Irreversible

Cooperative and exploratory discussion
Free entry

120 min.

Info

Our life, with all its changes and transformations, is best described by the concept of the irreversible, so familiar to us all. But at the same time, there is nothing that frustrates us or gives us greater discomfort than the idea of irreversibility. There is something deep in our existence that we cannot reconcile with, something we cannot win against, but neither can we refrain from fighting the endless battle.

Powerlessness, nostalgia, regret, despair, impossibility, remorse, separation, irrevocability, ageing are all figures of the irreversible, pieces of an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle that each of us is made of.

How can this puzzle be de/structured? Is there room for negotiation with the irreversible? A tension between moving relentlessly forward to a forward and (not) (being able to) go back? Is there a regenerative force and a point where things start again, made possible precisely by the irreversible? By stealth, can we make it reversible, break temporality? Can we be neutral or neutral? What is the attitude we should have towards its endless forms? How does irreversibility manifest itself on bodies and relationships?

These are just some of the questions we propose in our cooperative and exploratory discussion, in which Veronica Lazăr, Anda Zahiu, Alexandra Zorilă, Paul Gabriel Sandu and Constantin Vică, conceptual time travellers, will participate.

Biographies

Veronica Lazăr is interested in writing and teaching, political philosophy, history of ideas, cinema and contemporary arts.

Anda Zahiu is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and a member of the Centre for Research in Applied Ethics. She writes about new technologies, the problem of justice in political philosophy and the future of work.

Alexandra Zorila is a PhD student at the Faculty of Philosophy (UB) and a member of the Centre for Research in Applied Ethics, specialising in moral philosophy and applied ethics. Her research interests focus around narrative identity in the context of new technologies, in particular on the relationship between identity-constituting narratives and the individual’s agency.

Paul Gabriel Sandu (b. 1986) studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest and obtained his PhD in the field at the Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg with a work entitled Koexistenz im Ineinander (Mohr Siebeck Publishing House, 2021). He has published a number of articles, essays and philosophical studies and has authored several translations from German and English of works by authors such as F.W.J.Schelling, J.Habermas, M. Heidegger, E. Stein, Th. Adorno, N. Chomsky. He has also published a children’s book, Dragonfly of Fire (Curtea Veche, 2020) and, recently, a volume of poems entitled Tungsten (Tracus Arte, 2023). He is currently a doctoral assistant at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest.

Constantin Vică is a lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, where he teaches courses on ethics and politics of new technologies, philosophy of history – philosophy of the future, digital culture, etc. He is a researcher at the Centre for Research in Applied Ethics, University of Bucharest. He has co-authored articles in Science and Engineering Ethics, Ethics and Information Technology, Philosophy & Technology, International Journal of Social Robotics, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Philosophical Psychology, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. He co-edited, in 2019, the volume New Times, Old Times. Diary 2007-2013 by Mihail Radu Solcan. In 2023 he published Algorithmic Civilization and Life in the Digital World, University of Bucharest Publishing House.

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