Hana Gründler: ‘Archimedes’ on the Field – ‘Socrates’ in the Parallel Polis.

Departing from Seneca’s De otio, the lecture first examines ancient and premodern theorizations of ‘retreat as resistance’ in politically adverse times. I will then analyse how and why in the 1970s so-called nonconformist artists and philosophers such as Lumír Hladík or Jan Patočka drew on these historical figures and models of thought in their works. That is to ask, what kind of transhistorical imaginative spaces are created as a result? And to what extent can art and philosophy as micro-ethical practices contribute to both subtle transformations of the self and the living world even under totalitarian conditions? My talk concludes with a brief meditation on how these ethico-aesthetic strategies of resistance might be functional critical instruments also in our contemporary world.

Caption: Lumír Hladík, Nikdo nebude rušit mé kruhy! Noli turbare circulos meos!, 1976