I wish to do this by means of an exploration of the religion of the Maya in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. My thesis is that the polytheism of the Maya, in fact, fits very well into Hegel’s scheme. I argue specifically that it corresponds generally to the stage occupied by the Egyptian religion on Hegel’s account. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Art also play a key role in this analysis since, I argue, similarities between the two cultures can perhaps best be seen by their artworks which depict their conceptions of their gods.

International Congress: “Hegel’s Aesthetics Today”

University of Urbino "Carlo Bo"

Palazzo Veterani, Aula 3

Urbino

May 4, 2022

10:00 am (CET)

Read more about the congress here

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"Hegel’s Diagnosis of Modern Alienation, and the Story of the Fall, and its Echoes in


Bauer, Heine, and Bakunin"

In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel gives a provocative and heretical interpretation of the Fall in Genesis. Surprisingly, his focus on key concepts such as alienation and freedom proved to be highly influential for the development of social-political thinking in the 19th century. In this paper I trace this development in the works of Hegel’s students Heinrich Heine and Bruno Bauer, as well as Mikhail Bakunin (who can be regarded as one of his students at a second remove). All three of these thinkers make use of Hegel’s interpretation of the Fall in order to support their quite different agendas. Thus a largely overlooked part of Hegel’s philosophy of religion is transformed into a fruitful seed when it is transplanted into the field of social-political philosophy.

May 19, 2022: 2:00-3:30 pm (CET)

Research Seminar, Department of Political Science,

Comenius University, Bratislava


"Hegel as a Source of Inspiration for Heine, Feuerbach, and Marx and the Revolutions of 1848"

 
With regard to politics, Hegel is often known as a reactionary thinker, keen to defend the state of Prussia of his day and the repressive forces of the Restoration. He is not usually associated with young radicals. However, in this lecture I wish to sketch how Hegel inspired a number of his students in Berlin to play an active role in the call for radical social change that culminated in the Revolutions of 1848. This lecture will be based on my recent book, Hegel’s Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021).
 

Nová Cvernovka, Tabuľa

Radčianska 1575/78, Bratislava

April 6, 2022

7pm (CET)

Watch the video lecture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_jP_Enod7U

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"The Development of the Individual in Society"

The Carlos Llano Lectures

Departamento de Humanidades, Universidad Panamericana, Aguascalientes, Mexico

The first lecture will be held online: on Thursday, October 14, 2021 from 17:00-20:00 CET

The second lecture will be held online: on Friday, October 15, 2021 from 17:00-20:00 CET

To register, you just need to click here and give your name and e-mail:

https://forms.gle/LSA7LGsahHkCjG5E7


Abstract:

The main line of argument traces the various self-conceptions of different cultures as they developed historically, reflecting different views of what it is to be human. The thesis is that through examination of these changes we can discern the gradual emergence of what we today call inwardness, subjectivity, and individual freedom. As human civilization took its first tenuous steps, it had a very limited conception of the individual. Instead, the dominant principle was that of the wider group: the family, clan, or people. Only in the course of history did the idea of what we now know as individuality begin to emerge, and it took millennia for this idea to be fully recognized and developed. The conception of human beings as having a sphere of inwardness and subjectivity subsequently had a sweeping impact on all aspects of culture, including philosophy, religion, law, and art: indeed, this notion largely constitutes what is today referred to as modernity.

Lecture 1, October 14

Introduction

Part 1: Analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King

Part 2: Analysis of Socrates in Plato’s Apology

Conclusions: The New Role of Subjectivity

Lecture 2, October 15

Introduction

Part 1: Analysis of Seneca’s Letters

Part 2: Analysis of the Gospel of Matthew

Conclusions: Subjectivity in the Modern World

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Annual Book Prize of the Slovak Academy of SciencesJon Stewart 2021

June 28, 2021

The book The Emergence of Subjectivity in the Ancient and Medieval World: An Interpretation of Western Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020) was awarded the annual book prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the category "Scientific Monographs in a Recognized Publishing House."


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"Teaching Philosophy in Different Countries:
Reflections on Authority or the Lack thereof in the Classroom"

Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Matej Bel University 

The lecture will be held online: on Wednesday 30th of September 2020 at 13:00 CET

Platform: MS Teams. We kindly ask everybody who is interested to participate to register by sending an email to: michal.sedik@.umb.sk no later than 29th of September 2020 till 19:00 CET.


Abstract:

Teaching is a social event, and the classroom is a part of a wider society. What takes place in the teaching context is thus invariably a reflection of the wider society. In this paper I wish to make some reflections based on several years of teaching philosophy in many different countries. I will explore how the social context of a given country influences the nature of the pedagogical approach and techniques used. My claim is that basic social structures concerning authority find their way into the classroom in ways that are not always conducive to the learning process.

Read more

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Annual Book Prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

June 23, 2020


The book Faust, Romantic Irony, and System: German Culture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2019) was awarded the annual book prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the category "Scientific Monographs in a Recognized Publishing House."




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Honorary title of Private Professor Awarded from
the University of Szeged

May 25, 2020







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Annual Book Prize of
the Slovak Academy of Sciences

July 2, 2019

The book Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World: The Logic of the Gods (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018) was awarded the annual book prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the category "Scientific Monographs in a Recognized Publishing House."




    




Jon Stewart©2007-2024