Predavanje Dimitrisa Vardoulakisa

ZRC SAZU, Filozofski inštitut

vabi na javno predavanje

Dimitrisa Vardoulakisa (Western Sydney University)

Friedman’s Pencil: Agonism and the Repression of Instrumentality

Predavanje bo v torek, 18. junija ob 17.uri v Dvorani štirih letnih časov ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 4, 2. nadstropje. Potekalo bo v angleškem jeziku.

Friedman’s Pencil: Agonism and the Repression of Instrumentality

When in the 19th century Jacob Burckhardt invents the neologism “agonism” to denote the aristocratic politics of the Greek archaic period, he also provided agonism with its key feature: it was opposed, he said, to the instrumentality of both tyranny and democracy because it denoted a useless activity outside means and ends. Ever since, conflictual politics has been central in conceptions of non-representational political action marked by the critique of instrumental reason. This, I hold, evidences the repression of instrumentality that, at least since Heidegger, is determinative of philosophy’s unconscious.

And yet, a new look at Greek thought reveals that agonism is embedded in the conception of the good as the end of action, and hence instrumental through and through. My aim here is not so much to “refute” the modern conception of agonism, since one cannot negate the repressed without thereby reaffirming it. Rather, I would like to work through the repression of instrumentality by highlighting the profound contemporary relevance of the Greek foregrounding of instrumentality in agonism. I will do so with reference to Milton Friedman’s example of the production of a pencil, which I will argue exemplifies the capitalist repression of instrumentality.

Dimitris Vardoulakis je bil prvi predstojnik Oddelka za filozofijo na Univerzi v zahodnem Sydneyju v Avstraliji. Med njegove številne knjige sodijo Freedom from the Free Will: On Kafka’s Laughter (2016), Stasis Before the State: Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy (2018), Spinoza, the Epicurean: Authority and Utility in Materialism (2020), The Ruse of Techne: Heidegger’s Magical Materialism (2024) in The Agonistic Condition (2025). Je sourednik knjižne zbirke “Incitements” (Edinburgh University Press) in revije Philosophy, Politics and Critique. Je trenutni predsednik Avstralazijskega društva za kontinentalno filozofijo (ASCP) in podpredsednik avstralskega Sveta za humanistiko, umetnost in družboslovje (CHASS).