Centers and groups

PFI professors regularly carry out research activities which are institutionally organized in the form of laboratories and centers formally established within the university, as well as research groups registered on the platform held by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – CNPq) and certified by the institution, in which students and professors from other departments at UFF and other educational institutions also participate. Those who are interested should contact the coordinators and leaders directly.

Centers and Laboratories

CEFA: Center for Studies in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art

The center’s main objective is to bring together the various projects developed in UFF’s Philosophy Department that have aesthetics and the philosophy of art as their main themes. The professors who coordinate the activities are part of the line of research “Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art” of UFF’s Graduate Program in Philosophy. They also participate in the Aesthetics GT (work group) of the National Association of Graduate Studies in Philosophy (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia – ANPOF) and Brazilian Association of Aesthetics (Associação Brasileira de Estética – ABRE). In this way, the center functions as a laboratory, fostering exchange among participants’ research projects and further deepening the dialogue between their different interests.

Information: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Coordinators: Bernardo Oliveira, Patrick Pessoa, Pedro Süssekind, Vladimir Vieira

LAFE: Laboratory of Phenomenology

This laboratory focuses on different themes related to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, as well as authors from the so-called “phenomenological-existential” tradition. It continuously promotes teaching, study and research activities, academic production, as well as occasional extension activities. It has a permanent digital platform for studies on Husserl’s Logical Investigations, in addition to promoting the annual seminar “Husserl: suas leituras e seus leitores” (Husserl: his readings and his readers). The main objectives of the LAFE are to contribute to the improvement of research in phenomenology, encouraging exchanges between students and professors from UFF and other universities whose research projects engage with the major themes in phenomenological philosophy.

Information: https://laboratoriodefenomenologia.uff.br/ and Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Coordinator: Carlos Tourinho

Ancient Philosophy Center: Aporia Laboratory

The main objective of this center is to articulate and promote teaching, research and extension activities carried out by professors, students and researchers from UFF and from the community in general who are interested in Ancient Philosophy, its reception in posterity and its developments in the contemporary world. The center is formally registered as a CNPq research group.

Information: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Coordinators: Alice Bitencourt Haddad, Alexandre Costa

Research Groups Registered with CNPq

Academia Celeste (Celestial Academy): Studies in Cosmology and Ethics

The Academia Celeste has existed informally since the winter of 2004 and it is composed of researchers from different backgrounds and institutions. Since then, we have carried out several activities: we maintain an email discussion list, hold periodic face-to-face meetings, and conduct research individually or in groups, including work with funding from CNPq (Universal 2010) and Proppi-UFF (Jovem Pesquisador – Young Researcher 2009); we publish books and articles; we participate in events; in 2009 we began to record our activities on a blog. Our main line of research is ancient cosmology, its ethical dimensions and repercussions, themes that have both a philosophical-scientific and religious perspectives.

Information: Research Groups Directory (CNPq) e http://www.academiaceleste.blogspot.com.br/
Leaders: Marcus Reis, Cristina de Amorim Machado

Apophatiké – Interdisciplinary Studies on Mysticism

The group includes researchers from different academic areas, especially Philosophy, Literature and Theology, whose research is linked to mystical themes. Started in March 2010, it holds at least one monthly meeting where the participants present their research internally. In addition to holding study groups and academic events around Mysticism, the group intends to produce texts based on these meetings. The group research focuses mainly on these themes: Relations between mysticism and literature in Contemporary Times; neoplatonic mysticism (Plotinus, Proculus and Pseudo-Dionysius); contemporary mystics (Simone Weil, etc.); mysticism and Protestantism (Luther the Mystic).

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leaders: Marcus Reis, Eduardo Guerreiro Brito Losso

Center for Studies in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art

The Research Group on Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art is comprised of professors from the Department of Philosophy at UFF who develop their research in the area of aesthetics. The objective is to promote a dialogue between the researches produced by each member of the group, aiming to construct a panoramic view of the history of aesthetics, divided into three moments: the question of art and mimesis in ancient philosophy, modern aesthetics, and contemporary aesthetics. Thus, research follows three directions: (1) the delimitation of the fundamental questions of aesthetics, a discipline that formally emerged in Modernity, especially from Kant and his interpreters (for example, the question of the autonomy of the work of art and the specificity of judgments about the beautiful and the sublime in both art and nature); (2) the investigation of the multifaceted relations between art and philosophy; (3) the criticism and commentary of works of art, considering their relationship with philosophy.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leaders: Pedro Süssekind, Vladimir Vieira

Deleuze: Practical Philosophy

The research group is divided into three thematic axes – “Ethics in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze”; “The question of immanence in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze”; “The problem of judgment in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze” -, each led by one of its professor members, respectively, Mariana de Toledo Barbosa (UFF), Paulo Domenech Oneto (UFRJ) and Ovídio Abreu (PUC-Rio). These axes also include research by undergraduate and graduate students. The objective concerning all axes is to make explicit the inseparability between theory and practice in Deleuze’s philosophy: either because thought always unfolds from ethical-political coordinates; or because practice is equally determined by the creation of concepts.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leader: Mariana de Toledo Barbosa

Eros da Crítica (Eros of Criticism)

This group is focused on researching different forms of essay and performance-lecture as possible ways of presenting philosophical thought.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leader: Patrick Pessoa

Philosophy of Culture

Group dedicated to researching various forms of philosophical criticism of culture.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leader: Tereza Calomeni

Filosofias do Tempo do Agora (Philosophies of the Now-Time)

The reference to Walter Benjamin’s latest philosophy has the primary aim of making explicit the affiliation to critical theory, but to a specific critical theory, the one that proposes “a leap out of history” and that, unlike traditional theory, operates from the perspective that philosophy, in reflecting on the world around it, also modifies it. Based on that, this laboratory intends to deepen its relationship with feminist theories and psychoanalytic theories, understanding that both are linked to a practice. The philosophical-political moment will lead us to prioritize authors already present in ongoing research – Judith Butler, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan -, as well as bringing the theoretical contribution of contemporary thinkers in and from Latin America, such as Rita Segato and Anibal Quijano, to name some of the most important among them, opening a transdisciplinary and transregional dialogue that aims to rise to the challenges of the present time.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leader: Carla Rodrigues

Republican Studies Laboratory

The Republican Studies Laboratory conducts research on modern republicanism in its various dimensions. With the emergence of republican political thought in Renaissance Italy, the central terms of this tradition were established by an important group of authors. At the center of these debates were the concepts of freedom of the city and the citizen, virtue, mixed government, equality and political participation. Subsequently, with the English civil wars of the 17th century, these themes were recovered and duly adjusted by the then emerging formulation of natural law. The language of natural law then provided new ways of thinking about the republic under labels distinct from those developed by the Renaissance: the consent of the governed, the right to rebel, the social contract, the relationship between property and political power began to inhabit the republican universe. Arriving in the New World with the American Revolution, new questions arose.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leaders: Fabrina Magalhães, Luís Alves Falcão

LERen: Laboratory of Renaissance Studies

LERen researches the Renaissance from a multidisciplinary perspective: articulating different areas of knowledge around the appreciation of the different aspects of the Renaissance cultural phenomenon, in order to consider its philosophical production.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leader: Celso Azar

Metaphysics in Contemporary Philosophy

The history of contemporary philosophy reveals that the 20th century was marked, both in continental philosophy and in analytical philosophy, by the affirmation of the end of metaphysics. Heidegger tells us that the hegemonic tradition of Metaphysics in the West was the main reason for the oblivion of the question about the meaning of Being. On the other hand, in the analytical philosophy of language, we come across authors such as Mach, Wittgenstein, Carnap, among others, who share the conception that metaphysical problems would be nothing more than “pseudoproblems”. While such trends announce the end of Metaphysics, in the origins of contemporary philosophy, we come across important authors whose works would prioritize the preservation of metaphysics, redefining it on new bases. Among these authors, we can mention Husserl and Bergson. Even though phenomenology only became possible through a radicalization of Cartesian themes, Husserl himself tells us that phenomenology would be almost like a “neo-Cartesianism” (that is, a total reform of philosophy to make it a science with absolute foundations). Contrarily, by contesting the project of naturalizing consciousness, Bergson’s spiritualism presents us with his theory of the duration of moments of conscious life and, with this, defends a dualist philosophy that places, on the one hand, bodies in space and, on the other, the continuous and heterogeneous moments that are typical of the life of the spirit. The contrast between the philosophies that announce the end of metaphysics and those that, in one way or another, try to safeguard it, justifies the proposal to create the present research group.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leaders: Carlos Tourinho, Claudinei Aparecido de Freitas da Silva (UniOeste)

Metalogicon: Center for History and Philosophy of Logic

Metalogicon – Center for the History and Philosophy of Logic is basically comprised of researchers who are interested in both the historical development of logic and the philosophical questions it raises. In principle, its purpose is limited to (i) organizing courses and seminars, (ii) encouraging the scientific production of its members, and (iii) guiding the research of its students.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leader: Guilherme Wyllie

The Birth of Aesthetics in the Philosophy of the 18th and 19th Centuries

The Research Group’s main objective is to investigate the emergence of Aesthetics as an autonomous philosophical discipline in the modern period, that is, a type of approach to its objects that dispenses with references which are fundamental to other areas of philosophy. Given that the Critique of Judgment (1790) is usually considered its first major treatise, this purpose subsequently unfolds in three directions: (1) Detailed study of the Third Critique, as well as of other works by Kant that deal with pertinent themes; (2) Approach to authors, German but also English and French, who contributed to the establishment of this tradition, such as Addison, Burke, Hume, Diderot, Wickelmann, Herder, Baumgarten, among others; (3) Analysis of the main developments of this discipline in the German context of the late eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth century, in authors such as Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel, Hegel, Hölderlin, Schopenhauer, among others.

Infomation: Research Groups Directory (CNPq)
Leader: Vladimir Vieira