SEMINAR DESCRIPTION
\nThe Spirit\, then?
\nYes and no&mdash\;no and yes.
\nNot Spirit as substance\, nor Spirit as subject. Not even\, perhaps\, Spirit as such. Let us attend instead to what the word leaves behind in its wake: spiritus\, &ldquo\;breath.&rdquo\; A trace of air\, an opening\, a passage.
\nNothing more. Yet\, perhaps\, nothing less.
\nHence the proposal of a minimal pneumatology.
\nBut what does it mean to breathe? What does it mean to leave room&mdash\;for ourselves\, for others\, for things themselves&mdash\;to breathe? And what kind of question is this\, once it has been separated from the familiar vocabularies of self-help\, self-optimization\, or popular psychology?
\nIf a minimal pneumatology is neither a theology nor&mdash\;at least in the Hegelian sense&mdash\;a phenomenology\, it cannot simply become a psychology by default. Shall we turn\, then\, toward hermeticism? I feel here too we would be choosing perhaps the wrong door. For behind it we often find a room crowded with damasks and pleated velvets\, where Spirit\, overburdened by symbols and correspondences\, survives only as a captive creature\, adorned and enchained at once.
\nLet us begin elsewhere.
\nBreathing as a minimal gesture&mdash\;or rather as a constellation of minimal gestures: to open\, to make space\, to give time\, to set aside\, to choose\, to move beyond\, to challenge\, to hollow out\, to celebrate&hellip\; Gestures so slight that they often escape notice\, and yet it may be through them that Spirit passes.
\nA pragmatics of Spirit\, then?
\nFine. Yet I would prefer to speak of an aesthetics.
\nFor what is at stake here is\, before all else\, a restoration of perception to its primary dignity. Not perception as mastery\, nor as the reduction of things to what can be identified and possessed\, but perception as hospitality: a way of receiving what appears without exhausting it.
\nAccordingly\, throughout this session we will linger with a series of images and related materials. Together we shall attempt to discover&mdash\;with attentiveness\, patience\, sensitivity\, and generosity\, not least towards one another&mdash\;the ways in which Spirit\, rather than being summoned through prescribed practices\, and rather than becoming the object of our conceptual constructions\, quietly makes its way through the penumbra of what we see and do not see.
\nEmerging in its simplicity\, it appears uncannily before us\, reminding us that it had been there all along: near yet elusive\, intimate yet withdrawn\, concealed within what we habitually overlook or\, conversely\, feel compelled to overinterpret. It inhabits neither the obvious nor the occult\, but the interval between them&mdash\;the delicate space where attention hesitates and meaning has not yet closed upon itself.
\nThis session is therefore intended for all those drawn to the adventures of art and aesthetics across the centuries\; to philosophy and mythology\; to poetry and poetics\; to symbolism\, surrealism\, and the life of images\; and\, more generally\, to those strange and beautiful encounters in which imagination comes into contact with what is too readily called ineffable\, though it may be asking for something else entirely: not to be named\, mastered\, or decoded\, but simply sheltered in its fragility.
\nThe Spirit\, then?
\nIndeed.
\nMore than what you see. Less than you might interpret. Yet more than you could ever imagine.
\nCONTENTS
\nTIME
\nSunday\, September 6\, 2026
10:00&ndash\;13:00 Eastern US Time &bull\; 16:00&ndash\;19:00 Central European Time.
FACILITATOR
Carlos A. Segovia (PhD) is an independent British-born\, Spanish philosopher and writer\, working on contemporary philosophy at the crossroads of the philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of art\; and author of fifteen books.
\nAmong his publications\,
He has been associate professor of philosophy and religious studies at St Louis University Missouri (Madrid Campus)\, visiting professor at the University of Aarhus and the Free University of Brussels\, and guest lecturer at the European Research Council\, the Collè\;ge International de Philosophie\, the É\;cole Normale Supé\;rieure\, University College London\, Bauhaus-Universitä\;t Weimar\, the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan\, the European University at St Petersburg\, Waseda University in Tokyo\, Ryukoku University in Kyoto\, and the University of Lilongwe.
\nConvinced\, though\, that higher education within mainstream academia is undergoing a form of intellectual exhaustion&mdash\;brought about by academic standardization\, epistemological bureaucratization\, and the compartmentalization\, ideologization\, and commodification of knowledge\, alongside the cultivation of middlebrow mediocrity and the reduction of learning to a consumer experience&mdash\;he has turned to other scholarly venues in which thinking may still be pursued for what it truly is: a way of confronting the unknown&mdash\;the as-yet unthought but thinkable&mdash\;with renewed awe and in the spirit of an art rather than a science.
\nHe collaborates regularly with Incite Seminars\, where he has facilitated courses like &ldquo\;
He is currently based in Berlin with his life partner\, Sofya Shaikut\, a performance artist and butÅ dancer\, with whom he is also engaged in ongoing joint work.
\nINCITE SEMINARS
We are a mix of rogue scholars\, disgruntled academics\, disenchanted buddhists\, enchantment-hungry anarchists\, radical therapists\, and general weirdos looking to create autonomous and accessible forms of &ldquo\;higher education.&rdquo\;
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