Title: The Liberatory Potential of Bodily Impulses: Fichte vs. Adorno by Arash Abazari (Department of Philosophy, Bilkent University)
Date: Thursday, December 11, 2025
Time: 1530-1700
Room: H-232
Abstract: Consider a person who is entrapped within an abusive relationship and cannot leave it. On one occasion, during an argument with the partner, this person feels an intense stomach cramp that he or she cannot suppress, but which helps him or her end the relationship. Here the pure bodily impulse has a liberatory function, insofar as it can disrupt the habitual behavior of the agent.
In this talk, I distinguish two models of agency with regard to bodily impulses. The first model, which is predominant in the history of philosophy, posits that bodily impulses must be subordinated to the activity of reason. The second model, a scant countercurrent, posits that bodily impulses can liberate the agent from the sovereignty of calculative reason. From the first model, I focus on Fichte, and from the second on Adorno. After explaining in detail their respective theories of agency with regard to bodily impulses, I end with some remarks and questions as to which model of agency is to be preferred.
About the speaker: Arash Abazari specializes in 19th-century German philosophy, with a particular focus on Hegel. His first book, Hegel’s Ontology of Power: The Structure of Social Domination in Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2020), interprets the “logic of essence” in Hegel’s Science of Logic as a critical theory of capitalist society. The book was the subject of an Author Meets Critique panel in Hegel Bulletin (2022, 43(2)) and has been extensively reviewed in scholarly journals. In addition to Hegel, Abazari has published on Marx, Fichte, Kant, and the Frankfurt School. His current long-term research investigates the nature of political agency through the lens of the German philosophical tradition. As part of this project, he is currently working on a monograph on Georg Lukács’s theory of emancipatory politics. He is the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (2022–24) and an ACLS/Mellon Fellowship (2015–16).