Josefína Formanová is a PhD candidate based at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Charles University in Prague, where she also completed her bachelor studies in Philosophy and Anglo-American Literatures and Cultures, and graduated in Philosophy with the dissertation titled “Language and Memory in Hegel’s Conception of History”. During her doctoral studies, she realised part of her project as a visiting PhD student at the University of Heidelberg, and was granted a short-term PhD-fellowship at Hegel-Archive of Ruhr University Bochum. Since September 2024, she has been associated as a doctoral fellow at the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences in Prague.

Unverfügbarkeit und Mediopassivität

My doctoral research project draws on the observation that the current global society revolves around the highly valued ideal of success, and the declining ability to resign into passivity or doubt on the one hand, as well as the increasing tendency to lethargy where action proves vital on the other. In the broader scope of my research, I explore the notion of passivity in action, and claim it to be the foundation for living in meaningful relationships with others and the world. Specifically, I adhere to the idea of reinventing the understanding of activity according to its inherent uncontrollability, which appears to be present in each human act and relation. My research embarks from the most basic and common situation, in which uncontrollability is open for observations: human failure. 

In my dissertation, I particularly enquire into the phenomenon of failure in G. W. F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel’s founding philosophical narrative was written on the brink of modernity, into which the origin of the present paradigm of success and the ideal of social development can be localised. Returning to Hegel’s own understanding of education (Bildung), I offer an overall interpretation of “failed effort” in the Phenomenology of Spirit, in order to challenge the popular claim that failure is either but a means of success, or contrarily, an utter defeat. The overall objective of my work is thus, first, to contribute to the rigorous Hegelian interpretative corpus, and second, to mark principal indicators of the modern concept of failure, and its legacy in the current meritocratic ethos. 

Regarding the structure of my thesis, I start off with the excursions to the early-modern metaphysics of error, and proceed by discerning the notion of error and failure in the individual chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Besides the main line of my argumentation, I examine selected social-existential modes of (self)relations, addressed by various Hegel’s successors or opponents up until today (mainly current critical theorists). Overall, I seek to claim that the Hegelian concept of failure may shed new light on the dynamics of individual identity and the uncontrollability present in human action. Rather than restricting “failure” to its privative meaning in relation to “success”, I propose to understand the “dialectic of failure” via its role in biopolitics and scientific methods, and to detect the subtleties of its value in terms of intersubjective relations rather than subjective achievements.

Peer-reviewed articles: 

• “K filosofii zbitého myšlení. Dialektika citovatelného gesta podle Benjamina” (The Philosophy of Beaten Thinking. Benjamins’ Dialectic of Quotable Gesture). In: Reflexe, 66–67, 2024, pp. 87–110.
• “Selhání základem morálních teorií? K dialektické metaetice Michaela Steinmanna” (Failure as the Bases of Moral Theories? On Michael Steinmann’s Dialectical Metaethics). In: Filosofický časopis, 72, 2024/3, pp. 499–510.
• “Social Structure of Cognition in the Philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel and L. Wittgenstein”. In: Kínesis—Revista de Estudos dos Pós-Graduandos em Filosofia, 20, 2017/9 (online).

Selected presentations:

• “No Matter – Fail Better: The Foundation of Error in the Phenomenology of Spirit”. Contribution at the international research colloquium at Research Centre for Classical German Philosophy / Hegel-Archive, University of Bochum, Jun. 18, 2024.
• “Originality and Repetition. Benjamin’s Anti-doctrinal Theory of Thinking”. Contribution at International Critical Theory Conference in Rome, John Felice Rome Center of Loyola University Chicago, May 6, 2024.
• “Victorious Failure. Rethinking Failure as a Way-out of the Self-restrictive and Mute Mode of Existence”. Contribution to prof. H. Rosa’s “Ethics, Religion, and Resonance” Masterclass for PhD students, Aarhus University, Sept. 13–14, 2023.
• “The Failure of Philosophy: Language and Cognition Between Hegel and Wittgenstein”. Invited lecture organised by prof. A. Moser, Johannes Kepler University Linz, May 5, 2022.

Research participation:

• Since 2024: PhD-participant in Language, Picture, Gesture: Forms of Discursivity (UNCE24/SSH/026), project based at Charles University. https://jog.ff.cuni.cz/en/about-project/
• 2023 – 2024: Researcher in Repetition: Mother of Originality? Copying and Its Uncertain Promise (GA23-06150S), project based at Charles University.
• 2023: PhD-participant in Resilient Society for the 21st Century: Crisis Potentials and Effective Transformation, project based at the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Link to personal page (French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences – Prague)