In this article, I examine Reiner Schürmann’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s critique of subjectivity. By focusing on Nietzsche’s reflections on the difference between weight and lightness, I analyze Nietzsche’s critique of the appropriative nature of man and relate it to his understanding of the expropriative tendency in human existence. In the second part of the article, this Nietzschean understanding of subjectivity is developed through Schürmann’s interpretation of Nietzsche. Here, the onus is placed on Schürmann’s understanding of “the will to power.” For (...) Schürmann, the will to power is the completion of man’s appropriative nature at the same time as it is points beyond subjectivity and towards an understanding of man as an expropriative being. The aim of the article is to show up Nietzsche’s importance for Schürmann’s thought and to investigate how his interpretation can shed light on what existence would become if it transcended the limits of the appropriating subject. (shrink)

In this article, Strandberg analyses the development of Swedish cultural policy during the last decades. In contradistinction to the first policy proposition from 1974, which emphasised the importance of counteracting the negative impact of the market, the cultural policies that have been in place for the last twenty to thirty years consider the forces of the market to be conducive to the freedom of culture and the arts. This has entailed a paradigm shift in Swedish culture that has opened up (...) the field of cultural policy for the so-called creative industries, equated culture with creativity, and collapsed the distinction between culture and creative forms of entrepreneurship. When analysing this, Strandberg relates the modern history of Swedish cultural policy to the wider international development that has given rise to the paradigm of the creative industries and discusses how the equation of culture with creativity has made the autonomy of culture and the arts more and more difficult to uphold. (shrink)

In Patočka’s later thought, death is a recurring theme. It is something that he analyzes phenomenologically and existentially, but also a theme that is related to his critique of modernity and to his philosophy of history. In this article, I analyze the question of death more broadly in Patočka’s later philosophy in order to show how his reflections in “The Phenomenology of Afterlife” can shed new light on his understanding of our co-existence with others and provide us with a phenomenological (...) concretion that is lacking in his more speculative philosophy of history. By relating “The Phenomenology of Afterlife” to Patočka’s more famous analyses in the Heretical Essays, we can also understand the interconnection between his political thought and his so called “a-subjective phenomenology” in greater detail. (shrink)

From its very inception philosophy has been preoccupied with death, so much so that many philosophers have received the reputation of being somber, melancholic, and morbid in nature. By continuously reflecting on the meaning and nature of death, philosophers have seemingly been shrouded in darkness to such an extent that their contemporaries considered them to be dead long before they met their own demise. While this image of the moribund philosopher can certainly be questioned, the fact remains that many philosophers, (...) and then especially the ancient ones, have insisted that there is an essential relation between philosophical thought and death. A life dedicated to philosophy would, it seems, at the same time imply a life lived in the shadow of death. (shrink)

This volume contains for the first time in English, Jan Patočka’s seminal essay “The Phenomenology of Afterlife”, as well as contributions surrounding and analyzing this text. In his essay, Patočka reflects on our relation to the dead and on how the departure of a loved one affects our continued existence. The premise of Patočka’s investigation is that our existence always takes place by and through an originary and reciprocal “being for others”. The contributors in the volume extend the field of (...) inquiry into the wider phenomenological and post-phenomenological discussion of death by being cognizant of how works of literature can broaden our understanding of the care of death, grief, forgiveness and non-reciprocal love. Also included are reflections on issues of philosophical anthropology, community, collective memory, and the ecstatic nature of life – issues that can all be related back to Patočka’s initial reflections, but which nonetheless radiate into a myriad of directions. This volume appeals to students and researchers in the field. (shrink)