Organized by Prof. Hans-Georg Moeller and Prof. Andrea Martinez
Weekly meetings will take place on Wednesdays 10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. (US Central Time) beginning on July 29, 2026. There will be at least 6 seminar sessions.
Content
This seminar addresses different conceptions of the self – which is described as the “self-referentiality of orientation” in chapter eight of Werner Stegmaier’s What is Orientation? A Philosophical Investigation. If existence is seen as the quest for orientation within a horizon of contingencies, then it can be asked: who is orienting themselves? In daily life, we commonly regard the self simply as given and do not question it much – doing so would obstruct our orientation in the world. However, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology have “deconstructed” the self in various ways, showing that not just the how, why, and where-to of orientation is contingent, but also its very “subject.”
The seminar will consist of two sets of three meetings discussing various theories of constructions of the self that differ significantly from the concept of the “autonomous” or “sovereign” individual characterizing today’s (Western) common-sense understanding of the self. The first set of meetings, led by Hans-Georg Moeller, will begin with a look at selfhood in the philosophy of orientation and depictions of transitory and transformative selfhood in the Daoist text Zhuangzi. The second meeting will be dedicated to the controversial theory of the “bicameral mind” by Julian Jaynes. Jaynes suggested that prior to the 1st millennium BCE humans did not experience selfhood as active agency but as orientation to divine commands. The third meeting will address challenges to selfhood posed by external orientation to AI and LLMs.
The second set of meetings, led by Andrea Martinez, will present different orientations around the impossibility of knowing oneself entirely. Freud’s concept of the Unconscious forces a reorientation of man’s notion of autonomy. The unconscious is commonly portrayed as the bottom of the iceberg of the mind, depicting the unknown aspects of ourselves that nonetheless influence and determine our everyday choices. The first meeting traces Freud’s initial standpoint of the Unconscious as those elements which we have repressed in order to construct our ego, and compares it to Jung’s archetype of the Shadow. Unlike Freud, Jung believed we can not only access the parts of ourselves that we have repressed, but we can also integrate them into our conscious lives. In the second meeting, George Herbert Mead provides a perspective of the self which is inherently social and sees itself through its surrounding community. Finally, and in contrast to the psychoanalytical tradition, Timothy Wilson argues that certain perceptual processes remain in what he calls “the adaptive unconscious” for the sake of cognitive efficiency.
This seminar is discussion-based; this means that participants are expected to read the assigned passages before the sessions. The seminar is free, but seats may be limited. Please apply by July 15, 2026, via the application form below by briefly explaining 1.) your affiliation and your professional and/or academic background, 2.) your philosophical interests, and 3.) you motivation for joining the seminar (max. 50 words per field).