Thomas Telios
Title
PD Dr.
Last Name
Telios
First name
Thomas
Email
thomas.telios@unisg.ch
ORCID
Phone
071 224 3532
7 results
Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
- Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, The Common is the Collective: The Analytics of Common Sense and its Normative Consequences for ImaginationIn this paper, I follow Avshalom Schwartz’s (2024) recent suggestion to treat Aristotle’s imagination as “the psychological microfoundations of collective action and thus helps explain how we can move from individual psychology to collective agency and action.” As I argue, though, imagination can unravel such a political function thanks to the fact that it is an affection (πάθος) of what Aristotle introduces and calls “common sense” (κοινὴ αἴσθησις). In support of this argument, I start by, presenting Schwartz’s reasoning as to why imagination can qualify as the psychological foundation of collective actions. Building upon that, I return to Aristotle’s concept of common sense to sketch its functions. In addition, I qualify common sense as a σύνολον, a condition of individuation, and, leaning on Catherine Malabou and Jacques Derrida, an analysis of common sense as a collective event. In doing so, common sense is disclosed as a collective, both logical-analytical and normative, process that acknowledges, fosters, and accommodates difference. It is thanks to such an understanding of common sense that imagination can act as a regulative and inclusive fundament that can furnish the community with a common, yet inclusive and non-hierarchical or excluding common goal. In conclusion, I hint at further intertwinements of Aristotle’s conceptualization of common sense with concepts like memory and utopia.Type:journal articleJournal:AngelakiVolume:31Issue:1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Overdetermined Solidarity: Rethinking Solidarity as a Form of Agency, a Set of Practices, and Performative Normativity with Jean-Luc Nancy.The paper sketches a social-ontological understanding of solidarity. Following the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy, solidarity is neither an intentional collective activity aiming at overcoming significant adversities (cf. Sangiovanni 2015) nor a moral goal (cf. Habermas 1990) or a certain means to avoiding social pathologies (cf. Neuhouser 2022). Rather, solidarity is overdetermined, comprising three interrelated aspects: first, a collective form of agency, given that the subject is a collective entity that embodies the entirety of the different identities that have been inscribed in it through various modes of subjectivity production; second, a set of collective practices that are contingent since they do not bar individual actions and necessary in the sense of not having to be legitimized when manifesting themselves in a collective manner because they correspond to the subject's collective agency; and third, a performative mode of normativity production through collective struggles, where inclusion functions as solidarity's ethical materialization. To explicate how the individual subject can be conceived as a socially structured, collective entity, I refer to Nancy's conceptualization of freedom, to his concept of the body as an "instance par excellence of contradiction" that is "always in the plural", and ultimately to his theory of the irreducible but not incommensurable Other. In doing so, I extrapolate the idea of solidarity as a necessary form of collective agency from Nancy's understanding of the commensurable Other; from his understanding of a body, the idea of solidarity as a contingently necessary set of collective practices; and ultimately, from Nancy's understanding of freedom, the idea of solidarity as a performative normativity that guarantees the holistic and inclusive character of solidary actions.Type:journal articleJournal:Genealogy+CritiqueVolume:10Issue:1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, The Common Being: An Outline.(2024-05-05); - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Unter dem Regenbogen oder Utopie als Freyheit. Des gemeinen Mannes gemeine Utopien.(2025-12-12)Unter dem Regenbogen oder Utopie als Freyheit. Des gemeinen Mannes gemeine Utopien.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, On Koinotopia: Reconstructing Utopia in the Age of Neo-Liberalism, Political Ecology, and IntersectionalityUtopia, as a concept, was long declared obsolete. Yet the politics and social realities of neoliberalism, alongside the theoretical interventions of political ecology and, most importantly, intersectionality, have contributed to the resurgence of utopian thinking. This resurgence, however, has entailed a significant transformation of the concept itself: utopia is no longer understood as an exclusive and prescriptive narrative of what a better future world should look like, but rather as both a descriptive method and a normative benchmark. On the one hand, it identifies what must be done for such a world to emerge; on the other, it provides the normative criteria through which we may assess whether this transformation has in fact been realized. I call this reconceptualization of utopia koinotopia. Its distinctive valence, I argue, lies in incorporating the Other as both the condition and the vector of the subject’s constitution. Within this social-ontological framework, utopia necessarily forfeits its monistic character and must instead be reconstructed as a collective and inclusive endeavour. In order to demonstrate this claim, I begin (under I) by outlining the challenges that neoliberalism, political ecology, and intersectionality pose to traditional utopianism before turning (under II) to the advantages of conceiving utopia as a method, drawing on Ruth Levitas’s canonical formulation of the concept. As I argue, however, Levitas ultimately fails to provide an adequate account of the constitutive role of the Other in the production of the subject. I therefore trace (under III) the conceptualization of the Other across three theories of the topical: Roland Barthes’ concept of atopos, Michel Foucault’ concept of heterotopia, and Ernst Bloch’s notion of the “Not-Yet.” After showing that Bloch’s account of the Other most adequately fulfils the demands raised by the koinotopian project, I conclude (under IV) by arguing that this socially and ontologically grounded necessity of engaging the Other is precisely what renders koinotopia a necessarily collective, plural, and inclusive project.Type:book section - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Solidarity as Freedom: Jürgen Habermas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and the Future(s) of the European Project.The book-chapter begins with the claim "We have never been Euroepan" in order to dismantle the Habermasian European Project down to its elements and trace its limitations back to what I call Habermas's "political solipsism." While, in toto, Habermas's ethics is pluralist qua its discursivity, its epistemology remains solipsistic qua its universal-pragmatist epistemological assumptions. This also has far-reaching consequences regarding which political model of identity should be furthered. As I argue, Habermas's new concept of a "legally constituted civic solidarity" that came to replace his older moral understanding of solidarity cannot rectify these problems. Nevertheless, the concept of solidarity needs to be upheld. In the last section, I turn to Nancy's concept of freedom and interprets it as a model for European solidarity that results in the creation of a third space, where the differences of the various national states, while being respected, encounter each other and give rise to a shared and common European form of life.Type:book sectionJournal:Reimagining Europe. Thinking in Crisis. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Gemeinsinn: Eine Erklärung der Abhängigkeit(2025-09-12)Gemeinsinn und Differenz. Was bringt uns zusammen, und was trennt uns voneinander und wie lässt sich beides zusammen denken? Gemeinsinn, so haben es Aleida und Jan Assmann jüngst formuliert, umfasst ganz allgemein gesprochen das, was allen gemeinsam ist, was uns alle verbindet. Ursprünglich in der Antike als eine Art sechster Sinn verstanden, der die fünf Sinne zu einer gemeinsamen Wahrnehmung zusammenführt, hat die Moderne im Gemeinsinn eine moralisch-ästhetische Dimension erkannt. Denn im Gemeinsinn geht es um die gemeinsamen Neigungen und Bedürfnisse, die alle Menschen miteinander teilen und die uns auch in ethisch-moralischer Hinsicht, in unserer Sozialität, zusammenbringen.Type:conference keynote