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DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies Imaginaria of Force

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Dr. Dennis Borghardt

Curriculum

Dennis Borghardt is a literary scholar (German Studies/Classical Philology) with research focuses on modern German literature (16th–21st centuries), the reception of antiquity, aesthetics and natural philosophy in the early modern period, genre poetics, contemporary literature, literary theory, literary valuation theory (especially literary prizes), and poetic realism. He studied German, Latin, Greek, and philosophy and received his doctorate from the University of Münster with a thesis on mechanics, aesthetics, and poetics in the reception of antiquity in the early modern period (2018). His dissertation was awarded with the University of Münster-Dissertationspreis (2019).

After a research stay at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and a temporary assistant position at the Ruhr University Bochum (Prof. Binczek), he worked from 2015 to 2023 at the University of Duisburg-Essen as a research associate in the DFG project "Literary Prizes in German-Speaking Countries since 1990: Functions and Effects" and as an assistant (Prof. Pontzen).

Since 2023, Dennis Borghardt has been employed as a Lecturer for special assignments at the German Department of the University of Münster.

Publications (selection)

  • Aristoteles’ Wahrnehmungsbegriff im Spannungsfeld von aísthesis, dýnamis und epistéme, in: Frank Fehrenbach, Laura Isengard, Gerd Micheluzzi, Cornelia Zumbusch (eds.): Wahrnehmungskräfte – Kräfte wahrnehmen. Dynamiken der Sinne in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter 2024, pp. 39–56.
  • Der Wert der Preise. Valorisierungsdynamik in der deutschen Literaturpreislandschaft 1990–2019. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2022. (with Sarah Maaß).
  • Kraft und Bewegung. Zur Mechanik, Ästhetik und Poetik in der Antikenrezeption der Frühen Neuzeit. Hamburg: Meiner 2021. (= Paradeigmata 41).
  • Mediale und konzeptionelle akustische Formate der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Natalie Binczek, Uwe Wirth (eds.): Handbuch Literatur und Audiokultur. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter 2020, pp. 274–289.
  • Ens necessarium versus ens contingens. Strategien zur Bekämpfung des Zufalls in der frühneuzeitlichen Antikenrezeption und Ästhetik, in: Christoph Pflaumbaum, Carolin Rocks, Christian Schmitt, Stefan Tetzlaff (eds.): Ästhetik des Zufalls. Ordnungen des Unvorhersehbaren in Literatur und Theorie. Heidelberg: Winter 2015, pp. 43–58.

Research project: Dýnamis, enérgeia, and movement in Aesthetic Theory

In the history of ideas, aesthetic theory is generally linked to the discipline of ars aesthetica, especially to A. G. Baumgarten as its founder. The guiding principle here is that the analogy between inferior and rational faculties of the soul, as proposed by Baumgarten, leads to the sublimation of sensuality using the concepts of Leibniz-Wolff philosophy. Broadening this perspective, however, reveals that Baumgarten's analogon rationis not only has the archegetic function of bundling an 'art of perception' into a disciplinary framework, but also that theories of forces and motion, as well as the associated concepts of capacities from astronomy, cosmology, and psychology—and thus the interplay of mechanistic, materialistic, and metaphysical concepts of force—play a decisive role in this.

Building on the dissertation—which traced the concepts of dýnamis, enérgeia, and movement in their early modern revaluations of Aristotelianism, (Neo-)Platonism, and atomism—the question of the interdependence of force, power, and movement will be explored in a context that extends beyond the early modern period. The perspective will be broadened historically from the reception of antiquity between the 16th and 18th centuries to include medieval and modern eras, as well as systematically to include Christian, mystical, and modern-physical discourses. The goal is to provide an encyclopedic approach that transhistorically explores dýnamis, enérgeia, and movement in their functions for aesthetic theory formation.