Sr. Res. Assoc. Dr. Simon Hajdini

Simon Hajdini is Senior Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, where he teaches social and political philosophy.

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

2024 (Spring-Summer) Visiting Scholar, Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Chicago

2021— Senior Research Associate (tenured), Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

2021 (Spring) Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, The University of Chicago

2017-2020 Visiting Scholar, Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Chicago

2016-2017 Fulbright Postdoctoral Visiting Scholar, Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Chicago

2016-2021 Research Associate, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

2016— Assistant Professor (tenured), Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

2014-2016 Research Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

EDUCATION

Ph.D.   University of Ljubljana (Philosophy), 2012

B.A.    University of Ljubljana (Philosophy), 2004

B.A.    University of Ljubljana (Comp. Lit.), 2004

RESEARCH GRANTS

Names at the Tip of the Nose: Naming, Smell, and Truth

FUNDING SOURCE: Slovenian Research Agency. DURATION: 10/1/2022 - 9/30/2025. ROLE: PI with research team. STATUS: ongoing.

This project addresses the befuddling relationship between names and smells, taking its cue from the tip-of-the-nose phenomenon, indicating a well-documented human inability of odor-identification. The project relates this impossibility to a striking linguistic fact that, in Indo-European languages at least, smells altogether lack proper names. We name smells either eponymously by relating them to their sources or synesthetically by borrowing their names from the other senses. Consequently, smells stand for lexical voids and represent the singular site of a universal linguistic disturbance: a universal olfactory anomia. Thus, the primary scientific objective of the project is to examine the relationship between naming and the nameless realm of smells.

Structure and Genealogy of Indifference: Logic - Epistemology - Ideology

FUNDING SOURCE: Slovenian Research Agency. DURATION: 5/1/2017 - 4/30/2021. ROLE: PI with research team. STATUS: completed.

This basic research project is devoted to the philosophical analysis of the structure of indifference with special emphasis on the conceptualization of its genealogy. The project addresses the 1) logical, 2) epistemological, 3) philosophical-genealogical, and 4) ideological- theological status of indifference in modernity. The scientific background consists of two basic hypotheses: first, indifference, far from being reducible to the inertia of the undistinguished, is the bearer of a paradoxical difference that escapes the opposition between the distinguished and the undistinguished; second, as the bearer of negativity, indifference implies not the spontaneity or arbitrariness of choice but the irreducible impossibility of choice, which, however, emerges in the modality of the contingent encounter.

Varieties of Negation: Philosophy - Psychoanalysis - Literature

FUNDING SOURCE: Slovenian Research Agency. DURATION: 1/1/2018 - 12/31/2019. ROLE: PI (with Eric L. Santner) with research team. STATUS: completed.

This bilateral research project between Slovenia and USA addresses the notions of negation and negativity in German idealism and psychoanalysis. Its aim is to analyze the forms of negativity with the goal of critically reassessing the conceptions of subjectivity in the two above-mentioned traditions. Accordingly, the project follows four key objectives: 1) to explicate the forms of negation in German idealism and psychoanalysis and to analyze their conceptual relationships; 2) to demonstrate the structural role of negativity as the agent of the constitution of subjectivity; 3) to conduct a comparative philosophical analysis of the negativity of the subjects of self- consciousness and the unconscious; and 4) to illustrate the modes of negativity and subjectivity with examples from German literature from the 19th through the early 20th centuries.

Antinomies of Rest: A Philosophical Investigation into the Political-Theological and Ontological Status of Rest in Modernity

FUNDING SOURCE: Fulbright Program. DURATION: 11/1/2016 - 5/31/2017. ROLE: PI (postdoc). STATUS: completed.

The proposed project aims to deliver a philosophical analysis of the notion of rest in modernity by way of focusing on its double meaning in the English language. On the one hand, it focuses on the “actual” (Germanic) meaning of “rest” in the sense of “repose,” while on the other hand, the project reflects on the “reflected” (Romanic) meaning of “rest” as “remainder,” i.e., on the concepts of residuality in philosophy, political theology, and psychoanalysis.

The (Mis)uses of Laziness: The Figure of the Idler in Philosophy, Theology, and Political Economy

FUNDINING SOURCE: Slovenian Research Agency. DURATION: 7/1/2014 - 6/30/2016. ROLE: PI (postdoc). STATUS: completed.

The proposed project aims at delivering a philosophical analysis of the notion of laziness, focusing primarily on its historical and contemporary figures. Despite the massive history of its conceptions, the problem of laziness has not yet received a thorough philosophical conceptualization. The project intervenes in the conceptions of laziness in 1) early­-Christian ascetic tradition, high scholasticism, and Protestantism, 2) German idealism (Kant, Fichte, Hegel), 3) the discourse of classical political economy, and 4) contemporary political and economic discourse.

MEMBERSHIPS

Editorial Board of Borec

Editorial Board of Problemi

Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Central European Research Institute of Søren Kierkegaard

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

Slovenian (Native)

English (Fluent)

German (Fluent)