Prof. Dr. Costantino Esposito, research fellow at International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has edited a thematic issue of the journal Studium Ricerca dedicated to contemporary nihilism. This compendium of articles, written in several languages, aims to think about nihilism on the basis of its legacy, its transformations and the current problems it brings up. It was released on the occasion of the publication of Professor Esposito’s book Il nichilismo del nostro tempo. Una cronaca (2021).

Link to the journal: https://www.edizionistudium.it/riviste/studium-ricerca-n-3-2023

 

Inštitut Nove Revije, zavod za humanistiko is becoming an associated institution of the International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic). Inštitut Nove Revije, based in Ljubljana (Slovenia), is a highly steemed organization dedicated to interdisciplinary research and studies in the fields of humanities, social sciences and arts. Additionally, it oversees the publication of academic books and journals such as Phainomena and organizes congresses, conferences and other academic events. Under the general direction of Tomaž Zalaznik, Dean Komel and Mira Miladinović Zalaznik its Forum for the Humanities boasts 139 members from 39 countries.

 

Prof. Dr. Žarko Paić, research fellow at the International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has published The Uncanny: Contemporary Art and Its Theory (Amazon Publishing, 2023). The book deals extensively with problems of contemporary art theory: the body in the space and time of digital technologies, the theory of a new image, new media and aesthetics. The basic thesis of Prof. Paić is that the entry into the era of total visualization of the world marks the end of the metaphysical idea of the perdurability of Being in works of art, whereby it is now about the signature and superimposition of new ‘life-worlds’; a new form of construction of artificial life with which we can no longer consider art and aesthetics as the contemplation of the object, but only as the power to create new relations between autonomous objects and the imagination.

 

Prof. Dr. Adriano Fabris, co-director of the International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has published Ethics of Eating and Drinking. Food and Relations (Springer, 2024). The book discusses key ethical problems associated with the act of eating and drinking, arguing that food acts should be understood as relationships, that is, as a way in which man relates to others, and therefore these acts are linked to ethics.

The present edition is the English translation of the book originally published in Italian (Etica del mangiare. Cibo e relazione, Edizioni ETS, 2019), which has also been translated into Slovenian (Etika uživanja hrane, Inštitut Nove Revije, 2023) and soon into Spanish.

 

Teoria. Rivista di filosofia has published the second compendium of articles of the International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic) entitled War: Another Form of Nihilism? (Vol. 43, No. 2, 2023). The authors and their contributions to this volume are the following:

-Adriano Fabris (Università di Pisa, Italy): Premise: War: Another Form of Nihilism?

-Dean Komel (Univerza v Ljubljani, Slovenia): War of Nihilism

-Žarko Paić (Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Croatia): War, the Technosphere, and the Question of Evil. Three Paradigms of War

-Lúcio Jorge Hammes, Rogério José Schuck (Universidade Federal do Pampa / Universidade do Vale do Taquari, Brazil): Fundamentos para a paz: limites e possibiliades

-Werner Stegmaier (Universität Greifswald, Germany): Nihilismus in Zeiten des Krieges. Im Gespräch mit Nietzsche

-Fernando Gilabert Bello (Universidad de Málaga, Spain): Llenaremos de sal vuestros campos. Reflexiones en torno a la guerra y el nihilismo

-Rebeca Maldonado (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México): La nada como torsión y límite de la modernidad. Pensar desde la experiencia de la guerra el comienzo. Sobre los textos ontohistóricos de Heidegger del 41

-Gaetano Chiurazzi (Università degli studi di Torino, Italy): Doppia negazione: tra nichilismo e istituzione

-Alfredo Rocha de la Torre (Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia): Guerra y nihilismo: hacia un más allá de la razón

 

Within the framework of the 2nd Congress of the International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic) with the collaboration of the Inštitut Nove Revije -Zavod za humanistiko, the Italian Cultural Institute in Ljubljana and the Italian Embassy in Slovenia, the Slovenian translation of the book by Prof. Dr. Adriano Fabris (co-director of CeNic), Etica del mangiare [Etika uživanja hrane], was released. This translation of the book has been carried out by Jurij Verč and revised by Mira Miladinović Zalaznik, in addition to a foreword by Prof. Dr. Dean Komel (research fellow at CeNic). https://youtu.be/8F83yrBPLPQ

 

“Human Existence and Coexistence in the Epoch of Nihilism”.

The second congress of the International Centre of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), “Human Existence and Coexistence in the Epoch of Nihilism”, will be held from 28th to 30th November in Ljubljana (Slovenia). This event will reflect on the relationship between humanism and nihilism, framed by the problems of the contemporary world (scientific and technical progress, global social conditions or the violence of global dehumanization). Considering that the experience of nihilism predetermines different social crises, it is clear that the question of how man fulfils himself in his humanity has become problematic. All this leads to new questions about the value foundations on which human existence is based, communication, the relationship to common life, or an ethics that allows a new humanization. It becomes necessary, then, to confront the nihilistic challenge that pervades the contemporary world.

The speakers at this second congress are:
– Adriano Fabris: Transformations of the Idea of Humanity in the Age of Technological
Nihilism
– Alfredo Rocha de la Torre: Sprache und Nihilismus
– Dean Komel: Nihilismus und die unzeitgemäße Situation der Philosophie
– Damir Barbarić: Der Wille zum Nichts
– Dragan D. Prole: Nihilismus der Nivellierung
– Werner Stegmaier: Orientierung als Antwort auf den Nihilismus
– Žarko Paić: The Technosphere and Nihilism – Autopoiesis as the End of Metaphysics
– Veronica Neri: Image, AI and Informational Nihilism
– Susanna Lindberg: Wounded Thinking of the Wounded World
– Josef Estermann: Progress as Barbarism. Epistemic Violence and Philosophicide of the
West against Indigenous Cosmo-Spiritualities
– Chung-Chi YU: The Encountering of Cultural Difference
– Petar Bojanić: Moment of the Negative
– Ion Copoeru: Meaning, Autonomy and Interaction

 

Prof. Dr. Žarko Paić, research fellow at International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has published The Superfluity of the Human. Reflections on the Posthuman Condition (Schwabe 2023). The author argues that, concerning the progress and development of the techno-scientific mind in the application of artificial intelligence, the anthropological definition of man has not only become outdated and ineffective, but “man” itself has become superfluous. Taking into account philosophical perspectives on technological singularity, extropianism and the nexus between posthumanism and transhumanism, Paić considers the possibility of a new way of thinking about metaphysics within the labyrinth of language. These ideas are developed by critically confronting numerous approaches to this problem, from Heidegger, Severino, Anders, Deleuze, Simondon and Wiener.

 

Prof. Dr. Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, research fellow at International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism (CeNic), has published De la soledad. Para una filosofía del buen trato con la soledad (Comares, 2023). The book is not defined as a treatise on loneliness, but as a “guide” to the appropriation and elucidation of the experience of loneliness in its different manifestations (existential motives such as love or grief, social motives such as migration or identity denial, among others). In this way, with the aim of pointing out ways of living with loneliness, different fields of encountering and dealing with this experience, which reveals other ways of being with oneself and in the world, are analyzed.