Dimitris Karambelas and Giannis Asteris will discuss the book “The Spirit and the Beast” on Saturday, October 11, at noon, as part of the “Ta proforika” discussion series at DOMA Editions.

Regarding Dimitris Karambelas’ essay, The Spirit and the Beast

On the one hand, God, the laws of nature, right reason, genetic circuits: truth. On the other, chance, the ephemeral, the finite, the random: life. Between these two poles lies an intermediate space: the realm of the spiritual, the realm par excellence of man—a mixed and hybrid being, a monstrous coexistence of opposites.

This essay tells a story of the spiritual—from Secundus the silent philosopher, Pico della Mirandola, and Pascal to Hannah Arendt and Jacques Derrida; from Melville, Baudelaire, and Kafka to Ted Hughes, Thomas Pynchon, and Michel Houellebecq; from Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky to Bill Viola, Jim Jarmusch, and David Lynch—seeking an answer to the question of whether this transitional zone could be reborn for us again.

About the author

Dimitris Karambelas (Athens, 1972) is an assistant professor of Legal History at the Athens Law School, where he teaches ancient Greek and Roman law. He has published essays on Greek and foreign literature and on the essay as a genre.