CFP: "Orientations," Inaugural Conference, International Society for Cultural History, Ghent University, August 28-31, 2008.

The study of culture—whether it be from a regional, a national or a more global perspective—has been central to the humanities for at least two decades now. In this period, we have seen the rise of several disciplinary movements within this ever-expanding domain of research. Cultural studies, cultural criticism, cultural analysis and cultural anthropology are some of the more persistent labels to have been put forward in an attempt to describe and reorganise the field. Given the fact that the study of cultural artefacts and practices nowadays often steers a distinct historical course, the label of cultural history could be proposed as a sort of umbrella-term, comprising the previous ones. But is it, really? At this four-day event— the inaugural assembly of the International Society for Cultural History that was founded at a successful conference on cultural history in Aberdeen in July 2007—we want to address a series of fundamental questions about the recent impact and the near future of diverse forms of cultural history. Taking its cue from the fundamental work of, among others, Catherine Belsey, Peter Burke, Lynn Hunt, and Philippe Poirrier, the conference will tackle the vexing question of the precise nature of cultural history:

• Which disciplinary models and/or critical paradigms can be brought together under this label?
• Do we actually need such a unifying label?
• If we do, then what exactly do we understand by it?
• Are there different, national (British, French, German, Italian, Finnish?) forms of cultural history and what distinguishes them from one another?
• How does one teach cultural history and what does one teach when one teaches cultural history?

The organisers of this conference welcome papers (theoretical, practical or a combination of both) that will enable us to formulate answers to the questions listed above, but also to other issues concerning future 'orientations' of the field of cultural history:

• Where does the field stand, and where is it heading to?
• How does it relate to other academic disciplines both within and outside the humanities?

The label of cultural history is a slippery one, consisting of two no less slippery concepts: culture and history. The past few decades have also witnessed fierce methodological debates concerning the latter term, debates about the theory and practice of historiography, about historicism and presentism, about the irretrievable loss of the past and its stubborn presence, about history and memory, about historical traumas and ways of overcoming them. Did these and other historiographical debates in any way alter the domain of cultural history? Is cultural history a specific brand of history, in terms of the topics that it studies or does it, rather, involve a distinct methodology that sets it apart from other historical disciplines? Should we take cultural history as something different from political history, religious history, the history of science, the history of medicine, the history of art and literature, or does it comprise all of the above? If it does, what are the professional expectations with which cultural historians find themselves confronted? Are they supposed be true homines and feminae universales or, rather, amateurs, in the positive sense of that word? And what about the inter- or multidisciplinary nature of cultural history?

Apart from proposals tackling disciplinary issues like the above ones, the organisers also very much welcome papers that bring cultural history into practice. Alain Corbin's book on Louis-François Pinagot e.g. (The Life of an Unknown, Columbia UP, 2001), dealt both with the methodological difficulties of a cultural historian— how to write the history of an unknown craftsman? how to use archives, the findings of the history of science and religion and of political history to portray the inner and external world of a simple man living on the countryside during the nineteenth century? — as it tried to understand how Louis-François oriented his personal and professional life. The sound of the clocks, the rumours on the Parisian political life, the presence of a schoolmaster or a clergyman, the rhythm of nature, the decisions of parliament and the prosperity of his fellow countrymen organized the life of this simple, unknown man. In terms of more traditional disciplinary markers, we welcome contributions by political historians, historians of science and medicine, art historians, historians of literature and music, specialists of the history of philosophy and religion, etc. By opting for the notion of 'Orientations': as the conference's key-word, the organisers also want to suggest that cultural history is actually all about the art of orientating—oneself, one's group, one's region, one's country, one's world.

Keynote speakers include: Moritz Bassler Catherine Belsey Fernand Hallyn Pascal Ory

Paper proposals (400 words max.) should be sent to both jurgen.pieters@ugent.be and alexander.roose@ugent.be. Deadline for submission is January 31st, 2008. Notification of acceptance will be given before March 1st. Those invited to speak at the conference will be expected to become members of the ISCH before July 1st, when the final programme will be posted. Further information on the ISCH can be found at http:// http://www.abdn.ac.uk/isch

CFP: "Antisemitism and the Emergence of Sociological Theory," University of Manchester, October 31-November 2, 2008.

Modern antisemitism and modern sociological theory not only emerged in the same period but, as much as these discourses might have been antagonistic or even hostile to each other, they also overlapped and complemented each other. Both responded to the same set of causes: the limits and crises of modern society, especially the capitalist mode of production, and the desire, or urgency, to limit what their proponents saw as the negative impacts of modernity. Furthermore, many of those who formulated the classic contributions to both discourses shared a general intellectual background in nationalist liberalism. The conference is designed to explore this constellation. Contributions are encouraged that do at least one of the following: - discuss comments by sociologists (or those who helped, especially in the last third of the nineteenth century, constitute the discipline) on antisemitism and 'the Jewish Question'; - explore the antisemites' opinions on sociology, such as the notion of its supposed 'Jewishness'; - examine and compare what antisemites on the one hand, sociologists on the other, had to say about those subjects that were central to the thinking of either group, including money, usury, modernity, labour, individualism, community, society, social reform, socialism, state, culture, religion, the spirit of capitalism, and capitalist development; - investigate the extent to which classical sociology was either influenced by antisemitic ideas or was constructed in opposition to antisemitic ideas. Comparative approaches with respect to persons, texts and national contexts are particularly encouraged. The conference will take place at the University of Manchester, UK, on the weekend 31 October-2 November, 2008. Also those who anticipate they will not be able to attend but would like to contribute to subsequent publications (a relevant scholarly journal and/or an edited volume) are encouraged to get in touch. Keynote speakers to date will include Detlev Claussen (Hannover) and Robert Fine (Warwick). Deadline for paper proposals (up to 500 words plus short CV) is 9 March, 2008, to be submitted to Marcel.Stoetzler@manchester.ac.uk. The conference will be hosted by the Centre for Jewish Studies and the Centrefor Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, The University of Manchester.

"Grounds for Critique: Realism in the Natural and Human Sciences," IACR, King's College, London, July 11-13, 2008.

The Conference calls for papers from all areas in the arts and humanities, the natural and social sciences. It invites participants from both within and outside critical realism who are interested to explore critical realist philosophy, method and practice, encouraging a broad focus on the nature and grounds of critique. We live in a world of deep conflict, rapid change and flux, in which the problems facing human being and the natural world have never been greater. Challenges posed by techno-scientific fixes to the problems of nature and human nature; by the re-emergence of imperialist conflicts in the name of neo-liberal economics and politics; and by the re-assertion of the division between the secular and the spiritual as the form of modernity and the basis for taking sides in conflict: all provide ample grounds for critique. They also raise the crucial question: what are the grounds of critique at a time when, it is said, critical thinking has lost its way.Questions of critique are central to critical realism. Whether it be immanent critique throughout its development, explanatory and emancipatory critique in its second phase, dialectical and meta-critique in its third, or the most recent assertion of the meta-real, critical realists have sought to be critical about critique. From these different standpoints, they have drawn on or built bridges to theorists as diverse as Plato and Aristotle, Hegel and Marx, Adorno, Habermas and Derrida. So broad a palette requires reflexivity: how do the different forms of critique relate to each other, what are their limits, how are they critically assessed? What is specific to critical realist critiques? How are critiques rooted in the western tradition assessed in the light of those from elsewhere in the world? How does critical realism deal with the ‘end of critique’? How does it shed light on problems of interdisciplinarity? How does it make emancipation possible?Such questions lead us more concretely to ways of doing critique. What are our critical methods? How does critique inform normative theory and argument? How do we ‘do critique’ in relation to both the social and natural sciences and the world? How does it inform political activism and movements for emancipation, or policy formation and outcomes? How is critical realism ‘applied’, i.e., how does it engage with particular fields or objects, or establish research exemplars and examples? How does it approach, negotiate, challenge and overcome disciplinary boundaries? The deadline for receiving abstracts for papers is Friday March 7, 2008. Further information is available here: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/law/events/iacr.

"Derrida's Legacies," London School of Economics, March 1, 2008.

Marking the release of Derrida’s Legacies: Literature and Philosophy by Routledge this conference will present the work of a new generation of Derrida scholars. Bringing together recent thinking across disciplines, it will explore what it means to be thinking with, through, and alongside Derrida’s work today - addressing the questions of Derrida’s legacies and possible futures for his work. The event will explore Derrida’s influence, current trends and debates in Derrida scholarship, and will focus on particular texts. Following the Forum for European Philosophy’s development of innovative presentational formats, the conference will provide an opportunity for young researchers (graduate students and recent PhDs) to present their work beyond the confines of a traditional academic ‘paper’ and to lend their ideas to a more open-ended and informal discussion. A visual artist will also introduce their work, as a ‘provocation’ to Derrida’s legacies of thought. Speakers: Shahidha Bari, Phil Newman, Gerald Moore, Céline Condorelli, Devorah Baum, Sas Mays, Danielle Sands, Oisin Keohane, Nemonie Craven, Richard Fitch, Sarah Dillon Speakers: Shahidha Bari, Phil Newman, Gerald Moore, Céline Condorelli, Devorah Baum, Sas Mays, Danielle Sands, Oisin Keohane, Nemonie Craven, Richard Fitch, Sarah Dillon. The full programme is available here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/forumForEuropeanPhilosophy/events/conferences/DerridasLegaciesConference.htm.

Kirsch, Adam. "The Taste of Silence [on Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art"]." POETRY (January 2008).

Today, Heidegger's name is most often heard in debates about his collaboration with the Nazis. Though he lived from 1889 to 1976, his life and work must be judged by his behavior during the early thirties, when the Nazi Party came to power with a promise to renew the German spirit. Because this was also Heidegger's goal—in a different, but not unrelated sense—he was happy to add his intellectual prestige to the Nazi cause, serving as rector of his university under the new government. He was soon disillusioned with Hitler, but he never fully came to grips with his catastrophic moral and intellectual failure. It was left to writers in our own time, like Richard Wolin and Charles Bambach, to show the full implications of Heidegger's Nazism for his immensely influential work. Even in "The Origin of the Work of Art," the dark affinities of Heidegger's thought can be traced. (Indeed, the essay began as a lecture that Heidegger delivered in Freiburg in 1935, in the third year of Hitler's regime.) Yet it is not surprising that poets should continue to turn to Heidegger for inspiration and guidance. For Heidegger, more than any other philosopher, looked to poetry as a model of what thinking should be. He used individual poems, especially the hymns of Hölderlin, to help explicate his own ideas about nature, technology, art, and history. He constantly dwelled on the mysteries of language and translation, how the way we name things can reveal and conceal their essence. And he himself approached writing in a poetic spirit. We usually think of philosophy, especially German philosophy, as being written in dry, awkward jargon. But Heidegger's writing, though difficult, is deeply creative: he uses nouns as verbs and verbs as nouns, puns on etymologies, and even plays with spelling, all in an effort to jar the reader out of conventional ways of reading and thinking. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0108/comment_180561.html.

CFP: "Is There a Marxian Philosophy?" Fifth Annual Conference, Marx and Philosophy Society, London, May 24, 2008.

Keynote speaker: Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University) Is there a distinctive Marxian approach to areas of philosophy such as metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics or aesthetics? If so, what does it consist in? Or does a Marxian 'approach to philosophy' amount only to explaining philosophical ideas as means of class struggle or as effects of social relations of production? If so, can such an approach avoid making philosophical presuppositions of its own? We invite papers on any of these questions, in relation to Marx's own work or to others in the Marxist tradition. A panel for postgraduate paper givers will also be organised. Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words by 13 February 2008 at thelatest to Andrew Chitty at a.e.chitty@sussex.ac.uk.

Katz, Claire. "Review of Michael L. Morgan's DISCOVERING LEVINAS." NDPR January 12, 2008.

I can no longer count the number of times that I have heard people say that Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most difficult philosophers they have ever encountered -- and this comment is frequently uttered by those trained primarily in "Continental" philosophy. One can only imagine then how Levinas's project might appear to those unequipped with the vocabulary and conceptual frameworks of Husserl and Heidegger, Rosenzweig or Bergson, on whom so much of Levinas's work relies. Michael Morgan's book, Discovering Levinas, is a masterful reading of Levinas. It not only provides a clear account of Levinas's ethical project for those trained in European philosophy, but it also makes Levinas's account of the ethical accessible to those who are not. In so doing, Morgan acknowledges the ways that analytic philosophy and continental philosophy remain different in their methodologies and their concerns. And yet in spite of these differences, Morgan demonstrates what is lost when we maintain the boundaries that divide professional philosophy. Morgan's story for coming to this project is worth repeating here for it not only provides his motivation and his credentials, but also reveals a philosopher at his best. In an all too familiar story where Levinas could be interchanged with any number of thinkers, Morgan tells us in his Preface that he attempted to read Levinas many times but never made it past the first few pages and quickly put Levinas aside, moving on to other projects. He then agreed to team teach a course with Paul Franks on Levinas and Rosenzweig, the latter, though just as impenetrable as Levinas, was a thinker much more familiar to Morgan. (Morgan and Franks had translated and edited a collection of Rosenzweig's writings.) Before the class began, Franks moved from Indiana University to Notre Dame and Morgan was left to teach the class solo. Rather than drop Levinas and limit the course to Rosenzweig, Morgan rose to the challenge. As he worked through the material with his students and watched them become entranced by Levinas's ideas, Morgan continued to find new ways to decipher and explain those ideas. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu:80/review.cfm?id=12123.

PUB: JANUS HEAD 10.1 (Summer/Fall 2007).

The new issue of Janus Head: a Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts is now available on-line at http://www.janushead.org/. Contents: Editorial: "Celebrating Our 10th Volume" by Brent Dean Robbins http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Editorial.pdf Essays:

• "Technologies--Musics--Embodiments" by Don Ihde http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Ihde.pdf
• "The Noise of the World" by Michael Filimowicz http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Filimowicz.pdf
• "Agency, Identity and Technology: the Concealment of the Contingent in American Culture" by John Pauley http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Pauley.pdf
• "A Heideggerian Reflection on the Prospects of Technology" by Charles J. Sabatino http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Sabatino.pdf
• "Bodies in Transit: the Plastic Subject of Alphonso Lingis" by Tom Sparrow http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Sparrow.pdf
• "Sylvia Plath and White Ignorance: Race and Gender in 'The Arrival of the Bee Box'" by Ellen Miller http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Miller.pdf
• "Standing Unearthed: Construing a Persona Behind Plath's 'I Am Vertical'" by Teresa Calderon Quindos http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Quindos.pdf
• "Friendship Across Differences: Heidegger and Richard Wright's Native Son" by Sharin N. Elkholy http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Elkholy.pdf
• "Recovering Play: On the Relationship Between Leisure and Authenticity in Heidegger's Thought" by Kevin Aho http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Aho.pdf
• "'Is There a Difference?': Iconic Images of Suffering in Buddhism and Christianity" by Alan Pope http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Pope.pdf
• "On the Central Motivation of Dostoevsky's Novels" by Predrag Cicovacki http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Cicovacki.pdf
• "Against Violent Objects: Linguistic Theory and Practice in Novalis" by Kate Terezakis http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Terezakis.pdf
• "The Artist's Study of Nature and its Relationship to Goethean Science" by Daan Hoekstra http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Hoekstra.pdf
• "ART: Heal Thyself" by Kate Sedgwick http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Sedgwick.html

Creative Writing:

• "Heights of Macchu Picchu" (translated by John Felstiner) by Pablo Neruda http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Neruda.pdf
• Fourteen poems from Breathturn (translated by John Felstiner) by Paul Celan http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Celan.pdf
• "A House on the Drim River" by Kalina Maleska-Gegaj http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Maleska-Gegaj.pdf
• Six poems by Katia Kapovich http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Kapovich.pdf
• "The Doom" by Pankaj Kurulka http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Kurulka.pdf
• "Says Who" by Richard Hoffman http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Hoffman.pdf
• Six prose poems by Robert Gibbons http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Gibbons.pdf

Book Reviews:

• One-Hundred Thinkers: Review of Great Thinkers A-Z Edited by Julian Braggini & Jeremy Stangroom (Reviewer: Thomas Hallinan) http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Hallinan.pdf
• A Deleuzian Reading of Bergson: Review of The Challenge of Bergsonism by Leonard Lawlor (Reviewer: Rune Moelbak) http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Moelbak.pdf
• A Translator's Introduction to Levinas: Review of Toward the Outside: Concepts and Themes in Emmanuel Levinas" by Michael B. Smith (Reviewer: Wade Roberts)http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Roberts.pdf
• Stories of Psychologists: Review of Narrative Identities: Psychologists Engaged in Self-Construction by George Yancy & Susan Hadley (Reviewer: Kristen Hennessy) http://www.janushead.org/10-1/Hennessy.pdf

CFP: "Time, Memory and the Self: Remembering Merleau-Ponty at 100," International Merleau-Ponty Circle, Ryerson University, September 18-20, 2008.

Keynote Speakers:

• Edward S. Casey,
• Bernhard Waldenfels,
• Elizabeth Behnke

Call for Papers: In addition to papers on the topics of time, memory and the self, we would be interested in papers, appropriate to this centenary occasion, that critically appraise Merleau-Ponty’s significance or reception in various areas of philosophy or related disciplines. But papers on any area of current research in Merleau-Ponty studies will also be considered for inclusion in the program. We may also consider including one or two panels, appropriate to the centenary occasion, geared to critical appraisal of Merleau-Ponty’s significance or reception. Papers: Submit completed papers (maximum 4,000 words/30 minutes reading time) with 100-150 word abstracts. The conference features the annual M. C. Dillon Memorial Lecture, an honor and monetary award for the best graduate student submission. Graduate students who wish to be considered for the Dillon award should indicate this in their cover letter. Panel proposals: Submit a panel title, a proposal of 500 words for the panel as a whole, and, for each paper in the panel, either a) a complete paper or b) long abstract (minimum 750 words) and CV of the participant. Also include a short (100-150 word) abstract for each paper in the panel. Panels would be scheduled for 90 minute slots, with either two 30 minute papers, three 20 minute papers, or four 15 minute papers. Submit all materials to the address below. Submissions by email attachment (in RTF or PDF) are preferred. Hardcopy must be submitted in triplicate. Kym Maclaren and David Morris Merleau-Ponty Circle Conference Department of Philosophy, Ryerson University 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario CANADA M5B 2K3 mpc2008@trentu.ca Deadline for submissions: March 17th 2008

Further information is available here: http://www.trentu.ca/academic/philosophy/mpc2008/.

PUB: Makkreel, Rudolf. "Wilhelm Dilthey." STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY.

Wilhelm Dilthey was a German philosopher who lived from 1833-1911. He is best known for the way he distinguished between the natural and human sciences. Whereas the primary task of the natural sciences is to arrive at law-based explanations, the core task of the human sciences is the understanding of human and historical life. Dilthey's aim was to expand Kant's primarily cognitive Critique of Pure Reason into a Critique of Historical Reason that can do justice to the full scope of lived experience. Understanding the meaning of history requires both an inner articulation of the temporal structures of our own experience and the interpretation of the external objectifications of others. Dilthey's reflections on history and hermeneutics influenced thinkers in the twentieth century, especially Ortega, Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur. . . .

Read the rest here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dilthey/.

"Gouverner les vivants: à partir de Michel Foucault," Ecole Normale Superieure-Lyon, February 8-9, 2008.

The programme is available here: http://www.michel-foucault.com/events/afic.pdf.

PUB: FOUCAULT STUDIES 5 (2007).

Articles:

• "Foucault, Experience, Literature" by Timothy OʹLeary PDF;
• "The Groupe d’information sur les prisons: the Voice of Prisoners? Or Foucault’s?" by Cecile Brich PDF;

Review Essays:

• "Michel Foucault, History of Madness, translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (London/New York: Routledge, 2006)" by Alain Beaulieu, Réal Fillion PDF;
• "Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures from the Collège de France, 1977‐78 Edited by Michel Senellart. Translated by Graham Burchell. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)" by Thomas F. Tierney PDF.

There are also two interviews and several reviews.

Downloads here: http://ej.lib.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/issue/view/229/showToc.

Year-Long Fellowships (Theme: Global Borders), Institute for Historical Studies, University of Texas, Austin, 2008-2009.

The Institute for Historical Studies at University of Texas, Austin invites applications for residential fellows for 2008-09. We will host four external fellows and will aim to replace their full salaries at their home institutions. The fellows will include junior, mid-career, and senior faculty. The closing date for applications for the fellowships is February 15, 2008. Our first two year theme is “Global Borders.” Please note that we conceive of borders very broadly in conceptual (for instance, legal, cultural, aesthetic, gender and so on) as well as political or geographic terms. For full details of the fellowships and the theme as well as other matters, see: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/historicalstudies or contact: Julie Hardwick Associate Professor & Director of the Institute for Historical Studies Department of History 1 Univ Sta B7000 University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712 (512) 475-7221 http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/historicalstudies/

"Belief after Reason: Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida," 33rd Collegium Phaenomenologicum, Umbria, Italy, July 14 - August 1, 2008.

What becomes of belief after its critical accommodation in Kant’s account of reason? The courses, lectures, and seminars of the Collegium will explore some of the ways in which Glauben (belief, faith) continues to haunt post-Kantian European philosophy. They will examine its returns, translations, and implications. They will consider its seeming capacity to frustrate or avoid diagnosis. In addition to the course readings, texts by Kant, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Deleuze may also be discussed. The Collegium Phaenomenologicum will convene for its thirty-third annual session in the Umbrian town of Città di Castello. The Collegium is intended for faculty members and advanced graduate and postdoctoral students in philosophy and related disciplines. The core of the program consists in a series of lecture courses, individual lectures, and intensive text-based seminars. A Participants Conference will be held July 12-13, 2008. Courses:

• Robert Bernasconi (University of Memphis), ‘Infinities: Hegel’s “Faith and Knowledge”’
• Daniel Dahlstrom (Boston University), ‘Heidegger after Augustine’
• Michael Naas (De Paul University), ‘Religion, Technology, and Originary Faith in Derrida’

Participants will be comfortably housed at Hotel Le Mura in the historic centre of Città di Castello. The cost for room and board (full pension) will be approximately 40 Euros (double occupancy) and 50 Euros (single room) per day. The program fee for the three-week session will be 275 Euros. The deadline for applications is February 25, 2008. For more information, please contact: Paul Davies, Director Collegium Phaenomenologicum Department of Philosophy University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QN United Kingdom Tel.: +44(0) 1273 606755 Fax: +44(0) 1273 635972 E-mail: p.davies@sussex.ac.uk Further information is also available here: http://www.collegiumphaenomenologicum.org/.

CFP: "The Third Wittgenstein," First Annual Conference, British Wittgenstein Society, University of Hertfordshire, June 7-8, 2008.

The conference will also be the occasion of the official launch of the British Wittgenstein Society (BWS). Confirmed guest speakers are: John V. Canfield (Toronto) Frank Cioffi (Kent) J.-H. Glock (Zurich) Laurence Goldstein (Kent) P.M.S. Hacker (Oxford) Michel ter Hark (Gronigen) Daniel D. Hutto (Hertfordshire) Nigel Pleasants (Exeter) Avrum Stroll (UCSD) Crispin Wright (St Andrews) Registration and programme details will be made available in February. Contact: Daniele Moyal-Sharrock Lecturer in Philosophy School of Humanities University of Hertfordshire de Havilland Campus Hatfield, Herts AL10 9ABD. Moyal-Sharrock@herts.ac.uk The conference website is: http://www.editor.net/BWS/conference.html.

PUB: "Revision in History," HISTORY AND THEORY 46 (2007).

"Revision in History” is the topic for this year’s Theme Issue of History and Theory, just published in December. The issue contains seven essays by distinguished scholars all of whom address questions about the nature, meaning, function, and importance of revision in the practice of history. As these essays vividly show, answering these questions yields deep insights into the nature of history and casts a revealing light on how it is practiced. The collection provides a strong, up-to-date look at a crucial issue in the theory of history. A glance at the table of contents shows the range with which this question is addressed:

• Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “Revising the Past / Revisiting the Present: How Change Happens in Historiography” (free access to online version available here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/Spiegel.pdf);
• Jonathan Gorman, “The Commonplaces of ‘Revision’ and Their Implications for Historiographical Understanding”;
• J. D. Braw, “Vision as Revision: Ranke and the Beginning of Modern History”;
• Marnie Hughes-Warrington, “The ‘Ins’ and ‘Outs’ of History: Revision as Non-Place”;
• Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Revisionism in Soviet History”;
• Giorgos Antoniou, “The Lost Atlantis of Objectivity: The Revisionist Struggles between the Academic and Public Spheres”;
• Ethan Kleinberg, “Haunting History: Deconstruction and the Spirit of Revision”.

Click here to read abstracts of the articles: http://www.historyandtheory.org/archives/dec07.html

"Backwards and Forward: Questions of Method," Nordic Network for Wittgenstein Research, University of East Anglia, February 15-16, 2008.

Programme Friday 15 February: 14.00-14.15 Welcome coffee 14.15-15.30 Eugen Fischer (UEA): Wittgenstein’s non-cognitivism – explained andvindicated 15.45-17.00 Cato Wittusen (Bergen): Making sense slowly Saturday 16 February 10.00-11.15 Simo Säätelä (Bergen): Wittgenstein, mathematical problems andnonsense 11.30-12.45 Garry Hagberg (UEA): The thinker and the draughtsman: Wittgenstein,perspicuous relations and working on oneself 12.45-13.45 Lunch 13.45-15.00 Gisela Bengtsson (Oslo): Are you serious, Wittgenstein? 15.00-15.15 Coffee 15.15-16.30 Rupert Read (UEA) and Phil Hutchinson (MMU): “When these painfulcontradictions are removed…” Wittgenstein, Hertz and therapy 16.45-18.00 Alois Pichler (Bergen): http://www.hyperwittgenstein.net/ Participation in the workshop is free of charge. For information about accommodation and local arrangements, contact oskari.kuusela@uea.ac.uk. For general information, contact simo.saatela@fof.uib.no. For information about the Norwid Network for Wittgenstein Research (it's activities, how to become a member, etc.), go to http://nnwr.net/.

CFP: "Reason, Activism, and Change," Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, October 3-5, 2008.

Keynote speaker: Dr. Val Plumwood, Australian Research Fellow at the Australian National University, Social & Political Theory and the Centre for Resource & Environmental Studies Whether we seek to redress existing social inequities such as sexism, or halt the decay of our natural environments, the concerted operation of reason and activism aids the achievement of changes we want. Reason should inform activism, and activism can affect reasoning. Both may respond to or affect changes in social and physical circumstances. The Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy invites philosophical papers from diverse academic areas, including logic & argumentation, environmental philosophy, epistemology & metaphysics, philosophy of science & technology, legal theory, social & political philosophy, ethics, and moral psychology. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: · Forms of reasoning that encourage or discourage activism · Whether and how activism can be taught, and how it can be involved in other professional practices · How activism affects reasoning and justification · What sort of reasoning entrenches existing views and what encourages change · Whether terrorism can be reasonable, or morally justified · The affects of social activism and change on science and technology · How science and technology impact on the environment and on health · Androcentrism, anthropocentrism, and the environment · The logic of change: in bodies, in the environment, or of the beliefs held by a person or group of people Submissions of long abstracts (1000 words) are invited (for eventual presentations of 20 minutes, or not more than 3000 words). Email your abstract as a double-spaced Word attachment, prepared for anonymous review, as well as your full contact information, to: Dr. Catherine Hundleby at the address below. DEADLINE: March 14, 2008. Early submissions are encouraged, while we regret that late submissions cannot be accepted. Dr. Catherine Hundleby Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy (Cross-appointed to Women's Studies Program) Chrysler Hall North 2185 Mailing address: Department of Philosophy University of Windsor 401 Sunset Avenue Windsor, Ontario Canada N9B 3P4 Phone: 519.253.3000 x3947 E-mail: hundleby@uwindsor.ca

CFP: "Rethinking Philosophy for a Global Age," XXII World Congress of Philosophy, Seoul National University, August 30-July 5, 2008.

The Organizing Committee of the Korean Philosophical Association invites the submission of papers for the XXII World Congress of Philosophy. Online-Submission and Online-Registration through the Congress website (http://www.wcp2008.or.kr) are strongly preferred. Papers in 54 Regular Sections and Student Sessions are received through the website. Important Dates: Late Paper Submission Deadline: Feburary 15, 2008. Early Registration Deadline (Extended): January 31, 2008 WCP 2008 Secretariat The Organizing Committee of the Korean Philosophical Association c/o MECI International Convention Services, Inc. Rm. 1906, 19th floor Daerung Post Tower #1, 212-8 Guro-dong, Guro-gu, Seoul 152-790, Korea Phone: +82-2-2082-2300 Fax: +82-2-2082-2314 E-mail: secretariat@wcp2008.or.kr For more details, please visit the Congress website: http://www.wcp2008.or.kr.

CFP: "'Formulate with the greatest care': Adorno and Performance," Royal Northern College of Music, September 13-14, 2008.

Gnomic, speculative, penetrating, Adorno's major work on music performance occupied him throughout his life. Unfinished at his death, the copious notes and drafts have recently been collated as Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction (2001, Eng. 2006). This conference will be based around readings of Adorno's text and its contexts, interpretations, and uses. Confirmed speakers include the translator Wieland Hoban (Germany), Robert Hullot-Kentor (US), Lydia Goehr (US), Max Paddison (UK), Andrew Bowie (UK), and John Deathridge (UK).Proposals are invited for papers of 20 mins. Abstracts of 500 words should be emailed by 18 April 2008 to anthony.gritten@rncm.ac.uk. The programme will be available at www.rncm.ac.uk/content/view/134/80/ , with information on registration and accommodation, in May 2008. Organisers: Anthony Gritten and Nicholas Baragwanath.

CFP: "Identities under Construction," University of Liège, October 16–18, 2008.

Identities, collective and otherwise, have been a source of ardent debates all through the last decades of the defunct century. This state of affairs must be seen against the backdrop of a consistent critique of humanism and its universalist vision of ‘man’. The poststructuralist discourse, which articulated this critique, succeeded in obtaining an extremely influential, sometimes even hegemonic position in various disciplines of the humanities at the time. In retrospect, the end of the 20th century now appears as the hour of affirmation of any number of particularisms, differences and ‘positive’ (sexual, ethnic, cultural, postcolonial, . . .) identities. This era then provided a context for an important paradigmatic shift, which also found expression in the creation of the ‘anti-discipline’ of cultural studies. Although the poststructuralist critique of humanism has by now lost a good deal of its urgency and potency, it has left indelible traces in the reflection on who and what ‘we’ are as human beings, and it is far from having exhausted its potential for intellectual stimulation. Its heritage confronts us with a wide range of fascinating questions, which include: How is the concept of identity to be defined? How do identities come into being? What – which discourse(s) – does an individual or group identify with, and on what grounds does he or she do so? Is the subject colonized by the discourses identified with or is he/she capable of maintaining a degree of independence from them? Can one resist the pressures of hegemonic discourses? Has all reference to a universalist vision of man become suspect and/or lost its relevance? What are the political (democratic) conclusions to be drawn from this reflection? This call is issued by a group of researchers working at the University of Liège (Belgium) in various disciplines linked to the humanities – semiotics, literary theory, linguistics, communication studies, sociology, anthropology – and is meant for every intellectual susceptible of feeling interpellated by the subject as outlined above. Since the primary aim of the Identities under Construction Conference is to encourage an interdisciplinary theoretical reflection on the concepts of identity and identification, the scientific committee will privilege contributions focusing on theoretical aspects of the question. Case studies will be taken into consideration as long as they are used to illustrate or buttress a theoretical statement. Authors are invited to submit, by 1 February 2008, a 2500-character abstract including a title and (if necessary) a bibliography. The abstracts will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee. Notifications of acceptance will be delivered to authors by 1 April 2008. Further details are available here: http://www.id2008.ulg.ac.be/en/call.html.

"Derrida and the Classics," Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, May 20, 2008.

Chair: Barbara Goff

• Paul Allen Miller: The Platonic Remainder: Khora and the Corpus Platonicum (Respondent: Efi Spentzou)
• Rachel Bowlby: Derida’s Dying Oedipus (Respondent: Danielle Sands)
• Ahuvia Kahane: Derrida's Death and the Death of Antiquity (Respondent: TBA)

All welcome. For catering purposes, would those intending to attend please notify Richard Alston at r.alston@rhul.ac.uk.

"Aesthetics and Contemporary Art," Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Middlesex University, March 13-14, 2008.

An international interdisciplinary conference organized by the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Middlesex University, London in collaboration with the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits’ (CRC 626), Free University Berlin, and supported by the British Academy. Advance Registration only:

• Two day registration: £48 waged, £25 students (£15 CRMEP students) - includes refreshments, lunches andreception.
• One day registration (subject to availability): £30 waged, £15 students (£10 CRMEP students).

Torn between a revival of the discourse of aesthetics and the persistence of conceptualism, critical writing about contemporary art has once again come to focus on differing views of its aesthetic dimension. The context and character of these debates has, however, shifted markedly from the 1960s, with changes in art practices, institutions, political contexts, and theoretical paradigms – and in particular, with the global extension of the Western artworld since 1989. This conference will reconsider the place of the aesthetic in contemporary art, in the broadest of ways, with reference to the topics of four plenary panels:

• Sensate Thinking: Aesthetics, Art, Ontology
• The Dissolution of Artistic Limits: Objects, Events, Ideas
• Aesthetics of Post-Autonomy: Institution, Collaboration, Participation
• Exhibition-Value: Aesthetics of Curation in a Global Artworld

Keynotes:

• Luis Camnitzer, artist and writer; Professor Emeritus of Art, State University of New York, Old Westbury; author of Conceptualism in Latin American Art (University of Texas Press, 2007).
• Art & Language (Michael Baldwin, Mel Ramsden and Charles Harrison), group of artists and writers, since 1968; see, for example, Art & Language in Practice, Vol.1. (Illustrated Handbook, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 1999).

Plenary Panel Speakers: International:

• Dr Sebastian Egenhofer – Laurenz (Assistant) Professor for Contemporary Art, University of Basel
• Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Senior Research Fellow, Central St Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London; co-editor of Afterall; co-curator, 9th Istanbul Biennale, 2005
• Brian Holmes – writer and art critic (Paris); author of Hieroglyphs of the Future: Art and Politics in a Networked Era (Zagreb, 2002)
• Dr Pamela Lee – Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University; author of Object to be Destroyed: the Work of Gordon Matta-Clark (MIT Press, 2000) and Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s (MIT Press, 2004)

CRC 626, Free University Berlin:

• Dr Susanne Leeb – Research Associate Project A7, Sub-project: Cartographic Models in Contemporary Art
• Prof. Christoph Menke – Head of Project C1 / Institute for Philosophy, University of Potsdam; author of The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and Derrida (MIT Press, 1998)
• Dr Juliane Rebentisch – Research Associate C1, Sub-project: Democracy and Theatre / Institute for Philosophy, University of Potsdam; author of Aesthetik der Installation (Suhrkamp, 2003)
• Dr Dorethea Von Hantelmann – Research Associate Project A7, Sub-project: Exemplary Experiences: Relations Between Work and Situation in Contemporary Art

CRMEP, London:

• Prof. Eric Alliez –Project: Undoing the Image
• Dr Stewart Martin – Project: Absolute art
• Prof. Peter Osborne –Director, CRMEP; Project: Art Against Aesthetics

CRMEP/CRC 626 liaison:

• Dr Armen Avanessian, Postdoctoral Fellow, CRC 626
• Luke Skrebowski, PhD candidate, CRMEP

For registration contact: Ray Brassier r.brassier@mdx.ac.uk

Further information is available at: http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/crmep/EVENTS/AestheticsandContemporaryArt.htm.

Temporary Free Access to PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES 6.1-2 (2007).

The special double issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (Vol 6, #1-2, 2007) on Dennett's heterophenomenology, edited by Alva Noë, is available for free download until the end of March at http://www.springerlink.com/content/1568-7759. The issue includes papers by Taylor Carman, Roberto Casati and Elena Pasquinelli, Jérome Dokic and Elisabeth Pacherie, John Drummond, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly, Uriah Kriegel, Eduard Marbach, Alva Noë, Jean-Michel Roy, Eric Schwitzgebel, Charles Siewert, Gianfranco Soldati, Evan Thompson, Max Velmans, and Dan Zahavi; and a response by Dan Dennett. Also the most recent issue (Vol. 7 #1, 2008), a special issue on Moral Phenomenology, edited by Uriah Kriegel, has just been published.

CFP: "Limits of Personhood," Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyvaskyla, June 6-8, 2008.

Although the line between persons and non-persons may seem relatively clear in everyday life, advances in the experimental and theoretical sciences have shed a different light on the issue. There is more and more evidence to suggest that non-human animals, predecessors of the species Homo sapiens, and even some artificial creatures, possess or have possessed many of the features often considered unique to human persons. With regard to the knowledge supplied by neurosciences, biology, developmental psychology etc., it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish persons from non-persons. And even clear cases, paradigmatic persons, have their personal capacities dependently on sub-personal mechanisms, which seem to be governed by the same laws that govern the rest of nature – so perhaps persons are not that unique after all? The criteria applied by modern philosophy, which focus on distinctive forms of rationality and self-consciousness shared by persons, are no longer as evident as they used to be. New scientific findings also compel us to reconsider the moral status of non-human animals. It is the task of philosophers to try to bring conceptual clarity to the field by assessing the principal consequences of the growing knowledge concerning the features that are taken to explain the differences between living persons and non-persons. The aim of the conference is to explore and reconsider the borderline between persons and non-persons. The topics of the conference involvethe following features which are central as regards the borderline: intentionality, self-consciousness, autonomy, emotions, rationality, normative and moral relations, and recognition from others. The general starting point of the conference is the observation that these features seem to allow degrees and therefore provide no easy demarcation between persons and non-persons. Yet most of the contemporary theories of personhood make a simple dichotomy between persons and non-persons by using these features as criteria. We welcome papers that analyse the ways in which the features inquestion allow degrees, and examine where and how the line between personal and sub-personal, and personal and non-personal, should bedrawn. We also encourage papers discussing the history of views concerning the limits of personhood and the graduality of the central features – if possible, there will be special section(s) devoted to historical treatments of the features pertinent to the topic of the conference. Naturally, we also encourage papers (historical and other), which suggest an approach which could avoid the problems related to determining the limits of personhood. The questions to be addressed in the conference include:

• Are there actual non–human persons?
• If the following three claims contradict, which one should we drop or revise: 1) the moral status of persons is based on a certain set of characteristics C, 2) all humans do not in fact have characteristics C, 3) all humans have the moral status of persons.
• What is the relation of sub-personal mechanisms and personhood? How dothe sub-personal layers enable or constitute personal-level phenomena?
• In what ways do the features of personhood allow degrees and in what sense do humans share them with non-humans? To what extent and in what precise form does this overlapping vary from feature to feature?
• In what ways are the features inter-connected? How does a transition within one feature indicate transitions in other features, perhaps inall of them?
• In what ways is the graduality bodily origin? How do the modern theories of personhood (mis)recognise their graduality?
• What consequences regarding moral and legal statuses should be drawn from the fact that the capacities central to personhood come in degrees?
• In what sense do changes in the interplay of actual life forms, articulated scientific knowledge and ontological and epistemic commitments influence the limits of personhood?

Invited Speakers:

• José Luis Bermúdez,
• Michael Quante,
• Ralf Stoecker,
• Tim Thornton,+ TBA.

Deadline for abstracts: February 8

Length of abstracts: ca. 500 words

Send abstracts to jpkaukua@cc.jyu.fi

Notifications of acceptance: February 15

The conference is organized by the “Limits of Personhood" research project run by the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, and financed by the Academy of Finland. More information about the project can be found at: http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/limits/index.htm.

The members of the organizing committee are Jussi Kotkavirta, Mikko Yrjönsuuri, Arto Laitinen, Petteri Niemi, Jari Kaukua, Vili Lähteenmäki, Heikki Ikäheimo, Mimosa Pursiainen, Juhana Toivanen and Pessi Lyyra.

CFP: "Where the Wild Things Are: Inhuman Territories in Classical Antiquity," Department of Classics, University of Reading, September 4-5, 2008.

We are accustomed to seeing the ancient world from its centres – Athens, Rome, and other major cities to and from which ideas, goods, and people circulated. But in many locations in Greek and Roman thought and imagination, past and present, the 'civilised' human was the outsider. These places were often inhabited by part-human or inhuman 'people', whose appearance and behaviour ranged from the peculiar to the horrific. These 'wild places' were often geographically remote, such as the Libyan deserts, the snowy wastes of Scythia, and the gloom of Cimmeria. Monstrous races were the subject of ethnological scrutiny, challenging anatomical definitions of humanity. Other wild places were closer to hand, but untamed: Arcadia; Thessaly; the depths of the sea; even local mountains, forests and other silent places could be haunted by dangerous supernatural beings such as fauns and satyrs. The past, too, could be an inhuman wilderness. Both Roman and Greek cultures ranged between creativity, rationalism and aporia when confronted by traditions and legends that defied understanding, even their own, let alone those of others. Some myths even connect the founding of human societies with the rejection of semi-human beings, such as Hercules' labours, the Argonauts' and Odysseus' fantastical encounters, and above all, the victories of the gods over the Giants and Titans in the earliest age of the cosmos.

This event will bring together researchers from a range of classical disciplines to explore the same fundamental questions:

• In what ways were part-human beings in the ancient imagination defined by their habitat?
• Did environment affect how 'savage' or 'cultured' they were, and should we define this by their anatomies, their familial and social structures, or their relationships with humans, animals, and the gods?
• Finally, how did the exploration of wild places at the boundaries of human civilisation reinforce or challenge those boundaries?

Yulia Ustinova (Ben Gurion University), our keynote speaker, will address the subject of ''Wild Caves': Immortal Dwellers and Mortal Visitors'.

Papers should be 25-30 minutes in length. We welcome research in a wide variety of fields, but the following topics would be especially warmly received:

• the ethnographic element in Herodotus
• later ethnographic writers, both Greek and Latin
• ancient paradoxography
• hybrid and monstrous beings, especially in ancient verse and philosophy.

Titles and abstracts (c. 200 words in length) should be sent to the conference organisers, Dr. Emma Aston (E.M.M.Aston@reading.ac.uk) and Dr. Dunstan Lowe (D.M.Lowe@reading.ac.uk). If regular mail is preferred, the address is:

Department of Classics

University of Reading

Whiteknights

Reading RG6 6AA

The deadline for titles and abstracts is March 15, 2008.

CFP: "Space, Interaction, Discourse," Aalborg University, Denmark, November 12-14, 2008.

The aim of this international conference is to bring together researchers who investigate space, mediated discourse and embodied interaction from different perspectives.The conference will highlight interdisciplinary research that explores how embodied and virtual social actors communicate, interact and coordinate their activities in complex multimodal environments, with a special focus on place, mobility and the body. Thus, this conference welcomes contributions by scholars and doctoral students in a range of disciplines and fields of inquiry, including discourse studies, conversation analysis, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, interaction analysis, architecture, design, geography, sociology, anthropology, environmental psychology, mobility studies, ubiquitous computing, computer-supported cooperative work and computer-supported cooperative learning. Please see the online call for papers for more details. The conference will take place at Aalborg University, and it will consist of invited keynote lectures, parallel paper sessions and a workshop. Submissions are solicited for paper presentations (30 minutes including question time). Plenary Speakers:

• John A. Dixon, Lancaster University, UK
• Ole B. Jensen, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Elizabeth Keating, University of Texas at Austin, USA
• Lorenza Mondada, Université Lumière Lyon2, France
• Ron Scollon, Alaska, USA

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 1, 2008

Please submit an abstract and register on the website. All submissions will be reviewed by the scientific committee. Notification of acceptance by 15th March 2008.

The registration fee is 1500 DKK (approx. 200 euro), which includes participation in the conference, a conference folder, the reception, three lunches and two coffee/tea breaks each day over the three days. The conference is international and open to researchers, doctoral and graduate students. Further details are available here: http://www.placeme.hum.aau.dk/conf2008/.

Fish, Stanley. "Will the Humanities Save Us? Part 2" NEW YORK TIMES January 13, 2008.

All of this should not be taken to mean, as it was by some, that I am attacking the humanities or denigrating them or declaring them worthless. I am saying that the value of the humanities cannot be validated by some measure external to the obsessions that lead some (like me) to devote their working lives to them – measures like increased economic productivity, or the fashioning of an informed citizenry, or the sharpening of moral perceptions, or the lessening of prejudice and discrimination. If these or some other instrumental benchmarks – instrumental in the sense that they are tied to a secondary effect rather than to an internal economy – are what the humanities must meet, they will always fall short. But the refusal of the humanities to acknowledge or bow to an end they do not contemplate is, I argue, their salvation and their value. As Stacia says in words more precise than mine, “The subject of these studies are not to be used as tools to achieve something else . . . they are the achievement.” Of course, this does not mean that anyone will pay for them. In fact, as several posters observed, my argument (and it isn’t only mine) that the humanities are their own good and aren’t much good for anything else can be used to justify turning humanities departments into service departments and cutting funding for humanities research. I still remember serving on an all-university committee at Johns Hopkins University and hearing one of my fellow committee members say that he would happily support the English department because his wife very much enjoyed seeing plays. When I told him that the department never put on plays, and at that moment did not even have a faculty member who was interested in plays, he was amazed and asked the obvious question: What then do you do? When I replied that we research things like medieval astrology, Renaisssance iconography, 18th century political satire and romantic theories of the imagination, and then share our findings and interpretations with students, his puzzlement grew. . . . Read the rest of Fish's (as usual) provocative argument here: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/the-uses-of-the-humanities-part-two/.

Zizek, Slavoj. "Ideology Reloaded [on THE MATRIX Films]." LACANIAN INK June 6, 2003.

There is something inherently naïve about taking the 'philosophical' underpinning of The Matrix series seriously and discussing its implications. The Wachowski brothers, who wrote and directed the films, are not philosophers, but just two guys who flirt with and exploit, in an often confused way, some 'postmodern' and New Age notions in the service of science fiction. But The Matrix is one of those films that function as a kind of Rorschach test, setting in motion the universalized process of recognition, like the proverbial painting of God that seems always to stare directly at you from wherever you look at it‹practically every orientation seems to recognize itself in it. My Lacanian friends are telling me that the authors must have read Lacan. The Frankfurt School partisans see in The Matrix the extrapolated embodiment of Kulturindustrie, directly taking over, colonizing our inner life itself, using us as the source of energy. New Agers see how our world is just a mirage generated by a global Mind embodied in the World Wide Web. Or the series is a baroque illustration of Plato's cave, in which ordinary humans are prisoners, tied firmly to their seats and compelled to watch the shadowy performance of (what they falsely consider to be) reality - in short, the position of the cinema spectators themselves. This search for the philosophical content of The Matrix is therefore a lure, a trap to be avoided. Such readings that project into the film refined philosophical or psychoanalytic conceptual distinctions are effectively much inferior to a naïve immersion that I witnessed when I saw The Matrix at a local theater in Slovenia. I had the unique opportunity to sit close to a man in his late twenties who was so engrossed in the film that he repeatedly disturbed other spectators with loud exclamations like: "My God, wow, so there is no reality! So we are all puppets!" . . . Read the whole article here: http://www.lacan.com/zizekloaded.htm.

"Heidegger on Language, Poetry and the Holy," Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford, January 26, 2008.

A one-day colloquium on themes of language, poetry and religion in Heidegger Morning session: 9.30-12.45 am

• Judith Tonning (University of Oxford): Heidegger’s Early Reading of Romantic Poetry
• Paola-Ludovika Coriando (University of Freiburg): Language and simplicity: Hölderlin and Heidegger
• Paul Davies (University of Sussex): Poetic Moods and the Idea of the Holy

Afternoon Session: 2-5 pm

• Simon Jarvis (University of Cambridge): Language, Truth and Verse
• Robin Purves (University of Central Lancashire): Heideggerian Influences on British Poets of the 1960s and 1970s
• George Pattison (University of Oxford): The Philosopher and the Word of the Novelist: Heidegger, Death, and Russian Literature

The colloquium will be held in Lecture Room 1, Christ Church on Saturday 26th January from 9.30 a.m.-5 p.m.and is open to all.

Pinker, Stephen. "The Moral Instinct." NEW YORK TIMES January 13, 2008.

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them,” wrote Immanuel Kant, “the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” These days, the moral law within is being viewed with increasing awe, if not always admiration. The human moral sense turns out to be an organ of considerable complexity, with quirks that reflect its evolutionary history and its neurobiological foundations. These quirks are bound to have implications for the human predicament. Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings. We seek it in our friends and mates, nurture it in our children, advance it in our politics and justify it with our religions. A disrespect for morality is blamed for everyday sins and history’s worst atrocities. To carry this weight, the concept of morality would have to be bigger than any of us and outside all of us. So dissecting moral intuitions is no small matter. If morality is a mere trick of the brain, some may fear, our very grounds for being moral could be eroded. Yet as we shall see, the science of the moral sense can instead be seen as a way to strengthen those grounds, by clarifying what morality is and how it should steer our actions. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?=magazine&pagewanted=all.

Cohen, Patricia. "The Nature of Reasons: Two Philosophers Feud Over a Book Review." NEW YORK TIMES January 12, 2008.

Over the ages, philosophy has offered valuable guidance on profound questions of truth, beauty and existence, yet still unresolved is the conundrum of how to respond to a bad book review. This neglect no doubt has helped contribute to a feud between the prominent philosophers Colin McGinn and Ted Honderich. That, and perhaps a slight to an ex-girlfriend 25 years ago, terror in the Middle East and, oh yes, a fundamental disagreement on the nature of consciousness.

Surely 'lovers of wisdom' would not stoop to this level? More on a philosophical spat here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/books/12feud.html?_r=3&ref=books&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.

John Forth on Avatar Adi Da Samraj's Wisdom on Art.

From John Forth (Melbourne Australia): Please find below an introduction to the completely 'other' philosophy of Avatar Adi Da Samraj via this beautiful essay on Sacred Art, plus related essays: General introduction: http://www.daplastique.com/. 1. http://global.adidam.org/books/transcendental-realism.html: Adi Da's Divine Image Art; 2. http://www.mummerybook.org/: The Mummery Book: the Parable of Divine Tragedy; 3. www.dabase.org/restsacr.htm: The Restoration of the Sacred: the Politics and Culture of Intimacy and Beauty; 4. www.dabase.org/2armP1.htm#ch2: the Taboo against the Superior Man; 5. http://global.adidam.org/books/eleutherios.html: Real God as Eleutherios the Liberator 6. www.dabase.org/dht7.htm: on the nature of Real God; 7. www.dabase.org/broken.htm: Broken Light; 8. www.adidamla.org/newsletters/newsletter-aprilmay2006pdf: The Realization of the Beautiful -- with reference to Plato's Symposium; 9. www.aboutadidam.org/readings/parental_deity/index.html: on the Childishly Primitive Mommy-Daddy 'Creator' God of Conventional Religion and Scientism -- Scientism being an Adolescent Reaction to the Parental Deity; 10. http://www.ispeace723.org/: NOT TWO IS PEACE: the Necessary Politics of the Future. John Forth may be contacted at: radiance@vic.chariot.net.au.

CFP: 18th Annual Meeting, Society for Text and Discourse, University of Memphis, July 12-15, 2008.

Presentations at the 18th Annual Meeting can be in the form of posters or spoken papers. The deadline for submitting proposals for both presentation formats is February 15, 2008. A Review Committee will review the proposals, and authors will be notified regarding acceptance by the end of March 2008. Please submit proposals in English using our electronic submission system (http://aeon.psyc.memphis.edu/std08) or see http://www.societyfortextanddiscourse08.org/ for further details. Papers will be scheduled for 20 minutes, with an additional 5 minutes for questions and discussion. Posters are scheduled for a poster session on the second night of the conference. Proposals for symposia (sessions with multiple papers) should be discussed with the conference organizers prior to submission and follow the same procedure as proposals for papers. FORMAT Submissions should include a 2-3 page summary of the presentation (max. 1000 words, including bibliographic references) according to the specifications made available on http://www.societyfortextanddiscourse08.org/instructions.html. THE OUTSTANDING STUDENT PAPER AWARD The Outstanding Student Paper Award (OPSA) recognizes quality in work that is predominantly that of a graduate student. Accordingly, the student must be first author on the paper. THE JASON ALBRECHT OUTSTANDING YOUNG SCIENTIST AWARD The Jason Albrecht Outstanding Young Scientist Award (JAOYSA) honors the memory of Jason Albrecht, a promising young text and discourse researcher who passed away in 1996. The award recognizes an outstanding paper based on a doctoral dissertation. The doctoral candidate must be first author on the paper. Recipients of each award receive a commemorative certificate and a $150 award check. Proposals that are eligible for awards undergo two reviews - one by the regular program committee and a second one by the Awards Review Committee. Only proposals that are accepted for presentation as spoken papers will be considered for the awards. The ST&D Conference will be preceded by

• the ST&D Workshop (July 11-12, 2008)
• the Summer Institute (July 5-8, 2008)
• the 11th Conference of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media (July 8-11, 2008).

Deadling for submission: February 15, 2008.

Janz, Bruce. "Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, 1963-2007: a Personal Reflection."

I was in the Philosophy department at the University of Nairobi in the summer of 1994, meeting whoever I could, buying all the books I could find, generally just trying to find out what interested the philosophers there. I had come to Kenya for the summer, not my first visit and certainly not my last, to help my partner at the time with her development work in Western Kenya. I'd already run into Jay van Hook, who introduced me to Henry Odera Oruka, and I'd met Fred Ochieng Odhiambo and many others as well. One day, another visitor of Oruka's dropped by the department. Emmanuel Eze was making a tour of major philosophers in Africa. We quickly found out that we had a great deal in common, as far as our academic interests and background were concerned. We talked about our training, mine in Canada and his in what was at the time Zaire, and then also Fordham in New York. We stayed in touch when we were back in North America. It became clear to me, the more I read and the more I thought about our discussions, that African philosophy was much richer than I'd realized. I learned from Emmanuel the way to look at African philosophy as something other than a sub-specialty of philosophy, a small area of interest only to those who were brought up on the continent or were part of the diaspora. My interest at the time, and to this day, was with the question of how philosophy related to the conditions of the production of its concepts, as I've come to think of it, its place. Emmanuel asked me to work some of these concerns out by contributing a paper to a volume he was editing. That volume became Postcolonial African Philosophy. I saw in Emmanuel someone whose concern was to develop a field, to make it robust, active, and impossible to ignore. He was constantly talking to people about this, and he knew just about everyone in the field, and many people in related fields. This energy and vision bore fruit. He raised the issue of how difficult it was to find out about activities in African philosophy, and out of that AFRI-PHIL was born. It began its life at Bucknell University, where he was at the time, and Frank Wilson and I were the first listmasters. When Frank retired, Julie Maybee agreed to be a listmaster, and it moved to CUNY Lehman, where it resides to this day. Emmanuel began talking to me and others about the transitory nature of publishing in African philosophy, how journals came and went, and how difficult it was to find a place to publish work in more mainstream journals. Out of that came African Philosophy (at the time a collaborative effort with SAPINA), which eventually became Philosophia Africana (which now comes out of DePaul Philosophy Department). The driving force of these initiatives, and many more, was Emmanuel's vision for the field, and for Africa. He was a rare mix, of someone with real philosophical insight and ability, along with a kind of academic entrepreneurial spirit. He made things happen. But more than that, I think what I found so significant about him as a person was his gentle intelligence. He knew more than he said, always, and he had a way of challenging you that made you feel better, rather than worse about your ideas. He expected the best from those around him, and from himself, and I always enjoyed rising to his level when we discussed ideas. If there is one abiding intellectual passion that Emmanuel had, it concerned the nature of reason. You might have thought that I would say "race", and that, indeed, was a central focus for him, but what made it a focus was the way in which reason became "coloured" (to quote the title of one of his best known essays, "The Colour of Reason") throughout its formative period in the European Enlightenment and to the present. You can see it in most of his published work, but you can also see it in how he conducted himself. This is the gentle intelligence I saw in him. He was adept at shining a light in the dark places of Enlightenment philosophy, showing the racial assumptions in the supposedly universal pronouncements on reason. His Race and the Enlightenment will stand as an essential volume in modern philosophy, and his Achieving Our Humanity will only become more appreciated as time goes by, I believe. And, I look forward to his forthcoming On Reason: Rationality in a World of Cultural Conflict and Racism. All these, along with his papers and other anthologies, have been centrally concerned with reconstructing reason.That reconstruction did not amount to an abandonment, nor did it mean that he wanted to fragment reason into hermetically sealed compartments. He once accused me of something that I think applied better to himself. He said "At the core, you're an Enlightenment philosopher". Despite the thoroughgoing critique he made of the Enlightenment heritage, I believe he actually meant this as a compliment, and as something that he felt was fundamentally important for himself as well. Reason mattered to him; the problem was, how do we not be naïve about the ways in which it has been used for domination, exclusion, and control? Where could we see models within traditional African social and political structures for a form of reason that had not fallen prey to the blinders of the European Enlightenment? How have these blinders continued throughout the 20th century, both in anthropology as well as in writers such as Habermas? How might we reason about Africa, while recognizing that the disciplinary forms of that reason over the past two hundred years have served European interests, not African ones, and have served to prolong the privilege inherent in much of Enlightenment reason? How has reason systematically mis-categorized its objects of inquiry (in particular the way in which racial categories infiltrated supposedly "universal" reason), and what might be done about that? And, how does individual reason relate to social and, especially, political structures? The last time I saw him was in Johannesburg in October 07. We were both at an excellent conference on the future of African philosophy, hosted by Gerard Walmsley, at St. Augustine Seminary. Emmanuel did the opening keynote, and established the standard for the conference. What touched me at the time was the sheer grace he exhibited to everyone throughout the conference. He was there for everyone, me included. He told me after my paper that "if I were his brother, he'd have to kill me" - his very amusing way of putting a compliment in terms of brotherly rivalry. But the thing was, I realized that in some small way we were brothers. At least, we'd been through a lot together, and we shared a strong sense of the importance of philosophy in Africa and in the diaspora, first for Africans, but also for the world of philosophy. He didn't know at that point that his liver was failing him, and I recall thinking at the time that I was looking forward to a long and fruitful collaboration with him on future projects. When I heard he was gone, after the denial had subsided ("no, it must be another Emmanuel Eze") for some reason all I could think of was Derrida's comment at the death of Deleuze: "I'm going to have to wander all alone" (see, for this, The Work of Mourning, which came out of a conference at DePaul). But I also went back to a memorial that Emmanuel and I wrote for Derrida, in Philosophia Africana (8:1, March 2005, 79-82), a piece that carried the epigram "Uprooted African am I". Here's how we finished that short piece:

In fact, when he wrote about debt-especially debt to the dead-Derrida came closest to revealing a unique strain of the "Afro": he thinks that the dead belongs to the living as much as the living belongs to the dead. Once again, on the subject of mourning a friend who had died, he mused, "When I say Roland Barthes it is certainly him whom I name, him beyond his name. But since he himself is now in accessible to this appellation . . . it is him in me that I name, toward him in me, in you, in us that I pass through his name." This is how, without any metaphysical or functional guarantees, the dead becomes, for the living, ancestors or the living dead. The living-dead are alive because their words, their works, earn a life in the words and works of those still capable to live death.

Emmanuel probably didn't think about it this way for himself, but for me, he's now an ancestor. He surely "earned a life in the words and works of those still capable to live death." And I will mourn him, and will miss him always. Bruce B. Janz Associate Professor of Humanities and Associate Chair, Dept. of Philosophy University of Central Florida 4000 Central Florida Blvd. Orlando, FL 32816-1352 TEL: 407-823-5408 DEPT: 407-823-2273 FAX: 407-823-6658 janzb@mail.ucf.edubbjanz@gmail.com http://brucejanz.com/ Director, Center for Humanities and Digital Research TR541 CHDR TEL: 407-823-1226 chdr@mail.ucf.edu

"Nietzsche Workshop 2008," Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, June 3-5, 2008.

Speakers include:

• Lawrence Hatab (Old Dominion University)
• Paul Loeb (Puget Sound)
• Christine Battersby (Warwick)
• Beatrice Han-Pile (Essex)
• Duncan Large (Swansea)

Further speakers to be announced. Further details and full programmes will be posted in due course.

Inquiries to: Prof Keith Ansell Pearson Department of Philosophy University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL Tel: (0)24 7652 2327 Fax: (0)24 7652 3019 email: keith ansell-pearson@warwick.ac.uk or L.D.Hemsley@warwick.ac.uk

"100 Years of Merleau-Ponty: a Centenary Conference," Sofia University, Bulgaria, March 14-16, 2008.

A Conference to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Merleau-Ponty's birth will take place at Sofia University. We welcome essays on any topic related to the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. We will accept papers in either English or French — approximately 30 minutes reading time. For full consideration, complete papers must be received by January 14th, 2008. All papers will be published in a book.

Featured Speakers include:

• Leonard Lawlor, Faudree-Hardin University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphise; International Merleau-Ponty Circle; Chiasmi International; Society of Existential and Phenomenological Philosophy,
• William Hamrick, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Southern Illinois Univeristy at Edwardsville, USA
• Zeljko Loparic, Professor of Philosophy, State University of Campinas, Brasil

Please send essays to the conference co-directors:

Dr. Duane H. Davis Philosophy Department, CPO # 2830 University of North Carolina at Asheville, One University Heights Asheville, NC 28804-8520 USA ddavis@unca.edu

Ivan Kolev Philosophy Department Sofia University 15 Tsar Osvoboditel 1000 Sofia Bulgaria ivankolev.bulgaria@gmail.com www.ivankolev.com

CFP: "Usage, Application and Development of the Languages of the Caribbean and Guianas," 17th Conference, SCL, French Guiana, July 28-31, 2008.

The Society for Caribbean Linguistics (SCL) and the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL) will host their 17th Biennial Conference, entitled “Usage, Application and Development of the Languages of the Caribbean and the Guianas” at the Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de la Guyane; in Cayenne, French Guiana, from Monday 28 to Thursday 31 July, 2008. Abstracts on all types of Caribbean languages are invited. Caribbean languages include: Amerindian languages, Creole languages, standard, official and non-standard language varieties, and immigrant languages. As this is a joint conference with the SPCL, papers on non-Caribbean Creole languages are also welcome. For Cayenne 2008, abstracts on all aspects of Antillean and Guianese languages are especially invited and strongly encouraged. Abstracts pertaining to any of the following panel themes are invited (in any sub-discipline of linguistics): 1. Language description: Amerindian languages 2. Language description: Creole languages 3. Language contact: diachronic and synchronic 4. Sociolinguistic contexts and settings 5. Language and education 6. Language and migration 7. Linguistic practices and new technologies 8. Postcolonial pragmatics Deadlines: Submission of abstracts: Friday 15th February, 2008; Notification of acceptance: Tuesday 15th April, 2008; and Submission of full papers: Tuesday 1st July, 2008.

For further information please visit: http://www.scl-online.net/.

CFP: "Postmodernism, Truth and Religous Pluralism," Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology, Gordon College, April 11-12, 2008.

Keynote Speakers:

• Roger Haight (Union Theological Seminary)
• Richard Kearney (Boston College)

With the so-called 'return of religion,' it is almost impossible not to address the issue of religious pluralism, which acutely raises the question of truth. What kind of positive sense of religious truth is possible in a postmodern era? What is religious truth—is it representational, propositional, orthopractical, symbolic, aletheiological, or something else altogether? How does the notion of 'truth' square with a multiplicity of religious traditions? Is the very term 'religion' appropriate in a pluralistic society, since the term is distinctly western? How might the earnest faith of a Christian, say, be compatible with the equally earnest faith of other believers or even non-believers? With the varieties of religions (not to mention the varieties of expressions of religions), how can their respective differences be respected? Are there forms of religious expression that simply cannot find a place in the public square? We encourage papers that draw on continental figures; philosophical traditions such as deconstruction, feminist philosophy, hermeneutics, and phenomenology; and religious traditions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Only complete papers (maximum of 3,000 words) will be accepted. Papers should be prepared for blind review and sent to Trent.J.Koutsoubos@Wheaton.edu as email attachments. DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 15, 2008 For further information regarding the conference, contact Bruce.Ellis.Benson@Wheaton.edu. The Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology seeks to promote inquiry at the intersection of philosophy and theology. For more information about SCPT, visit SCPTOnline.org.

CFP: "Strategies in Argumentation," Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, February 14-15, 2008.

Arguers and critics characteristically aim to realize several goals at the same time. On the one hand, a discussant pretends to make contributions that are reasonable (for instance, by furthering the resolution of the underlying dispute). On the other hand, he also wants to be seen as trying to make effective contributions. Depending on the situation, the contribution is to be effective with respect to a favorable deal (in a negotiation), with respect to persuading the interlocutor of a certain conclusion or standpoint (in an argumentative discussion) or with respect to getting the adversary to acknowledge the superiority of his reasoning (in polemic contexts). Strategic considerations can pertain to the purpose of reasonableness, to the purpose of effectiveness, or to the aim of finding a balance between them (‘strategic manoeuvring’). We invite proposals for paper presentations that deal with any of these three kinds of argumentative strategies. We hope for submissions from scholars and PhD students working within pragma-dialectics, computational dialectic, dialogue logic, game theory, formal dialectic, rhetoric, and the like. Further details available here: http://www.rug.nl/filosofie/sia/index.

Fish, Stanley. "Will the Humanities Save Us?" NEW YORK TIMES January 6, 2008.

How does one justify funding the arts and humanities? It is clear which justifications are not available. You can’t argue that the arts and humanities are able to support themselves through grants and private donations. You can’t argue that a state’s economy will benefit by a new reading of Hamlet. You can’t argue – well you can, but it won’t fly – that a graduate who is well-versed in the history of Byzantine art will be attractive to employers (unless the employer is a museum). You can talk as Bethany does about “well rounded citizens,” but that ideal belongs to an earlier period, when the ability to refer knowledgeably to Shakespeare or Gibbon or the Thirty Years War had some cash value (the sociologists call it cultural capital). Nowadays, larding your conversations with small bits of erudition is more likely to irritate than to win friends and influence people. At one time justification of the arts and humanities was unnecessary because, as Anthony Kronman puts it in a new book, Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, it was assumed that “a college was above all a place for the training of character, for the nurturing of those intellectual and moral habits that together from the basis for living the best life one can.” It followed that the realization of this goal required an immersion in the great texts of literature, philosophy and history even to the extent of memorizing them, for “to acquire a text by memory is to fix in one’s mind the image and example of the author and his subject.” It is to a version of this old ideal that Kronman would have us return, not because of a professional investment in the humanities (he is a professor of law and a former dean of the Yale Law School), but because he believes that only the humanities can address “the crisis of spirit we now confront” and “restore the wonder which those who have glimpsed the human condition have always felt, and which our scientific civilization, with its gadgets and discoveries, obscures”. . . . Read the rest here: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/will-the-humanities-save-us/.

Clark, John. "Acting Up [on Zizek]." NEW HUMANIST 123.1 (2008).

Slovenian philosopher and social critic Slavoj Žižek has long been known as the enfant terrible of the intellectual world, but some might wonder if even he hasn’t now gone too far. It was not enough that, as conventional wisdom was announcing with finality the death of Communism and dismissing with contempt anything related to the old Soviet Union, Žižek would publish a book proclaiming the need for “Repeating Lenin”. But now, in a book with a guillotine appropriately emblazoned on the cover, he has decided to champion boldly the legacy of the Reign of Terror’s own Maximilien Robespierre. The central theme of Žižek’s recent work on Lenin, Robespierre and the topic of totalitarianism is the necessity of “the Act”. Some observers might be tempted to ask whether his entire intellectual oeuvre is also some kind of act. . . . Read the rest here: http://newhumanist.org.uk/1677.

Highfield, Roger. "The Science of Dreams: the Results." TELEGRAPH January 8, 2008.

More than a century ago, Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, a milestone work that would inspire generations of scientists to examine the connection between the nebulous, hard-to-define mind and the grey, wrinkled organ that sits between our temples. Freud called our dreams the 'royal road to the unconscious.' His seductive idea was that their content is shaped by experiences early in life, creating the hope that psychoanalysis could use our dreams to reveal our childhood miseries, and thereby cure our inner torment. Today, however, a study of dreams conducted for The Daily Telegraph by Harvard University has come to the inescapable conclusion that Freud put too much emphasis on our formative years. Although dreams are bizarre and otherworldly, they are as likely to be moulded by mundane, humdrum and everyday activities as by life-changing events. . . . Read the whole article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=SJWNEMYD4R04LQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/earth/2008/01/01/scisleep101.xml.

Pollock, Andrew. "Review of Bruce Fink's FUNDAMENTALS OF PSYCHOANALYTICAL TECHNIQUE." METAPSYCHOLOGY ONLINE REVIEWS 12.1 (2008).

Fink, Bruce. Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: a Lacanian Approach for Practitioners. New York: Norton, 2007. Jacques Lacan's theory has had a surprisingly limited affect on American psychoanalytic thought, and almost no noticeable affect on how analysis is conducted in the United States. Lacan himself was openly contemptuous of American interpretations of Freud, and made pointed comments about the failings he saw in Ego Psychology, in particular. Even now, 26 years after his death, the ascendance of Relational psychoanalysis in America is strictly incompatible with Lacan's articulated understanding of what occurs during analysis. The result is that in America, Lacan is more often read in university literature courses than he is taught in therapeutic training programs, and American therapists have, for the most part, not had the benefit of engaging with his rich and varied contributions. Bruce Fink's new book, Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: a Lacanian Approach for Practitioners, goes a long way toward providing the kind of systematic introduction to Lacanian technique that is sorely needed in the United States. Fink's book also manages to ground an introduction of Lacan's theory in rich descriptions of the analytic encounter. Along with Fink's earlier A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and his recent new translations of Lacan's seminal Ecrits, Fink's project redresses the unbalanced focus on a theoretical version of Lacan in America today. . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4008.

Lane, Bob. "Review of Dennis Ford's THE SEARCH FOR MEANING." METAPSYCHOLOGY ONLINE REVIEWS 12.1 (2008).

Ford, Dennis. The Search for Meaning: a Short History. Berkeley: U of California P, 2007. Dennis Ford in The Search for Meaning: a Short History wants to investigate the meaning of life question by looking at several different "world views" in an attempt to . . . to what? To survey ways that people have employed to find a transcendent and meaningful answer to the big question? To evaluate these ways? To advocate for The Way? His book begins, "Does life have meaning?" and "How could we go on living if we were to admit that life is utterly meaningless?" (The brilliant opening of Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and this is suicide" resonates in the background.) Ford goes on to suggest that when we take that question seriously, when it hits us with its full existential force, we are driven to find an answer in order to ward off suicidal anxiety and angst. His book then offers us a history of attempts at answers to this overriding question of meaning. These answers include myth, philosophy, science, postmodernism, pragmatism, archetypal psychology, metaphysics, and naturalism. His book, he tells us, is a search for meaning and not a search for God. Ford devotes a chapter to each of these "world views" in order to show the various answers offered to the deep "meaning of life" questions. . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4000.

Godelek, Kamuran. "Review of Matheson Russell's HUSSERL: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED." METAPSYCHOLOGY ONLINE REVIEWS 12.1 (2008).

Russell, Matheson. Husserl: a Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, 2006. The founder of modern phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, is one of the most intriguing figures in twentieth-century philosophy. One reason for this is that Husserl, perhaps more so than any other philosopher of the early decades of this century, represents a transition from one philosophical culture to another. For his thought bears the stamp of two very different intellectual worlds: on the one hand, one can discern in his writings the philosophical posture of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, characterized by a deep commitment to the idea of science as the prism within which everything both social and natural is fused. On the other hand, Husserl's thought prepared the ground for the development of a very different philosophical attitude, one that had already made itself felt in Europe by the end of the nineteenth century. This attitude is characterized by a profound distrust of all system, of any claim to hold the ultimate key to reality in its myriad of manifestations. . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=3998.

CFP: "Self, Identity and Culture: East and West," Society for Indian Philosophy, Kolkata, India, January 6-9, 2009.

Some Suggested Topics: Self and Personal Identity, Artificial Intelligence, Reductionist Theory, Empirical Self and Transcendental Self, Cultural Self, Self, Culture and Globalization, Tradition and Modernity, Dualism, Parallelism, Materialism, Split Personality, Individualism and Collectivism, Society, Culture and Religion, Personal Immortality, Cybernic Immortality, Immortality and Freedom, Yoga and Self realization, Atman and Brahman, Self-Consciousness and Identity, Consciousness and Unconsciousness, Cultural Relativism, Deconstructionism, Culture and Meaning. Selected papers from the conference will be published (subject to editorial review) in a special volume of the Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion. Advisory Board: Kisor K. Chakrabarti (USA), Kate Bemis (USA), Wayne Borody (Canada), Thomas Brooke (UK), Linda B. Elder (USA), Ashoke Kumar Ganguly (India), Gordon Hais t (USA), Laurent Metzer (France), Isaac Nevo (Israel), David Rose (UK), G. T. Smith (USA), Andrew Ward (UK), Bill Wyllie (UK). Special arrangements have been made with local hotels for a limited number of hotels at a special conference rate. There will be also two trips for conference participants and interested scholars before and after the conference. "Encounter India" program will be offered before and after the conference. Kindly visit our web page for details. Detail information about publication of papers, hotel booking, registration, pre-conference and post-conference trip will be available on December 5, 2007. In addition to the main program, the meeting will also host book launches,artistic and cultural activities, exhibitions, plenty of space and opportunity for informal networking and alliance building. If you are interested to submit a paper proposal, please send by email an abstract (150 words)by February 5, 2008. Please include title of your paper, Full Name, Current affiliation, phone number and an email address. If you want to participate without presenting a paper, i.e., chair a session, organize a panel, conduct a round table session or any other offer please get in touch with Dr. Chandana Chakrabarti, Director Center for Spirituality, Ethics and Global Awareness, PO Box M, Bethany, WV 26032. Email: Chandana Chakrabarti cchakrabarti@bethanywv.edu; cchakrabarti@yPhone; Tel.: 304-829-752, Fax: 304-829-7926.

"Beyond Reification: Critical Theory and the Challenge of Praxis," John Cabot University, Rome, May 21-23, 2008.

The conference will examine the importance and the developments of the Frankfurt School by addressing both the philosophical tradition of the early stages of Critical Theory – and in particular the works of Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse – as well as the application of their theories to our contemporary society. In order to reflect the wide range of topics addressed by Critical Theory, the conference will cover different aspects of philosophical reflection on politics, aesthetics, sociology, technology, literature and any other relevant field of study. During the sessions, each speaker will have one hour, with 30-40 minutes for presentation, followed by 20-30 minutes of discussion. All presentations will be made in English. Keynote speakers:

• Andrew Cutrofello, Loyola University Chicago
• Andrew Feenberg, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver
• Alessandro Ferrara, University of Rome, Tor Vergata
• David Ingram, Loyola University Chicago
• Martin Matustik, Purdue University
• Hugh Miller, Loyola University Chicago
• Stefano Petrucciani, University of Rome, La Sapienza
• Francesco Saverio Trincia, University of Rome, La Sapienza

If you are interested in presenting a paper, please submit a 1-2 page abstract by January 15, 2008 (including name, institutional affiliation if any, and mailing address). Abstracts should be submitted by email. Decisions regarding the program will be made by February, 2008. The presented papers will be published in a volume dedicated to the conference. To submit an abstract, or for more information, contact: Prof. Stefano Giacchetti Ludovisi – sgiacchetti@johncabot.eduTel: (+39) 06-81905467.

Click here for last year's conference program.

Chrisafis, Angelique. "Academic Tug-of-Love Over De Beauvoir Legacy." GUARDIAN January 4, 2008.

As France begins a glittering celebration of the centenary of Simone de Beauvoir's birth next week, some academics have warned against the rush of debate and publications descending into prudish attacks on her deliberately outrageous sex life. De Beauvoir's partnership with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre has been called the "original open relationship" - one of France's most celebrated and unconventional intellectual couplings. They met in 1929 and never married but devoted themselves to each other while agreeing they should be free to engage in sexual and emotional entanglements with others - as long as they shared the details. Their long list of sometimes mutual partners included well-known intellectuals as well as some of De Beauvoir's awestruck young women students. One of them, Bianca Lamblin, later wrote a pained memoir entitled A Disgraceful Affair, telling how Sartre said before seducing her for the first time in Paris: "The hotel chambermaid will really be surprised, because I already took a girl's virginity yesterday." Read the rest here: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2235338,00.html.

Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (1963 - 2007).

Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (1963-2007) was a Nigerian-born American philosopher. Eze was a specialist in postcolonial philosophy. He wrote as well as edited influential postcolonial histories of philosophy in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Influences in his own work include Paulin Hountondji, Richard Rorty, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Eze was most recently Associate Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, where he also edited the journal Philosophia Africana. He died December 30, 2007 after a short illness. . . . More at Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Chukwudi_Eze.

Followell, Duncan. "Greek Love [Review of Davidson's THE GREEKS AND GREEK LOVE]." TELEGRAPH January 5, 2008.

Davidson, James. The Greeks and Greek Love: a Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007. . . . Davidson admits to how murky his subject is. Though Greek love was public, Greek sex life is invisible: "reading about Greek love one sometimes feels as if one has been beamed down into a painting by Watteau", but "what the Greeks don't enlarge on is sexual acts". I don't buy that - many of the vases are quite unambiguous - but it's true that there is no Greek Kama Sutra. In the end he has to state the obvious: that just as the region was itself a set of independent, often warring city-states, so "there were lots of different kinds of homosexuality in ancient Greece". It's clearly a field in which commentators can offload hang-ups of their own. Davidson seems remarkably free of these but there is, for example, a whole industry of scholars in modern Greek universities dedicated to disproving the remark of Athenaeus the Anthologist that Alexander the Great "was insanely fond of boys". Read the whole review here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/01/05/bodav105.xml.

BBC Documentaries on Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre.

Very interesting BBC Documentaries on:

• Nietzsche: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4856584283711679549;
• Heidegger: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5183028207388717405; and
• Sartre: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6934766864914832195.

(Thanks to www.continental-philosophy.org.)

CFP: "Conference on U.S. Intellectual History," Grand Valley State University, October 17-18, 2008.

The conference is being organized by the editors of the U.S. Intellectual History (USIH) weblog, in coordination with the 33rd Annual Great Lakes History Conference (GLHC), sponsored by the Department of History at Grand Valley State University. This coordinated conference will hopefully serve as a springboard for an annual (or bi-annual) gathering of scholars with an interest in the context of ideas and intellectual life in the United States. Papers on any aspect of U.S. intellectual history are welcome. Topics might include -- but are not limited to -- studies of particular persons or groups of people, analyses of important or representative works, considerations of the historical significance of ideas (or a particular idea), and the influence of ideas on American cultures, regions, and events. Also welcome are broader meditations on the state of the discipline itself. Themes of interest might cover the meaning of a national subdiscipline in a transnational scholarly climate; the interaction of intellectual history with disciplines such as literature, philosophy, science, math, religion, political science, and education; the teaching of U.S. intellectual history; and the relationship of U.S. intellectual history to questions of race, class, and gender. Please submit digital abstracts for papers, panels, or both, of approximately 200 words and a curriculum vitae, by June 15, 2008. Be sure to include your address, email, and phone number. Those interested in commenting on a session should send a CV and indicate areas of expertise. Papers must take no longer than 30 minutes in a 2-paper session or 20 minutes in a 3-paper session. Sessions will last 90 minutes. Conference headquarters will be at the L.V. Eberhard Center of Grand Valley State University in downtown Grand Rapids. Hotel accommodations will be available at the Days Inn of Grand Rapids, which is across the street from the Eberhard Center. The conference is within easy walking distance of museums and restaurants. Grand Rapids is served by most major and regional airlines. Please address all inquiries and abstracts to: Paul Murphy (murphyp-at-gvsu.edu) or Tim Lacy (timothy.n.lacy-at-gmail.com).