Philosophy Department's 2024/25 Speaker Series is happy to have Dr. Clint Jones come for a talk March 27, 2025. Clint is a Full-Time Instructor in  Religion and Philosophy at Capital University. His areas of research and interests include Social and Political Philosophy, Environmental Philosophy, 19th & 20th Centuries, Renaissance, Applied Value Theory,& Aesthetics. Clint is also is UK Philosophy Alumni, receiving his PhD with us in 2013.

Title: "Witchcraft, Marcuse, and Techno-Utopias of the Future"

Abstract: Determining what it means to develop a post-capitalist environmental vision for society requires us to rethink our orientation to the world.  To achieve such a critique a radical re-interpretation of our relationships to the environment, society, and technology are necessary.  Pairing the critical theory of Herbert Marcuse with insights drawn from witchcraft-as-practice it is possible to articulate how to achieve this re-interpretation of the self in relation to a techno-scientific society.  Doing so raises important questions for the development of a post-capitalist consciousness as well as a post-capitalist pragmatic praxis for inhabiting the world.  What is witchcraft?  Is a post-capitalist society necessarily utopian?  Can the utopianism of Marcuse and the Frankfort School be successfully informed by delving into the expectations of witchcraft for the individual practitioner?  Can the fluid sustainability of witchcraft cancel out the self-destructive impulse of our current techno-scientific social order?  Answering these questions allows us to think through what it means to be an environmentalist now and in the future.