Philosophy of Space and Time

The lectures include the following topics:
• Space and time in classical philosophies. Pre-Socratics: apeiron and sfairos. Plato's Timaeus and Aristotle's Physics. Plotinus and Augustine on time and eternity. Cyclic, linear and mystical time.
• Space and time in the Renaissance and Modern philosophy. Cusanus: »Centre is everywhere, circumference nowhere«. The infinite universe of Giordano Bruno. Absolute vs. relational space/time: Newton and Leibniz. Kant's a priori of space and time.
• Space-time in contemporary philosophy and science. Spacetime in Einstein's theory of relativity and in quantum mechanics. The possibility of »closed time-loops« and logical paradoxes. Anisotropy of time and causality.
• Phenomenological space/time. Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard et al. Time, finiteness and eternity, physics and metaphysics.
• Virtual spaces in the real time. Philosophical analysis of the modern virtual reality as our “parallel” world of digital “shadows”.

The main topic of the seminar part of this course is a philosophical analysis of space and time in the contemporary cosmology: finiteness vs. infiniteness, the plurality of geometries and topologies of space, hyperspaces and “(mem)branes”; space-time and multiverse(s), the “Anthropic Cosmological Principle”, evolution and/or teleology, the role of consciousness and mind in the cosmos.