Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
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Thorsten Botz-Bornstein (born 1964) is a German philosopher[1] specializing in aesthetics and intercultural philosophy.
Biography
Botz-Bornstein was born in Germany in 1964, studied philosophy in Paris from 1985 to 1990, and received his Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1993. As a postdoctoral researcher based in Finland he undertook extensive research on Russian formalism and semiotics in Russia and the Baltic countries. In 2000 he received his 'habilitation' from the EHESS of Paris. He has also been researching in Japan, in particular on the Kyoto School, and worked for the Center of Cognition of Hangzhou University (China) as well as at Tuskegee University in Alabama. He is now Associate Professor of philosophy at Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait.
Philosophy
In his philosophy he attempts to establish conceptual links between style, play, and dream. He does so by borrowing elements from non-Western philosophies (Russian, Japanese, Chinese), architecture, and the aesthetics of cinema. His philosophy is determined by an organic “play-style-dream” triangle, which he uses as a theoretical foundation in works on aesthetics (organic space, organic style, organic architecture, organic film, etc.), intercultural communication, virtual reality, and politics. His approach can be described as “neo-organic." World War II experiences of totalitarianism led to the perception that any totality must be split apart or deconstructed. Botz-Bornstein's neo-organicism develops a hermeneutic alternative by rethinking synthesis and dynamic forms of holism without falling into the trap of totalitarianism.
Linked to his central research on the phenomenon of style is his research on Japanese philosophy. One of his early starting points (1992) has been Kuki Shūzō’s notion of 'iki' which Botz-Bornstein interpreted as an idea related to Western elaborations of the term style. He has been interested in comparisons of Nishida Kitaro with Western authors like Mikhail Bakhtin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Other topics are Pan-Asianism, Eurasianism and Pan-Slavism and corresponding reflections on the 'cultural sphere,' international world order, etc. Botz-Bornstein is also working on the idea of the 'virtual' in aesthetics and cultural theory as well as about meta-philosophical questions of 'ethnophilosophy.'
Publications
Authored Books:
The New Aesthetics of Deculturation: Neoliberalism, Fundamentalism and Kitsch (Bloomsbury, 2019).
The Political Aesthetics of ISIS and Italian Futurism (Lexington, 2018)
Organic Cinema: Film Architecture, and the Work of Bela Tarr (Berghahn, 2017)
Transcultural Architecture: Limits and Opportunities of Critical Regionalism (Ashgate, 2015)
Veils, Nudity, and Tattoos: The New Feminine Aesthetics (Lexington, 2015)
Virtual Reality: The Last Human Narrative? (Brill, 2015)
The Veil in Kuwait: Gender, Fashion, Identity (with Noreen Abdullah-Khan) (Palgrave, Pivot Series, 2014)
La Chine contre l'Amérique. Culture sans civilisation contre civilisation sans culture? (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2012)
Place and Dream: Japan and the Virtual (Rodopi, 2004)
Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Sokurov, Bergman, Kubrik, Wong Kar-wai (Lexington ,2007)
Vasily Sesemann: Experience, Formalism and the Question of Being (Rodopi, 2006)
Aesthetics and Politics of Space in Russia and Japan (Lexington, 2009)
The Cool-Kawaii: Afro-Japanese Aesthetics and New World Modernity (Lexington, 2010)
Edited Books:
Plotinus and the Moving Image: Neoplatonism and Film Studies (with G. Stamatellos, Brill, 2017)
Inception and Philosophy: Ideas to Die For (Chicago: Open Court, ‘Philosophy and Popular Culture Series’, 2011)
Re-ethnicizing the Minds? Tendencies of Cultural Revival in Contemporary Philosophy (Rodopi, 2006)
The Philosophy of Viagra: Bioethical Responses to the Viagrification of the Modern World (Rodopi, 2011)
Culture, Nature, Memes: Dynamic Cognitive Theories (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008)
The Crisis of the Human Sciences: False Objectivity and the Decline of Creativity (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2012)
References
- ^ Wirth, Michael (November 12, 2011). "Wilhelm Sesemann – en spegel av Europas förvirrade situation". Tidningen Kulturen (in Swedish). Retrieved 18 June 2012.