Since Heraclitus' famous aphorism "Nature likes to veil herself", the conception of nature has undergone profound changes: from the powerful and dynamic phusis of Greek philosophy to the vulnerable ecosystem, from playful and unpredictable lascivia to a mechanistic view of nature, from a the Sublime to something ready to be dominated, from a primordeal force to the "second nature" in contemporary technology. The various conceptions of nature - such as Zeno's "artistic fire", "Mother Nature", nature as living organism, nature as a hieroglyphic - problematize at the same the porous boundaries between nature and culture, between nature and art, between the non-human and the human, between nature and technology. We will focus on seminal texts from Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Renaissance Neo-Platonism, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, 20th century ecology and eco-criticism.

2-6 LP

Dates:

Fri 11.05.2018, 09:00-17:00

Fri 13.07.2018, 09:00-17:00

Sat 14.07.2018, 09:00-17:00 (Geb. 50.41 R -133)