Public talk by Professor Dimitris Vardoulakis
'The Primary Question of Philosophy: Epicureanism as the Other of Philosophy'
Abstract: Starting from the assumption that power colonizes minds no less than land, and thought no less than customs, the present paper explores a way to decolonize the Western from within: by interrogating the philosophical assumptions that enabled the idea of “colonizing” in the first place. I will do this by turning to ancient philosophy to present what I take to be the question that organizes the ancient philosophical apparatus, namely, the question of the ends of action. The surprising conclusion will be that Western thought contained the seeds of its own decolonization or deconstruction from the very beginning, which can be found in the more maligned and attacked of the ancient schools of philosophy, epicureanism.
Bio: Dimitris Vardoulakis was the inaugural chair of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. Some of his books include Freedom from the Free Will: On Kafka’s Laughter (2016); Spinoza, the Epicurean: Authority and Utility in Materialism (2020); The Ruse of Techne: Heidegger’s Magical Materialism (2024); and The Agonistic Condition: Materialism and Democracy (2025). He is the co-editor of the book series “Incitements” (Edinburgh University Press) and the journal Philosophy, Politics and Critique. He is currently Vice President of the Council of the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) and has served as chair of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy (ASCP).
