B.A. (Trent) M.A. (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Ph.D. (Trent)
Thesis: Time, Being, and the Image
Examining Committee:
Emilia Angelova (Supevisor), Ihor Junyk, James Penney
External Examiner: Marie-Eve Morin, University of Alberta
Internal Examiner: Kelly Egan
Chair: Michael Eamon
Abstract
The three projects that make up this dissertation try to articulate an ontological idea of art; which is to say, they all approach art, or the imagination (as in project two), from the standpoint of a philosophical question concerning the sense of being. The ontological question is elaborated in terms of a theory of the spatial-temporal structure of the aesthetic or sensible realm. This kind of ontology contrasts with a more traditional metaphysical one, where the sense of being is sought within the purely intelligible realm, a realm that transcends the sensible. In projects one and two, the contrast is developed in terms of the Nietzschean/Heideggerian critique of metaphysics, and through the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, who appropriates this critique. In project three, it is developed in terms of Bergson and Deleuze’s critique of objective time, or of any attempt to define being and time in terms of what is static and unchanging. Art is central for the ontology at stake here, and the ontology is one of art, because it is a matter of questioning the spatial-temporal being of the sensible, and not the being of the purely intelligible; and because art (as I try to show) is itself essentially concerned with revealing this ontological dimension of the sensible.
Jacob Potempski graduated from Trent University with a B.A. in philosophy and cultural studies. He completed his Master’s at the University of Amsterdam, in the program: Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. His Master’s thesis dealt with the problem of time in the work of Heidegger and Kant, in relation to questions of ethics and ontology. In his PhD, he explored the question of time in relation to art, specifically the (avant-garde) cinema, by drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze.
Publications:
"The Death of God and the Discovery of Finitude in the Philosophy of Time: from Kant, through Holderlin, to Heidegger,"Symposia, Journal of Religious Studies, University of Toronto.
‘The cinema and real-time: an investigation of the medium’s relation to time through the lens of Christian Marclay’s THE CLOCK (2010) and Dan Graham’s Present Continuous Past(s) (1974)’ the spring issue of Kinema, Journal of Film and Visual Studies, which is based at the university of Waterloo.