Videoconferences presenting this book:<\/p>\n
Au de-l\u00e0 du wokisme: la justice sociale et une \u00e9thique k\u00e9notique, Pr\u00e9sentation du livre de William Franke, Identit\u00e9s sociales et justice sociale: repenser l’\u00e9thique et la politique \u00e0 l’\u00e8re du wokisme, Les Pollens, Lorgue (France), 8 juin 2025<\/a><\/p>\n Living Together: An Apophatic Ethics (Videorecording of Lecture)<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cLiving Together: An Apophatic Ethics\u201d Keynote Lecture<\/strong>, Plenary Session<\/strong>, for 8th World Conference on Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education, May 22, 2025, Vienna, Austria<\/p>\n Franke, William<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n William Franke is a philosopher of the humanities and professor of comparative literature at Vanderbilt University. He has been professor of philosophy at University of Macao; Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Intercultural Theology at University of Salzburg; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research fellow in Berlin; and Francesco de Dombrowski Visiting Professor at Harvard University\u2019s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence. In 2021 he became Professor Honoris Causa of the Agora Hermeneutica. His apophatic philosophy is conceived and expounded in\u00a0On What Cannot Be Said<\/em>\u00a0(2007) and\u00a0A Philosophy of the Unsayable<\/em>\u00a0(2014). It is extended into a comparative philosophy of culture in\u00a0Apophatic Paths from Europe to China: Regions Without Borders<\/em>\u00a0(2018) and applied to address current controversies in education and society in\u00a0On the Universality of What Is Not: The Apophatic Turn in Critical Thinking<\/em>\u00a0(2020). His most recent\u00a0Pandemics and Apocalypse in World Literature: The Hope for Planetary Salvation<\/em>\u00a0(2025) plies his apophatic philosophy to illuminate issues of urgent public purport. He lectures and leads seminars on his ideas in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish on five continents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n “William Franke\u2019s voice, at a time when wokeism is on the defensive, is unique in the present concert of woke theory. Provocatively, he compares wokeism with Ren\u00e9 Girard\u2019s theory of scapegoating as the definitive act of self-sacrifice. Wokeness reflects the pathos of our contemporary social struggles, which leads us to important questions about the coherence of our societies.” “Franke writes as an intellectual reflecting on the lived experience of ideological oppression. His analysis is profoundly personal and philosophical, exploring intellectual submission’s psychological and spiritual dimensions. Franke\u2019s book, like Milosz’s\u00a0The Captive Mind<\/em>\u00a0and Orwell’s\u00a01984<\/em>, is a cautionary narrative about the fragility of freedom and the resilience required to resist the allure of oppressive systems.” “Social Identities and Social Justice<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t just critique wokeism as a social revolution that has become an intolerant religion. It tries to redeem it from an \u201capophatic\u201d perspective that goes beyond \u201cpositive, divisive, sectorial identifications.\u201d Franke\u2019s argument is clear and brilliant throughout the book.” The revolutionary upheaval currently sweeping across Western democracies on parade under the banner term \u201cwoke\u201d calls for rethinking the foundations of ethics and politics. The social justice movement challenges us to fundamentally reconceive our being with one another in society and to re-embrace our profoundest traditions. Focus on identities, however, has become divisive and vexatious. In\u00a0Social Identities and Social Justice<\/em>, William Franke indicates a way to exit from the current impasse empoisoning politics in Western democracies by thinking the concept of identity through to its grounds in the non-identity (or undelimited human potential) that all share and that unites rather than divides us. The traditions of negative theology (admission of ignorance of God) and apophasis (self-critical unsaying of one\u2019s own certainties) are leveraged for outlining a truly relational approach to public discourse. We must open our concepts of mutually exclusive identities towards their infinite truth rooted in our unlimited interconnectedness. Doing so, we open our ideas beyond their finite content and open ourselves to building a world together.<\/p>\n Social Science, Political Science, Philosophy, Public Affairs, Sociology, Wokeism, Cancel Culture<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n May 15, 2025<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n 2025<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n 9781680533811 hardcover<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n $99.95<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n 6×9<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n 316<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSocial Identities and Social Justice: Reconceiving Ethics and Politics in the Wake of Wokeism<\/h2>\n
\n\u2014Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, Professor of Philosophy, Gulf University, Kuwait, editor of\u00a0Tracking Global Wokeism<\/em>\u00a0(2025)<\/p>\n
\n\u2014Andrzej Wierci\u0144ski<\/a>,\u00a0Distinguished Professor<\/a>,\u00a0Faculty of\u00a0Artes Liberales<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0University of Warsaw<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u2014Montserrat Herrero, Professor of Philosophy, University of Navarra<\/p>\n