Philosophy Seminars - “Thinking with Paintings”
A Problem of Freedom: The Openness That Painting Holds
Speaker: Maya Mandalinci
Moderator: Emre Şan
At first glance, thinking of art as a kind of problem of freedom may be read as an expression of humanity’s desire to create or its capacity to produce innovative discourses. Yet when we trace the problem of freedom back to the question “How is free existence possible?”, art takes on this inquiry in an ontological sense as well. Aesthetic experience makes it possible to slip free from the compulsory structure of cause–effect or end–means relations. A striking work of art is capable of cutting through, and even reversing, the familiar and rote workings of the world. The philosophical move that supports this reading is grounded in the Kantian notion that aesthetic judgment is disinterested, taking no account of interest or utility. Aesthetic experience suspends the web of practical relations and their necessary schemas; what remains, the disinterested gaze, provides the ground for aesthetic taste. Heidegger’s understanding of art, in turn, extends this disinterested gaze toward a domain in which we can listen to Being itself. Through the mediation of the work, beings appear in their own inexhaustible possibilities, without being reduced to the subject’s dominion. Thus, in Heidegger, this artistic openness is attributed—unlike in the Kantian account—not to the free play of imagination and understanding but to the field of movement of Being itself. That is, Heidegger shifts freedom from human cognition to the disclosure of beings. In this context he opposes the subject’s—whether artist or spectator—dominion over things and appropriating approach. We too will trace this artistic passage from necessity to freedom from Kant to Heidegger and, with Heidegger’s famous example, plunge inward through “the dark opening of the worn insides” of Van Gogh’s shoes.
Biography
Maya Mandalinci was born in Istanbul in 1989. She studied at Üsküdar American Academy. She completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the Department of Philosophy at Boğaziçi University, and received her PhD from the Department of Philosophy at METU with a dissertation titled “The Philosophical Significance of Death: A Reconstructive Interpretation of Hegel and Heidegger.” Her current work focuses on a variety of subjects such as the relationship between life and death, existentialism, aesthetics, phenomenology, anxiety, free will and bioethics. She is a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy at Istanbul Topkapı University. She is among the founding members of the Pratik Felsefe Topluluğu (Practical Philosophy Community), which produces content on YouTube.
* The seminar will be held in Turkish. To attend this seminar, you can create your registration by using the "Register" button on the page and receive your free event invitation. Registrations will open 1 week before the event date (03.12.2026, at 18:30) and the "Register" button will become visible. Participation is limited to a quota of 70 people.
* Participants who have completed the event registration and received their invitation are kindly requested to be at the venue at least 15 minutes before the event. The doors will be closed at the event starting time.