Wojciech Kaftanski
I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow and Communications Associate at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. I am a former Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Husserl-Archives: Centre for Phenomenology and Continental Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven. I was affiliated with an ERC project Homo-Mimeticus. I lectured for a few years in philosophy at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia. I graduated from that school with a PhD: "The Problem and the Cure: 'Mimesis' in Kierkegaard’s Second Authorship." I was a Visiting Scholar at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen in Autumn 2015; I am a former House Foundation Fellow at Hong Kierkegaard Library, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, USA in 2011.
My philosophical interests are in affectivity, imitation (mimesis), imagination, morality (especially moral psychology and moral education, virtues, exemplarity), eudaimonic well-being, selfhood (authenticity, individuality and identity) aesthetics. My work is informed by recent developments in social and natural sciences on imitation in humans especially in evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, and studies of human cognition and learning.
Supervisors: Dr Jeffrey Hanson, Harvard University, Prof. George Pattison, Glasgow University, Dr Richard Colledge, Australian Catholic University, and KU Leuven Project Advisor Dr Nidesh Lawtoo
My philosophical interests are in affectivity, imitation (mimesis), imagination, morality (especially moral psychology and moral education, virtues, exemplarity), eudaimonic well-being, selfhood (authenticity, individuality and identity) aesthetics. My work is informed by recent developments in social and natural sciences on imitation in humans especially in evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, and studies of human cognition and learning.
Supervisors: Dr Jeffrey Hanson, Harvard University, Prof. George Pattison, Glasgow University, Dr Richard Colledge, Australian Catholic University, and KU Leuven Project Advisor Dr Nidesh Lawtoo
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Access to full article under this link:
https://rdcu.be/cODvV
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/heyj.12330
Access to full article under this link:
https://rdcu.be/cODvV
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/heyj.12330
(1) First, I briefly present Kierkegaard as a thinker who observes the intensification of the role of mimesis in modern society; I focus on the phenomena of fashion and repetition as qualifying the lives of both the bourgeois and the working class in the emerging urban environment. (2)Second, I present Kierkegaard as a “transitional” thinker who traces a conceptual shift in an understanding of mimesis from representation (understood as occupying a limited and privileged position in the domains of aesthetics and religion) to performance (the domain of everyday life). I read Kierkegaard as someone who reclaims the original performative dimension of mimesis from the Platonic (pre-Platonic) tradition, which was lost in and after the Renaissance. (3)Lastly, after briefly outlining the classic takes on affective mimesis in Durkheim and Tarde, I indicate that Kierkegaard especially takes issue with affective mimesis, because he sees it as compromising the authenticity of the modern self; then I present Kierkegaard’s indirect and performative-interpretative mimesis as a counterbalance, or a solution to the affective mimesis.