Cfp: "The Ethical Challenge of Multidisciplinarity: Reconciling ‘the Three Narratives’ -- Art, Science, and Philosophy," 13th Conference, International Society for the Study of European Ideas, University of Cyprus, July 2–6, 2012.

Language—and by extension our story telling activities in general—enables us to confront the contingencies of life by answering the immediate question: what’s happening and what is going to happen next. Science also attempts to answer this question. However, there appears to be—at least in the western cultural tradition—a fundamental tension between the literary-artistic and the scientific projects: whereas the artist seeks to recreate human experience, thereby evoking basic ethical issues, the scientist seeks ethically-neutral, evidence-based facts, as the constituents of our knowledge of reality. It is thus left to others—to the philosopher, theologian, critic, or historian—to bridge the theoretical and ethical gaps between the world of ‘fiction’ and the world of ‘fact’, of art and science. Among other things, the ever increasing rate of production of scientific data in the modern age poses a new multidisciplinary challenge: how to address the unresolved/unresolvable tensions between the language of normativity and the language of facticity.

The organizers of the 13th ISSEI Conference invite scholars from various academic fields to discuss the ethical challenge of multidisciplinarity by characterizing the scope, effects and implications of the discontinuities among ‘the three narratives’: to consider how artists, scientists, and philosophers have articulated, explained and responded to them and/or have attempted to reconcile them.

The conference is divided into five sections:

1. History, Geography, Science
2. Politics, Economics, Law
3. Education, Sociology, Women’s Studies
4. Literature, Art, Music, Theatre, Culture
5. Religion, Philosophy, Anthropology, Psychology, Language

Visit: http://issei2012.haifa.ac.il/.

Cfp: "(Re)Branding Feminism," Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies (IGRS), University of London, March 1-2, 2011.

There has been a general recognition, if not acceptance, of many of feminism’s key concepts. But does this mean that it has ceased to assert itself as a unique movement? Indeed, should feminism be (re)branded in an age when all ideologies are subject to market forces? And what should this rebranding consist of?

Two years on from the stimulating ‘Where are we now? A workshop on women and heterosexuality’ hosted by the IGRS, this conference will address some of the issues raised then to question the place of feminism in the twenty-first century. While there has been ambivalent press and general apathy towards those issues that once encouraged women to put the political into the personal, it is increasingly women themselves who think there is nothing more to discuss. Why has there been a decline in the link between the personal and the ideological? Do we need a different kind of feminism to meet the cultural, political and academic needs of a younger generation?

Topics might include but are not limited to:

• Are sisters doing it for themselves?
• Feminism on the frontline
• I can be a real bitch
• Family romances
• Home-makers and career women
• God was/is a woman
• Feminism and the sex industry
• Feminist renaissance
• Feminism is bollocks
• Rebranding feminism
• Pub talk

Abstracts between 200-300 words that explore any aspect of (re)branding feminism are sought as are poster submissions of 200 - 300 words on any topic related to rebranding feminism. Submit poster ideas and abstracts in a word document or .pdf.

Please send abstracts and poster ideas to both Jean Owen (ojean27@yahoo.com) and Elisha Foust (elishafoust@googlemail.com) by 5pm 1 October 2010.

"The Philosophy of the Enlightenment," Annual Conference, British Society for the History of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and Centre for Intellectual History, University of Sussex, March 29-31, 2011.

Papers relating to any aspect of the philosophy of the enlightenment will be considered. The topic will be interpreted broadly, but we particularly welcome papers in the following areas:

• Philosophy and Political Thought in the Enlightenment
• The Enlightenment and Kant
• Aesthetics and the Enlightenment

There will be a panel on 'Jewish Thought in the Enlightenment', and papers on this topic are also welcome.

Plenary speakers will include Jonathan Friday (Kent), Knud Haakonssen (Sussex), James Harris (St Andrews), Ian Hunter (Queensland), and Quentin Skinner (Queen Mary, London).

Deadline for submission of papers is 31 December 2010.

Inquiries:

Lucy Allais: L.L.Allais@sussex.ac.uk or
Knud Haakonssen: k.haakonssen@sussex.ac.uk.

"Women, Philosophy and History," Center for Research on Women, Barnard College, October 2-3, 2009.

A Conference in Celebration of the Work of Eileen O'Neill. This two-day conference continues the groundbreaking work of Eileen O'Neill '75 by examining the standard narrative of the history of philosophy from a feminist perspective. O'Neill's pioneering scholarship has brought to light the texts and ideas of women in the early modern period, and demonstrated the substantial contributions they made to philosophy. Her work has encouraged the analysis of thinkers as diverse as Marie de Gournay, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Anna Maria van Schurman, Mary Astell, Émilie du Châtelet, and Damaris Masham. It has also challenged philosophers to reconsider methodological assumptions that have hidden these women and their works from view. The eminent international scholars gathered for this conference will continue this exploration and discuss the methodological, pedagogical, and philosophical implications of O'Neill's work. The conference also celebrates the impact of O'Neill's commitment to women in philosophy more generally. Further information is here: http://www.barnard.edu/bcrw/events.htm.

Cfp: "Cultural Translation," Cardiff University, December 11, 2009.

Etymologically, the word translation is linked, among other things, to “tradition” on the one hand and to “betrayal” on the other. . . . And yet the word tradition itself, linked in its roots to translation and betrayal, has to do with handing over. Tradition itself is nothing if it is not a transmission. How is tradition to be transmitted, to be passed on, if not through translation? (Rey Chow) The process of “cultural translation” is inevitably enmeshed in conditions of power – professional, national, international. . . . Given that that is so, the interesting question for enquiry is . . . how power enters into the process of “cultural translation” (Talal Asad) For this free interdisciplinary conference, we invite proposals on problematics of: Intercultural encounters Translation between cultures Postcolonialism and the politics of translation Diaspora, migration, mobility and cultural practices Ethnicity, language, representation and cultural identity Theories and practices of cultural translation Tradition, transmission, translation and problems of origins Re-examining the assumptions of translation Questions of technology, mediation and the voice Ethical and political problems in academic methodologies Proposals: 400-word proposals for 20-minute papers. Deadline: 1st September 2009 Further information may be found here: http://ranciere.blogspot.com/2009/05/cultural-translation-conference.html or email: BowmanP@cf.ac.uk.

"Transcendental Philosophy: its History and Nature," Annual Conference, BSHP, Manchester Metropolitan University, April 14-17, 2009.

Thinking about the notion of the “transcendental” in the history of philosophy touches on a number of distinct topics that have proved of central significance. These include the understanding of the a priori, the nature of necessity claims in experience, the questions of the nature of experience itself and its possibility, and the understanding of what is essential in claims of knowledge. Whilst transcendental philosophy as a venture has tended in recent years to be identified with the Kantian project, it is not exclusively connected to it, since successors to Kant have contested the understanding and significance of the “transcendental”. Included amongst alternatives to the Kantian conception are those of the German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling and Hegel), all of whom have either described themselves or been described by others as transcendental philosophers. Similarly,the revival of interest in Kant in the late nineteenth-century, produced significant revisions in the understanding of transcendental methods and arguments. The traditions of European philosophy include significant reinventions of the concept of the transcendental in the works of Husserl, Derrida and Deleuze and the analytic tradition includes such transcendental projects as those of Wilfred Sellars and Peter Strawson and Charles Pierce provides an additional example of an arguably transcendental philosophy. By contrast, in considering the place of the concept of the transcendental in philosophy, it is also important to consider its usage prior to the work of Kant in, for example, the medieval tradition of describing the transcendentals or Plotinus’conception of the transcendental. In responding to this topic contributors might focus, inter alia, on any of the following: Transcendental philosophy: its nature and scope; Transcendental arguments; the nature of transcendental idealism; the viability of transcendental realism; transcendental phenomenology; the role of the transcendentals in medieval philosophy; transcendental empiricism; transcendental philosophy and metaphysics; the synthetic a priori; transcendental deductions; transcendental psychology; analytic philosophy and the transcendental; the intuition of essences; categorial intuition; transcendental subjectivity; science and experience; transcendental apperception; transcendental imagination; transcendental logic; the logic of experience; transcendental ontology; transcendental pragmatism; semiotics and the transcendental; transcendental dynamics; mathematics and experience; nature and the world; mind and world; transcendental aesthetics; transcendental dialectics; transcendental methods. Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words, by December 31st, to the following: Gary Banham [g.banham@mmu.ac.uk] and James Clarke [jac505@york.ac.uk].

Burrell, David. "Review of Michael Gillespie's THE THEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF MODERNITY." NDPR (November 2008).

Gillespie, Michael Allen. The Theological Origins of Modernity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. This massively erudite study offers an alterative genealogy of "modernity," showing it to be a sustained attempt to re-cast the created world in a new key, once the metaphysical idiom had shifted from "scholasticism" to "nominalism." Gillespie challenges the standard account, which focuses on the religious wars of the seventeenth century to trigger a set of strategies we call "modern," inaugurated as ploys to circumvent and neutralize "religion" or "faith," so as to clear a way to understand the universe more straightforwardly. His elaborately constructed case proposes to show how intractable controversies in philosophical theology helped to shape the goals of that more straightforward understanding of nature, though not the disparate paths proposed to attain that understanding. The details of the case instruct us well in the "history of ideas," allowing us to become philosophically engaged as dialectical oppositions emerge and meet. His story opens in Avignon with a brief chance encounter of William of Ockham, Francesco Petrarch, and Meister Eckhart after Sunday mass (1, 43). In different ways, these three presage the emergence of alternatives to "scholastic realism," each shaped by the novel metaphysical mode of "nominalism." But let us outline the story before scrutinizing what these abstract names portend for the author, and the ways he wishes to put them into play. The initial chapter elaborates the metaphysical thesis noted, rooting the dynamic proper to modernity in the near-total supersession of "nominalism" over "scholasticism," with the narrative then moving to "Petrarch and the invention of individuality," leading into a fulsome description of Italian humanism by way of its principal protagonists, only to shift to the Low Countries with the impressive figure of Erasmus. While frequently mentioned as a source of patronage for intellectuals, the papal court provides the cultural backdrop for the urbane Christian humanism of the Mediterranean, yet that very urbanity proved a stumbling block to the church's claim to presage the coming of the Kingdom, triggering a northern reaction of righteous reform: "Luther and the storm of faith." The ensuing chapter proves axial to the author's thesis: Erasmus and Luther locked in combat yet each somehow beholden to the "nominalist" revolution. The next two chapters focus on Descartes and Hobbes, respectively, each searching for new strategies with which to think the universe, while these are tested in a mutual encounter highlighted in the final chapter: "contradictions of the enlightenment." An epilogue liberates us from the dreary landscape of northern Europe to introduce a player ancient and new: Islam; suggesting that "the west" will prove unable to engage Islam fruitfully until we understand the real roots of our touted modernity. So what appears as an afterthought in response to recent events, traumatic for the west, becomes the point of this extensive and intensive study. The detail of the extensive study is breathtaking, with intellectual biographies of the major protagonists elaborated against the backdrop of social and political upheavals of their times. We are constantly and consistently instructed. The intensive study, however, is bedeviled with some crucial ambiguities, though these need not undermine the author's overall thesis, and may in fact elicit refinements which could prove enlightening. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=14665.

CFP: "Transcendental Philosophy: its History and Nature," BSHP, Manchester Metropolitan University, April 14-17, 2009.

Thinking about the notion of the 'transcendental' in the history of philosophy touches on a number of distinct topics that have proved of central significance. These include the understanding of the a priori, the nature of necessity claims in experience, the question of the nature of experience itself and its possibility, and the understanding of what is essential in claims of knowledge. Whilst transcendental philosophy as a venture has tended in recent years to be identified with the Kantian project it is not exclusively connected to it since successors to Kant have contested the understanding and significance of the transcendental. Included amongst alternatives to the Kantian conception are those of the German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling and Hegel) all of whom have either described themselves or been described by others as transcendental philosophers. Similarly the revival of interest in Kant in the late nineteenth century produced significant revisions in the understanding of transcendental methods and arguments. The traditions of European philosophy include significant re-inventions of the concept of the transcendental in the works of Husserl, Derrida and Deleuze and the analytic tradition includes such transcendental projects as those of Wilfrid Sellars and Peter Strawson. By contrast, in considering the place of the concept of the transcendental in philosophy it is also important to consider its usage prior to the work of Kant in, for example the medieval tradition of describing the transcendentals as providing us notions that exceed those of categorial determination. In responding to this topic contributors might focus, inter alia, on any of the following: Transcendental philosophy: its nature and scope; Transcendental arguments; the nature of transcendental idealism; the viability of transcendental realism; transcendental phenomenology; the role of the transcendentals in medieval philosophy; transcendental empiricism; transcendental philosophy and metaphysics; the synthetic a priori; transcendental deductions; transcendental psychology; analytic philosophy and the transcendental; the intuition of essences; categorial intuition; transcendental subjectivity; science and experience; transcendental apperception; transcendental imagination; transcendental logic; the logic of experience; transcendental ontology; transcendental pragmatism; semiotics and the transcendental; transcendental dynamics; mathematics and experience; nature and world; mind and world; transcendental aesthetics; transcendental dialectic; transcendental methods. Please send abstracts to the following: Gary Banham, Reader in Transcendental Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University (g.banham@mmu.ac.uk); James Clarke, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of York (jac505@york.ac.uk).

An Interesting Interview with Beatrice Longuenesse, THE DUALIST (2006).

Longuenesse's philosophical work, drawing on concepts from both 'analytic' and 'continental' traditions, has focused on Kant, Hegel, and the concepts of subject, self, and personal identity. She has most recently published Kant on the Human Standpoint (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005), and her Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysics is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. To read the interview, please visit: http://www.stanford.edu/group/dualist/vol12/Longuenesse.pdf.

Recent Entries at the STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY

Analytic Philosophy:

• Pigden, Charles: Russell's Moral Philosophy
• Tanney, Julia: Gilbert Ryle

Early Modern Philosophy:

• Smith, George: Isaac Newton
• Smith, George: Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
• Look, Brandon: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
• McDonough, Jeff: Leibniz's Philosophy of Physics
• Russell, Paul: Hume on Free Will
• Russell, Paul: Hume on Religion