Biografie

Lilian Kroth arbeitet derzeit an ihrem Promotionsprojekt über Michel Serres' Philosophie der Grenzen an der Universität Cambridge. Seit 2021 ist sie mit den Forschungsgruppen "Kritisches Denken im Plural" und "Energie und Klima" am Centre Marc Bloch assoziiert. Sie ist eine der Organisatorinnen des CRASSH-Forschungsnetzwerks "Remote Sensing. Ice, Instruments, Imagination" in Cambridge. Zuvor studierte sie Philosophie an der Universität Wien (BA, MA), wo sie auch als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin und Tutorin tätig war, sowie Bildende Kunst an der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. Sie hat an verschiedenen Gruppenausstellungen und Theaterprojekten mitgewirkt. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Natur- und Rechtsphilosophie, Wissenschaftsgeschichte und -philosophie, kritische Theorie und Ästhetik.;

Lilian Kroth travaille actuellement sur son projet de doctorat sur la philosophie des limites de Michel Serres à l'Université de Cambridge. Depuis 2021, elle est associée aux groupes de recherche "Pensée critique au pluriel" et "Energie et climat" au Centre Marc Bloch. Elle est l'une des organisatrices du réseau de recherche CRASSH "Remote Sensing. Ice, Instruments, Imagination" à Cambridge. Auparavant, elle a étudié la philosophie à l'université de Vienne (BA, MA), où elle a également travaillé comme assistante de recherche et tutrice, et les beaux-arts à l'Académie des beaux-arts de Vienne. Elle a participé à plusieurs expositions collectives et projets théâtraux. Ses recherches portent sur la philosophie de la nature et du droit, l'histoire et la philosophie des sciences, la théorie critique et l'esthétique.;

Lilian Kroth is currently working on her PhD project on Michel Serres’s philosophy of limits at the University of Cambridge. Since 2021, she has been associated to the research groups “Critical thinking in the plural” and “Energy and climate” at the Centre Marc Bloch. She is one of the organizers of the CRASSH research network “Remote Sensing. Ice, Instruments, Imagination” in Cambridge. Prior to that, she has studied Philosophy at the University of Vienna (BA, MA), where she also worked as a research assistant and tutor;

and Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She contributed to various group exhibitions and theatre projects. Her research is interested in philosophy of nature and law, the history and philosophy of science, critical theory and aesthetics.

Zusammenfassung

The interest of my thesis on Michel Serres’s philosophy of limits is to trace limit formations as operative functions of thought, which perform interdisciplinary ‘translations’ between philosophy of science, aesthetics, and critical theory. In order to pursue this, I examine a number of Serres’s works revolving around the history and philosophy of science, writings on art and literature, and ‘critical’ pieces. These comprise, amongst others, his early Hermès-series, The Birth of Physics, The Natural Contract, as well as his series on Foundations. I focus on Serres’s engagement with limit-formations (that is, relatedly also the formation of boundaries, borders, frontiers, and margins) in respect to three main fields. I examine his understanding of limits in respect to the history and philosophy of geometry (1), in respect to his take on topology (2), and in relation with entropy as a concept used both in thermodynamics and information theory (3). I argue that Serres’s understanding of limits provides a prolific output both on the level of content and form, and challenges common understandings of being ‘given’ and ‘made’. On the one hand, the thesis shines light on Serres’s historical account of the genesis of different limits, and how they travel between knowledge formations. On the other hand, it reconstructs his own employment of limits and how it sits in his philosophy of science, his take on aesthetic practices, and his idea of contracts. The aim is to approach Serres’s work in its potential to explain how limits both disconnect and connect. These analyses emerge from the background of Serres, at first sight, not being prone to taking limits as a primary concern. His reservations towards limits as ontological givens, as politically non-negotiable, or straightforwardly socially constructed turn out to be highly productive. These contexts leads his work to a philosophy of limits that takes what he calls the ‘North-West-Passage’ between the sciences and humanities with an outlook that remains both philosophical and historical. Within French-speaking philosophy and beyond, Serres therefore turns out to be a crucial and astonishingly original thinker of limits in an irreducible plural, and connected to that, as I argue, a critical thinker.