The imperative of "Gnothi seauton" has survived to this day as a possible trace of the transition from the world of myth to the world of philosophy. On one hand, this maxim does not offer any completed and unquestionable account of the world and of humans' place in it, as we are accustomed to from mythological narratives; on the other, however, it is not yet a statement belonging to philosophical ethics as we understand it, such as Kant's categorical imperative.

On closer inspection, the appeal to "Gnothi seauton" leads to a number of questions: Does self-knowledge belong to the field of philosophy, at all? How is philosophy, with its claim of universality, related to self-knowledge, which is performed as an entirely individual enterprise? Or is it precisely the other way round? Is it that only with self-knowledge does philosophy achieve its value? And why is it that the Delphic Oracle exhorts us to know ourselves, and not others? Or is it that the path to real understanding of others leads only through knowing ourselves first?

These questions have been subject to reflection before. In philosophical treatises from the most ancient Greek philosophy till now, we continually find variations of this original impulse. They appear in artistic research as well in the form of the fundamental self-reflection of the author and agent, in the need of distance from dramatic event and relationship among agents in the performative situation. What meaning do we still find in the thought of Socrates, Plutarch, Kierkegaard, Foucault, Brecht, Stanislavski, and many others? And what is the value of self-knowledge for the philosophy of today, and, in particular, for the newly emerging performative philosophy?

The conference will provide its participants space to avoid some of the typical behavior that can be observed so often in standard academic interactions. During their contributions the presenters will not simply read their fixed texts, but express their thought-out meditation without that support . As for the lectures' settings, they may choose not only a standard conference room, but also a theater stage or the cozy attic at the Theater On the Balustrade.

The organizers' rationale is that a speech delivered without the support of a fixed text and outside habitual settings will boost the performative dimension of a lecture. Stepping into the field of discourse without such support may stimulate us and turn into an intentional provocation towards new meaning. Rhetorical or esthetic brilliance is not expected, and neither is originality at all cost, or great entertainment... what is sought after is openness of topics, concentration on the ideas being expressed, and attention to the immediate situation. We also hope that such settings will encourage and promote the sharing of ideas between a lecturer/performer and their listeners/spectators.

Such a conference format is also associated with the conference's theme itself. It is relevant to ask what the relationship is between self-knowledge and habit, and whether we are able to discover something in the communication itself when we are delivering an impromptu lecture, or what impact the presentation format has on the lucidity and intelligibility of the ideas for the others and for us as well.

The conference will consist of two sections - one Czech and one English.

Please send your proposals for 20- to 60-minute-long presentations associated with the conference's theme to the following e-mail address: alicekoubova@seznam.cz, no later than March 15, 2014.

Diversity of submission formats is most welcome (lectures, speeches, dialogs, moderated discussions, and performances), as is diversity of approaches (systematic philosophy, artistic research, theater studies, historic analysis, personal reflection). In your application, please, write your name, title, submission format, length of the contribution, the language in which you intend to deliver your presentation, and any requirements you may have concerning the venue.

We shall inform you on the submission's reception by March 30, 2014.

Abstracts

in alphabetical order (of participants' surnames)

Mónica Alarcón
Lecture in movement: I don’t have gestures, I’m my gestures

Although Flusser understands gestures as body movement, not every body movement is a gesture. Only those movements that elude a causal explanation are gestures and instead of an automatic response, evoke a significant action. Gestures are not natural; they are artificial, manmade and nevertheless aesthetic. A theory of gesture would therefore be a theory of meaning, a semiologic statement. Because by gesticulating a person reveals or conceals himself to someone else, a theory of gestures could be understood as a meta-theory of communication. A theory of gesture is more than a theory; it would have practical consequences too: one would act differently.

A theory of gestures allows one to be theoretically aware of the one’s own gestures and step out of them or freely repeat them. Such a "formal" transcendence brings closer self-knowledge to a self-outline of one’s own possibilities in real life. Self-knowledge does not mean the solipsistic thinking of an isolated consciousness subject. Self-knowledge arises from the active being-in-the-world of existence. It is a whole-body dispositional readiness toward meaning.

Arno Böhler, Susanne V. Granzer
In.Time

A sunny day on a terrace at the Hudson-river in Manhattan: We see a table with some empty bottles of Corona bear. A man and a woman hang around on two chairs. Unaffected by the hustle and bustle of New York they are enjoying their leisure time––probably the most exclusive good of our times. The peaceful atmosphere stimulates their free-floating thoughts and desires to imagine NEW POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP. That is to say, an earthly milieu, in which there is space and time enough to perform the deepest desires and unlikeliest visions. On its constitution there would be written: “Gnothi seauton! Share and express your deepest desires with the world, you are surrounded by.“

Dreaming of their utopia under the endless horizon of a bright sky and the floating river in front–not to forget the Coronas––a “stupid” idea pops up between them: “Shouldn’t we go down to Wall Street to share our dream of a NEW POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP with others at the stock market? What will happen, if everybody would be able to buy a share of our vision to create an authentic form of existence?”

Gnothi seauton! Is this not a call to realize IN.TIME the vision of a new politic of friendship to come?

Martin Dornberg
Self-knowledge, embodiment and philosophy

Without or with only a few ideas on a paper some reflections about the relation between philosophy, thinking and self- knowledge of us as embodied human beings are proposed.

A dialogue between ideas, spontanous reflections, dialogues with the spectators, movements, things of my daily life and/or film sequences/fotos will be initiated "on stage".

The main philosophical ideas which will be "present/presented" are part of the thinking of J.L. Nancy and/or M. Merleau-Ponty and/or J. v. Uexküll..

Special attention will be given to the performative, affective and medial aspects of the "presence/presentation" and the "sharing (partage , fr.)" of ideas/voices. In how far self- and/or other - attention and mindfullness in relation to "self" and/or the "other(s)" promote an augmented/different ("differAnt", fr. ) quality of the emerging philosophical thoughts.

Carsten Friberg, Larissa Lily
Knowing me, knowing you: gaining self-knowledge in relation to others

To address the question why the Delphic Oracle exhorts us to know ourselves and not others, or if real understanding of others can be only reached through knowing ourselves first, we suggest viewing it in the opposite way: Self-knowledge is always knowledge in relation to others, and knowledge gained from acting among others.

The Delphic Oracle asks of us to know ourselves in relation to a collective world of conditions of living.

If self-knowledge is provided in acting among others a proper approach to such knowledge should be through action rather than merely an intellectual reflection. It is, however, difficult to be aware of our actions as our bodily appropriation hereof makes them largely »invisible« to us.

Becoming aware of how we are bodily formed requires bodily self-awareness established through exercises where we sense, feel, and perceive our bodily relation to others.

We will invite the participants to join in on basic bodily exercises for increased awareness while taking in the philosophical reflections on the theme.

Milena Fridmanová
To know, or to change yourself?

Imperative “Know yourself” is a paradoxical claim. It does not name only object of interest (yourself), but also way of accessing it (knowing). It says: you as subject of knowledge should direct your attention to yourself as to your object, before you research any other irrelevant things. This has been in history of philosophy very often understood as invitation to investigate subject of knowledge itself – as subject experiencing world and all the phenomena through his own senses and his own cognitive processes which are rather static and easy to be objectified. While staying at this level, we consider subject of knowledge by characteristics all subjects have in common. Thus, even when focusing on “knowing yourself”, philosophy can very easily avoid meeting “yourself personally”. I suppose that this possibility of missing the target dwells mostly in first part of imperative (knowing). It says “know yourself” rather than “be” yourself, “change” yourself or “be aware” of yourself. Knowledge perspective brings us to take distance from ourselves and reflect upon ourselves by means of language and concepts. How does then distanced reflection relate to real life “yourself” and how does it contribute to way we are changing?

Christian Grüny
Looking at myself through the world: the mirror

The mirror is the only means we have of looking at ourselves. It appears to allow an immediate confrontation with ourselves, but in fact takes a detour through the whole world. Despite the promise that I should be able to see myself as I am, this look at myself makes the idea of seeing things and in particular people as they are appear dubious.

I don’t see myself like I would see another person – in a way I don’t see myself at all. I struggle to put together the visible features into a coherent whole but finally fail. Contrary to Lacan, the image of myself as whole never ceases to be recognizable as a delusion. Neither is image the right word for what I see. I remain tied up in it, unable to realize and develop it fully.

The mirror plays an important part in the process of knowing oneself. But incoherence, delusion, failure are so deeply tied up with it that what it really presents to us is not a supplemented vision of our being whole but a reminder of our fragmentation.

Andrew Haas
On the Impossibility of Gnothi Sauton

How is it possible for us to take up the Greek call to “know thyself,” Gnothi sauton? In fact, it is only by presupposing a particular concept of the psyche or ego, soul or subject—that is, a self that can know itself because it is present to itself, speaks to itself in the silence of its inner-monologue, self-to-self (Husserl). Then self-knowledge is the process by which I present myself to myself, bring myself to presence for myself, identify with myself (even as I differentiate myself from myself), take possession of myself as that which is proper to me (self-possession), whether as self-feeling or self-sensing, self-imagining or self-representing, self-conceptualizing or self-thinking. But if self-presence is the condition of the possibility of self-knowledge, it is easy enough to show its dependence upon non-presence, self-absence; or on the alternation or relation of presence and non-presence, presence-to-self and absence therefrom, self and other (Derrida). And yet, is there not another possibility, one that is neither self-presence nor self-absence? This would be a self that neither speaks to itself, nor remains silent—but rather gives a sign (Heraclitus), that is, it implies what it can neither say nor not-say. Self-knowledge then, becomes a problem of how we are neither present to ourselves nor absent therefrom, but implied therein—and so implicated thereby. In other words, self-knowledge is far more self-implication, which is maybe no knowledge at all.

Anna Kawalec
Contemplation as a form of self-knowledge in philosophy and theatre

I will focus my considerations on the space between theater as the action of human being and human being as a subject. The relationship assumes a fundamental dimension of the activities on the part of the subject, namely contemplation (Greek theoria). Contemplation is, on the one hand, the basis of wise human being’s attitude towards the world, but on the other, it triggers of the dimension of the subject, which – reflexively – constitutes the subject itself (in the cognitive and volitional acts).

How does theater employ the contemplation and make it the tool and the object of human cognition? The illustrative material will be constituted by the theoretical assumptions and their practical realizations of the selected Polish theatres of the 1960’s and 1970’s (The Rhapsodic Theatre, Laboratory, Cricot 2).

Bara Kolenc
On Repetition and Theatricality through Kierkegaard, Freud and Lacan

Through Kierkegaard, Freud and Lacan, I will focus on the concept of repetition insofar as this determines modern subjectivity and its self-reflection. In this respect, I will consider the problem of the connection or disconnection between thought and body, subject and object, representation and the unrepresentable, wherein lies the crux of the concept of repetition. I will continue by delineating the concept of productive repetition and showing its fundamental connection to theatricality. I will also look at the philosophical distinction between recollecting and repeating and analyze it in view of the difference between anamnesis and mneme. I will conclude by examining Weber’s thesis about theatre setting the scene of possibility in relation to Kierkegaard’s theory of theatre and the notion of coincidence.

While the content of my paper will deal with the concept of repetition as the basic process of constructing modern subjectivity and its self-knowledge, its formal part, separated from the content and thus exposed, will distill the performative quality of philosophical expression and function as a practical test of the theoretical concept of repetition.

Petr Koťátko
Subject in Decay

The performance is inspired by a characteristic motive from Samuel Beckett’s novel Unnamable: the narrator repeatedly voices his suspicion that his mind is a space for interventions of other, more assertive and more efficient minds, competing for the role of the actual speaker of his utterances. The resulting decay of self- consciousnes and personal identity, the collaps of the referential function of the first person pronoun and of the literary function of Ich-form belong to the constitutive features of the late Beckett’s narrative. The permanent failures of the narrator’s attempts for continuous narration serve as a way of performative (rather then descriptive) representation of the chaotic nature of the universe.

The author will attempt to demonstrate the Beckettian hunt for personal identity and its failures in a “lecture” permanently interrupted by hecklers planted in the audience.

Alice Koubová
Self-cognition and the symbolon

The issue of self-cognition in philosophy is a true puzzle. First, its function is corrective: since Socrates, philosophers are reminded of the fact that all philosophical cognition is dynamic, indefinite and precarious, because even the seemingly most primitive knowledge of oneself cannot be definitely achieved. Second, it seems that its function for philosophical knowledge is nevertheless crucial and irreducible. How to deal with the tension between impossibility and necessity of self-knowledge in philosophy?

The middle Platonist and a priest of the Delphic temple Plutarch from Chaeronea explains the function of imperative Gnothi seauton with the means of the concept SYMBOLON. SYMBOLON does not mean a sign referring to a completed meaning or an object. It moreover designates an event, inner experience of something that brings things together in a very surprising, unexpected way. It leads one into astonishment and causes distance, the philosophical stance. The meaning concentrated in SYMBOLON cannot be grasped totally with the aid of philosophical concepts and exceeds necessarily the thinking. As such, it bring thinking into movement. Plutarch uses another metaphor of a seed in order to describe the role of the prompt to self-cognition in the context of philosophy. I will discuss several consequences of this metaphor and the meaning of SYMBOLON in order to show that self-cognition is a very specific sort of beginning in philosophy.

Branislava Kuburović
Kako održati reč * Jak dodržet slovo * How to Keep a Word

This is a performative lecture to be given by heart / z paměti / napamet as a dialogue with an inner partner negotiating three different languages – Czech, English and Serbo-Croat – that have framed the context of my selfknowledge / identity in the past twenty years.

This personal narrative will be woven together with an analysis of the notion of word keeping – or word-holding in Czech and Serbo-Croat – as a way of thinking through the relationship of performance to philosophy. It will address the performativity of (multi-lingual) speech and question the idea of the temporal as well as physical and physiological gaps between speech and action.

The lecture will engage with the ethical implications of the idea of keeping (one’s) word through Derrida’s theorising of the promise, and consider the implications of theorising identity as a promise, and self-knowledge as keeping our word to/as ourselves.

The performative aspect of the lecture is also an examination of the unstable relationship between location and identity in the era of increased global migration, especially forced migration, and proposes the figure of the migrant /survivor as a multiple subject position that cannot be resolved in the likeness of our existing parameters of identity and belonging.

Howard Lotker
Know Thy Phenomenological Position

A fundamental part of finding out who one is is finding out exactly where one is – what is my point of view? There is a spot from where I (and you) see the world that has recently been called in philosophy the Phenomenological Position. This workshop will a llow participants to concretely experience and to better understand exactly how they embody the phenomenological position every day is a series of exercises for individuals, pairs, and groups, that were discovered and created by Howard Lotker and HoME theater as part of their research for their upcoming performance The Church of Phenomenology, scheduled to premiere in mid-March at Alfred ve dvore theater in Prague. You don’t need to have any background in movement, theater, or philosophy to participate in the workshop; it is enough to bring a curiosity about your world and an open mind. You don’t need any special clothing either.

The workshop will conclude with a discussion of what has been discovered, what remains to be discovered. Conclusions can be proposed, overturned, or we can begin again - or simply forget the whole thing ever happened.

Elke Mark
Sensuous Knowledge – A Performance Walk

While talking and listening to aspects of tactlile knowledge and equilibrioception as an embodied and to everybody accessible knowledge a certain atmospheric level of experience will be opened by minimal performative actions. The underlying complex tactile experience and the sense of balance are illuminated from interdisciplinary perspectives and translated into a perceptible interactive process. Along the way the listener is invited to realize the own amount in any form of knowledge generation and is encouraged to get involved perceptible into slumbering (pre)knowledge.

The concept of ‚Unintentional Acting’ as initiator invites to reflect in a continuous relation to the body’weight’ and the individual repertoire of language, gesture, sound, text and humour - as the starting point of a dialogue. The walk will be developed in relation to the interior of the building and might end up outside.

Darla Migan
Constituting Knowers in situ, The Conference

The vulnerability of constituting thyself as knower—as one who can know—may be especially felt in the interactions between faces at philosophy conferences. My own often shows up at philosophy conferences as a suspect knower, carrying potentially suspicious knowledge. Thus, I offer a parrhesiatic performance reflecting on a previous conference experience that may also work towards constituting a radical care of the self.

Parrhesia happens as a mode of risky truth-telling from a speaker who, by speaking, risks violence to herself for the sake of telling all of the truth (Foucault). For this presentation, I will play an eight-minute recording of myself reflecting on my (in)authenticity as one who may know. The audio recording of my voice (sounding out short excerpts from an earlier essay on race and emancipatory possibility in the work of a certain 20th century German philosopher) will play together with live video feed showing my interpretation of audience members’ facial expressions during that previous conference presentation.

The performance will be followed by a conversation on the violence of constituting thyself as a parrhesiast who is also at home in the world of professional philosophy.

Emanuele Mariani
The Who-Question. Profecy and Predestination of the Self

What if the maxim of «gnothi seauton» was to be intended as a prophecy? A prophecy, which does not necessarily indicate a reflexive relationship of the subject himself. We are predestined to become what we are. But what sense could have predestination for philosophy? We think of St. Paul: «he hath chosen us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world» (Eph. 1:4). Predestination as redemption. We, creatures, are chosen to be redeemed before coming into the world. Here is the paradox: inside the order of creation operates the Christ, the redeemer of the creatures which ourselves are and which he himself is. That is how the a priori of history works – following Benjamin and Agamben. An a priori, we might say, that uncovers the truth of an original sense in the events of the future, i.e. retrospectively. The point, therefore, is to understand what «original» means. What is the «origin?». Is it what we come from? Or what we advance to? On the basis of such an ambiguity we propose to address the question of «gnothi seauton». «Know thyself» might then be translated into «who am I?», «who will I be?» or more precisely «who will I become?».

Improvisation group /na:u/ and guests
Spark of body inspiration

For dancers, the body is an instrument, which they constantly train to be more sensitive, learn through it, move it and play with it, widening the range of its physical articulation. I often think how great it is that the body is such an instrument that cannot be simply put away like a violin or a trumpet if you are not in the mood to play it. You have to get along with each other during both good and bad times. Maybe that´s why for many dancers the body becomes a significant teacher and a partner in the process of getting to know themselves.

/na:u/ is a group of dance and performing artists focusing on improvised dance performance. The piece is created at the present moment, on the spot, dance interacting with music and speech, together with you, in front of your eyes. The source of inspiration for the improvised dance will be personal experience of the dancers with the process of self-knowledge through their physical experiences in dance, such as "aha! moments", when the spark of inspiration emerges through the body and movement.

Dancers/performers: Radim Klásek, Jana Novorytová, Michaela Raisová, Markéta Pucová (Vacková)
aprox. 30 min performance + 30 min discussion

Miranda Nell
Being and Timing: Hamlet, Heidegger & Thinking About Death

My presentation will be a juxtaposition of a famous piece of theatre presented as a lesson, and a “dry” piece of philosophy interpreted as a monologue. I will begin with an analytically formatted version of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be…” soliloquy, not as a struggling young prince contemplating suicide, but rather as a bored professor might lecture the case. Second, I will perform a passage from Heidegger’s Being and Time through the lens of the stage.

After introducing these two ponderings on the meaning of death, I will address their comparison more directly. I will provide a handout, some powerpoint slides, and pose some questions to the audience, to try to provoke specific thoughts about the different ways that these two pieces deal with death, and about how the format in which we experience them alters our reaction.

Jan Puc
Self-knowledge as self-sentience

In my talk, I would like to invite the audience to thing about the possibility of feelings-based self-knowledge.

Firstly, I will introduce the notion of “felt sense” which is the cornerstone of psychotherapy method “focusing”, founded by E. Gendlin. Further, I will argue for the statement that feelings contain implicit meanings and describe the way the focusing works with them. For a feeling to be a way to knowledge, self-knowledge included, it must contain a meaning. So any attempts to base self-knowledge in feelings must consider feelings meaningful. And vice versa, if feelings are considered meaningful, there is possible knowledge of them. In the end, I will try to differentiate three aspects of the “felt sense” and put forward some statements on what self-knowledge is possible to get from feelings.

Hester Reeve
Bohm Dialogue

In place of the standard ‘end of conference round up session,’ you are invited to participate in a Bohmian Dialogue. Dialogue allows for an experimental group conversation which, in tune with David Bohm’s principles, will start off with ‘no agenda’ or subject other than the context of the conference and the shared reflections of those present. In a Bohm Dialogue there is no hierarchy and the process aims at attending to “what needs to be said” and would rather avoid the straight forward sharing of knowledge or already established opinions. We will explore ‘what needs to be said’ together as a group, but you will also find your internal dialogue during the event a rich learning curve (are you really able to be honest? Are you able to suspend your judgements, opinions and academic armour?).

I have almost 15 years experience of participating in and facilitating Bohm Dialogue in educational, prison and performance settings. For a brilliant introduction to Dialogue, please read “Dialogue - A Proposal” at: http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/bohm_dialogue.htm).

Hester Reeve
The 24 Hour Origin of the Work of Art Lecture

In April 2014 I conducted an experiment with my art students. I locked them into a gallery with me (S1 Gallery, Sheffield) where we spent a 24-hour period together studying Martin Heidegger’s “The origin of the Work of Art.” Part art installation and part extended lecture, this event broke with all known formats of studying and teaching philosophy. Preparing meals, resting in coffins, carving and drinking wine all became vital parts of ‘the lecture’ alongside my more standard presentations opening up Heidegger’s concerns. For Gnothi seuton I will share what I learned from my students and screen some of the event documentation relevant to the conference theme.

Candice Salyers
Six Reasons Why My Dance Card Isn’t Full

The significance of self-knowledge has surfaced for me during both artistic and philosophical processes as a vital component of my movement in the world. My dance work does not seek to illustrate thoughts but rather to allow moving itself to be an active agent in the revelation of understanding.

Performance of the solo dance Six Reasons Why My Dance Card Isn’t Full has been a process of uncovering self-knowledge and a continuing practice of personal inquiry in the form of the question, “Why dance?” in which “dance” functions alternatively as both a noun and a verb. Why do I continue to dance? Why does dance performance impact the development of my consciousness and in what ways? How can a dance teach its performer and become a process of philosophical inquiry?

For this presentation, I will perform the solo Six Reasons Why My Dance Card Isn’t Full and then guide audience members through a process in which they can uncover more of their own self-knowledge, which may have been stirred up for them during the performance.

Anna Street
Performing the Self: Gnothi Seauton and the Rise of Performance Philosophy

The importance of self-knowledge is a prevailing idea in our contemporary world, notably in the field of psychoanalysis which has had a huge impact on new philosophical research, literature and the arts. Conventional wisdom holds that self-knowledge is hidden deep within and that in order to find it we have to strip the self of all its superficial layers. At the same time, however, the growing importance of the concept-praxis “performance” calls models of identity into question. From Austin to Derrida to Butler, language, discourse, and even deeply personal attributes such as gender or race have undergone significant reassessment. How do changing concepts of the self as an evolving rather than fixed identity affect possible interpretations of Gnothi Seauton?

These conflicting trends reveal the breaking point between dominant strands of analytical philosophy and the development of Performance Philosophy. As well as setting the stage historically with an overview of the cultural specificities of theories about the self, our approach proposes to present recorded interviews with contemporary actors and directors across Europe and Russia in which we ask questions about the role of performance in self-knowing. After showing edited fragments of these interviews, we will invite discussion pertaining to evolving concepts of the self in current performance practices.