Principal Investigator: PD Dr. Susanne Lettow

Research Assistant: Gregory Rupik M.A.

Relations of reproduction and kinship, which are constituted synchronically and diachronically and thus always have a genealogical dimension, structure the social world in a fundamental way. Thereby these relations are subject to cultural, social and political conflict and engagements. Particularly in situations of historical transformation, scientific, artistic and philosophical debates proliferate on questions on the genealogy and origin of living beings as well as on which forms of belonging to social and natural orders exist. This does not only come true with regard to the present in which family forms, relations of kinship and the process of reproduction itself undergo far reaching social, cultural and technological change. The decades around 1800, too, are shaped by an extensive problematization of relations of reproduction, descent and kinship. The research project starts from the assumption that the theoretical debates of the emerging life sciences and the closely related nature philosophical reflections play a crucial role in this context. The aim of the project is to systematically reconstruct the philosophical and scientific articulations of the topics 'reproduction', 'descent' and 'kinship' in post-Kantian Naturphilosophie, and to determine their impact for the social and cultural transformations of the period.

Program

Friday, July 6, 2018

9:00 – 9:30 Welcome and Introduction: Susanne Lettow

9:30 – 10:30 Andrea Gambarotto (Catholic University Louvain):
Conceiving Generation: The Notion of Bildungstrieb in “Romantic Biology” 

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee and Cookies

11:00 – 12:00 Jocelyn Holland (California Institute of Technology):
Rotation as Reproduction

12:00 – 13: 00 Barbara Orland (University of Basel):
The Secret Moment of Fecundation – Experimental and Philosophical Speculations at the Turn of the 19th Century

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:00 Dalia Nassar (University of Sydney):
Herder’s Naturalism and Holism (comment: Stefani Engelstein)

15:00 – 16:00 Brigitte Hilmer (University of Basel):
Zeugung und Fortpflanzung bei Franz von Baader und Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler

16:00 – 16:30 Break

16:30– 17:30 Gregory Rupik (Freie Universität Berlin/University of Toronto):
Sex as Nature’s Summit? Goethe on Organisms, Teleology, and Reproduction

Saturday, July 7

9: 45 Welcome back

10:00– 11:00 Stefani Engelstein (Duke University):
Sexual Division and New Mythology: Goethe and Schelling

11:00 – 12:00 Christine Lehleiter (University of Toronto):
The Genealogy of Dwarfs: Reproduction and Desire in Goethe’s Neue Melusine

12:00 – 13:00 Lunch

13:00 – 14:00 Susanne Lettow (Freie Universität Berlin):
Reproduction, Territory and Human Diversity. Post-Kantian Articulations of „Race“ 

14:00 – 14:15 Break

14:15 – 15:30 Summary and Discussion: Gregory Rupik