Doubt pervades our daily life, both emotionally and cognitively. And yet, modern philosophy and the humanities tend to trivialize it. They conceive doubt in purely negative terms, as a mere nuisance in the pursuit of knowledge. But the modern arts, and also a small number of philosophers, paint a much more nuanced picture: They meet doubt with curiosity and attention; they embrace it as a transformative power; they provoke it at will and even cultivate it in ordinary life. The international conference "The Pleasure of Doubt in Arts, Aesthetics and Everyday Life" explores this alternative route to doubt, skepticism and scruples. It starts from the assumption that “living doubt” is not just a mental state of disbelief, but a conflictual experiential process. Doubt implicates the body as well as the senses; it stimulates just as much as it irritates; it discloses as well as it obscures.

Renowned representatives from anthropology to philosophy are invited to discuss how doubt shapes our lives, and how the experience of doubt is, or even ought, to be dealt with.

Invited speakers are:

– Erika Fischer-Lichte (Berlin)

– Dieter Mersch (Zürich)

– Andrew Norris (Santa Barbara, CA)

– Mathijs Pelkmans (London)

– Heidi Salaverría (Hamburg)

– Richard Shiff (Austin, TX)

– Miriam Strube (Paderborn)

– Uwe Wirth (Gießen)

– Christiane Voss (Weimar)

– Michelle Zerba (Alexandria, LA)

Venue: Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI), Christinenstr. 18/19, 10119 Berlin, +49 30 473 7291 10, https://www.ici-berlin.org/
Admission is free.
For detailed information, please visit our conference website: http://www.pleasure-of-doubt.com/