The Free Academy: Josefína Formanová
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: September 25, 2025, 19:00 – 21:00
If you haven’t failed, you haven’t lived. Reflections on an absurd challenge.
Samuel Beckett’s prose piece Worstward Ho contains the following famous words. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” And Beckett’s words could perhaps be a credo for our fast-paced, self-assured age. In her lecture, Josefína Formanová will attempt to use the lines in question as a model for cultivating failure as a principle of spiritualizing humanity, against the backdrop of reflections on dramatic absurdity and the not-so-distant Hegelian dialectic.
Josefína Formanová (born 1992) is completing her doctoral studies in philosophy at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts. She currently works as an editor for Host magazine, where she also presents the philosophical and social podcast Kovárna. She also occasionally publishes in other Czech and Slovak media. Her doctoral research focuses on the philosophy of Hegel, specifically the experience of error and failure in his conception of man and society.