The 12^th International Conference of
	ISSEI	In cooperation With
	International Society for the Study of European Ideas

Section IV: Art, Theatre, Literature, Music, Culture

Workshop: Thinking and Narrative Construction in Fiction and in the Humanities

Chair: Boris Gubman

The faculty of thinking was associated by I. Kant with the production of meaning. He believed it necessary to differentiate between the ability of the intellect (Verstand) to apprehend perceptions and the activity of the reason (Vernunft) to comprehend the meaning of the world. While the intellect is aimed at the knowledge of the finite, the human reason posses the gift to rise above the immediately given in experience. These two faculties are mutually related and able to cooperate in the creation of different meaningful images of the world. The contemporary postmetaphysical stance of philosophizing brought with itself the understanding of the “impurity” of reason, its intimate relations with language thus producing its vision in the broadly understood hermeneutical perspective. When approached in this hermeneutical perspective, reason reveals its capacity to create a variety of different meaningful forms of portraying reality within the universe of human culture. The diachronic facet of human existence and social life is represented by a narrative discourse in fiction and humanities. Heidegger, H. Arendt, H.G. Gadamer, P. Ricoeur, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, A.C. Danto, W.H. Dray, H. Fain, M. White, F. Ankersmit, and other leading contemporary philosophers contributed to the understanding of the narrative formation. However, the problem of the part paid by the thinking ability, cooperation of the intellect and reason in producing meaningful narrative constructions in humanities and fiction invites us for further scholarly analysis and professional discussion.

Areas to be discussed within the workshop format:

- Kant’s understanding of thought faculty and its contemporary interpretations;

- hermeneutical reason and postmetaphysical thinking;

- reason and intellect in fiction and humanities;

- time and narrative discourse;

- narrative and meaning;

- narration and thought faculty;

- narrative and the crisis of meta-narration in humanities;

- narration in and thought humanities;

- narration in and thought fiction;

- values and thinking in humanitis;

- thinking and empirical analysis in humanities;

- thinking and theoretical interpretation in humanities;

- practice and the narrative vision of the human universe.

Boris Gubman

Russia

e-mail: gubman@mail.ru

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