In all situations of life, the very first thing one does is orient oneself.
Orientation precedes everything else, all perceiving, thinking, and acting;
it decides which directions we pursue.
It seems simple but is very complex, and it has so far hardly been explored.
The Hodges Foundation for Philosophical Orientation (HFPO) is based on the philosophy of orientation, as developed by Werner Stegmaier, and strives to promote, research, and further develop this philosophy in theory and practice in academia and among the general public. The HFPO provides a place and a platform for philosophical research and investigation into not only the conditions and structures of human orientation, but also to what extent philosophical orientations are necessary, possible, and beneficial in everyday life. It seeks to philosophically reflect and confront the vast reorientations humanity is facing in the 21st century.
The HFPO is neither for profit, nor does it follow any political or religious aims. It wants to support and promote orientation research not only in academia, but also in cooperation with people who are not able to withdraw into quiet rooms for reflection and who are professionally confronted with surprising situations – entrepreneurs and their employees, politicians, diplomats, journalists, lawyers, doctors, teachers, ministers, artists, athletes, marketeers, and many others. They all develop skills and competences of orientation that philosophy has traditionally passed over.
Timon Georg Boehm and Reinhard G. Mueller are organizing a seminar at the 2022 ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) conference that is taking place in Taipei on June 15-18, 2022.
In this seminar, entitled “Orientation in and through Texts,” we seek to explore, via the philosophy of orientation, how different forms of writing orient us in different ways and create different worlds of orientation.
Since the invention of writing, fundamental reorientations of thinking have often occurred hand in hand with innovative forms of writing. From Parmenides’s didactic poetry, via Plato’s dialogue, Aristotle’s treatise, Montaigne’s essay, Descartes’ meditation, Nietzsche’s performance of masks, Joyce’s experimental thoughtstream, Wittgenstein’s album, Derrida’s deconstruction, and all the way to the explosive differentiation of digital forms of writing in our contemporary world – new forms of communication can bring about radical reorientations, and foundational reorientations often require new forms of writing to communicate them.
The deadline to submit an abstract is November 31, 2021.
To submit an abstract or access the call for papers, click here.
After receiving many high-quality contributions, the HFPO engaged in a careful two-stage selection process, first by examining the application materials and second via a Zoom meeting with the four finalists, and is now pleased to announce its very first Hodges doctoral dissertation fellow for the academic year 2021-22: Olga Faccani.
Olga Faccani is a PhD candidate in Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she currently focuses on ancient Greek performance. Her dissertation, Tragic Bonds: Death, Disorientation, and Trauma in Euripides, investigates the process of disorientation caused by death and trauma in the work of Athenian playwright Euripides. By analyzing the ways in which characters re-orient themselves in the aftermath of death and trauma, Olga aims to explore the significance of uncertainty and loss in Greek tragedy, and more generally the ways in which the theater art form enacts the process of disorientation. At UC Santa Barbara, Olga also maintains an active collaboration with The Odyssey Project, a theater program between incarcerated youth and undergraduate students. As part of this experience, the participants reconstruct ancient texts in their own voices, and leverage storytelling to look at their lives through a heroic lens rather than a criminalized one.
HFPO is establishing its own publishing house, called “Orientations Press,” dedicated to writings concerning the philosophy of orientation. Its first book will be an English translation of Werner Stegmaier’s introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s life and philosophy that was first published in German with Junius as Friedrich Nietzsche zur Einführung in 2011.
Werner Stegmaier and Reinhard Mueller are currently finishing the manuscript of the English translation, whose title will be An Orientation to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The book provides, via the perspective of the philosophy of orientation, an introduction to Nietzsche’s philosophy within the contexts of his life and his forms of writing, to the guiding distinctions of his philosophizing, to a methodological Nietzsche interpretation, and offers a new reading of his famous concepts of the will to power, the overman, the eternal return of the same, and amor fati. The English version will include a new, additional chapter on “How to Study Nietzsche Today,” which highlights the importance of taking into account the most recent edition of Nietzsche’s later notes, the KGW IX, in which one can recognize exactly how Nietzsche added notes in his notebooks, workbooks and on loose sheets, where he crossed words out, added further comments, and revised passages, which permit readers to better understand the genesis of Nietzsche’s thinking.
Werner Stegmaier’s An Orientation to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is expected to appear in the fall of 2021.
Join the second round of our virtual seminar on the primary book of the philosophy of orientation, Prof. Werner Stegmaier’s What is Orientation? A Philosophical Investigation.
After the first round of the seminar welcomed participants from San Fransisco, Nashville, the UK, Germany, and Switzerland, the book’s translator Dr. Reinhard G. Mueller now offers a second round of weekly webinar sessions that go through the book chapter by chapter.
The seminar’s first session is on March 12, but you can join the free virtual seminar any time.
For the academic year 2021-22, we provide dissertation fellowships that expand knowledge concerning the philosophy of orientation, either within the field of philosophy or any other discipline, if it produces philosophically relevant results.
$30,000 for full-time dissertation writing
no citizenship restrictions
Given the difficulties connected with the Coronavirus pandemic, we faced an insufficient pool of highest quality contributions in 2020. We therefore decided to postpone the deadline for our prize competition to 2021. Since the disruptions of work and life, caused by the lockdowns, rapidly accelerate the digital transformation of our world, our question has become even more relevant. We therefore ask again:
New deadline for contributions is October 25, 2021. We offer the following prize awards: 1st award $25,000, 2nd award $15,000, 3rd award $10,000, and a special student award of $5,000 (if no student is among the top three).
In our genre “Agonistic Orientations: Sequences of Competing Essays,“ we are exploring the nature of “agon” (competition) via essays written by different authors who are themselves philosophically competing with each other. In thus far four essays, Enrico Mueller and Carlin Romano are debating with one another, in two essays each, the historical and philosophical birth of agonism in ancient Greece and especially focus on the contest between the two thinkers Plato and Isocrates and the concept of “Kairos” in ancient Greek culture.
Orienting oneself successfully isn’t only a matter of theoretical knowledge, but it’s also an achievement and competence involving manifold orientation skills and orientation virtues that differ depending on the field of action we’re in. Such orientation skills, demanded especially from successful professionals such as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, politicians, lawyers, athletes, marketers, scientists, artists, or poker players, have hardly become an object of philosophical research. Through the lens of the philosophy of orientation, this essay series investigates these orientation skills that are vital for people to successfully find their ways in today’s complex and ever-changing world.
The first essay, written by Reinhard G. Mueller, addresses “Decision-Making as an Orientation Skill in Poker and Everyday Life” and discusses how Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions when You Don’t Have All the Facts relates to the philosophy of orientation. Click here to read this essay and learn more about this series.
In our first video podcast, Mike Hodges, the HFPO’s founder, and Reinhard Mueller, its executive director, are discussing how the Coronavirus pandemic will change our world long-term politically and economically and with regard to our everyday life.
Find the full video podcast as well as shorter segments here.
We’re also exploring the reorientations due to the Coronavirus pandemic in our series of “Essays Concerning the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
We’re exploring the vast reorientations currently taking place in our world due to the Coronavirus pandemic. In the first essay, Werner Stegmaier focuses on the shift from the knowledge mode to the orientation mode and how, despite persistent uncertainty, our routines, both new and established, continue to provide hold in our orientation. Read it in English and German.
In the second essay, Reinhard G. Mueller explores how the pandemic brings to the fore the very processes of orientation and how the current emergency mode is accompanied by an overall shift to moral orientation. Read his essay here.
In the third essay, J.B. Potter and his brother James Potter engage, in a historical perspective, with the question of how we can accept the challenge to “rise” in this crisis. Read their essay here.
We appreciate all questions and feedback and are open to publish contributions to the topic. Please contact: reinhard.mueller@hfpo.com
