Frauke Kurbacher
Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany
Frauke Annegret Kurbacher, Dr. phil., studies philosophy, German literature and the history of the arts at the University of Münster (Germany). She has also founded and directed the international interdisciplinary working circle for philosophical reflection since 1996. She holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Wuppertal (her thesis focused on the faculty of judgement and was part of the DFGCollege Subject and Person in Modern Times). Research and other fellowships abroad include stays in São Paulo, New York and Paris. She had taught in philosophy departments at several universities and other institutions (Berlin, Leipzig, Wuppertal, Münster, Paris). Various publications focus on the theory of subject and person, topics of social philosophy like friendship and love, philosophy of enlightenment and studies on Aristotle, Thomasius, Kant, Arendt and others. Selected publications: (2005) Selbstverhältnis und Weltbezug. Urteilskraft in existenz-hermeneutischer Perspektive. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms; (2006) “Liebe zum Sein als Liebe zum Leben,“ published in: Kurbacher (Ed.), Hannah Arendt: Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin. Versuch einer philosophischen Interpretation. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms. p. XI-XIV; “Was ist Haltung?“ in: www.theomag.de, magazine for theology and esthetics, ed. by Andreas Mertin and Karin Wendt, no. 43, Dec. 2006; (2011) “Liebe und Person. Liebesphilosophien als Interpersonalitätstheorien,“ in: Ekkehard Martens / Volker Steenblock a.o. (Ed.), Zeitschrift für Didaktik der Philosophie und Ethik, Vol. 33, no. 4, Hannover: Siebert, p. 315-320; “Diastatische Subjektivität. Zur Phänomenologie der Verschiedenzeitigkeit,” with Sebastian Schulze, in: Simultaneität. Modelle der Gleichzeitigkeit, ed. by Philipp Hubmann and Till J. Huss, Bielefeld: transkript (forthcoming 2013).
Articles of Frauke Kurbacher
Die Freiheit des Fremden. Reflexionen zur Halt- und Bodenlosigkeit. Eine Skizze
Flusser’s philosophical autobiography, Bodenlos, reflects upon the existential meanings of being groundless–that is, to have lost everything, materially, spiritually, and conceptually. Bodenlos contrasts with the more theoretical concept of Haltlosigkeit–the human condition of uncertainty–, in which the foreign and the concrete are constitutive of all “groundless” existence. In spite of the more theoretical claim of Haltlosigkeit, the term bodenlos refers to the ambiguity of all situations of a human existence in crisis. Rather than the Heideggarian “heroic” act of deciding and of an autonomous selfdetermination, this Bodenlosigkeit is, moreover, a feeling of lost ground, of being displaced that builds up the concrete, actual, and new situation. This also informs Flusser’s understanding of freedom and liberty, an understanding which is not simply based on autonomous free will and self-awareness or on certain reactive behaviour. Rather, it is – as bodenlos – the in-between both of these existential possibilities and theoretical positions. This is what the independence of the migrant, the liberty of the traveller, the freedom of the foreign itself could mean: the highly precarious movement of the inbetween.