Registration to Departmental Seminar, Department of Philosophy (14 Apr 2025)

Title: On Joy and Suffering: A Weilian Approach to Ascesis and Emotions

Speaker: Prof. Deborah Casewell (Associate Professor, University of Chester)
Date: 14 April 2025 (Mon)
Time: 4:30pm-6:30pm HK Time
Venue: Room 220, Fung King Hey Building (Limited seats. Registrations will be handled on a first come, first served basis.) with synchronous online broadcasting on Zoom

Abstract:
Simone Weil is famed for her life of suffering and self-sacrifice, and her response to the problems of human existence, the decreation of the self, emphasises how suffering and affliction enable that. However, Weil's philosophy also embraces joy and beauty as means to that decreative practice, and in her own writing, there are suggestions that joy itself can be cultivated. Weil's concern with how the emotions can be changed can be traced back to her university work, where she uses Spinoza’s account of emotions to illustrate how we engage with the world. Our experience of the world is like a swimmer in water, where ‘what the swimmer calls water is for him above all a feeling made up of the pleasure that comes from swimming, and the pain induced by fatigue’ (SP, 55). These two feelings, pleasure and pain, are then associated by her with joy and sadness, and Weil posits an active relation to these emotions: we have the ability to conjure up pleasure, pain, sorrow, or joy, where ‘in my dreams, when I move towards joy or toward sadness, I summon up landscapes that are either luminous or dim’, and it is ‘this feeling, with its shadings of pleasure and pain, which is the only thing I can experience, is thus the fabric of the world’ (SP, 56). In this talk, I will argue that Weil transmutes this taxonomy of emotions into a particular kind of work and habit, and therefore provides us with a blueprint for how to reconsider our own relations to emotions, and how to speak of the emotions in philosophy: where her blend of activity and passivity is attentive to the power of human action as well as recommending passivity in important situations.

Attend seminar online. No registration is required.
Meeting ID: 920 0965 6419
Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/92009656419

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1. Provision of personal data is voluntary. The information collected will be used for the purposes of events and communication related to the Department and related responsible organization for this event. Only authorized personnel in the Department can access the information. The Department will promote and disseminate information such as talks, services and research information to you by post, email or phone. You have the right to make subsequent changes on your choice of receiving further promotional information by notifying us in written format. 2. Under the provisions of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance, you can access and apply for amendment of the data in this form. Please contact our Institute staff if necessary. 3. The Institute will use the photos and videos taken from events in organizing and promotional purposes. If you do not agree with the relevant arrangements, you may submit your wishes and notify us in written format before the event. I have read, understood and agreed with the above terms and conditions.
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