Joachim Duyndam
filosoof
filosoof
INTRODUCTION & BIO & PUBLICATIONS
This website is about mastering meaning, about control over meaning. “BetekenisLab” (Dutch) means “Meaning-Lab” in English. Meaning is taken here as a connective relationship between something meaning-demanding and something meaning-giving.
Humans are creatures of meaning. We constantly give and receive meaning; we live in meanings. Seeing this thing as a computer screen, feeling my dryness as thirst, enjoying a meal, falling in love with someone, using a lie as an argument, condemning this case as theft, forgiving someone a wrongdoing, considering that political party as a threat – just a few random examples of meaning relations. These examples alone show that meaning arises (is found or made) through interpreting-as, through judgments. These can be descriptive judgments (or facts): in front of me is a glass of water; that football player is offside – or normative judgments: that act is despicable; this music is beautiful; my situation is unpleasant; here is someone in need. Both descriptive and normative judgments can be more or less debatable: was it offside or not; is what I did transgressive; when is war justified?
In every interpretation or judgment, something meaning-demanding is connected to a meaning-giving. Meaning-demanding is usually something particular, for example an object, an action, a practice, a situation, an event, a phenomenon, a feeling, an opinion, a work of art (the dot in our logo). That particular matter is connected to a meaning-giving: something more general, for example a concept, a rule, a law, a norm, a value, an ideal, a tradition (the arc in our logo). Meaning-demanding and meaning-giving are not separate entities in themselves: meaning is constructed as the connection between them.
In the “Meaning-Lab” on this website, meaning relationships are investigated in six themes: exemplars, empathy, resilience, forgiveness, humanism, and philosophy (see below). The guiding and central relational concept is mimesis. This originally ancient-Greek concept means, among other things, imitation and following, but also translating, reproducing, depicting, reciting, representing, impersonating, counterfeiting, performing.
Meaning – that is, the connective relationship between something meaning-demanding and a meaning-giving – is conceived here as mimetic. Such as, in the order of the six themes:
Creative mimesis: finding a creative-mimetic relationship with an exemplary person or role model.
Completive mimesis: an empathic relationship completes the experiences of the other.
Mimetically bouncing back: resiliently responding to heteronomous pressure, threat, or adversity.
Healing mimesis: an interpersonal relationship damaged by fault can be restored when one forgives the other for the guilt of the violation.
Critical mimesis: (self-)critically responding to cultural manifestations (including politics and religion) that have become taken for granted or dogmatic.
Thinking mimesis: critically constructive understanding the being of reality, that is, reflectively apprehending or resonantly hearing.
Positive signal: intellectual catharsis.
BIO
Joachim Duyndam is professor emeritus of Humanism and Philosophy at the University of Humanistics (UvH) in Utrecht. He received his PhD in 1997 for an interdisciplinary study of empathy.
As a philosopher, Joachim proceeds like a detective (which was already his vocational wish as a child). In a relatively limited occasion – an experience, an event, a media moment, a statement, a story – he perceives traces that he follows to more far-reaching, encompassing or fundamental meanings. His work in teaching and research, which is richly represented on this website, also bears witness to this motive.
Joachim has been affiliated with the University of Humanistic Studies from its founding in 1989 until his legal retirement in 2021. His academic career began in Nijmegen, where he had been appointed teaching assistant professor (‘junior lecturer,’ one would now say) since 1984. Before, he studied philosophy at the universities of Utrecht (UU), Nijmegen (now RU) and Amsterdam (UvA), where he graduated cum laude in 1984.
Joachim is thoroughly educated in the European philosophical tradition, leading to today’s phenomenology and hermeneutics. His research departs from and moves on the meaning fields of mimesis: exemplars, empathy, resilience, forgiveness, humanism and philosophy.
SELECTED PAPERS PUBLISHED BY JOACHIM
Duyndam, J. (2024). A locked room: The significance of empathy and being seen, particularly for older adults. In J. Duyndam & A. Machielse (Eds.), Meaning and Aging: Humanist Perspectives (pp. 61-78). (Studies in Humanism and Atheism). Palgrave MacMillan.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55806-1_4
#empathy
Duyndam, J. (2021). Teaching humanism. In W. D. Hart (Ed.), Educating humanists: The challenge of sustaining communities in the contemporary era (pp. 33-53). (Studies in Humanism and Atheism). Springer Nature.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88527-4_3
Duyndam, J. (2018). Uniqueness and resilience. Innovation in Aging, 2(1), 26.
https://doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igy023.096
#resilience
Duyndam, J. (2017). Resilience beyond mimesis: Humanism, autonomy, and exemplary persons. In B. Becking, A.-M. Korte, & V. Liere, (Eds.), Contesting religious identities: Transformations, disseminations and mediation (pp. 175-194). Brill.
https://doi.org/10.1163/15733831-12341536
#resilience; #humanism; #model
Duyndam, J. (2017). Humanism as a positive outcome of secularism. In P. Zuckerman & J. Shook (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of secularism (pp. 706-720). Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199988457.001.0001
#humanism
Duyndam, J. (2017). Positive Humanism. Irish Freethinker and Humanist, 167(6), 20-22.
#humanism
Duyndam, J. (2016). The balance of enjoyment: The truth of hedonism in Levinas. Mededelingen van de Levinas Studiekring: Journal of the Dutch-Flemish Levinas Society, 21, 65-79.
https://levinasstudiekring.nl/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/2016_e-journal.pdf
#philosophy; #Levinas
Duyndam, J. (2015). A hidden motive of suicide terrorism: The political meaning of Levinas’ concepts of escape and election. Mededelingen van de Levinas Studiekring: Journal of the Dutch-Flemish Levinas Society, 20, 2-9.
https://levinasstudiekring.nl/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/2015_e-journal.pdf
#philosophy; #Levinas
Duyndam, J. (2014). Girard and Heidegger: Mimesis, Mitsein, addiction. The European Legacy, 20(1), 56-64.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2014.976933
#philosophy
Duyndam, J. (2013). Hermeneutical mimesis. In V. Neufeld Redekop & T. Ryba (Eds.), René Girard and creative mimesis (pp. 249-258). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Duyndam, J. (2013). Haptotherapy and empathy. International Journal of Haptonomy and Haptotherapy, 1(1), 1-6
https://doi.org/10.61370/tlas6511
#empathy
Duyndam, J. (2012). Humanism, resilience, and the hermeneutics of exemplary figures. Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, 20(2), 3-17.
#humanism; #resilience; #model
Duyndam, J. (2011). Introduction: Why Nasr Abu Zayd fascinates me. In J. Duyndam & R. van Riessen (Eds), Proceedings of the international memorial conference in honour of Nasr Abu Zayd: How can a humanistic approach to Islam be realized? (pp. 3-4). Dutch-Flemish Levinas Society.
https://levinasstudiekring.nl/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Vol16_2011.pdf
#philosophy
Duyndam, J. (2010). Empathy and the potential body of imagination. In G. Bottà & M. Härmänmaa (Eds.), Language and the scientific imagination. University of Helsinki, Language Centre.
http://hdl.handle.net/10138/15277
#empathy
Duyndam, J. (2010). Girard’s anthropology of addiction: An exploration through mimesis and Mitsein. In G. Bottà & M. Härmänmaa (Eds.), Language and the scientific imagination. University of Helsinki, Language Centre.
http://hdl.handle.net/10138/15228
#model
Duyndam, J. (2010). Ideals today between wishful thinking and realism. In H. Frendo (Ed.), The European mind: Narrative and identity (pp. 674-679). University of Malta Press.
#humanism
Duyndam, J. (2009). Girard and Levinas, Cain and Abel, mimesis and the face. Contagion: Journal of violence, mimesis, and culture, 15/16, 237-248.
https://doi.org/10.1353/ctn.0.0023
Duyndam, J. (2009). Sincerely me: Enjoyment and the truth of hedonism. In B. Hofmeyr (Ed.), Radical passivity: Rethinking ethical agency in Levinas (Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy series) (pp. 67-78). Springer Science & Business Media.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9347-0
#philosophy; #Levinas
Duyndam, J. (2007). Credible fatherhood and unique identity: Toward an existential concept of adoption. The European Legacy, 12(6), 729-735.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770701565072
#model
Duyndam, J. (2006). Exzessives Geben: Freigebigkeit bei Levinas und anderen. In F. Miething & C. Von Wolzogen (Eds.), Après vous: Denkbuch für Emmanuel Levinas 1906-1995 (pp. 125-138). Verlag Neue Kritik.
#filosofie; #Levinas
Duyndam, J. (2004). Hermeneutics of imitation. A philosophical approach to sainthood and exemplariness. In M. Poorthuis, & J. Schwartz (Eds.) Saints and role models in Judaism and Christianity (pp. 7-21). Brill.
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047401605_003
#model
Duyndam, J. (2003). The right to be protected from humiliation as a human right. In D. Meyer-Dinkgräfe (Ed.),European culture in a changing world: Between nationalism and globalism (Proceedings of the 8th conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, ISSEI). CD-ROM. The University of Wales.
#humanism
Duyndam, J. (2002). Empowerment by empathy: On good and gruesome empathy. In A. Halsema & D. van Houten (Eds.), Empowering humanity: State of the art in Humanistics (pp. 139-148). Humanistics Library, De Tijdstroom.
#empathy
Duyndam, J. (2000). Narrative identity and empathic citizenship. In D. Apollon, O.B. Fure, & L. Sväsand (Eds.), Approaching a new millennium: Lessons from the past, prospects for the future (Proceedings of the 7thconference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, ISSEI). CD-ROM. University in Bergen.
#empathy