Mats Rosengren

Professor at Department of Literature and Rhetoric

Telephone:
+46 18 471 29 40
E-mail:
mats.rosengren@littvet.uu.se
Visiting address:
Engelska parken, Thunbergsvägen 3 P
Postal address:
Box 632
751 26 UPPSALA

Download contact information

Short presentation

Since October 2014, I hold the chair of Rhetoric at the Department of Literature, Uppsala University.

I am founding member of the Swedish Ernst Cassirer Society (since 2004). Since 2020, the society has been on hold – you find find documentation ofour activities here.

Since 2016 I am responsible for the scientific side of Uppsala University's exchange with Collège de France.

Listen to me talking about rhetoric (in Swedish).

Check the latest publications in our series Uppsala Rhetorical Studies

Research

My main interests lie in the theory and history of rhetoric, epistemology and the philosophy of science, French philosophy, cave art and artistic research. I have written about Plato, Montaigne, Chaim Perelman, Cornelius Castoriadis, Ernst Cassirer and Gilles Deleuze.

One of my major works is a study of the discovery of Palaeolithic cave art and the subsequent development of the discipline of cave art studies, seen from a doxological perspective: Cave Art, Perception and Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan 2012). In 2019, the book was published in French, in a slightly expanded translation: L'Art des Cavernes-perception et connaissance (Hermann, Paris).

I am also a translator, mainly of French philosophy, and an editor, primarily for the now-concluded Logos/Pathos series at Glänta Produktion.

For a number of years, I have been working on an overarching project dealing with issues related to social imaginaries. The project currently has two main strands, one focusing on the construction and significance of the social imaginary in prehistory, and one linking the philosophies of Ernst Cassirer and Cornelius Castoriadis with a contemporary rhetorical perspective on social imaginaries.

Since the pandemic, I have also been teaching advanced courses on democratic theory and propaganda.

Doxology – a rhetorical approach to epistemology

Since 2002, I have been working on developing a “different” take on epistemology. I have chosen to call this epistemic stance doxological in order to emphasise that all knowledge is doxic knowledge, thereby turning the conventional Platonic distinction between doxa (beliefs, opinions) and episteme (objective, eternal knowledge) on its head.

Protagoras' dictum, the so-called homo mensura theorem, which asserts that man is the measure of all things, is an early expression of a doxological position that explicitly states that no understanding escapes the human conditions of knowledge. Our knowledge is, and always will be, precisely human – not objective or neutral in the usual sense of these terms.

Protagoras dictum advocating man as the measure of all things is, perhaps, the most poignant expression of a doxological position, stating explicitly that no apprehension escapes the human-related conditions of knowledge alluded to in Protagoras’s fragment. Departing from the pivotal question “What would a Protagorean position imply for epistemology today?”, I develop a critique of the purely discursive notion of knowledge. I emphasize the fact that our knowledge is always embodied, in ourselves as biological beings as well as formulated and/or preserved in some language, institution or ritual; practiced and upheld by one or many individuals, always in one historical moment or other and within the admittedly diffuse framework of an ever changing but still specific social situation. Doxology is not a relativism abandoning all claims to objectivity or science – far from it – but an attempt, in the wake of the serious and fundamental criticisms of the late 20th century, to readdress and reconsider what knowledge, science and objectivity could be today. Nor is doxology a teaching about apparent or illusory knowledge, but about situated, variable and interested knowledge. In short it is a teaching about how we actually do create the knowledge that we need – in science as well as in life. In my publications on doxology I have tried to formulate and develop a concept of knowledge taking heed of all these factors. First introduced in 2002, this concept, doxology, has now become wildly used within the social and human sciences in Scandinavia.

Mats Rosengren

Publications

Recent publications

All publications

Articles in journal

Books

Chapters in book

Collections (editor)

Other

FOLLOW UPPSALA UNIVERSITY ON

Uppsala University on Facebook
Uppsala University on Instagram
Uppsala University on Youtube
Uppsala University on Linkedin