Michael Marder will be presenting a faculty colloquium paper on “A Phenomenology of Betrayal”.
About the speaker
Marder is Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Vitoria-Gasteiz. His work spans the fields of environmental philosophy and ecological thought, political theory, and phenomenology.
Known for his pioneering work in plant philosophy as well as phenomenology, Marder has published 13 books, countless book chapters and articles, and runs The Philosophical Salon. As a public philosopher Marder has also contributed numerous news articles and opinion pieces to the major news media outlets worldwide.
Professor Marder received his Doctor in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research in New York.
More information on his prodigious output can be found at https://www.michaelmarder.org/
Abstract
Betrayal is an exceptionally slippery subject. The first question it raises is: if thinking is meant to be faithful to what is thought, and if, moreover, such fidelity is vital to truth, then how does this apply to betrayal? To live up to the task of thinking betrayal, we would need to allow our subject matter to pervert, to internally displace and turn inside out the dynamic structures of thinking. To be faithful to betrayal (that is to say, to how it is or may be thought), it will be necessary to let it unleash its unfaithfulness, above all, its unfaithfulness to itself, to the sense of its strong semantic, thematic, and ideational identity.
