Research – SIMON GODART

Umschläge. Peripeteia and Anagnorisis in Aristotle’s Poetics

How can we think turning points — moments of reversal that arise between extremes, from bliss to misery, from righteous intention to terrible crime, from salvation to destruction? And why does this figure of Umschlagen lie at the heart of Aristotle’s Poetics? This project investigates the roles of anagnorisis (recognition) and peripeteia (reversal) in Aristotle’s literary theory. Both figures mark decisive transformations — of knowledge in the case of recognition, and of action in the case of reversal. I argue that Aristotle mobilises these concepts in order to rehabilitate tragedy in response to Plato’s critique in the Politeia. More specifically, I show that this defence of tragic poetry is structured as an alignment with philosophical discourse: the dianoetic significance of peripeteia and anagnorisis allows Aristotle to construe tragic drama as a site of quasi-philosophical insight, thereby integrating it into the domain of philosophy.

You may follow this link to find further information on a preliminary project on this complex: https://www.temporal-communities.de/research/future-perfect/projects/peripety-godart/index.html

System and Spirit: Cassirer and the Uses of Enlightenment (Start: Nov. 2026)

This project examines Ernst Cassirer’s Die Philosophie der Aufklärung (1932) as both a historiographical reconstruction of the Enlightenment and a philosophical intervention into early twentieth-century debates on reason, culture, and modernity. It analyses Cassirer’s concept of the Enlightenment as a historically bounded yet systematically productive formation, structured by the shift from esprit de système to esprit systématique.
A central focus lies on Cassirer’s methodological positioning between Kantian transcendental philosophy and a Hegelian philosophy of history, and on the question of how Enlightenment historiography functions as a critical mirror for modern thought. Within this framework, special attention is given to Cassirer’s reading of Leibniz as a key figure in the transition from early modern system-building to Enlightenment systematicity.
The project investigates how Cassirer’s reconstruction produces a unified yet internally differentiated image of eighteenth-century philosophy, and how this model informs his understanding of reason, system, and historical transformation. It further situates The Philosophy of Enlightenment within Cassirer’s broader engagement with modernity, including its implicit relevance for the Cassirer–Heidegger debate at Davos (1929).

Research for this project is conducted within the Turin Humanities Programme as part of the project After the Enlightenment: Histories, Debates, and Reinterpretations (PI: Elisabeth Décultot, 2026–2028).

Ongoing Project: Online-Journal „Bildbruch. Beobachtungen an Metaphern „

Based in Basel and Berlin, the online-journal Bildbruch. Beobachtungen an Metaphern is dedicated to the investigation into the ways in which metaphoricity shapes our worlds and our thoughts – and , most importantly, how its deriavte form of catachresis takes part in these processes. Me and Sina Dell’Anno founded this journal in 2020 as a platform for the exchange on ‚coins that have lost their images‘ (Nietzsche) in philosophy and philology and explores the lines between concept, metaphor and catachresis in the tradition of Hans Blumenberg. Bildbruch appears twice a year, cooperating with different guest editors from both fields, and publishes contributions especially from early-career researchers.

You may find the Journal and its latest issues, e.g. „Frühe Neuzeiten“, via this link: https://www.bildbruch.com/

Past Projects: Thematic Einstein Forum „Scales of Temporality“ (2022/23)

Together with researchers from EXC 2020 and MATH+, the Thematic Einstein Forum „Scales of Temporality: Modelling Time and Predictability in the Literary and the Mathematical Sciences“ explored shared interests, common ground, and overlapping problems in the conceptualisation of time across the mathematical sciences and the Humanities. By comparing and confronting different models of temporality in these fields, the Forum contributed to a transdisciplinary dialogue and reflected on the various ways in which time can be conceptualised.Exploring across disciplines what time may be thought to be — as loop or line, as container of objects and phenomena, as a dynamic process, or as the inner structure of consciousness and life — we observed that its very taken-for-grantedness informs and conditions our respective modes of inquiry in strikingly similar ways.

Follow this link to learn more about the project: https://www.temporal-communities.de/news/models-of-time-and-probability.html

Professional Affiliations:

Member of the Renaissance Society of America, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie, the German Studies Associtation, the Leibniz-Gesellschaft and the Hans Blumenberg Gesellschaft

Research Interest: