Biosemiotics is an interdiscipline that seeks naturalistic understandings of metalistic phenomena, grounded in biology, and, in turn, seeks understandings of biological processes in terms of a general semiotics.
What can be learned about human semiosis, interpretation, communication, creativity and meaning-making by studying less complex but analogous phenomena in cellular signaling, chemotaxis, zoosemiotics, embryonic development, or the immune system? Can the pervasive metaphoric usages of chemical “message,” genetic “information,” and ”signaling” in contemporary biology be defined more precisely by taking them literally? While human symbolic representation may be species-specific–or at least unique to unusually big-brained animals–it must have emerged out of less complex semiotic processes and proto-semiotic processes. What are the antecedents of human semiosis? And how can the exploration of these antecedents help bridge the unnatural gap between body and mind that was imposed centuries ago more for religious than scientific reasons? Participants from various fields in the sciences and humanities will explore these and other questions at the June gathering. All are welcome to attend.
Visit: http://dactylfoundation.org/?page_id=3026.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Patterson, Steve. "Sexism and the Idea of the Great Speech: the GUARDIAN's Classicist on Rhetoric." RAIL February 27, 2011.
Many in the field of rhetoric, I’ll wager, are happy to see an article about their discipline at all in a major newspaper like the Guardian. Being a philosopher myself I sympathize with the sort of small-town-ish “Hey! They’re talking about US!!” feeling engendered by articles like Mary Beard’s What makes a great speech? The article itself, however, is rather a letdown in terms of what it communicates to the reader about rhetoric.
Let me begin in fairness by noting that Mary Beard is a well-known classicist in the UK. Thus it is not surprising that her treatment of rhetoric here focuses primarily on sources and examples drawn from Greco-Roman antiquity. Be this as it may, she speaks in a general voice here about rhetoric and so her discussion is disturbingly incomplete. Rather than showing rhetoric as the very active and modern discipline that it is, her focus on the ancients gives the impression that the study of rhetoric ended with Cicero. She makes no mention at all of any figures in the history of rhetoric between antiquity and the present day. Not even foundational figures of contemporary rhetoric like Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, get a mention, to say nothing of figures lesser known outside rhetoric but equally if not more important within it like Burke, Richards, Toulmin, or Henry Johnstone Jr.. Though to her credit she avoids rehashing the standard Platonist objections to rhetoric, Beard’s presentation is rendered somewhat shallow by her lack of modern sources. . . .
Read the rest here: http://railct.com/2011/02/27/sexism-and-the-idea-of-the-great-speech-the-guardians-classicist-on-rhetoric/.
Let me begin in fairness by noting that Mary Beard is a well-known classicist in the UK. Thus it is not surprising that her treatment of rhetoric here focuses primarily on sources and examples drawn from Greco-Roman antiquity. Be this as it may, she speaks in a general voice here about rhetoric and so her discussion is disturbingly incomplete. Rather than showing rhetoric as the very active and modern discipline that it is, her focus on the ancients gives the impression that the study of rhetoric ended with Cicero. She makes no mention at all of any figures in the history of rhetoric between antiquity and the present day. Not even foundational figures of contemporary rhetoric like Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, get a mention, to say nothing of figures lesser known outside rhetoric but equally if not more important within it like Burke, Richards, Toulmin, or Henry Johnstone Jr.. Though to her credit she avoids rehashing the standard Platonist objections to rhetoric, Beard’s presentation is rendered somewhat shallow by her lack of modern sources. . . .
Read the rest here: http://railct.com/2011/02/27/sexism-and-the-idea-of-the-great-speech-the-guardians-classicist-on-rhetoric/.
Beard, Mary. "What Makes a Great Speech?" GUARDIAN Ferbruary 26, 2011.
When the Greeks read of Demosthenes speaking through the pebbles, or trying to make himself heard above the waves, or declaiming loudly as he climbed up hill, almost out of breath, they were grasping an important truth of ancient culture: that the art of public speaking could be learned, that the techniques of oratory were teachable. In a culture in which oral persuasion counted for almost everything in politics, it was crucial to believe that public speaking was a skill that could be acquired by almost anyone who was prepared to put in the hard work.
Ancient literature was full of advice to would-be orators. Although they are little read now, even by the most devoted students of Latin and Greek, volumes of this stuff survives, dealing with everything from how to move your hands or when to make a joke, to the rhythms, cadences and structures of effective oratory. And Roman boys (the rich ones at least) spent most of their school days practising the art of speech-making. Some of these school exercises still survive: "Defend Romulus on the charge of having killed Remus", the kids were asked; or "Make a speech advising Agamemnon whether or not to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia". The Roman equivalent of the national curriculum was committed to training boys to speak persuasively, even on these flagrantly fictional topics.
The modern world has largely inherited the ancient view that oratory is a matter of technique. True, we do have a romantic notion that some people are "naturals" at public speaking – whether it is something in the air of the Welsh valleys that produces the gift of the gab, or the "natural" sense of timing that great orators share with great comedians. But modern speech-writers always stress the importance of technique, and they advocate many of the same old tricks that the ancients used ("group your examples into threes", they advise – that's the classical "tricolon", which was taken to extremes in Blair's famous "education, education, education" soundbite). . . .
Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/26/kings-speech-oscars-mary-beard.
Ancient literature was full of advice to would-be orators. Although they are little read now, even by the most devoted students of Latin and Greek, volumes of this stuff survives, dealing with everything from how to move your hands or when to make a joke, to the rhythms, cadences and structures of effective oratory. And Roman boys (the rich ones at least) spent most of their school days practising the art of speech-making. Some of these school exercises still survive: "Defend Romulus on the charge of having killed Remus", the kids were asked; or "Make a speech advising Agamemnon whether or not to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia". The Roman equivalent of the national curriculum was committed to training boys to speak persuasively, even on these flagrantly fictional topics.
The modern world has largely inherited the ancient view that oratory is a matter of technique. True, we do have a romantic notion that some people are "naturals" at public speaking – whether it is something in the air of the Welsh valleys that produces the gift of the gab, or the "natural" sense of timing that great orators share with great comedians. But modern speech-writers always stress the importance of technique, and they advocate many of the same old tricks that the ancients used ("group your examples into threes", they advise – that's the classical "tricolon", which was taken to extremes in Blair's famous "education, education, education" soundbite). . . .
Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/26/kings-speech-oscars-mary-beard.
Joseph, John E. "What If Derrida Was Wrong About Saussure?" TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT April 14, 2011.
Daylight, Russell. What If Derrida Was Wrong About Saussure?. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011.
This book is the first systematic analysis of all of Derrida's published pronouncements on Saussure's Cours, including its impassioned rejection of writing as only a secondary representation of language, the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign and the problem of its existence in time. The last is, more precisely, one of the topics pursued seriously by Saussure that Derrida never took up - thus allowing him to depict Saussure as implying certain ideas that in fact he directly rejected.
Daylight patiently combs through the fine silk weave on which Derrida has painted his broad brushstrokes. He leads us step by step through each of Derrida's readings of Saussure, then sometimes back again through the same texts as we proceed to the next set of Derridean claims. Daylight sees his task not as defending Saussure from falsehoods, but showing that Derrida's interpretation is by no means the only possible one. . . .
Read the rest here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=415785&c=1.
This book is the first systematic analysis of all of Derrida's published pronouncements on Saussure's Cours, including its impassioned rejection of writing as only a secondary representation of language, the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign and the problem of its existence in time. The last is, more precisely, one of the topics pursued seriously by Saussure that Derrida never took up - thus allowing him to depict Saussure as implying certain ideas that in fact he directly rejected.
Daylight patiently combs through the fine silk weave on which Derrida has painted his broad brushstrokes. He leads us step by step through each of Derrida's readings of Saussure, then sometimes back again through the same texts as we proceed to the next set of Derridean claims. Daylight sees his task not as defending Saussure from falsehoods, but showing that Derrida's interpretation is by no means the only possible one. . . .
Read the rest here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=415785&c=1.
Cfp: 6th Annual Meeting, North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics, Boston College, September 15-17, 2011.
NASPH was formed in 2005 in order to further the study of philosophical hermeneutics. While honoring the rootedness of philosophical hermeneutics in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, NASPH also recognizes that the future of such thinking depends on engaging with a diverse range of figures and issues. Our intention is to promote dialogue focusing on both the sources of, and the prospects for, philosophical hermeneutics.
James Risser will give the Keynote Address. Other invited speakers will include Theodore George, Drew Hyland, Dennis Schmidt, and Charles Scott.
James Risser will give the Keynote Address. Other invited speakers will include Theodore George, Drew Hyland, Dennis Schmidt, and Charles Scott.
"Simone de Beauvoir Now: a Symposium to Mark the 25th Anniversary of Simone de Beauvoir's Death," Centre for Philosophy and Literature and Department of Women's Studies, Duke University, September 23, 2011.
Confirmed Speakers:
Emily Apter (French, New York University)
Stella Sandford (Philosophy, Kingston University, UK)
Ursula Tidd (French, University of Manchester, UK)
Linda Zerilli(Political Science and the Center for Gender Studies, University of Chicago)
Respondents:
Nancy Bauer (Philosophy, Tufts University)
Toril Moi (PAL; Literature, Duke University)
Visit: http://www.duke.edu/web/philartslit/events.html.
Emily Apter (French, New York University)
Stella Sandford (Philosophy, Kingston University, UK)
Ursula Tidd (French, University of Manchester, UK)
Linda Zerilli(Political Science and the Center for Gender Studies, University of Chicago)
Respondents:
Nancy Bauer (Philosophy, Tufts University)
Toril Moi (PAL; Literature, Duke University)
Visit: http://www.duke.edu/web/philartslit/events.html.
Seminar Series on the Philosophy of Literature, Royal Holloway College, University of London, February-March, 2011.
During the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, the characteristics of the philosophical approach to literature have undergone some important changes. Alongside the continuation of the traditions of Continental thought, representatively symbolized by the work of Badiou and Rancière, can be detected a move back to elements that were challenged 40 years ago by the generation of Barthes, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. The death of the author is now being countered by the notion of the author as intentional subject; the disconnection between life and art-work is giving way to a new interest in biography; the notion of the self-contained work of art, or of art-as-textuality, is being displaced in favour of a view of literary language as a hard-wired element of human cognition. From Marion’s version of phenomenology to Currie’s Arts and Minds, the philosophy that might underlie literature is being re-appraised.
Session 1 (23 February 2011) : The Intentional Subject
Session 2 (16 March 2011): (T)exteriors
Session 3 (23 March 2011): The Intentional Act
Visit: http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2011/03/the-philosophy-of-literature/.
Session 1 (23 February 2011) : The Intentional Subject
Session 2 (16 March 2011): (T)exteriors
Session 3 (23 March 2011): The Intentional Act
Visit: http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2011/03/the-philosophy-of-literature/.
"No Quarrels: Literature and Philosophy Today," Humanities Foundation, Boston University, April 1-2, 2011.
[This conference is over but readers may still wish to know about it.]
Our speakers are literary critics and philosophers thinking at the intersection between traditions. Working from the details of particular literary and philosophical texts, they will consider the present state of some ancient quarrels:
Our speakers are literary critics and philosophers thinking at the intersection between traditions. Working from the details of particular literary and philosophical texts, they will consider the present state of some ancient quarrels:
- Does literature offer some kind of “truth” as philosophy has traditionally sought to do?
- Is literary art an exercise of rational capacities, or does it extend beyond the formal enclosures of reason?
- Is the effect of literary art to stir up the passions and blind us to reality, as Plato and others have warned, or can it also be part of a legitimate moral and political education?
- How might literature and philosophy expose one another’s limits?
- What is the future of their relationship, both institutionally and intellectually?
Sinnerbrink, Robert. Interviews on Deleuze. THE PHILOSOPHER'S ZONE.
Part 2: At the Movies April 2, 2011:
This week, The Philosopher's Zone goes to the movies. In the second of two programs devoted to the great French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, we examine what he had to say about cinema. He was one of the first philosophers to turn their attention to films and he saw film as a philosophical medium. But what did that mean and why, in his view, did film become more philosophical after World War II?Part 1: Who was Gilles Deleuze? March 26, 2011:
Gilles Deleuze, who died by his own hand in 1995, was one of the most influential and prolific French philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. He wrote influentially not just on philosophy, but on literature, film, fine art and the environment as well. But his writing style - highly allusive, peppered with neologisms - is not easy-going. This week, we try to get to grips with a significant and important thinker.
"Hermeneutics and Translation Studies," University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, May 26-27, 2011.
Even though Translation Studies and Hermeneutics share a common interest in the mediating processes, these two disciplines have co-existed and developed since the advent of Translation Studies in the mid 20th century with strikingly little interaction. The purpose of this symposium is to explore avenues in which Hermeneutics and Translation Studies could complement one another, thereby strengthen research on both oral and written mediation and the mediating processes. The symposium is conceived of as a forum for posing and discussing questions of relevance to these two disciplines. In particular, the purpose of the symposium is to begin developing the contours and goals of and simultaneously setting limits to the scope of an emerging discipline, Translational Hermeneutics, which could be developed by merging these heretofore distinct research strands.
Suggested Topics:
1. A Retrospective: Hermeneutics and the Development of Translation Studies
3. Didactics of Translation and Interpreting from a Hermeneutical Point of View
4. Translation in Practice – Specialized Texts versus Literature
5. Hermeneutics, Culture and Postcolonial Translation Studies
6. Synergies: Hermeneutics and Cognitive Linguistics
7. Hermeneutics, Corpus Studies and Empirical Research – Conflicting Paradigms?
Visit: http://philosophyoftranslation.blogspot.com/2010/11/call-for-papers-hermeneutics-and.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PhilosophyOfTranslation+%28Philosophy+of+Translation%29&utm_content=FeedBurner.
Suggested Topics:
1. A Retrospective: Hermeneutics and the Development of Translation Studies
3. Didactics of Translation and Interpreting from a Hermeneutical Point of View
4. Translation in Practice – Specialized Texts versus Literature
5. Hermeneutics, Culture and Postcolonial Translation Studies
6. Synergies: Hermeneutics and Cognitive Linguistics
7. Hermeneutics, Corpus Studies and Empirical Research – Conflicting Paradigms?
Visit: http://philosophyoftranslation.blogspot.com/2010/11/call-for-papers-hermeneutics-and.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PhilosophyOfTranslation+%28Philosophy+of+Translation%29&utm_content=FeedBurner.
Cfp: "Space, Place and the McLuhan Legacy," Twelfth Annual Convention, Media Ecology Association, University of Alberta, June 23–26, 2011.
McLuhan gave much attention to the changing environment of the city in the wake of technological change. As he stated in an article published in Canadian Architect in June 1961,“[t]oday the entire human community is being translated into ‘auditory space,’ or into that ‘field of simultaneous relations,’by electric broadcasting. It behooves the architect and town planner, above all, to know what this means” (p. 52).
For McLuhan, the city is a “technological composite,” a patchwork of media and technologies built up over time and space. In this context, new technologies may be imagined as “punctuations” in our historical landscape, inaugurating irreversible cultural, social, and economic changes. Locating the MEA convention in the heart of Edmonton’s urban centre will provide an occasion to reflect on the significance of this Western Canadian city in shaping McLuhan’s early explorations of perspective as a fundamental artistic and communicational principle.
The 12th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association will include papers, panels, and creative projects exploring space, place, and city in the context of the McLuhan intellectual legacy. How might media ecology inform today’s architecture and city planning? What is the relationship between urban and virtual media realities? What is the meaning of the city in the “global village”? How do new media technologies intertwine, intersect, and reform today’s urban landscapes?
For McLuhan, the city is a “technological composite,” a patchwork of media and technologies built up over time and space. In this context, new technologies may be imagined as “punctuations” in our historical landscape, inaugurating irreversible cultural, social, and economic changes. Locating the MEA convention in the heart of Edmonton’s urban centre will provide an occasion to reflect on the significance of this Western Canadian city in shaping McLuhan’s early explorations of perspective as a fundamental artistic and communicational principle.
The 12th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association will include papers, panels, and creative projects exploring space, place, and city in the context of the McLuhan intellectual legacy. How might media ecology inform today’s architecture and city planning? What is the relationship between urban and virtual media realities? What is the meaning of the city in the “global village”? How do new media technologies intertwine, intersect, and reform today’s urban landscapes?
A suite of themes have been developed for the Centenary, presented in the form of five probes or heuristics, which McLuhan often used in his teaching and public addresses:
- Media as extensions of the human senses
- Media as “punctuations” in history (bias of time, bias of space)
- Figure and ground as a means of achieving a deep understanding of changes in perception occasioned by new media
- The city as a technological composite
- The city as classroom
Cfp: "Philosophies of Travel: Exploring the Value of Travel in Art, Literature, and Society," University of Sydney, September 30-October 1, 2011.
Journey, pilgrimage, linear narration; what are the paradigms of travel and how do we think on them? The philosophies of travel make vital revelations about the cultures from which travellers emerge. Do we travel, to change ourselves or as Samuel Johnson argued, to “regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are”? Or do we use the journey to ‘turn back’ on things reflectively, or, as Pliny wrote, “to see what we disregard when it is under our own eyes.” From the ‘temple tourists’ of Augustan Rome, to Thomas Cook’s dreams of a tourism-enabled sobriety, to iPod™-wielding backpackers in the ashrams of India, travel has been understood as education, forging, exploration (both of the worlds of others and of the self), as well as frivolity, hedonism, and colonialism. Tourists have even been called the “barbarians of our Age of Leisure” (Turner and Ash 1975). This conference will look at the habits, traditions, and writings of travellers from the past and the present in order to build a picture of what travel is and has been understood to be for the traveller.
Abstracts for papers of 20min length are welcome on any of the following subjects:
Abstracts for papers of 20min length are welcome on any of the following subjects:
- Philosophical justifications of/explanations of the impulse to travel
- Pilgrimage, religious tourism, and spiritual tourism
- Identity, meaning, and tourism
- The aesthetics of travel in art, literature, or film
- Ideals of travel/ideals of journeying
- Reactions against travellers/travel
Cfp: Meeting (in Conjunction with 2011 Annual Meeting of Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), International Association for Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (IAPCS), Philadelphia, October 19, 2011.
We invite abstracts for papers that explore issues at the intersection of phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. This includes, but is not limited to, developing approaches to naturalized phenomenology, neurophenomenology, and the treatment of various issues (e.g., embodied cognition, perception, intersubjectivity and social cognition, etc.) that foster communication between the continental phenomenological tradition, analytic philosophy of mind, and empirical cognitive science. Phenomenology is here understood as a philosophical discipline and method in the tradition started by Edmund Husserl, and including the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and numerous others.
Abstracts (maximum 500 words) should be sent as email attachments no later than May 16 to:
joelk@hum.ku.dk.
Abstracts (maximum 500 words) should be sent as email attachments no later than May 16 to:
joelk@hum.ku.dk.
Cfp: "Transforming Human Nature in Science, Technology and the Arts," Dublin City University, October 21-23, 2011.
Update (April 18, 2011):
The venue has changed from Bahrain (due to the political unrest) to Dublin, Ireland. We are also extending the CFP deadline until June 1st. Please see the new details on our website: www.transformingthehuman.org. (Refresh the webpages if you have visited us before to clear your browser cache and see the updated pages.)
Original Post (January 26, 2011):
From genomics to virtual reality, technology has been changing the way human beings interact and navigate in the world at an ever increasing pace. During the last two decades, advances in technological integration are calling for special attention from thinkers across the disciplines and around the world. As the technological characteristics of the human condition impact our understanding of "the human", we are faced with radical changes in self-undersatnding and human identity. In short, through technology we are transforming human nature.
Possible Topics could include, but are not limited to:
· Bioethics, bioconservatism, bioliberalism, enhancement
· Posthumanist anthropology, aesthetics, ecology, feminism, critical theory
· Representation of human performance in technology and the arts
· Transhumanism and/or posthumanism in science fiction, fantasy, dystopian/utopian literature
· Enhancement and political discourse, regulation, and rights
· Humanism, transhumanism, and posthumanism in philosophy
· Poststructuralism, postmodernism, and posthumanism
· Transhuman and posthuman impact on ethics and/or value formation
· Phenomenology and postphenomenology
· Embodiment relations and identity
· Globalization and the spread of biomedicine and transhumanism
· Economic implications of transhumanist projects
· Popular culture and posthumanist representations
· Theology, enhancement, and the place of the posthuman
· Technology, robotics, and ethics
· Cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality
· Cyborgs and democracy
· Humanity, human, biotechnology
Visit the conference website: http://www.transformingthehuman.org/.
The venue has changed from Bahrain (due to the political unrest) to Dublin, Ireland. We are also extending the CFP deadline until June 1st. Please see the new details on our website: www.transformingthehuman.org. (Refresh the webpages if you have visited us before to clear your browser cache and see the updated pages.)
Original Post (January 26, 2011):
From genomics to virtual reality, technology has been changing the way human beings interact and navigate in the world at an ever increasing pace. During the last two decades, advances in technological integration are calling for special attention from thinkers across the disciplines and around the world. As the technological characteristics of the human condition impact our understanding of "the human", we are faced with radical changes in self-undersatnding and human identity. In short, through technology we are transforming human nature.
Possible Topics could include, but are not limited to:
· Bioethics, bioconservatism, bioliberalism, enhancement
· Posthumanist anthropology, aesthetics, ecology, feminism, critical theory
· Representation of human performance in technology and the arts
· Transhumanism and/or posthumanism in science fiction, fantasy, dystopian/utopian literature
· Enhancement and political discourse, regulation, and rights
· Humanism, transhumanism, and posthumanism in philosophy
· Poststructuralism, postmodernism, and posthumanism
· Transhuman and posthuman impact on ethics and/or value formation
· Phenomenology and postphenomenology
· Embodiment relations and identity
· Globalization and the spread of biomedicine and transhumanism
· Economic implications of transhumanist projects
· Popular culture and posthumanist representations
· Theology, enhancement, and the place of the posthuman
· Technology, robotics, and ethics
· Cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality
· Cyborgs and democracy
· Humanity, human, biotechnology
Visit the conference website: http://www.transformingthehuman.org/.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Hodge, Joanna. Review of Michael Ehrmantraut, HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHIC PEDAGOGY. NDPR (March 2011).
Ehrmantraut, Michael. Heidegger's Philosophic Pedagogy. London: Continuum, 2010.
There is, of course, a mountain of commentary on the thinking of Martin Heidegger, and claims to open up a genuinely new line of enquiry can be only rarely made out. Nevertheless, Michael Ehrmantraut does bring into focus a new angle of entry: the question of the importance for Heidegger's enquiries of the process of teaching philosophy. This question is then narrowed down again, for Ehrmantraut does not propose to pursue the interpretation given by Heidegger of Plato's practice in general, nor yet of the famous readings of the allegory of the cave in both GA 34 (Lectures on Plato's Allegory and on the Theaetetus) and in the second set of lectures from GA 36/37 (recently translated as Being and Truth by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt). The question is focused rather on Heidegger's own activity as teacher. In this Ehrmantraut proposes to provide a motivation for Heidegger's otherwise unexplained enthusiasm for Graf Yorck von Wartenburg's contribution to a discussion of historicality, expressed in the latter sections of Being and Time (1927), and it is with Heidegger's response to Yorck that Ehrmantraut begins his study. Against Dilthey, Yorck insists on the ontological status and futural orientation of historicality, and Ehrmantraut shows Heidegger seizing on the notion of historicality as a virtuality awaiting actualisation. That actualisation is to take place through the task of educating the next generation to take up a stance in the world as oriented towards another kind of future. In this task, philosophy in general, and more specifically the radically transformative philosophy proposed by Martin Heidegger, is to play a significant role.
The role in the enquiries of Being and Time of Dasein and Sein, of Seinsverständnis and das Man, are well enough known; those of the privilege to futurity over pastness and presentness, and to historicality over everydayness and within-timeness, less so. The stance of radical self-appropriation in the moment of Entschlossenheit, the defining moment of opening up to this futurity and historicality has been the focus of controversy for decades, at least since the decisive intervention of Ernst Tugendhat. In his magisterial Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl and Heidegger (1968), Tugendhat argues that the departure from a close tie between meaning, truth and expressibility in language renders the notion of Entschlossenheit otiose. This is a serious criticism; but what it precisely refuses to engage with is Heidegger's implicit appeal to future meanings, conjured into existence by that very stance which, in time, appropriates to itself both past, present and, more importantly, future conditions for meaningfulness. This very basic disagreement concerning truth is matched by a less obvious but no less basic challenge posed by Heidegger to the commonly understood notion of practice. The fallen, everyday notion of practice presumes that there is a theoretical orientation and specification of aims of living, given in advance of activity, and that there is then a subsequent turn to their practical realisation. Heidegger's proposal in Being and Time is to up-end this ordering, in line with the up-ending of the notion of truth: the practical orientation, a willingness to be put in question by being, precedes all determination of Dasein as self-questioning with respect to its circumstances, its past, its present and its future engagements. The radicality of these two moves comes to the fore in Ehrmantraut's analyses. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23190.
There is, of course, a mountain of commentary on the thinking of Martin Heidegger, and claims to open up a genuinely new line of enquiry can be only rarely made out. Nevertheless, Michael Ehrmantraut does bring into focus a new angle of entry: the question of the importance for Heidegger's enquiries of the process of teaching philosophy. This question is then narrowed down again, for Ehrmantraut does not propose to pursue the interpretation given by Heidegger of Plato's practice in general, nor yet of the famous readings of the allegory of the cave in both GA 34 (Lectures on Plato's Allegory and on the Theaetetus) and in the second set of lectures from GA 36/37 (recently translated as Being and Truth by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt). The question is focused rather on Heidegger's own activity as teacher. In this Ehrmantraut proposes to provide a motivation for Heidegger's otherwise unexplained enthusiasm for Graf Yorck von Wartenburg's contribution to a discussion of historicality, expressed in the latter sections of Being and Time (1927), and it is with Heidegger's response to Yorck that Ehrmantraut begins his study. Against Dilthey, Yorck insists on the ontological status and futural orientation of historicality, and Ehrmantraut shows Heidegger seizing on the notion of historicality as a virtuality awaiting actualisation. That actualisation is to take place through the task of educating the next generation to take up a stance in the world as oriented towards another kind of future. In this task, philosophy in general, and more specifically the radically transformative philosophy proposed by Martin Heidegger, is to play a significant role.
The role in the enquiries of Being and Time of Dasein and Sein, of Seinsverständnis and das Man, are well enough known; those of the privilege to futurity over pastness and presentness, and to historicality over everydayness and within-timeness, less so. The stance of radical self-appropriation in the moment of Entschlossenheit, the defining moment of opening up to this futurity and historicality has been the focus of controversy for decades, at least since the decisive intervention of Ernst Tugendhat. In his magisterial Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl and Heidegger (1968), Tugendhat argues that the departure from a close tie between meaning, truth and expressibility in language renders the notion of Entschlossenheit otiose. This is a serious criticism; but what it precisely refuses to engage with is Heidegger's implicit appeal to future meanings, conjured into existence by that very stance which, in time, appropriates to itself both past, present and, more importantly, future conditions for meaningfulness. This very basic disagreement concerning truth is matched by a less obvious but no less basic challenge posed by Heidegger to the commonly understood notion of practice. The fallen, everyday notion of practice presumes that there is a theoretical orientation and specification of aims of living, given in advance of activity, and that there is then a subsequent turn to their practical realisation. Heidegger's proposal in Being and Time is to up-end this ordering, in line with the up-ending of the notion of truth: the practical orientation, a willingness to be put in question by being, precedes all determination of Dasein as self-questioning with respect to its circumstances, its past, its present and its future engagements. The radicality of these two moves comes to the fore in Ehrmantraut's analyses. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23190.
"Speculative Philosophies and Religious Practices: New Directions in the Philosophy of Religion and Post-Secular Practical Theology," Centre for Faiths and Public Policy, University of Chester, June 1, 2011.
This workshop is a one-day workshop exploring the intersection between recent trends in continental philosophy of religion and realist versions of public theology. It is an interrogation of the implications – whether political, theological or practical – of the turn to the Real in recent thought. From the perspective of public and practical theology, this involves bolstering the realist strands of the discipline (Manchester Realism and the William Temple Foundation) with the resources of philosophy, constructing a philosophical toolkit for realist public theologians. John Reader and Christopher Baker’s Entering the New Theological Space, for example, has already started drawing on post-Derridean philosophies as theoretical background to their theological enterprises, moving beyond the sociological and pragmatic basis that public theologians have traditionally found sufficient; there is a growing realisation, however, that a new generation of philosophers – the philosophers of the speculative turn – may well be more fruitful for deepening and broadening public theology’s self-understanding. Therefore and from the perspective of philosophy of religion, this interrogation of the Real involves thinking through the consequences of continental philosophy of religion’s recent flirtations with a more realist brand of speculation. The philosophies of Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Graham Harman, Iain Hamilton Grant and Quentin Meillassoux are beginning to be felt throughout the humanities, and the papers in this workshop, following the lead established in Smith and Whistler’s After the Postsecular and the Postmodern, will begin to think through the broader impact of this new tendency, especially as it impacts on philosophy of religion. In other words, the guiding question for the day is: what has the speculative turn in continental philosophy of religion to do with religious practice? This workshop brings together public theologians and philosophers of religion to inhabit the intersection between philosophical theory and religious phenomena.
See: http://www.chester.ac.uk/sites/files/chester/Speculative%20Philosophies%20and%20Religious%20Practices%20-%20vs%202.pdf.
See: http://www.chester.ac.uk/sites/files/chester/Speculative%20Philosophies%20and%20Religious%20Practices%20-%20vs%202.pdf.
Pub: Timothy Bewes, THE EVENT OF POSTCOLONIAL SHAME.
Bewes, Timothy. The Event of Postcolonial Shame. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2010.
In a postcolonial world, where structures of power, hierarchy, and domination operate on a global scale, writers face an ethical and aesthetic dilemma: How to write without contributing to the inscription of inequality? How to process the colonial past without reverting to a pathology of self-disgust? Can literature ever be free of the shame of the postcolonial epoch--ever be truly postcolonial? As disparities of power seem only to be increasing, such questions are more urgent than ever. In this book, Timothy Bewes argues that shame is a dominant temperament in twentieth-century literature, and the key to understanding the ethics and aesthetics of the contemporary world.
Drawing on thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Theodor Adorno, and Gilles Deleuze, Bewes argues that in literature there is an "event" of shame that brings together these ethical and aesthetic tensions. Reading works by J. M. Coetzee, Joseph Conrad, Nadine Gordimer, V. S. Naipaul, Caryl Phillips, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Zoë Wicomb, Bewes presents a startling theory: the practices of postcolonial literature depend upon and repeat the same structures of thought and perception that made colonialism possible in the first place. As long as those structures remain in place, literature and critical thinking will remain steeped in shame.
Offering a new mode of postcolonial reading, The Event of Postcolonial Shame demands a literature and a criticism that acknowledge their own ethical deficiency without seeking absolution from it.
Visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9321.html.
In a postcolonial world, where structures of power, hierarchy, and domination operate on a global scale, writers face an ethical and aesthetic dilemma: How to write without contributing to the inscription of inequality? How to process the colonial past without reverting to a pathology of self-disgust? Can literature ever be free of the shame of the postcolonial epoch--ever be truly postcolonial? As disparities of power seem only to be increasing, such questions are more urgent than ever. In this book, Timothy Bewes argues that shame is a dominant temperament in twentieth-century literature, and the key to understanding the ethics and aesthetics of the contemporary world.
Drawing on thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Theodor Adorno, and Gilles Deleuze, Bewes argues that in literature there is an "event" of shame that brings together these ethical and aesthetic tensions. Reading works by J. M. Coetzee, Joseph Conrad, Nadine Gordimer, V. S. Naipaul, Caryl Phillips, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Zoë Wicomb, Bewes presents a startling theory: the practices of postcolonial literature depend upon and repeat the same structures of thought and perception that made colonialism possible in the first place. As long as those structures remain in place, literature and critical thinking will remain steeped in shame.
Offering a new mode of postcolonial reading, The Event of Postcolonial Shame demands a literature and a criticism that acknowledge their own ethical deficiency without seeking absolution from it.
Visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9321.html.
Cfp: "Feminist Epistemology and Philosophical Traditions," Society for Women in Philosophy, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, November 18-19, 2011.
The aim of this conference is to reflect critically on the relation of feminist epistemology to the various philosophical traditions that generated it and those that have nourished it intellectually and challenged it in the past three decades. These traditions include that of epistemology itself (of course), but also more generally the analytical philosophical traditions, the continental philosophical traditions, feminist philosophical traditions, and other philosophically inflected theoretical traditions, for example psychoanalytical theory. It is to be hoped that responses to the call for papers will add to this list.
Questions to be addressed include:
Questions to be addressed include:
- What, currently, is the relation between feminist epistemology and the more mainstream traditions of epistemology?
- What influence has feminist epistemology had on the more mainstream traditions of epistemology, if any?
- Is there any unity to ‘feminist epistemology’ across its relation to different philosophical traditions (for example the analytical and the continental traditions)?
- How have other theoretical traditions influenced and challenged feminist epistemology?
- What is the significance of the mainly Anglo-American constitution of the field of feminist epistemology?
- 'What, if anything, remains distinctive about 'feminist epistemology'? That is, when is 'feminist epistemology' simply 'epistemology'?
- Kirsten Campbell (Goldsmiths, University of London), ‘Feminist Epistemology and Psychoanalytical Theory’ -- Respondent: Stella Sandford (Kingston University)
- Miranda Fricker (Birkbeck College, University of London), ‘Feminist Epistemology as Social Epistemology’ -- Respondent: Stella Gonzalez Arnal (University of Hull)
- Gillian Howie (University of Liverpool), ‘Is There a “Continental” Feminist Epistemology?’ -- Respondent: Alison Stone (Lancaster University)
- Alessandra Tanesini (Cardiff University), ‘From Margin to Centre: Feminist Epistemology asv Socially Responsible Epistemology’ -- Respondent: Kathleen Lennon (University of Hull)
Clough, Sharyn. Review of Alexandra L. Shuford, FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY AND AMERICAN PRAGMATISM . NDPR (April, 2011).
Shuford, Alexandra L. Feminist Epistemology and American Pragmatism: Dewey and Quine. London: Continuum, 2010.
Feminist Epistemology and American Pragmatism: Dewey and Quine by Alexandra Shuford is the third in a recent series of books from Continuum that will be of interest to those following debates within feminist epistemology and philosophy of science (the other two books are Rationality and Feminist Philosophy by Deborah K. Heikes, reviewed earlier this year in NDPR, and Objectivity in the Feminist Philosophy of Science by Karen Cordrick Haely). Each of these three books is authored by philosophers new to these debates, consistent with Continuum's mission to "actively seek out the emerging generation." These slim volumes are not inexpensive ($120.00 each and not available in paperback), but each contains something of value.
The strength of Shuford's presentation is her application of Dewey's theory of inquiry to the problem of the high rate of caesarean sections in US hospitals. This latter problem is serious and Shuford's analysis is a welcome addition to feminist attempts to address it. This key chapter, "Feminist Pragmatist Inquiry," is the last of six that also include "Birthing Feminist Pragmatist Epistemologies," "Quine's Naturalized Epistemology," "Antony's Analytic Feminist Empiricism," "Nelson's Holistic Feminist Empiricism," and "Dewey's Theory of Inquiry."
Shuford's main thesis is that Nelson and Antony's feminist use of Quine, though in the right pragmatist spirit, still fails to acknowledge fully the embodied nature of knowing that is captured by Dewey and is necessary for understanding and criticizing phenomena. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23309.
Feminist Epistemology and American Pragmatism: Dewey and Quine by Alexandra Shuford is the third in a recent series of books from Continuum that will be of interest to those following debates within feminist epistemology and philosophy of science (the other two books are Rationality and Feminist Philosophy by Deborah K. Heikes, reviewed earlier this year in NDPR, and Objectivity in the Feminist Philosophy of Science by Karen Cordrick Haely). Each of these three books is authored by philosophers new to these debates, consistent with Continuum's mission to "actively seek out the emerging generation." These slim volumes are not inexpensive ($120.00 each and not available in paperback), but each contains something of value.
The strength of Shuford's presentation is her application of Dewey's theory of inquiry to the problem of the high rate of caesarean sections in US hospitals. This latter problem is serious and Shuford's analysis is a welcome addition to feminist attempts to address it. This key chapter, "Feminist Pragmatist Inquiry," is the last of six that also include "Birthing Feminist Pragmatist Epistemologies," "Quine's Naturalized Epistemology," "Antony's Analytic Feminist Empiricism," "Nelson's Holistic Feminist Empiricism," and "Dewey's Theory of Inquiry."
Shuford's main thesis is that Nelson and Antony's feminist use of Quine, though in the right pragmatist spirit, still fails to acknowledge fully the embodied nature of knowing that is captured by Dewey and is necessary for understanding and criticizing phenomena. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23309.
Palmer, Jason. "Language Universality Idea Tested With Biology Method." BBC NEWS April 15, 2011.
A long-standing idea that human languages share universal features that are dictated by human brain structure has been cast into doubt. A study reported in Nature has borrowed methods from evolutionary biology to trace the development of grammar in several language families. The results suggest that features shared across language families evolved independently in each lineage. The authors say cultural evolution, not the brain, drives language development. . . .
Read the rest here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13049700.
Read the rest here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13049700.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Cfp: "Uncanny Homecomings: Narrative Structures, Existential Questions, Theological Visions," University of Iowa, August 26-28, 2011.
The 2011 Religion, Literature and the Arts conference encourages participants to investigate the subject of home and homecoming. Poets and philosophers have long identified the human yearning to find a geographic and emotional environment that allows for a feeling of integration, where we understand our place in the greater whole. If we linger with this notion, however, the paradoxical nature of our desire for homecoming emerges: the home that we remember from our past is not the place that we are ever able to find in our present, and the places that we find or create in our present that have an aura of "home" are frequently disconcerting in their ability to provide comfort. There is something unheimlich in returning home, a lesson learned by individuals from Odysseus or the Prodigal Son in the Western tradition to those facing crises of homecoming in 21st century Palestine or Algeria.
Several different and helpful frames emerge as ways of investigating our longing for home. Narrative structures reveal the stories that shape and alter our trajectories, helping us to find a home in and through language, to root ourselves in a plot of land. Existential questions disclose the historical, philosophical, political, psychological and temporal desire for locating ourselves in a home. Theological visions incorporate the depth dimension of the human desire for integration within the rich tapestry of religious narratives that frame our cycles of exile and return.
Papers can speak about a particular historical figure or group, event, practice, text or work of art, reflecting on its capacity to disclose the provocative problem of homecoming in relation to human well-being. They can reflect on the nature, origin and effects of this desire in human history, using resources from any of the disciplines represented at the conference, and discussing how particular religious or secular communities have understood, interpreted, or reused myths, symbols or ideas about homecoming. Session papers should be 20 minutes long, with 10 minutes reserved for questions and answers. Please submit your abstract into the most appropriate of the following categories: Religious Studies, Literature, Art and Art History, Popular Culture, Postcolonial Approaches.
More information is available on the website at: http://rla2011.blogspot.com/.
Several different and helpful frames emerge as ways of investigating our longing for home. Narrative structures reveal the stories that shape and alter our trajectories, helping us to find a home in and through language, to root ourselves in a plot of land. Existential questions disclose the historical, philosophical, political, psychological and temporal desire for locating ourselves in a home. Theological visions incorporate the depth dimension of the human desire for integration within the rich tapestry of religious narratives that frame our cycles of exile and return.
Papers can speak about a particular historical figure or group, event, practice, text or work of art, reflecting on its capacity to disclose the provocative problem of homecoming in relation to human well-being. They can reflect on the nature, origin and effects of this desire in human history, using resources from any of the disciplines represented at the conference, and discussing how particular religious or secular communities have understood, interpreted, or reused myths, symbols or ideas about homecoming. Session papers should be 20 minutes long, with 10 minutes reserved for questions and answers. Please submit your abstract into the most appropriate of the following categories: Religious Studies, Literature, Art and Art History, Popular Culture, Postcolonial Approaches.
More information is available on the website at: http://rla2011.blogspot.com/.
Cfp: "Space and Place," Mansfield College, University of Oxford, September 14–16, 2011.
Questions of space and place affect the very way in which we experience and recreate the world. Wars are fought over both real and imagined spaces; boundaries are erected against the “Other” constructed a lived landscape of division and disenfranchisement; and ideology constructs a national identity based upon the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion. The construction of space and place is also a fundamental aspect of the creative arts either through the art of reconstruction of a known space or in establishing a relationship between the audience and the performance. Politics, power and knowledge are also fundamental components of space as is the relationship between visibility and invisibility. This new inter- and multi-disciplinary conference project seeks to explore these and other topics and open up a dialogue about the politics and practices of space and place. We seek submissions from a range of disciplines including archaeology, architecture, urban geography, the visual and creative arts, philosophy and politics and also actively encourage practioners and non-academics with an interest in the topic to participate.
We welcome traditional papers, preformed panels of papers, workshop proposals and other forms of performance – recognising that different disciplines express themselves in different mediums. Submissions are sought on any aspect of space and place, including the following:
1. Theorising Space and Place
* Philosophies and space and place
* Surveillance, sight and the panoptic structures and spaces of contemporary life
* Rhizomatics and/or postmodernist constructions of space as a “meshwork of paths” (Ingold: 2008)
* The relationship between spatiality and temporality/space as a temporal-spatial event (Massey: 2005)
* The language and semiotics of space and place
2. Situated Identities
* Gendered spaces including the tension between domestic and public spheres
* Work spaces and hierarchies of power
* Geographies and archaeologies of space including Orientalism and Occidentalism
* Ethnic spaces/ethnicity and space
* Disabled spaces/places
* Queer places and spaces
3. Contested spaces
* The politics and ideology of constructions and discourses of space and place including the construction of gated communities as a response to real/imagined terrorism.
* The relationship between power, knowledge and the construction of place and space
* Territorial wars, both real and imagined.
* The relationship between the global and the local
* Barriers, obstructions and disenfranchisement in the construction of lived spaces
* Space and place from colonisation to globalisation
* Real and imagined maps/cartographies of place
* Transnational and translocal places
4. Representations of place and space
* Embodied/disembodied spaces
* Lived spaces and the architecture of identity
* Haunted spaces/places and non-spaces
* Set design and the construction of space in film, television and theatre
* Authenticity and the reproduction/representation of place in the creative arts
* Technology and developments in the representation of space including new media technologies and 3D technologies of viewing
* Future cities/futurology and space
* Representations of the urban and the city in the media and creative arts
* Space in computer games
Organising Chairs:
Shona Hill; Shilinka Smith
Conference Leaders
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
New Zealand
E-mail: shs@inter-disciplinary.net
Colette Balmain
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
London, United Kingdom
E-mail: cb@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader,
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
E-mail: sp@inter-disciplinary.net.
We welcome traditional papers, preformed panels of papers, workshop proposals and other forms of performance – recognising that different disciplines express themselves in different mediums. Submissions are sought on any aspect of space and place, including the following:
1. Theorising Space and Place
* Philosophies and space and place
* Surveillance, sight and the panoptic structures and spaces of contemporary life
* Rhizomatics and/or postmodernist constructions of space as a “meshwork of paths” (Ingold: 2008)
* The relationship between spatiality and temporality/space as a temporal-spatial event (Massey: 2005)
* The language and semiotics of space and place
2. Situated Identities
* Gendered spaces including the tension between domestic and public spheres
* Work spaces and hierarchies of power
* Geographies and archaeologies of space including Orientalism and Occidentalism
* Ethnic spaces/ethnicity and space
* Disabled spaces/places
* Queer places and spaces
3. Contested spaces
* The politics and ideology of constructions and discourses of space and place including the construction of gated communities as a response to real/imagined terrorism.
* The relationship between power, knowledge and the construction of place and space
* Territorial wars, both real and imagined.
* The relationship between the global and the local
* Barriers, obstructions and disenfranchisement in the construction of lived spaces
* Space and place from colonisation to globalisation
* Real and imagined maps/cartographies of place
* Transnational and translocal places
4. Representations of place and space
* Embodied/disembodied spaces
* Lived spaces and the architecture of identity
* Haunted spaces/places and non-spaces
* Set design and the construction of space in film, television and theatre
* Authenticity and the reproduction/representation of place in the creative arts
* Technology and developments in the representation of space including new media technologies and 3D technologies of viewing
* Future cities/futurology and space
* Representations of the urban and the city in the media and creative arts
* Space in computer games
Organising Chairs:
Shona Hill; Shilinka Smith
Conference Leaders
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
New Zealand
E-mail: shs@inter-disciplinary.net
Colette Balmain
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
London, United Kingdom
E-mail: cb@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader,
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
E-mail: sp@inter-disciplinary.net.
Pub: Gianni Vattimo, A FAREWELL TO TRUTH.
Vattimo, Gianni. A Farewell to Truth. Trans. William McCuaig. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.
With Western cultures becoming more pluralistic, the question of "truth" in politics has become a game of interpretations. Today, we face the demise of the very idea of truth as an objective description of facts, though many have yet to acknowledge that this is changing.
Gianni Vattimo explicitly engages with the important consequences for democracy of our changing conception of politics and truth, such as a growing reluctance to ground politics in science, economics, and technology. Yet in Vattimo's conception, a farewell to truth can benefit democracy, exposing the unspoken issues that underlie all objective claims. The end of absolute truth challenges the legitimacy of policies based on perceived objective necessities -- protecting the free market, for example, even if it devastates certain groups or classes. Vattimo calls for a truth that is constructed with consensus and a respect for the liberty of all. By taking into account the cultural paradigms of others, a more "truthful" society -- freer and more democratic -- becomes possible.
In this book, Vattimo continues his reinterpretation of Christianity as a religion of charity and hope, freeing society from authoritarian, metaphysical dogmatism. He also extends Nietzsche's "death of God" to the death of an authoritarian God, ushering in a new, postreligious Christianity. He connects the thought of Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Karl Popper with surprising results and accommodates modern science more than in his previous work, reconciling its validity with an insistence that knowledge is interpretive. Vattimo's philosophy justifies Western nihilism in its capacity to dispense with absolute truths. Ranging over politics, ethics, religion, and the history of philosophy, his reflections contribute deeply to a modern reconception of God, metaphysics, and the purpose of reality.
Visit: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231153082/ref=pe_5050_19265340_snp_dp.
With Western cultures becoming more pluralistic, the question of "truth" in politics has become a game of interpretations. Today, we face the demise of the very idea of truth as an objective description of facts, though many have yet to acknowledge that this is changing.
Gianni Vattimo explicitly engages with the important consequences for democracy of our changing conception of politics and truth, such as a growing reluctance to ground politics in science, economics, and technology. Yet in Vattimo's conception, a farewell to truth can benefit democracy, exposing the unspoken issues that underlie all objective claims. The end of absolute truth challenges the legitimacy of policies based on perceived objective necessities -- protecting the free market, for example, even if it devastates certain groups or classes. Vattimo calls for a truth that is constructed with consensus and a respect for the liberty of all. By taking into account the cultural paradigms of others, a more "truthful" society -- freer and more democratic -- becomes possible.
In this book, Vattimo continues his reinterpretation of Christianity as a religion of charity and hope, freeing society from authoritarian, metaphysical dogmatism. He also extends Nietzsche's "death of God" to the death of an authoritarian God, ushering in a new, postreligious Christianity. He connects the thought of Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Karl Popper with surprising results and accommodates modern science more than in his previous work, reconciling its validity with an insistence that knowledge is interpretive. Vattimo's philosophy justifies Western nihilism in its capacity to dispense with absolute truths. Ranging over politics, ethics, religion, and the history of philosophy, his reflections contribute deeply to a modern reconception of God, metaphysics, and the purpose of reality.
Visit: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231153082/ref=pe_5050_19265340_snp_dp.
"Naturalism," Annual Conference, Hegel Society of Great Britain, University of Oxford, September 5-6, 2011.
This year's Hegel Society of Great Britain annual conference will be on the theme of Naturalism: Was Hegel a naturalist or an anti-naturalist and can he shed light onto how we think about these issues in philosophy today.
The speakers will be:
Will Dudley (Williams College) 'Hegel's Critical Naturalism'
Alexis Papazoglou (Cambridge) 'Hegel, the Space of Reasons and the Realm of Nature'
Paul Redding (Sydney) 'Hegel: Naturalist-leaning Forms of Idealism and Idealist-leaning Forms of Naturalism'
Sebastian Roedl (Basel) 'The Self-Determining Concept'
Alison Stone (Lancaster) 'Hegel, Philosophy of Nature and Naturalism'
Kenneth Westphal (UEA) 'Aspects of Philosophical Naturalism in Hegel's 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit'
For more information, contact Alexis Papazoglou on ajp83@cam.ac.uk.
The speakers will be:
Will Dudley (Williams College) 'Hegel's Critical Naturalism'
Alexis Papazoglou (Cambridge) 'Hegel, the Space of Reasons and the Realm of Nature'
Paul Redding (Sydney) 'Hegel: Naturalist-leaning Forms of Idealism and Idealist-leaning Forms of Naturalism'
Sebastian Roedl (Basel) 'The Self-Determining Concept'
Alison Stone (Lancaster) 'Hegel, Philosophy of Nature and Naturalism'
Kenneth Westphal (UEA) 'Aspects of Philosophical Naturalism in Hegel's 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit'
For more information, contact Alexis Papazoglou on ajp83@cam.ac.uk.
Cfp: "Historicising Narrative Theory." JOURNAL OF NARRATIVE THEORY.
The Journal of Narrative Theory (JNT) seeks submissions for an upcoming special issue, "Historicizing Narrative Theory."
Essays (max. 10,000 words) should address themselves to the relationship(s) of contemporary narrative theory to ethnic and/or postcolonial studies, and may examine both literary and cultural texts (visual and digital mediums, music, ethnographies, tourism guides, etc).
Structuralist, or classical, narrative theory – in the vein of Roland Barthes, Gerard Genette, and Tzvetan Todorov – sought to articulate a taxonomy of narrative, taking as its principle examples canonical texts of European and American literature, e.g. Genette on Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. While feminist narrative theorists, such as Susan Lanser and Robyn Warhol, have demonstrated that gender and sexuality are constitutive considerations of texts, rather than simply extra-formal considerations, similar theoretical engagements with narrative theory in terms of race, capital, imperialism, and class still need to take place. Narrative theory remains only partly decolonized despite the increasing globalization of the contemporary novel, in form and content as well as production, distribution, and consumption. We know that race, nation, and class matter to literary form, but how and why do we account for it in narrative theory? And how does narrative theory have to change/reconsider itself in order to truly decolonize?
What would a “postcolonial” or “marxist” narratology look like? Is an “ethnic,” “postcolonial,” or “marxist” narrative theory even possible or desirable? What are the dangers/pitfalls of ghettoization and/or co-optation in engaging classical narrative theory? What kinds of questions does narrative theory need to ask in order to be historicized? For example, Dan Shen, Ming Dong Gu, and others have sought to articulate Chinese narrative theory that takes into account both specific Chinese aesthetic and cultural histories as well as considers mutual artistic and theoretical influences with the West. In his work on Latino comics and postcolonial writing, Frederick Luis Aldama argues for the universality of not only the narrative tools available to writers and graphic novelists, but also the very cognitive processes that inform our subjectivity and creativity. Michael McKeon’s 2000 anthology, Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach, treats narrative historically but focuses only on fiction and includes only three essays on postcolonial writing.
We are looking for essays that engage with the limitations/possibilities of current narrative theory(s), either through explicit theoretical engagement with narrative theory and/or the practice/revisiting of it through innovative interpretations of texts.
Information about the journal can be found at the following address: http://www.emich.edu/english/jnt.
Contributors should follow the MLA style (7th edition), with footnotes kept at a minimum and incorporated into the text where possible.
Please send a copy of the submission by email attachment to each of the editors – Sue J. Kim (skim666@gmail.com) and Priyamvada Gopal (pg268@cam.ac.uk) – by July 15, 2011.
Essays (max. 10,000 words) should address themselves to the relationship(s) of contemporary narrative theory to ethnic and/or postcolonial studies, and may examine both literary and cultural texts (visual and digital mediums, music, ethnographies, tourism guides, etc).
Structuralist, or classical, narrative theory – in the vein of Roland Barthes, Gerard Genette, and Tzvetan Todorov – sought to articulate a taxonomy of narrative, taking as its principle examples canonical texts of European and American literature, e.g. Genette on Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. While feminist narrative theorists, such as Susan Lanser and Robyn Warhol, have demonstrated that gender and sexuality are constitutive considerations of texts, rather than simply extra-formal considerations, similar theoretical engagements with narrative theory in terms of race, capital, imperialism, and class still need to take place. Narrative theory remains only partly decolonized despite the increasing globalization of the contemporary novel, in form and content as well as production, distribution, and consumption. We know that race, nation, and class matter to literary form, but how and why do we account for it in narrative theory? And how does narrative theory have to change/reconsider itself in order to truly decolonize?
What would a “postcolonial” or “marxist” narratology look like? Is an “ethnic,” “postcolonial,” or “marxist” narrative theory even possible or desirable? What are the dangers/pitfalls of ghettoization and/or co-optation in engaging classical narrative theory? What kinds of questions does narrative theory need to ask in order to be historicized? For example, Dan Shen, Ming Dong Gu, and others have sought to articulate Chinese narrative theory that takes into account both specific Chinese aesthetic and cultural histories as well as considers mutual artistic and theoretical influences with the West. In his work on Latino comics and postcolonial writing, Frederick Luis Aldama argues for the universality of not only the narrative tools available to writers and graphic novelists, but also the very cognitive processes that inform our subjectivity and creativity. Michael McKeon’s 2000 anthology, Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach, treats narrative historically but focuses only on fiction and includes only three essays on postcolonial writing.
We are looking for essays that engage with the limitations/possibilities of current narrative theory(s), either through explicit theoretical engagement with narrative theory and/or the practice/revisiting of it through innovative interpretations of texts.
Information about the journal can be found at the following address: http://www.emich.edu/english/jnt.
Contributors should follow the MLA style (7th edition), with footnotes kept at a minimum and incorporated into the text where possible.
Please send a copy of the submission by email attachment to each of the editors – Sue J. Kim (skim666@gmail.com) and Priyamvada Gopal (pg268@cam.ac.uk) – by July 15, 2011.
McWhorter, Ladelle. Review of Timothy O'Leary, et al., eds. FOUCAULT AND PHILOSOPHY. NDPR (March 2011).
O'Leary, Timothy, and Christopher Falzon, eds. Foucault and Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell, 2010.
"Philosopher" was a label that Michel Foucault sometimes resisted, especially in the earlier decades of his career, but Timothy O'Leary and Christopher Falzon have assembled an excellent anthology of articles demonstrating Foucault's engagement with and contributions to contemporary philosophical practice throughout his life's work. The book examines and situates Foucault's work in relation to several major strands of philosophical tradition. It consists of an introduction and one paper each by the editors and an additional nine papers by well-known Foucault scholars including Gary Gutting, Jana Sawicki, Amy Allen, and Paul Patton, among others. There is no lack of interpretive disagreement in the group, which is especially notable in Gary Gutting's explicit critique of Béatrice Han-Pile's work and Barry Allen's implicit challenge to C.G. Prado. However, the disagreements and alternative perspectives are informative and thought-provoking.
Obviously it is impossible in one review to do justice to all eleven articles, and O'Leary and Falzon do an excellent job of summarizing them in their introduction. Here I will simply discuss four themes, each of which runs through several different papers. The first is Foucault's relation to his predecessors, including Hegel (Gutting), Nietzsche (Hans Sluga), and Heidegger (Timothy Rayner). The second is Foucault's relationship to and, in some cases, value for contemporary philosophical debates, including critical theory (Falzon and Amy Allen) and queer theory (Sawicki), as well as other discussions less easily categorized (Prado and O'Leary). Aligned with the second theme, the third theme that emerges very strongly in this collection is the question of truth and Foucault's epistemological positions. This comes out to some extent in Rayner's article on Heidegger, but it is foregrounded in Barry Allen's essay entitled "Foucault's Theory of Knowledge." Finally, I will conclude this review with a look at the theme of political theory and practice, with a focus on Paul Patton's essay, "Foucault and Normative Political Philosophy: Liberal and Neo-Liberal Governmentality and Public Reason." . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23091.
"Philosopher" was a label that Michel Foucault sometimes resisted, especially in the earlier decades of his career, but Timothy O'Leary and Christopher Falzon have assembled an excellent anthology of articles demonstrating Foucault's engagement with and contributions to contemporary philosophical practice throughout his life's work. The book examines and situates Foucault's work in relation to several major strands of philosophical tradition. It consists of an introduction and one paper each by the editors and an additional nine papers by well-known Foucault scholars including Gary Gutting, Jana Sawicki, Amy Allen, and Paul Patton, among others. There is no lack of interpretive disagreement in the group, which is especially notable in Gary Gutting's explicit critique of Béatrice Han-Pile's work and Barry Allen's implicit challenge to C.G. Prado. However, the disagreements and alternative perspectives are informative and thought-provoking.
Obviously it is impossible in one review to do justice to all eleven articles, and O'Leary and Falzon do an excellent job of summarizing them in their introduction. Here I will simply discuss four themes, each of which runs through several different papers. The first is Foucault's relation to his predecessors, including Hegel (Gutting), Nietzsche (Hans Sluga), and Heidegger (Timothy Rayner). The second is Foucault's relationship to and, in some cases, value for contemporary philosophical debates, including critical theory (Falzon and Amy Allen) and queer theory (Sawicki), as well as other discussions less easily categorized (Prado and O'Leary). Aligned with the second theme, the third theme that emerges very strongly in this collection is the question of truth and Foucault's epistemological positions. This comes out to some extent in Rayner's article on Heidegger, but it is foregrounded in Barry Allen's essay entitled "Foucault's Theory of Knowledge." Finally, I will conclude this review with a look at the theme of political theory and practice, with a focus on Paul Patton's essay, "Foucault and Normative Political Philosophy: Liberal and Neo-Liberal Governmentality and Public Reason." . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23091.
Pub: Jeffrey High, et al., eds. WHO IS THIS SCHILLER NOW?
High, Jeffrey, Nicholas Martin, and Norbert Oellers, eds. Who Is This Schiller Now? Essays on His Reception and Significance. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011.
The works of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) -- a dramatist and poet for the ages, one of Germany's first historians, and an important aesthetic theorist -- are among the best known of German and world literature. Schiller's explosive original artistry and feel for timely and enduring personal tragedy embedded in timeless sociohistorical conflicts remain the topic of lively academic debate. The essays in this volume address the many flashpoints and canonical shifts in the cyclically polarized reception of Schiller and his works, in pursuit of historical and contemporary answers to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's expression of frightened admiration in 1794: "Who is this Schiller?" The responses demonstrate pronounced shifts from widespread twentieth-century understandings of Schiller: the overwhelming emphasis here is on Schiller the cosmopolitan realist, and little or no trace is left of the ultimately untenable view of Schiller as an abstract idealist who turned his back on politics. Ehrhard Bahr, Matthew Bell, Frederick Burwick, Jennifer Driscoll Colosimo, Bernd Fischer, Gail K. Hart, Fritz Heuer, Hans H. Hiebel, Jeffrey L. High, Walter Hinderer, Paul E. Kerry, Erik Knoedler, Elisabeth Krimmer, Maria del Rosario Acosta López, Laura Ann Macor, Dennis F. Mahoney, Nicholas Martin, John A. McCarthy, Yvonne Nilges, Norbert Oellers, Peter Pabisch, David Pugh, T. J. Reed, Wolfgang Riedel, Jörg Robert, Ritchie Robertson, Jeffrey L. Sammons, Henrik Sponsel.
Visit: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1571134883/ref=pe_5050_19213940_snp_dp.
The works of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) -- a dramatist and poet for the ages, one of Germany's first historians, and an important aesthetic theorist -- are among the best known of German and world literature. Schiller's explosive original artistry and feel for timely and enduring personal tragedy embedded in timeless sociohistorical conflicts remain the topic of lively academic debate. The essays in this volume address the many flashpoints and canonical shifts in the cyclically polarized reception of Schiller and his works, in pursuit of historical and contemporary answers to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's expression of frightened admiration in 1794: "Who is this Schiller?" The responses demonstrate pronounced shifts from widespread twentieth-century understandings of Schiller: the overwhelming emphasis here is on Schiller the cosmopolitan realist, and little or no trace is left of the ultimately untenable view of Schiller as an abstract idealist who turned his back on politics. Ehrhard Bahr, Matthew Bell, Frederick Burwick, Jennifer Driscoll Colosimo, Bernd Fischer, Gail K. Hart, Fritz Heuer, Hans H. Hiebel, Jeffrey L. High, Walter Hinderer, Paul E. Kerry, Erik Knoedler, Elisabeth Krimmer, Maria del Rosario Acosta López, Laura Ann Macor, Dennis F. Mahoney, Nicholas Martin, John A. McCarthy, Yvonne Nilges, Norbert Oellers, Peter Pabisch, David Pugh, T. J. Reed, Wolfgang Riedel, Jörg Robert, Ritchie Robertson, Jeffrey L. Sammons, Henrik Sponsel.
Visit: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1571134883/ref=pe_5050_19213940_snp_dp.
Paul Redding, Review of Randall E. Auxier, et al., THE PHILOSOPHY OF RICHARD RORTY. NDPR (March 2011).
Auxier, Randall E., and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds. The Philosophy of Richard Rorty. Chicago: Open Court, 2010.
The Philosophy of Richard Rorty is the thirty-second volume in the Library of Living Philosophers series, which commenced with a volume on the philosopher with whom Rorty is most often compared, John Dewey. With this volume, the series title serves as a sad reminder of Rorty's death at the age of 75 in 2007, while the collection was still in preparation. For many who, like the reviewer, were in the early stages of a university career in philosophy at the time, the publication of Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in 1979 was a very significant event indeed. I imagine that the attitude towards Rorty expressed by James Edwards in his contribution to the volume is far from unusual: "I am one of those who admire the work (and the man) almost without reservation; one of those who would not want to imagine what recent . . . philosophy would have been if Rorty had not been around to shake things up and to forge some unexpected linkages" (658). Of course not everyone, even from that particular generation, reacted to this work, and the stream of writings following it, with admiration. While many saw in Rorty a Socratic gadfly, to another wing of the profession he was closer to an ancient sophist. And even among those who do admire, admiration rarely means whole-hearted agreement -- many admirers still find troubling elements within Rorty's philosophy, as Edwards himself seems to.
With Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and the series of collections of essays that started with Consequence of Pragmatism in 1982, Rorty's thought-provoking ideas began to find a wide readership beyond the bounds of professional philosophy and started to attract the combination of applause and condemnation that has continued to this day. In fact, collections of critical essays on Rorty, similar in conception and format to the Library of Living Philosophers series, have been appearing on a reasonably regular basis since Alan Malachowski's Reading Rorty in 1990. Even omitting non-English language volumes and ones with very specific themes, such as one on "Rorty and Confucianism", there have been, on my count, seven prior to this volume. Of these, a number, like the Malachowski volume, have followed the LLP practice of having paired replies by Rorty to the interpretative and critical pieces. Both Malachowski's collection and the impressive 2000 volume edited by Robert Brandom, Rorty and His Critics, while large at around 400 pages each, are dwarfed by the LLP volume. With the standard introductory "Intellectual Autobiography", twenty-nine substantial essays, most with replies by Rorty, and an extensive bibliography of Rorty's writings, it is roughly the size of the other two combined. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23070.
The Philosophy of Richard Rorty is the thirty-second volume in the Library of Living Philosophers series, which commenced with a volume on the philosopher with whom Rorty is most often compared, John Dewey. With this volume, the series title serves as a sad reminder of Rorty's death at the age of 75 in 2007, while the collection was still in preparation. For many who, like the reviewer, were in the early stages of a university career in philosophy at the time, the publication of Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in 1979 was a very significant event indeed. I imagine that the attitude towards Rorty expressed by James Edwards in his contribution to the volume is far from unusual: "I am one of those who admire the work (and the man) almost without reservation; one of those who would not want to imagine what recent . . . philosophy would have been if Rorty had not been around to shake things up and to forge some unexpected linkages" (658). Of course not everyone, even from that particular generation, reacted to this work, and the stream of writings following it, with admiration. While many saw in Rorty a Socratic gadfly, to another wing of the profession he was closer to an ancient sophist. And even among those who do admire, admiration rarely means whole-hearted agreement -- many admirers still find troubling elements within Rorty's philosophy, as Edwards himself seems to.
With Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and the series of collections of essays that started with Consequence of Pragmatism in 1982, Rorty's thought-provoking ideas began to find a wide readership beyond the bounds of professional philosophy and started to attract the combination of applause and condemnation that has continued to this day. In fact, collections of critical essays on Rorty, similar in conception and format to the Library of Living Philosophers series, have been appearing on a reasonably regular basis since Alan Malachowski's Reading Rorty in 1990. Even omitting non-English language volumes and ones with very specific themes, such as one on "Rorty and Confucianism", there have been, on my count, seven prior to this volume. Of these, a number, like the Malachowski volume, have followed the LLP practice of having paired replies by Rorty to the interpretative and critical pieces. Both Malachowski's collection and the impressive 2000 volume edited by Robert Brandom, Rorty and His Critics, while large at around 400 pages each, are dwarfed by the LLP volume. With the standard introductory "Intellectual Autobiography", twenty-nine substantial essays, most with replies by Rorty, and an extensive bibliography of Rorty's writings, it is roughly the size of the other two combined. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23070.
2011 Metaphor Festival, Department of English, University of Stockholm, September 8-10, 2011.
The Metaphor Festival is a yearly event at the English Department, Stockholm University, taking place towards the end of September. It started as internal departmental seminars on the character and occurrence of metaphors, but has grown into an international symposium on figurative language. It is also our intention to publish a volume of articles based on talks at each Festival.
The interest in figurative language – in particular metaphor and recently also metonymy – has increased considerably over the last few decades, especially as a result of the development of cognitive science, which includes studies into natural language semantics and the connection between culture, language and cognition. It also connects to the renewed interest in rhetoric and to subject fields such as text and discourse analysis, narratology, and philosophical paradigms such as phenomenology. In short, the inquiry into the nature and importance of figures of speech for human experience, cognition, social structures, culture, production of artefacts and artistic pursuits, including both literature and other art forms, makes this a broad and varied interdisciplinary field. In particular the connection between linguistic and literary research as regards the exploration into figurative language has been stimulating for colleagues in our department and elsewhere.
Though we appreciate the development and insights in cognitive semantics concerning the basic and dynamic role of figurative thinking and expression, we also welcome other approaches into the character and use of figurative language. We include both tropes and schemes in the notion of figures of speech, and in the Festival we do not merely welcome talks on metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche, but also for instance on simile, oxymoron, antithesis, hyperbole, understatement, punning, irony, and on rhyme schemes and other formal rhetorical devices.
Visit: http://www.english.su.se/pub/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=15653.
The interest in figurative language – in particular metaphor and recently also metonymy – has increased considerably over the last few decades, especially as a result of the development of cognitive science, which includes studies into natural language semantics and the connection between culture, language and cognition. It also connects to the renewed interest in rhetoric and to subject fields such as text and discourse analysis, narratology, and philosophical paradigms such as phenomenology. In short, the inquiry into the nature and importance of figures of speech for human experience, cognition, social structures, culture, production of artefacts and artistic pursuits, including both literature and other art forms, makes this a broad and varied interdisciplinary field. In particular the connection between linguistic and literary research as regards the exploration into figurative language has been stimulating for colleagues in our department and elsewhere.
Though we appreciate the development and insights in cognitive semantics concerning the basic and dynamic role of figurative thinking and expression, we also welcome other approaches into the character and use of figurative language. We include both tropes and schemes in the notion of figures of speech, and in the Festival we do not merely welcome talks on metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche, but also for instance on simile, oxymoron, antithesis, hyperbole, understatement, punning, irony, and on rhyme schemes and other formal rhetorical devices.
Visit: http://www.english.su.se/pub/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=15653.
Cfp: Annual Conference, Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, Memorial University of Newfoundland, October 6-8, 2011.
Keynote Speakers:
James Mensch (St. Francis Xavier University), Winner of the 2010 Symposium Annual Book Prize
Alia Al-Saji (McGill University)
Sophie-Jan Arrien (Université Laval)
John Russon (University of Guelph)
Peter Trnka (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Visit: http://www.c-scp.org/en/congress-parent/congress.html.
James Mensch (St. Francis Xavier University), Winner of the 2010 Symposium Annual Book Prize
Alia Al-Saji (McGill University)
Sophie-Jan Arrien (Université Laval)
John Russon (University of Guelph)
Peter Trnka (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Visit: http://www.c-scp.org/en/congress-parent/congress.html.
Cfp: "The Perception of Change: Space, Time, and Mobility after Henri Bergson," School of Geography and Environment, University of Oxford, May 27, 2011.
In 1911 the French philosopher and Nobel Laureate Henri Bergson delivered a pair of lectures at the University of Oxford entitled "The Perception of Change." In these lectures Bergson explored some of the challenges of thinking through questions of “change and duration in their original mobility”. In the process, he made what are by now a series of familiar claims: that all movement and change is indivisible; that immobility is actually the product of relations between different mobilities; that the brain is not a storehouse for snap-shot like representational images; and that the past preserves itself automatically. We find it difficult to grasp the true significance of these claims, he suggested, because our thinking is dominated by perceptual habits that encourage us to understand movement as a series of fixed positions in space. The challenge, on his view, is to return to and expand perception, to grasp the fundamental continuity of life’s change, to ‘plunge into duration’ through the elaboration of a style and method of philosophical intuition. In the intervening century, Bergson’s influence has waned and waxed. In recent decades his work has received renewed attention, due in no small part to its reappraisal by Gilles Deleuze. On the occasion of the centenary of his Oxford Clarendon lectures, this symposium will explore Bergson’s ongoing significance as a major philosophical figure. More specifically, by taking these lectures as a point of departure, the symposium will provide a forum within which to reflect upon the resources Bergson provides for thinking through the complex relations between time, space, and the apprehension of movement in the contemporary world.
Confirmed Speakers:
Professor Steven Brown, School of Management, University of Leicester
Dr JD Dewsbury, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol
Dr Peter Merriman, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University
Professor John Mullarkey, Film and Television Studies, Kingston University, London
Others TBA
We welcome abstracts of 150 words for papers that engage with "The Perception of Change" lectures and/or Bergson’s philosophy more generally. Equally, proposals for artistic or performance based interventions that engage themes in Bergson’s work are also welcome. Scholars of PhD level and higher are encouraged to submit an abstract. The closing date for submission of abstracts is 1st of April 2011. Please send proposals/abstracts to Derek McCormack (derek.mccormack@ouce.ox.ac.uk) or Tim Schwanen (tim.schwanen@ouce.ox.ac.uk).
Confirmed Speakers:
Professor Steven Brown, School of Management, University of Leicester
Dr JD Dewsbury, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol
Dr Peter Merriman, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University
Professor John Mullarkey, Film and Television Studies, Kingston University, London
Others TBA
We welcome abstracts of 150 words for papers that engage with "The Perception of Change" lectures and/or Bergson’s philosophy more generally. Equally, proposals for artistic or performance based interventions that engage themes in Bergson’s work are also welcome. Scholars of PhD level and higher are encouraged to submit an abstract. The closing date for submission of abstracts is 1st of April 2011. Please send proposals/abstracts to Derek McCormack (derek.mccormack@ouce.ox.ac.uk) or Tim Schwanen (tim.schwanen@ouce.ox.ac.uk).
Cfp: "Individuals – Individualism – Individuality," 17th International Philosophy Colloquium Evian, Evian (Lake Geneva), France, July 17-23, 2011.
Human beings encounter the world in a way that is characterized by confronting individual objects. Every object, as the specific object that it is, constitutes a unity that is not identical to any other object. Individuality is the principle of such unity – an immanent form that makes the object an individual, identical only to itself, and thus more than simply the sum of its parts. Accordingly, objects are individua, logically speaking: the elements of which the world is composed. In social ontology we are confronted with a more challenging concept of the individual, namely as the hallmark of our self-understanding as human beings. Human beings are individuals as persons. The principle of their individuality is not merely that of a continued existence in space and time, but instead the unity of their self-consciousness. Thus for persons it is not the case that individuality is exhausted by numerical oneness. Rather first and foremost the individuality of a person unfolds or is projected only insofar as the individual determines herself in and through her actions. The individual is what she makes herself. Against this background, we can view the concept of individuality as a critical concept, in two opposing ways: On the one hand one might argue that the nonidentical moment of individuality is coming under pressure in modern society. Critique in this context must defend individuality against the pressure to conform to conceptual and social systems. On the other hand critics of liberalism would argue that the very idea of individuality as the basis of modern society is itself problematic. The focus on the individual–so this critique goes–results in an atomism that loses sight of the larger social context, along with the social conditions of individuality. In a different perspective, individuality is regarded as an effect of domination or of techniques of subjectification. Accordingly, the job of critique is to disrupt the appearance of individuality in order to render the larger context intelligible.
How are these heterogeneous tendencies in the concept of the individual connected to one another? Are there criteria that would hold for this concept throughout its diverse areas of application? The 17th International Philosophy Colloquium in Evian invites philosophers to Lake Geneva to discuss the concept of individuality across the range of its manifold meanings. The International Philosophy Colloquium in Evian welcomes philosophers who are interested in engaging in discussion across traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is conceived particularly as a place where the divide between continental and analytic philosophy is overcome, or at least where their differences can be rendered philosophically productive.
A detailed exposition of the topic and all relevant information concerning the character and history of the colloquium as well as matters of accommodation and costs can be found on our website:
http://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/eviancolloquium/.
How are these heterogeneous tendencies in the concept of the individual connected to one another? Are there criteria that would hold for this concept throughout its diverse areas of application? The 17th International Philosophy Colloquium in Evian invites philosophers to Lake Geneva to discuss the concept of individuality across the range of its manifold meanings. The International Philosophy Colloquium in Evian welcomes philosophers who are interested in engaging in discussion across traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is conceived particularly as a place where the divide between continental and analytic philosophy is overcome, or at least where their differences can be rendered philosophically productive.
A detailed exposition of the topic and all relevant information concerning the character and history of the colloquium as well as matters of accommodation and costs can be found on our website:
http://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/eviancolloquium/.
Pub: KRITIKE 4.2 (2011).
Editorial: In this Issue of KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy by Paolo A. Bolaños
Articles:
"Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutics of Symbols: a Critical Dialectic of Suspicion and Faith" by Alexis Deodato S. Itao
"The Vanishing Mediator and Linguistic Hospitality" by Angelo Bottone
"Palahniuk’s Tyranny of Language and Ontological Minimalism" by Daniel Hourigan
"The Mystical Force of Money" by Edward Erikson
"Commodity, Sign, and Spectable: Retracing Baudrillard's Hyperreality" by Daryl Y. Mendoza
"Mediated Psychopathy: a Critical Discourse Analysis of Newspaper Representations of Aggression" by Roland Paulsen
"Rorty's Philosophy of Education: Between Orthodoxy and Vulgar Relativism" by Rhoderick John S. Abellanosa
"Kant's Reflections on the Unity of Consciousness, Time-Consciousness, and the Unconscious" by Ben Mijuskovic
"Nietzsche and Callicles on Happiness, Pleasure, and Power" by Kristian Urstad
"Narratives and the Dialogue of Cultures of Knowledge: a Perspective on the Experience of the West and Africa" by Uchenna Okeja
"Becoming an Expression in Deleuze: Two Cases from Turkey (Fazil Say and Misirli Ahmet)" by Cetin Balanuye
Denkbild:
"Elixirs and Fabulous Potions: On Critical Theory in the Philippines Part III (A Philosophical Fiction)" by F. P. A. Demeterio
Visit: http://www.kritike.org/current_issue.html.
Articles:
"Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutics of Symbols: a Critical Dialectic of Suspicion and Faith" by Alexis Deodato S. Itao
"The Vanishing Mediator and Linguistic Hospitality" by Angelo Bottone
"Palahniuk’s Tyranny of Language and Ontological Minimalism" by Daniel Hourigan
"The Mystical Force of Money" by Edward Erikson
"Commodity, Sign, and Spectable: Retracing Baudrillard's Hyperreality" by Daryl Y. Mendoza
"Mediated Psychopathy: a Critical Discourse Analysis of Newspaper Representations of Aggression" by Roland Paulsen
"Rorty's Philosophy of Education: Between Orthodoxy and Vulgar Relativism" by Rhoderick John S. Abellanosa
"Kant's Reflections on the Unity of Consciousness, Time-Consciousness, and the Unconscious" by Ben Mijuskovic
"Nietzsche and Callicles on Happiness, Pleasure, and Power" by Kristian Urstad
"Narratives and the Dialogue of Cultures of Knowledge: a Perspective on the Experience of the West and Africa" by Uchenna Okeja
"Becoming an Expression in Deleuze: Two Cases from Turkey (Fazil Say and Misirli Ahmet)" by Cetin Balanuye
Denkbild:
"Elixirs and Fabulous Potions: On Critical Theory in the Philippines Part III (A Philosophical Fiction)" by F. P. A. Demeterio
Visit: http://www.kritike.org/current_issue.html.
Peucker, Henning. Review of Joaquim Siles i Borras, THE ETHICS OF HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGY. NDPR (March 2011).
Siles i Borràs, Joaquim. The Ethics of Husserl's Phenomenology: Responsibility and Ethical Life. London: Continuum, 2010.
First the bad news: this book is not, as the reader might well expect on the basis of its title, a book on Husserl's ethics. Joaquim Siles i Borràs does not investigate Husserl's ethics and does not even take into account the two volumes in the Husserliana series containing the majority of Husserl's ethical writings (28 and 37), which incidentally have not yet been translated into English. Instead, this book investigates the hidden ethos or moral attitude that underlies Husserl's phenomenology as a whole and its development. Thus, Siles i Borràs understands ethics not simply as dealing with moral normativity, but rather in a much broader sense. As a result, he attempts to show that Husserl's phenomenological epistemology in general and its basic methodological principle of presuppositionlessness in particular have ethical relevance. This basic principle calls for radical freedom from prejudice and dogmatism as an ethical demand, a demand that the later Husserl combines with an ideal of absolute and universal self-responsibility. Thus Siles i Borràs sees phenomenology as ultimately grounded in an ethical attitude of reflective self-responsibility. Ethics is therefore not secondary to epistemology but founds it on the basis of an ethical demand of rigor and radical self-responsibility. The thesis of this book is that this ethical demand -- it would perhaps be better to speak about the ethos of the phenomenological philosophy than of its ethics -- guides Husserl's work and drives its development of increasing radicalization from beginning to end. This leads Siles i Borràs to a set of slightly ambiguous claims, viz., that phenomenology (i) is "an ethical project" (5), (ii) is an "ethical life" (18, 49), (iii) is an "ethical inquiry" (19, 30) or -- perhaps most precisely -- (iv) is motivated by an ethical demand (19). . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23049.
First the bad news: this book is not, as the reader might well expect on the basis of its title, a book on Husserl's ethics. Joaquim Siles i Borràs does not investigate Husserl's ethics and does not even take into account the two volumes in the Husserliana series containing the majority of Husserl's ethical writings (28 and 37), which incidentally have not yet been translated into English. Instead, this book investigates the hidden ethos or moral attitude that underlies Husserl's phenomenology as a whole and its development. Thus, Siles i Borràs understands ethics not simply as dealing with moral normativity, but rather in a much broader sense. As a result, he attempts to show that Husserl's phenomenological epistemology in general and its basic methodological principle of presuppositionlessness in particular have ethical relevance. This basic principle calls for radical freedom from prejudice and dogmatism as an ethical demand, a demand that the later Husserl combines with an ideal of absolute and universal self-responsibility. Thus Siles i Borràs sees phenomenology as ultimately grounded in an ethical attitude of reflective self-responsibility. Ethics is therefore not secondary to epistemology but founds it on the basis of an ethical demand of rigor and radical self-responsibility. The thesis of this book is that this ethical demand -- it would perhaps be better to speak about the ethos of the phenomenological philosophy than of its ethics -- guides Husserl's work and drives its development of increasing radicalization from beginning to end. This leads Siles i Borràs to a set of slightly ambiguous claims, viz., that phenomenology (i) is "an ethical project" (5), (ii) is an "ethical life" (18, 49), (iii) is an "ethical inquiry" (19, 30) or -- perhaps most precisely -- (iv) is motivated by an ethical demand (19). . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23049.
Pub: INFORMAL LOGIC 31.1 (2011).
Table of Contents:
Articles:
"Functionalism, Normativity and the Concept of Argumentation" by Steven W Patterson
"Dialog Models for Persuasion Strategies of Quotation Manipulation" by Douglas Walton, Fabrizio Macagno
"Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence" by Christopher Lee Stephens
Book Reviews:
Book Review of Is that a Fact? by David Hitchcock
Book Review of Controversy and Confrontation, Relating Controversy Analysis With Argumentation Theory by Maria Navarro
Visit: http://ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/informal_logic/issue/view/366.
Articles:
"Functionalism, Normativity and the Concept of Argumentation" by Steven W Patterson
"Dialog Models for Persuasion Strategies of Quotation Manipulation" by Douglas Walton, Fabrizio Macagno
"Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence" by Christopher Lee Stephens
Book Reviews:
Book Review of Is that a Fact? by David Hitchcock
Book Review of Controversy and Confrontation, Relating Controversy Analysis With Argumentation Theory by Maria Navarro
Visit: http://ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/informal_logic/issue/view/366.
Sperry, Elizabeth A. Review of Marianne Janack, ed. FEMINIST INTERPRETATIONS OF RICHARD RORTY. NDPR (March 2011).
Janack, Marianne, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Richard Rorty. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2010.
(A) It is objectively true that women should not be oppressed.
(B) We must work to overcome the oppression of women.
Are A and B opposed? These claims undeniably represent a difference in emphasis, one seeking to describe reality and the other to alter it. But if feminist progress is best obtained on a non-foundationalist approach to truth, the difference between A and B is substantial. Richard Rorty argued that neo-pragmatism better advanced feminism's aims than did representationalist philosophical approaches, and Marianne Janack has collected ten essays that examine the import of those arguments. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=22913.
(A) It is objectively true that women should not be oppressed.
(B) We must work to overcome the oppression of women.
Are A and B opposed? These claims undeniably represent a difference in emphasis, one seeking to describe reality and the other to alter it. But if feminist progress is best obtained on a non-foundationalist approach to truth, the difference between A and B is substantial. Richard Rorty argued that neo-pragmatism better advanced feminism's aims than did representationalist philosophical approaches, and Marianne Janack has collected ten essays that examine the import of those arguments. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=22913.
"Agnotology: Ways of Producing, Preserving, and Dealing with Ignorance," Bielefeld University, May 30-June 1, 2011.
Within the last 10 years historians of science such as Robert Proctor, Londa Schiebinger, Peter Galison, and Naomi Oreskes, have been promoting a new area of enquiry—Proctor calls it agnotology, the study of ignorance—which they suggest is of as much relevance to philosophers and social scientists and others as it is to historians. Indeed, the suggestion is that agnotology offers a new approach to the study of knowledge, an approach at least as complex and important as its more established sister, epistemology. The aim of this workshop is to map out this new ignorance-centered terrain in an effort to determine just what and where it might add to knowledge-centered terrains such as epistemology and philosophy of science and how valuable the additions might be. Topics will range over the naturalness and even inevitability of certain kinds of ignorance and the unnaturalness or deliberate production of other kinds—for example, on ignorance created through government secrecy and censorship, cultural prejudice, industry influence on scientific research, and so on—and the epistemological and societal implications of such ignorance. The ultimate goal is to make a significant contribution to this new kind of enquiry.
Speakers will include historians Norton Wise (UCLA), Naomi Oreskes (San Diego), Peter Galison (Harvard), and Robert Proctor (Stanford); sociologists Peter Weingart (Bielefeld) and Stefan Böschen (Augsburg); neurobiologist Stuart Firestein (Columbia); mathematician/philosopher of science Daniel Andler (Sorbonne); and philosophers Nancy Cartwright (LSE and San Diego), Philip Kitcher (Columbia), Pat Kitcher (Columbia), Hugh Lacey (Swarthmore and São Paulo), Kevin Elliott (South Carolina), Torsten Wilholt (Bielefeld), Martin Carrier (Bielefeld), and Janet Kourany (Notre Dame). The program will also feature a screening of Peter Galison and Robb Moss’s documentary film “Secrecy.”
Speakers will include historians Norton Wise (UCLA), Naomi Oreskes (San Diego), Peter Galison (Harvard), and Robert Proctor (Stanford); sociologists Peter Weingart (Bielefeld) and Stefan Böschen (Augsburg); neurobiologist Stuart Firestein (Columbia); mathematician/philosopher of science Daniel Andler (Sorbonne); and philosophers Nancy Cartwright (LSE and San Diego), Philip Kitcher (Columbia), Pat Kitcher (Columbia), Hugh Lacey (Swarthmore and São Paulo), Kevin Elliott (South Carolina), Torsten Wilholt (Bielefeld), Martin Carrier (Bielefeld), and Janet Kourany (Notre Dame). The program will also feature a screening of Peter Galison and Robb Moss’s documentary film “Secrecy.”
Pub: Jeremy Dunham, et al. IDEALISM: THE HISTORY OF A PHILOSOPHY.
Dunham, Jeremy, Ian Hamilton Grant, and Sean Watson. Idealism: the History of a Philosophy. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2011.
Contents:
Introduction: Why Idealism Matters Part 1: Ancient Idealism 1. Parmenides and the Birth of Ancient Idealism 2. Plato and Neoplatonism Part 2: Early Modern Idealism 3. Phenomenalism and Idealism I: Descartes and Malebranche 4. Phenomenalism and Idealism II: Leibniz and Berkeley Part 3: German Idealism 5. Immanuel Kant: Cognition, Freedom and Teleology 6. Fichte and the System of Freedom 7. Philosophy of Nature and the Birth of Absolute Idealism: Schelling 8. Hegel and Hegelianism: Mind, Nature and Logic Part 4: British Idealism 9. British Absolute Idealism: From Green to Bradley 10. Personal Idealism: From Ward to McTaggart 11. Naturalist Idealism: Bernard Bosanquet 12. Criticisms and Persistent Misconceptions of Idealism 13. Actual Occasions and Eternal Objects: The Process Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. Part 5: Contemporary Idealisms 14. Autopoiesis: Idealist Biology I 15. Autonomous Agents: Idealist Biology II 16. Contemporary Philosophical Idealisms
Contents:
Introduction: Why Idealism Matters Part 1: Ancient Idealism 1. Parmenides and the Birth of Ancient Idealism 2. Plato and Neoplatonism Part 2: Early Modern Idealism 3. Phenomenalism and Idealism I: Descartes and Malebranche 4. Phenomenalism and Idealism II: Leibniz and Berkeley Part 3: German Idealism 5. Immanuel Kant: Cognition, Freedom and Teleology 6. Fichte and the System of Freedom 7. Philosophy of Nature and the Birth of Absolute Idealism: Schelling 8. Hegel and Hegelianism: Mind, Nature and Logic Part 4: British Idealism 9. British Absolute Idealism: From Green to Bradley 10. Personal Idealism: From Ward to McTaggart 11. Naturalist Idealism: Bernard Bosanquet 12. Criticisms and Persistent Misconceptions of Idealism 13. Actual Occasions and Eternal Objects: The Process Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. Part 5: Contemporary Idealisms 14. Autopoiesis: Idealist Biology I 15. Autonomous Agents: Idealist Biology II 16. Contemporary Philosophical Idealisms
Arrow, Ruaridh. "Gene Sharp: Author of the NONVIOLENT REVOLUTION RULEBOOK." BBC NEWS February 21, 2011.
In an old townhouse in East Boston an elderly stooped man is tending rare orchids in his shabby office. His Labrador Sally lies on the floor between stacks of academic papers watching him as he shuffles past. This is Dr Gene Sharp the man now credited with the strategy behind the toppling of the Egyptian government.
Gene Sharp is the world's foremost expert on non-violent revolution. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, his books slipped across borders and hidden from secret policemen all over the world.
As Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine fell to the colour revolutions which swept across Eastern Europe, each of the democratic movements paid tribute to Sharp's contribution, yet he remained largely unknown to the public.
Despite these successes and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2009 he has faced almost constant financial hardship and wild accusations of being a CIA front organisation. The Albert Einstein Institution based on the ground floor of his home is kept running by sheer force of personality and his fiercely loyal Executive Director, Jamila Raqib.
In 2009 I began filming a documentary following the impact of Sharp's work from his tranquil rooftop orchid house, across four continents and eventually to Tahrir square where I slept alongside protesters who read his work by torchlight in the shadow of tanks. . . .
Read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12522848.
Gene Sharp is the world's foremost expert on non-violent revolution. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, his books slipped across borders and hidden from secret policemen all over the world.
As Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine fell to the colour revolutions which swept across Eastern Europe, each of the democratic movements paid tribute to Sharp's contribution, yet he remained largely unknown to the public.
Despite these successes and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2009 he has faced almost constant financial hardship and wild accusations of being a CIA front organisation. The Albert Einstein Institution based on the ground floor of his home is kept running by sheer force of personality and his fiercely loyal Executive Director, Jamila Raqib.
In 2009 I began filming a documentary following the impact of Sharp's work from his tranquil rooftop orchid house, across four continents and eventually to Tahrir square where I slept alongside protesters who read his work by torchlight in the shadow of tanks. . . .
Read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12522848.
Cfp: "Empowerment and the Sacred," Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, University of Leeds, June 24-26, 2011.
Keynote Speakers:
Kim Knott (University of Leeds);
Bart Moore-Gilbert (Goldsmith’s University);
Neil L. Whitehead (University of Wisconsin)
Discussing international responses to the ‘resurgence of religion’ in our time, Talal Asad has argued: ‘If anything is agreed upon, it is that a straightforward narrative of progress from the religious to the secular is no longer acceptable’ (Asad, 2006). In the ‘straightforward narratives’ of which Asad talks – and in Enlightenment discourses of ‘reason’, ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’ more generally - religion, spirituality and the sacred have customarily been pitted against empowerment and emancipation, in political, cultural and intellectual terms. At this present historical juncture, then - when the secularist orientation of global futures is increasingly being called into question - a vital need presents itself for cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary debate about the role that the sacred has, does and can play in our understanding of the possibilities of personal and collective agency, power and change.
This conference will bring together scholars, professionals and arts-practitioners to investigate the ways in which sacred traditions - in diverse cultural and historical contexts - have shaped discourses, practices and narratives of empowerment, emancipation, social change, resistance and survival. We ask: How do different sacred discourses and practices frame and/or extend the possibilities of agency - socially, spiritually, imaginatively and corporeally? What variant conceptions of the spheres of activity have they produced – whether temporal, spatial, cultural, cosmic, public and/or private? And what role have religious and spiritual traditions played in political discourses and counter-discourses of class, gender, race, sexuality, cultural identity, humanism and human rights? Where sacred traditions have challenged the limits of secular reason, what alternatives have they suggested for cognition, representation, and even rationality? And how have they ‘empowered’ different artistic practices? Does the ‘commitment to social justice’ necessitate the ‘translation’ of sacred realities into ‘disenchanted histories’, in order to maintain dialogue with modern institutions (Dipesh Chakrabarty)? Or does a ‘conception of creativity in dialogue with the sacred’ enable an interrogation of ‘forbidden territories within ourselves’ as well as ‘the sacrosanct territories of our institutions’ (Wilson Harris)? Do sacred traditions themselves provide the premises for imaginations of cross-cultural and inter-faith community that differ from secular multiculturalism?
We welcome papers, especially from postgraduates and early career researchers, that address issues of the sacred and empowerment inrelation to topics which may include, but are by no means limited to:
•Concepts of agency: God, gods, spirits and the divine; thehuman/extra-human; identity and ‘imagined communities’; actors,heroes/anti-heroes, role-models and leaders; somatic/spiritual powers.
•Performances of power: artistic, cultural, political, ritual; protest and activism; violence/non-violence.
•Histories and historiography: colonialism and the postcolonial; globalization; materialism; memory.
•Sacred texts and authority: interpretation, translation,intertextuality; secular/religious criticism; freedom of speech, blasphemy, and taboo.
•Place, space and environment: sacred sites and land rights; nature, geography, topography, archaeology.
•Difference and dialogue: orthodoxy/the unorthodox; syncretism, inter-faith and cross-culturalism.
•Justice and judgment: ethics, morality, legality; sacred-secular/inter-faith arbitration.
•Secular/sacred powers and the state: private/public spheres; policy-making and pedagogy.
•Re/conceptualizations: ‘sacred’, ‘secular’, ‘post-secular’, ‘religion’, ‘magic’, ‘spirituality’, ‘myth’ etc.
•Action, motivation and practice: choice, desire, sacrifice and faith; freedom/constraint.
•Epistemologies and aesthetics: faith, rationalism and science; representation and the unrepresentable.
Please submit 300 word abstracts, accompanied by a 100 word biography, for 20 minute papers to the conference organisers, Shivani Rajkomar and Lori Shelbourn, atorganisers@empowermentandthesacred.com.
The deadline for submissions has been extended to the 30th of March 2011. Further details can be found on our website: http://www.empowermentandthesacred.com/.
Kim Knott (University of Leeds);
Bart Moore-Gilbert (Goldsmith’s University);
Neil L. Whitehead (University of Wisconsin)
Discussing international responses to the ‘resurgence of religion’ in our time, Talal Asad has argued: ‘If anything is agreed upon, it is that a straightforward narrative of progress from the religious to the secular is no longer acceptable’ (Asad, 2006). In the ‘straightforward narratives’ of which Asad talks – and in Enlightenment discourses of ‘reason’, ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’ more generally - religion, spirituality and the sacred have customarily been pitted against empowerment and emancipation, in political, cultural and intellectual terms. At this present historical juncture, then - when the secularist orientation of global futures is increasingly being called into question - a vital need presents itself for cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary debate about the role that the sacred has, does and can play in our understanding of the possibilities of personal and collective agency, power and change.
This conference will bring together scholars, professionals and arts-practitioners to investigate the ways in which sacred traditions - in diverse cultural and historical contexts - have shaped discourses, practices and narratives of empowerment, emancipation, social change, resistance and survival. We ask: How do different sacred discourses and practices frame and/or extend the possibilities of agency - socially, spiritually, imaginatively and corporeally? What variant conceptions of the spheres of activity have they produced – whether temporal, spatial, cultural, cosmic, public and/or private? And what role have religious and spiritual traditions played in political discourses and counter-discourses of class, gender, race, sexuality, cultural identity, humanism and human rights? Where sacred traditions have challenged the limits of secular reason, what alternatives have they suggested for cognition, representation, and even rationality? And how have they ‘empowered’ different artistic practices? Does the ‘commitment to social justice’ necessitate the ‘translation’ of sacred realities into ‘disenchanted histories’, in order to maintain dialogue with modern institutions (Dipesh Chakrabarty)? Or does a ‘conception of creativity in dialogue with the sacred’ enable an interrogation of ‘forbidden territories within ourselves’ as well as ‘the sacrosanct territories of our institutions’ (Wilson Harris)? Do sacred traditions themselves provide the premises for imaginations of cross-cultural and inter-faith community that differ from secular multiculturalism?
We welcome papers, especially from postgraduates and early career researchers, that address issues of the sacred and empowerment inrelation to topics which may include, but are by no means limited to:
•Concepts of agency: God, gods, spirits and the divine; thehuman/extra-human; identity and ‘imagined communities’; actors,heroes/anti-heroes, role-models and leaders; somatic/spiritual powers.
•Performances of power: artistic, cultural, political, ritual; protest and activism; violence/non-violence.
•Histories and historiography: colonialism and the postcolonial; globalization; materialism; memory.
•Sacred texts and authority: interpretation, translation,intertextuality; secular/religious criticism; freedom of speech, blasphemy, and taboo.
•Place, space and environment: sacred sites and land rights; nature, geography, topography, archaeology.
•Difference and dialogue: orthodoxy/the unorthodox; syncretism, inter-faith and cross-culturalism.
•Justice and judgment: ethics, morality, legality; sacred-secular/inter-faith arbitration.
•Secular/sacred powers and the state: private/public spheres; policy-making and pedagogy.
•Re/conceptualizations: ‘sacred’, ‘secular’, ‘post-secular’, ‘religion’, ‘magic’, ‘spirituality’, ‘myth’ etc.
•Action, motivation and practice: choice, desire, sacrifice and faith; freedom/constraint.
•Epistemologies and aesthetics: faith, rationalism and science; representation and the unrepresentable.
Please submit 300 word abstracts, accompanied by a 100 word biography, for 20 minute papers to the conference organisers, Shivani Rajkomar and Lori Shelbourn, atorganisers@empowermentandthesacred.com.
The deadline for submissions has been extended to the 30th of March 2011. Further details can be found on our website: http://www.empowermentandthesacred.com/.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Cfp: "Feminist Challenges or Feminist Rhetorics? Locations, Scholarship, and Discourse," Eighth Biennial Conference on Feminisms and Rhetorics, Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, University of Minnesota, Mankato, October 12-15, 2011.
The conference committee is strongly interdisciplinary and therefore our theme seeks to recognize the spaces between disciplines and communities. The conference theme is meant to acknowledge the academic and socio-discursive spaces that feminisms, and rhetorics on or about feminisms, inhabit. Major political, religious and social leaders have recently discussed feminism, including the Dalai Lama, but the discussion seems to revolve around cultural or essentialized discourses of feminism.
This spotlight on feminism is, of course, not new, and they ways feminism is engaged in public discourse is much different than that of academic discourse. However, in Rhetoric and Composition, we have seen many significant publications lately focusing on what it means to be a woman in the field, how to be a successful woman in the field, and the connections between feminist theory and feminist pedagogy.
We seek proposals that speak to the challenges and diversities of feminist rhetoric and discourse, in public and private life, in the academy, and in the media. We welcome proposals on topics that significantly engage disciplines other than Rhetoric and Composition, and that have consequences for communities located outside of the academy.
Questions to consider include:
What are the discourses of feminism?
Where are they located?
What does feminist scholarship look like in the 21st century? What is the politic of feminist scholarship?
How does feminist inquiry impact our understanding of scholarship?
What are the challenges faced by feminists inside and outside of the academy? Where do we find feminist rhetorics?
How do we understand the function of feminist rhetoric?
How has interdisciplinarity impacted the feminist agenda?
How do we understand the politics of inclusion in 21st century feminism?
How might we add to Joanna Russ’ invective: “She wrote it, BUT.?”
In the past few years, women have made, yet again, publicly recognized strides in breaking through a variety of glass ceilings, however, current events in places like Arizona, illustrate the necessity of a renewed feminist politic. The recursive nature of feminism is not new, and is, in fact, embodied in the rhetorical struggle for place in dominant discourse.
Visit: http://femrhet.cwshrc.org/.
This spotlight on feminism is, of course, not new, and they ways feminism is engaged in public discourse is much different than that of academic discourse. However, in Rhetoric and Composition, we have seen many significant publications lately focusing on what it means to be a woman in the field, how to be a successful woman in the field, and the connections between feminist theory and feminist pedagogy.
We seek proposals that speak to the challenges and diversities of feminist rhetoric and discourse, in public and private life, in the academy, and in the media. We welcome proposals on topics that significantly engage disciplines other than Rhetoric and Composition, and that have consequences for communities located outside of the academy.
Questions to consider include:
What are the discourses of feminism?
Where are they located?
What does feminist scholarship look like in the 21st century? What is the politic of feminist scholarship?
How does feminist inquiry impact our understanding of scholarship?
What are the challenges faced by feminists inside and outside of the academy? Where do we find feminist rhetorics?
How do we understand the function of feminist rhetoric?
How has interdisciplinarity impacted the feminist agenda?
How do we understand the politics of inclusion in 21st century feminism?
How might we add to Joanna Russ’ invective: “She wrote it, BUT.?”
In the past few years, women have made, yet again, publicly recognized strides in breaking through a variety of glass ceilings, however, current events in places like Arizona, illustrate the necessity of a renewed feminist politic. The recursive nature of feminism is not new, and is, in fact, embodied in the rhetorical struggle for place in dominant discourse.
Visit: http://femrhet.cwshrc.org/.
Cfp: "Hegel and Capitalism," 22nd Biennial Meeting, Hegel Society of America, DePaul University, October 5-7, 2012.
The conference will cover all aspects of the theme “Hegel and Capitalism,” broadly understood. We invite papers that address this theme historically, systematically, or with reference to current questions and issues. Papers that interpret, engage, or apply Hegel are welcome. Papers that investigate the conference topic in new ways are encouraged.
Submitted papers are limited to 6,000 words, and should be formatted for blind review and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 300 words. Papers must be submitted at this length and later adjustments must remain within this limit. Papers submitted must be complete essays; proposals are not acceptable. All papers should be in English. Although papers presented at meetings of the Hegel Society of America are usually published as a collection of essays, publication cannot be guaranteed. By submitting a paper, however, an author of a paper accepted for the program agrees to reserve publication for the HSA proceedings. Final decision as to publication remains dependent on the results of peer and publisher review.
Please send papers to: Andrew Buchwalter, Program Chair, abuchwal@unf.edu.
Submitted papers are limited to 6,000 words, and should be formatted for blind review and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 300 words. Papers must be submitted at this length and later adjustments must remain within this limit. Papers submitted must be complete essays; proposals are not acceptable. All papers should be in English. Although papers presented at meetings of the Hegel Society of America are usually published as a collection of essays, publication cannot be guaranteed. By submitting a paper, however, an author of a paper accepted for the program agrees to reserve publication for the HSA proceedings. Final decision as to publication remains dependent on the results of peer and publisher review.
Please send papers to: Andrew Buchwalter, Program Chair, abuchwal@unf.edu.
Fallon, Stephen M. Review of Sanford Budick, KANT AND MILTON. NDPR (April 2011).
Budick, Sanford. Kant and Milton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010.
You may be one of the many readers who do a double-take when encountering the title of Sanford Budick's Kant and Milton. I predict that Kant scholars will put down the book convinced that Milton is a seminal figure for Kant, and Miltonists will put it down heartened by this evidence of the poet's influence and armed with a new way of thinking about one of the central debates in Milton studies today, concerning the meaning of Samson Agonistes. (A preliminary word to philosophers: caveat emptor; as a Milton scholar with an interest in the history of philosophy, I cannot claim anything like Budick's intimate knowledge of Kant.)
Budick, a prominent, highly regarded Milton scholar, demonstrates an impressive philosophical sophistication. The second surprise, after the title, is that Budick, a professor of English at Hebrew University, engages intensively with Kant scholarship and only minimally with Milton scholarship. He argues that Kant, who along with other eighteenth-century German intellectuals knew Milton well and valued him highly, singles out the poet as the preeminent poet of the sublime and, as such, as a crucial predecessor making possible Kant's understanding and articulation of the attainment of freedom and moral autonomy. For Budick's Kant, aesthetics and ethics are closely related. If Budick's arguments are right, then Kant's readers will have a new resource for tracing the development of the categorical imperative, and Miltonists will have a new and powerful lens to understand Milton.
In six chapters Budick traces the development of Kant's moral and aesthetic thought as it develops out of the crucible of the constellation of German Miltonism (Budick employs a methodology of Konstellationsforschung pioneered by Dieter Heinrich), particularly in agonistic dialogue with Herder. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23249.
You may be one of the many readers who do a double-take when encountering the title of Sanford Budick's Kant and Milton. I predict that Kant scholars will put down the book convinced that Milton is a seminal figure for Kant, and Miltonists will put it down heartened by this evidence of the poet's influence and armed with a new way of thinking about one of the central debates in Milton studies today, concerning the meaning of Samson Agonistes. (A preliminary word to philosophers: caveat emptor; as a Milton scholar with an interest in the history of philosophy, I cannot claim anything like Budick's intimate knowledge of Kant.)
Budick, a prominent, highly regarded Milton scholar, demonstrates an impressive philosophical sophistication. The second surprise, after the title, is that Budick, a professor of English at Hebrew University, engages intensively with Kant scholarship and only minimally with Milton scholarship. He argues that Kant, who along with other eighteenth-century German intellectuals knew Milton well and valued him highly, singles out the poet as the preeminent poet of the sublime and, as such, as a crucial predecessor making possible Kant's understanding and articulation of the attainment of freedom and moral autonomy. For Budick's Kant, aesthetics and ethics are closely related. If Budick's arguments are right, then Kant's readers will have a new resource for tracing the development of the categorical imperative, and Miltonists will have a new and powerful lens to understand Milton.
In six chapters Budick traces the development of Kant's moral and aesthetic thought as it develops out of the crucible of the constellation of German Miltonism (Budick employs a methodology of Konstellationsforschung pioneered by Dieter Heinrich), particularly in agonistic dialogue with Herder. . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23249.
"Feminist Phenomenology and Medicine," Uppsala University, May 18-21, 2011.
Phenomenology and much feminist theory and philosophy investigate lived experiences and affirm the role of embodiment for human meaning-making. Furthermore, both unveil and scrutinize taken-for-granted and in this sense ‘hidden’ assumptions, beliefs and norms that we live by, that we strengthen by repeated actions and that we also resist, challenge and question. Whereas there is a growing area of feminist phenomenology dealing with concrete issues of embodiment and situatedness surprisingly little work focuses on topics/phenomena related to medicine and health. Whereas phenomenologists have made valuable contributions to the analysis of the nature of medicine, the meaning of illness and health as well as clinical practice, there have been comparably few analyses of such issues that combine insights from feminist theory and philosophy with phenomenology.
This conference is based on the conviction that facticities of human life, such as birth, illness, sex and death benefit from being examined in the light of feminist theory and phenomenology. More and more often, these facticities are managed in medicine, through medical treatment and medical technology. We want to approach both the facticities of human existence and the different ways in which these are being medicalized through the perspectives of feminist phenomenology. By doing this we want to bring to light the role of bodies in different human experiences and in subjective and intersubjective meaning-making. We want to examine taken-for-granted assumptions about bodies that inform and structure medical practices and lived experiences in medicine as well as in everyday life. We further want to raise questions of how the relation between phenomenology and feminism can be understood in a fruitful and mutually enriching way and how phenomenon such as birth, illness, sex and ageing can and does inform feminist phenomenology as a theoretical framework.
We welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives dealing with the overarching topic of feminist phenomenology and medicine. Topics can include (but are not limited to) phenomenological analyses and/or approaches to:
- ethics
- suffering and pain
- disability
- birth and death
- embodiment of subjectivity
- sexualities and sexual identities
- medical practices
- medical diagnosis
- bodily movement
- health
Visit: http://www.genna.gender.uu.se/conferences-events/conferences-workshops/femphenmed/.
This conference is based on the conviction that facticities of human life, such as birth, illness, sex and death benefit from being examined in the light of feminist theory and phenomenology. More and more often, these facticities are managed in medicine, through medical treatment and medical technology. We want to approach both the facticities of human existence and the different ways in which these are being medicalized through the perspectives of feminist phenomenology. By doing this we want to bring to light the role of bodies in different human experiences and in subjective and intersubjective meaning-making. We want to examine taken-for-granted assumptions about bodies that inform and structure medical practices and lived experiences in medicine as well as in everyday life. We further want to raise questions of how the relation between phenomenology and feminism can be understood in a fruitful and mutually enriching way and how phenomenon such as birth, illness, sex and ageing can and does inform feminist phenomenology as a theoretical framework.
We welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives dealing with the overarching topic of feminist phenomenology and medicine. Topics can include (but are not limited to) phenomenological analyses and/or approaches to:
- ethics
- suffering and pain
- disability
- birth and death
- embodiment of subjectivity
- sexualities and sexual identities
- medical practices
- medical diagnosis
- bodily movement
- health
Visit: http://www.genna.gender.uu.se/conferences-events/conferences-workshops/femphenmed/.
Gooding-Williams, Robert. Review of Paul S. Loeb, THE DEATH OF NIETZSCHE'S ZARATHRUSTRA. NDPR (April 2011).
Loeb, Paul S. The Death of Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Cambridge: CUP, 2010.
Paul Loeb's The Death of Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a superb contribution to the philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche's notoriously most inaccessible book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (hereafter TSZ). Through careful exegesis of some of TSZ's most complicated and densely symbolic passages, and through rigorous, critical analysis of all the important secondary literature on the thought of the eternal recurrence, Loeb's book presents an ingeniously argued and richly insightful interpretation of Nietzsche's literary fiction that pointedly and often persuasively takes issue with each of the major TSZ commentaries to have been published within the last twenty-five years or so.
Loeb's central project is twofold: first, to advance a "performative understanding" of the "clue" Nietzsche offers his readers for interpreting TSZ -- namely, that the thought of eternal recurrence is the book's fundamental conception[2]; and second, to rely on that clue to solve four of TSZ's most prominent "riddles" or "interpretive difficulties" (1, 6).
By "performative understanding," Loeb has in mind the thesis that the narrative of TSZ embodies and enacts the thought of recurrence and, more specifically, that it displays "the unconditioned and endlessly repeated circular course of Zarathustra's life" (2). On the basis of this understanding, the riddles Loeb purports to solve include 1) the question of the relative significance of Parts III and IV of TSZ; 2) the difficulty of making sense of the various dreams, visions, allegories, and symbols that animate TSZ; 3) the problem of understanding the relationship between Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and his concepts of the superhuman and the will to power; and, finally, the issue of whether the thought of recurrence is to be understood as a thought of total, unconditional affirmation, or as a selective thought that excludes the recurrence of the so-called "small man."
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23270.
Paul Loeb's The Death of Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a superb contribution to the philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche's notoriously most inaccessible book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (hereafter TSZ). Through careful exegesis of some of TSZ's most complicated and densely symbolic passages, and through rigorous, critical analysis of all the important secondary literature on the thought of the eternal recurrence, Loeb's book presents an ingeniously argued and richly insightful interpretation of Nietzsche's literary fiction that pointedly and often persuasively takes issue with each of the major TSZ commentaries to have been published within the last twenty-five years or so.
Loeb's central project is twofold: first, to advance a "performative understanding" of the "clue" Nietzsche offers his readers for interpreting TSZ -- namely, that the thought of eternal recurrence is the book's fundamental conception[2]; and second, to rely on that clue to solve four of TSZ's most prominent "riddles" or "interpretive difficulties" (1, 6).
By "performative understanding," Loeb has in mind the thesis that the narrative of TSZ embodies and enacts the thought of recurrence and, more specifically, that it displays "the unconditioned and endlessly repeated circular course of Zarathustra's life" (2). On the basis of this understanding, the riddles Loeb purports to solve include 1) the question of the relative significance of Parts III and IV of TSZ; 2) the difficulty of making sense of the various dreams, visions, allegories, and symbols that animate TSZ; 3) the problem of understanding the relationship between Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and his concepts of the superhuman and the will to power; and, finally, the issue of whether the thought of recurrence is to be understood as a thought of total, unconditional affirmation, or as a selective thought that excludes the recurrence of the so-called "small man."
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23270.
"Creation, Creatureliness, and Creativity: the Human Place in the Natural World," Annual Conference, Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology, Loyola Marymount University, April 20-22, 2012.
Keynote Speakers:
Bruce Foltz (Eckerd College)
Janet Martin Soskice (Cambridge University)
Norman Wirzba (Duke Divinity School)
SCPT's 2012 conference takes today’s ecological crises as its point of departure. We invite theological and philosophical contributions informed by continental traditions such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, eco-feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonial studies, deconstruction, and social and deep ecology that help us understand and implement a sustainable future together. Authors may submit papers that address ecological issues head on, as well as those that tackle philosophical and theological themes that underlie these issues.
The Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology seeks to promote inquiry at the intersection of philosophy and theology. For more information about SCPT, visit http://www.scptonline.org/.
Bruce Foltz (Eckerd College)
Janet Martin Soskice (Cambridge University)
Norman Wirzba (Duke Divinity School)
SCPT's 2012 conference takes today’s ecological crises as its point of departure. We invite theological and philosophical contributions informed by continental traditions such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, eco-feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonial studies, deconstruction, and social and deep ecology that help us understand and implement a sustainable future together. Authors may submit papers that address ecological issues head on, as well as those that tackle philosophical and theological themes that underlie these issues.
The Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology seeks to promote inquiry at the intersection of philosophy and theology. For more information about SCPT, visit http://www.scptonline.org/.
Copenhagen Summer School in Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, August 8-12, 2011.
This summer school is an initiative of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology. The course will provide essential insights into central themes within the philosophy of mind, viewed from a phenomenological perspective. Topics include: transcendental philosophy, intentionality, perception, empathy, and the enactive mind. The course will consist of a mixture of lectures and seminars (25 hours total), aimed at advanced MA students and PhD students.
Speakers include: Prof. Jocelyn Benoist (Sorbonne, Paris), Prof. Shaun Gallagher (Memphis), Prof. Camilla Serck-Hanssen (Oslo), Prof. Dan Zahavi (Copenhagen), Dr. Søren Overgaard (Copenhagen)
Visit http://cfs.ku.dk/summerschool/.
Speakers include: Prof. Jocelyn Benoist (Sorbonne, Paris), Prof. Shaun Gallagher (Memphis), Prof. Camilla Serck-Hanssen (Oslo), Prof. Dan Zahavi (Copenhagen), Dr. Søren Overgaard (Copenhagen)
Visit http://cfs.ku.dk/summerschool/.
Cfp: "German Idealism Today," Sixth international Conference, Nordic Network for German Idealism (NNGI), Aarhus University, October 31-November 2, 2011.
Speakers:
Marcus Gabriel (Universität Bonn)
Sebastian Gardner (University College London)
Arne Grøn (University of Copenhagen)
Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Stephen Houlgate (University of Warwick)
Axel Hutter (Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität, München)
Terry Pinkard (Georgetown University)
Robert Pippin (University of Chicago)
Sebastian Rödl (Universität Basel)
Camilla Serck-Hansen (University of Oslo)
Günther Zöller (Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität, München)
Alenka Zupančič (Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana)
Visit: http://nngi.org/?p=434.
Marcus Gabriel (Universität Bonn)
Sebastian Gardner (University College London)
Arne Grøn (University of Copenhagen)
Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Stephen Houlgate (University of Warwick)
Axel Hutter (Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität, München)
Terry Pinkard (Georgetown University)
Robert Pippin (University of Chicago)
Sebastian Rödl (Universität Basel)
Camilla Serck-Hansen (University of Oslo)
Günther Zöller (Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität, München)
Alenka Zupančič (Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana)
Visit: http://nngi.org/?p=434.
Speight, Allen. Review of Benjamin Rutter, HEGEL ON THE MODERN ARTS. NDPR (April 2011).
Rutter, Benjamin. Hegel on the Modern Arts. Cambridge: CUP, 2010.
Hegel's aesthetics has, especially since Henrich and Danto, often been viewed as heralding the "end of art." Those who have taken pains to look more carefully at the text of Hegel's Lectures on Fine Arts have rightly pointed out that Hegel's claims seem to be more precise than this -- that Hegel does not in fact declare the "end of art" in the sense of its death but rather insists that (in T. M. Knox's translation) "the form of art has ceased to be the supreme need of the spirit." The modern aesthetic issue of concern for an Hegelian then, presumably, is not a matter of art's ceasing to exist (although Hegel does sometimes make it sound as though he might think this is not an impossibility -- as for example, when he huffs that with the German poet Jean Paul "art actually ends"), but whether art can matter any longer for those of us who inhabit a modern, rationalistic and bourgeois age.
But those who have attempted to rescue a Hegel whose aesthetics might still be philosophically relevant for at least some of the significant developments in art and literature since his death in 1831 have not always taken up the broader philosophical question about how and why art can still matter (or even -- as is the bolder claim of this book -- be indispensable) for Hegel. And Hegel's defenders as well as his critics have also had the further limitation of resting their claims about what Hegel actually said in his lectures on what remains to this day an unclear textual basis. The most widely used published English version of Hegel's lectures on aesthetics is Knox's two-volume Hegel's Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, but Knox relied on an edition prepared by Hegel's student H. G. Hotho, and contemporary scholars have been at pains to use the existing transcriptions of those lectures in an effort to pare off the authentic words of Hegel himself from the accretions of his disciple.
English-speaking philosophers interested in Hegel's various Berlin lecture series on topics in the philosophy of spirit have had access for years to good translations of the various Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, thanks to the editorial work of Jaeschke, Hodgson, and others, but there exists to this day no such opportunity for those interested in Hegel's aesthetics. (The situation is in fact worse than this, since not even all of the aesthetics lecture series transcripts have been published yet in German.)
One of the best features of Benjamin Rutter's new book on Hegel's aesthetics is that he has taken care to examine the development of Hegel's views about modern art over the series of lectures Hegel gave on the topic during the 1820s. The conclusions Rutter draws based on his textual work with the German transcripts of the lectures -- that Hegel, for example, was more pessimistic about art's role in modern life in the early part of that decade but tended to soften his views in the final lecture series -- are, moreover, importantly situated in the context of a fine-grained account of Hegel's treatment of various achievements within the artistic genres that he thought mattered most in modernity (certain forms of lyric poetry and Dutch genre painting, especially). . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23290.
Hegel's aesthetics has, especially since Henrich and Danto, often been viewed as heralding the "end of art." Those who have taken pains to look more carefully at the text of Hegel's Lectures on Fine Arts have rightly pointed out that Hegel's claims seem to be more precise than this -- that Hegel does not in fact declare the "end of art" in the sense of its death but rather insists that (in T. M. Knox's translation) "the form of art has ceased to be the supreme need of the spirit." The modern aesthetic issue of concern for an Hegelian then, presumably, is not a matter of art's ceasing to exist (although Hegel does sometimes make it sound as though he might think this is not an impossibility -- as for example, when he huffs that with the German poet Jean Paul "art actually ends"), but whether art can matter any longer for those of us who inhabit a modern, rationalistic and bourgeois age.
But those who have attempted to rescue a Hegel whose aesthetics might still be philosophically relevant for at least some of the significant developments in art and literature since his death in 1831 have not always taken up the broader philosophical question about how and why art can still matter (or even -- as is the bolder claim of this book -- be indispensable) for Hegel. And Hegel's defenders as well as his critics have also had the further limitation of resting their claims about what Hegel actually said in his lectures on what remains to this day an unclear textual basis. The most widely used published English version of Hegel's lectures on aesthetics is Knox's two-volume Hegel's Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, but Knox relied on an edition prepared by Hegel's student H. G. Hotho, and contemporary scholars have been at pains to use the existing transcriptions of those lectures in an effort to pare off the authentic words of Hegel himself from the accretions of his disciple.
English-speaking philosophers interested in Hegel's various Berlin lecture series on topics in the philosophy of spirit have had access for years to good translations of the various Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, thanks to the editorial work of Jaeschke, Hodgson, and others, but there exists to this day no such opportunity for those interested in Hegel's aesthetics. (The situation is in fact worse than this, since not even all of the aesthetics lecture series transcripts have been published yet in German.)
One of the best features of Benjamin Rutter's new book on Hegel's aesthetics is that he has taken care to examine the development of Hegel's views about modern art over the series of lectures Hegel gave on the topic during the 1820s. The conclusions Rutter draws based on his textual work with the German transcripts of the lectures -- that Hegel, for example, was more pessimistic about art's role in modern life in the early part of that decade but tended to soften his views in the final lecture series -- are, moreover, importantly situated in the context of a fine-grained account of Hegel's treatment of various achievements within the artistic genres that he thought mattered most in modernity (certain forms of lyric poetry and Dutch genre painting, especially). . . .
Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23290.
Cfp: "Between Reason and Unreason: Nietzsche – The Enlightenment – Romanticism," Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, Queen Mary College, University of London, September 9–11, 2011.
18th International Conference, Friedrich Nietzsche Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
According to some critics, Nietzsche opts out of the dialectic of Enlightenment and appeals in Romantic fashion to the Other of reason, whether in the form of the ancient Greek Dionysian or archaic ideals of nobility. Others highlight the ways in which Nietzsche’s unique style of critique deploys reason against the claims of Enlightenment reason, undermining the latter from within so as to extend our concept of reason. The purpose of this conference is to examine the place of Nietzsche’s thought between Reason and Unreason by focusing on its relation to the modern traditions of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. What is Nietzsche’s relation to the Enlightenment in the different phases of his work? Is he, as critic of Enlightenment reason, a representative of the counter-Enlightenment – or rather of an intensified form of Enlightenment critique? In what sense(s) can Nietzsche be characterised as a Romantic? Is his recourse to art an appeal to Other of reason – or is art rather the medium in which the claims of Enlightenment reason can be realised? In line with the venue of the conference at the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, special attention will be given to Nietzsche’s relations to the German and Anglo-Saxon traditions of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
The 2011 conference will follow the standard FNS conference format of five parallel sessions and five plenary sessions with well-known speakers in the field. In addition, it will include the 2nd international workshop on Nietzsche and Kant, on the topic "Nietzsche and Kantian Aesthetics". This will involve invited speakers, but there will also be space for other relevant papers submitted through this call for papers.
Confirmed plenary speakers:
Marco Brusotti (TU Berlin / Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy)
Rüdiger Görner (Director of Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, Queen Mary)
Beatrix Himmelmann(University of Trømso, Norway)
Nicholas Martin (University of Birmingham)
The Friedrich Nietzsche Society welcomes proposals for 30-minute papers on all topics bearing on the conference theme, including the following:
* Nietzsche and Reason / Nietzsche and the Irrational
* Nietzsche’s relation to both the Enlightenment and Romanticism
* Nietzsche and the Enlightenment / Nietzsche contra the Enlightenment
* Nietzsche and Romanticism / Nietzsche as Romantic
Email: friedrich.nietzsche.society@gmail.com.
According to some critics, Nietzsche opts out of the dialectic of Enlightenment and appeals in Romantic fashion to the Other of reason, whether in the form of the ancient Greek Dionysian or archaic ideals of nobility. Others highlight the ways in which Nietzsche’s unique style of critique deploys reason against the claims of Enlightenment reason, undermining the latter from within so as to extend our concept of reason. The purpose of this conference is to examine the place of Nietzsche’s thought between Reason and Unreason by focusing on its relation to the modern traditions of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. What is Nietzsche’s relation to the Enlightenment in the different phases of his work? Is he, as critic of Enlightenment reason, a representative of the counter-Enlightenment – or rather of an intensified form of Enlightenment critique? In what sense(s) can Nietzsche be characterised as a Romantic? Is his recourse to art an appeal to Other of reason – or is art rather the medium in which the claims of Enlightenment reason can be realised? In line with the venue of the conference at the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, special attention will be given to Nietzsche’s relations to the German and Anglo-Saxon traditions of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
The 2011 conference will follow the standard FNS conference format of five parallel sessions and five plenary sessions with well-known speakers in the field. In addition, it will include the 2nd international workshop on Nietzsche and Kant, on the topic "Nietzsche and Kantian Aesthetics". This will involve invited speakers, but there will also be space for other relevant papers submitted through this call for papers.
Confirmed plenary speakers:
Marco Brusotti (TU Berlin / Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy)
Rüdiger Görner (Director of Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, Queen Mary)
Beatrix Himmelmann(University of Trømso, Norway)
Nicholas Martin (University of Birmingham)
The Friedrich Nietzsche Society welcomes proposals for 30-minute papers on all topics bearing on the conference theme, including the following:
* Nietzsche and Reason / Nietzsche and the Irrational
* Nietzsche’s relation to both the Enlightenment and Romanticism
* Nietzsche and the Enlightenment / Nietzsche contra the Enlightenment
* Nietzsche and Romanticism / Nietzsche as Romantic
Email: friedrich.nietzsche.society@gmail.com.
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