DEATH: Stephen Toulmin (1922 - 2009).

Update (December 27, 2009):

• Grimes, William: Stephen Toulmin, a Philosopher and Educator, Dies at 87 New York Times December 11, 2009
• Johnson, Pamela J.: In Memoriam Stephen E. Toulmin, 87 USC News December 8, 2009
• Ruse, Michael: Stephen Toulmin, Philosopher, 1922-2009 Chronicle of Higher Education December 12, 2009

Original Post (December 9, 2009): Stephen Edelston Toulmin, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California, and one of the most influential ethical philosophers of the latter half of the 20th century, has died. Together with Chaim Perelman, he was also hailed in rhetorical circles as one of the most important theorists of argument (equated with 'informal logic' by some) in the twentieth century. . . . More information may be found here: http://uscnews.usc.edu/obituaries/in_memoriam_stephen_e_toulmin_87.html.

Sahlins, Marshall. "The Anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss." AANET.ORG July 8, 2009.

For ninety-nine percent of human history, Levi-Strauss once observed, a divided humanity did not know the other modes of life, the other beliefs and the other institutions that Anthropology since the end of the nineteenth century has been called upon to understand. More than any other science or discipline, Anthropology became the self-consciousness of the human species in all its varieties and all its similarities. There developed a line of global thinkers of human cultures — E.B. Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, Franz Boas, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Bronislaw Malinowski — of whom, alas, it seems that Levi-Strauss is the last. Levi-Strauss is apparently the last with a pan-human vision, the last to embrace the study of all the cultural expressions of humanity as the only way of knowing what mankind is. More than once he has quoted Rousseau on that score: "When one proposes to study men, one only needs to look at those nearby; but in order to study man, one has to look afar; for it is necessary to observe the differences in order to discover the properties." Hence the title of an influential collection of Levi-Strauss's essays, The View from Afar (1988). Levi-Strauss's grand ambition has been to discover the universal laws of human thought underlying the great diversity of cultures known to Anthropology. In the pursuit of that ambition, he developed an ethnographic knowledge of the planet unparalleled by any scholar before and unlikely to be duplicated by anyone again. A master of Native American cultures North and South, he also supported his famous structuralist theories with detailed descriptions of indigenous customs from every other continent, as well as from remote islands of the South Seas and the nearby practices and histories of European societies. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.aaanet.org/issues/upload/Sahlins-Levi-Strauss-Blog-Post.pdf.

"A Tribute to Isaiah Berlin." THE PHILOSOPHER'S ZONE December 19, 2009.

Isaiah Berlin was born in Russia a hundred years ago, on 6 June 1909. He grew up to be a distinguished philosopher, a great historian of ideas - tracing the origins and vicissitudes of liberal thought over the last few centuries - and an eloquent defender of liberty. He was a man with very many friends and, this week, we talk about him with one of them: the British political philosopher John Gray. . . . Listen or read the transcript here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2009/2759562.htm.

Pub: Chambers, Samuel A., and Michael O'Rourke, eds. JACQUES RANCIERE ON THE SHORES OF QUEER THEORY. BORDERLANDS 8.2 (2009).

Introduction: Samuel A. Chambers and Michael O'Rourke, Jacques Rancière on the Shores of Queer Theory Essays: Todd May, There are no Queers: Jacques Rancière and Post-Identity Politics Samuel A. Chambers, A Queer Politics of the Democratic Miscount Chas. Phillips, Difference, Disagreement and the Thinking of Queerness Oliver Davis, Rancière and Queer Theory: On Irritable Attachment Sudeep Dasgupta, Words, Bodies, Times: Queer Theory Before and After Itself Nina Power, Non-Reproductive Futurism: Rancière’s Rational Equality against Edelman’s Body Apolitic Hector Kollias, How Queer is the Demos? Politics, sex, and equality Patricia MacCormack, Inhuman Evanescence Richard Stamp, The Torsion of Politics and Friendship in Derrida, Foucault and Rancière Paul Bowman, Aberrant Pedagogies: JR, QT and Bruce Lee Roger Cook, Aesthetic Revolution, the Staging of (‘Homosexual’) Equality and Contemporary Art Daniel Williford, Queer Aesthetics Afterword: Adrian Rifkin, Oh I do like to be beside the seaside (Now Voyager) ... on misunderstanding Rancière and Queer Theory Reviews: Anatoli Ignatov, The Re-turn to the Other: In Search of New Ontologies of International Relations (Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition; Anthony Burke, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War against the Other; Louiza Odysseos, The Subject of Coexistence: Otherness in International Relations) Edward Cavanagh, Settler Revolutions and Indigenous Dissolutions (James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and theRise of the Anglo-world, 1783-1939) Mark W. Westmoreland, Race, Racism and (Pedagogical) Rupture (Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Race and Racism: an Introduction) Access the issue here: http://www.borderlands.net.au/issues/vol8no2.html.

Wylie, Alison, Elizabeth Potter, and Wenda K. Bauchspies. "Feminist Perspectives on Science." STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY (December 2009)

Feminists have a number of distinct interests in, and perspectives on, science. The tools of science have been a crucial resource for understanding the nature, impact, and prospects for changing gender-based forms of oppression; in this spirit, feminists actively draw on, and contribute to, the research programs of a wide range of sciences. At the same time, feminists have identified the sciences as a source as well as a locus of gender inequalities: the institutions of science have a long tradition of excluding women as practitioners; feminist critics of science find that women and gender (or, more broadly, issues of concern to women and sex/gender minorities) are routinely marginalized as subjects of scientific inquiry, or are treated in ways that reproduce gender-normative stereotypes; and, closing the circle, scientific authority has frequently served to rationalize the kinds of social roles and institutions that feminists call into question. Feminist perspectives on science therefore reflect a broad spectrum of epistemic attitudes toward and appraisals of science. Some urge the reform of gender inequities in the institutions of science and call for attention to neglected questions with the aim of improving the sciences in their own terms; they do not challenge the standards and practices of the sciences they engage. Others pursue jointly critical and constructive programs of research that, to varying degrees, aim at transforming the methodologies, substantive content, framework assumptions, and epistemic ideals that animate the sciences. The content of these perspectives, and the degree to which they generate transformative critique, depends not only on the types of philosophical and political commitments that inform them but also on the nature of the sciences and subject domains on which they bear. Feminist perspectives have had greatest impact on sciences that deal with inherently gendered subjects—the social and human sciences—and, secondarily, on sciences that study subjects characterized in gendered terms, metaphorically or by analogy (projectively gendered subjects), chiefly the biological and life sciences. Feminist perspectives are relevant to sciences that deal with non-gendered subject matters, but perspectives vary substantially in content and in critical import depending on the sciences and the particular research programs they engage. . . . Read the rest here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-science/.

Rader, Richard. Review of Simon Goldhill, et al., eds. SOPHOCLES AND THE GREEK TRAGIC TRADITION. BMCR (December 2009).

Goldhill, Simon, and Edith Hall, eds. Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition. Cambridge: CUP, 2009.

I had a dismaying experience recently while introducing Greek tragedy in my Mythology course. Out of curiosity I asked how many students (of 700) had at some point prior to my class read Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus. Only about 10 percent raised their hands. Slightly shocking. What really struck me was that the question I followed with--how many were at least familiar with the story of Oedipus--elicited the same number of hands. That's simply frightening. It's one thing to be unfamiliar with Trachiniae or Seven against Thebes, quite another to be unacquainted with perhaps the most notorious figure of Western literature, one especially with such a memorably sordid life. I suspect Simon Goldhill and Edith Hall, two of the most prolific supporters of Greek tragedy and editors of Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition, a Festschrift in honor of Pat Easterlin, have had similar experiences in the classroom. I wish I could say their book is likely to right this pedagogical situation, but I'm not going to hold my breath. All the same, Goldhill and Hall have produced a fine book, one that re-appraises Sophocles' legacy in a way that repays consideration. I have (at times serious) differences regarding the premises and conclusions of some of the essays, but these I see primarily as the negotiations of a dialogue initiated by this book, one that I hope will continue even after the ink has dried on my review. . . .

Read the whole review here: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-12-29.html.

"Virtue and Economic Crises," Mykolas Romeris University, July 29-August 1, 2010.

Fourth Annual Conference, International Society for MacIntyrean Philosophy. Keynote Speakers: Bob Brecher (Center for Research and Development, University of Brighton) Zenonas Norkus (Department of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Vilnius) John O’Neill (School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester) Clemens K. Stepina (Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Sciences, University of Vienna) Alasdair MacIntyre once argued that Karl Marx left philosophy and turned to political economy at a time when his philosophical enquiry was still incomplete. From After Virtue to Dependent Rational Animals Alasdair MacIntyre’s work has laid a solid philosophical foundation for building an understanding of the nature of human rationality, virtue and practice. One aim of this conference is to use MacIntyre’s work in thinking through some of the challenges and problems we face today: the crumbling neo-liberal economic order, equitable economic development, the role of virtue in the practices of production, and the lack of democracy in the dominant economic institutions of production.Further, this conference aims to encourage interdisciplinary research into the field of ethics, philosophy, political economy, social theory and theology in order to think through the moral as well as political aspects of the future of economic development. Its underlying presupposition rests in our belief that the orthodox neoclassical economic theory – the rational individual consumer aiming to maximize his/her preferences at any cost – has to be theoretically challenged. A robust Aristotelian social theory and moral philosophy can contribute in rethinking some of these presuppositions and beliefs. Possible Topics: 1. The importance of moral and intellectual virtues for equitable economic development. 2. What are the moral and philosophical presuppositions behind the neoclassical economic thought and behind the existing socio-economic order of market capitalism? 3. What can economic theory learn from moral philosophy and virtue ethics? 4. What is the role of business ethics in times of economic crises? Please submit proposals, including title and abstract, of no more than 350 words to: Dr. Andrius Bielskis, Department of Politics, Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania, e-mail: andrius.bielskis@mruni.eu. Conference website: http://www.macintyreanenquiry.org/Vilnius2010/Vilnius2010.html.

Pub: Patzia, Michael. "Xenophanes." INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY (December 2009).

Xenophanes of Colophon was a traveling poet and sage with philosophical leanings who lived in ancient Greece during the sixth and the beginning of the fifth centuries BCE. There are a significant number of surviving fragments for such an early figure, and the poetic verses available to us indicate a broad range of issues. These include comments on religion, knowledge, the natural world, the proper comportment at a banquet, as well as other social teachings and commentary. Despite his varying interests, he is most commonly remembered for his critiques of popular religion, particularly false conceptions of the divine that are a byproduct of the human propensity to anthropomorphize deities. According to Xenophanes, humans have been severely mislead by this tendency, as well as the scriptures of the day, and he seemed intent on leading his audience toward a perspective on religion that is based more on rationality and less on traditionally held beliefs. His theological contributions were not merely negative, however, for he also presented comments that support the notion of divine goodness, and many have speculated that he may have been the first monotheist, or even pantheist, in the Western intellectual tradition. The possibility that Xenophanes endorsed the perspective of divine unity led Plato and Aristotle to designate him as the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, and some have classified him (though probably erroneously) as having been Parmenides’ teacher. Many of Xenophanes’ poetic lines are concerned with the physical world and the fragments show some very inventive attempts to demythologize various heavenly phenomena. An example of this is his claim that a rainbow is nothing but a cloud. He also postulated that earth and water are the fundamental “stuffs” of nature and, based in part on his observations of fossils, he held the view that our world has gone through alternating periods of extreme wetness and dryness. Another area in which Xenophanes made some seminal comments is epistemology. In addition to endorsing a critical rationality toward religious claims, he encouraged a general humility and skepticism toward all knowledge claims and he attempted to discourage dogmatic arrogance. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/xenoph/.

Pub: Hernandez, Jill Graper. "Gabriel Marcel." INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY (December 2009).

The philosophical approach known as existentialism is commonly recognized for its view that life’s experiences and interactions are meaningless. Many existentialist thinkers are led to conclude that life is only something to be tolerated, and that close or intimate relationships with others should be avoided. Heard distinctly among this despair and dread was the original philosophical voice of Gabriel Marcel. Marcel, a World War I non-combatant veteran, pursued the life of an intellectual, and enjoyed success as a playwright, literary critic, and concert pianist. He was trained in philosophy by Henri Bergson, among others. A prolific life-long writer, his early works reflected his interest in idealism. As Marcel developed philosophically, however, his work was marked by an emphasis on the concrete, on lived experience. After converting to Catholicism in 1929, he became a noted opponent of atheistic existentialism, and primarily that of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’s characterizations of the isolated self, the death of God, and lived experience as having “no exit” especially disgusted Marcel. Regardless of his point of departure, Marcel throughout his life balked at the designation of his philosophy as, “Theistic existentialism.” He argued that, though theism was consistent with his existentialism, it was not an essential characteristic of it. Marcel’s conception of freedom is the most philosophically enduring of all of his themes, although the last decade has seen a resurgence of attention paid to Marcel’s metaphysics and epistemology. A decidedly unsystematic thinker, it is difficult to categorize Marcel’s work, in large part because the main Marcelian themes are so interconnected. A close read, however, shows that in addition to that of freedom, Marcel’s important philosophical contributions were on the themes of participation, creative fidelity, exigence, and presence. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/marcel/.

Pub: Wilkerson, Dale. "Friedrich Nietzsche." INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY (August 2009).

Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. His writings on truth, morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power, consciousness, and the meaning of existence have exerted an enormous influence on Western philosophy and intellectual history. Nietzsche spoke of “the death of God,” and foresaw the dissolution of traditional religion and metaphysics. Some interpreters of Nietzsche believe he embraced nihilism, rejected philosophical reasoning, and promoted a literary exploration of the human condition, while not being concerned with gaining truth and knowledge in the traditional sense of those terms. However, other interpreters of Nietzsche say that in attempting to counteract the predicted rise of nihilism, he was engaged in a positive program to reaffirm life, and so he called for a radical, naturalistic rethinking of the nature of human existence, knowledge, and morality. On either interpretation, it is agreed that he suggested a plan for “becoming what one is” through the cultivation of instincts and various cognitive faculties, a plan that requires constant struggle with one’s psychological and intellectual inheritances. Nietzsche claimed the exemplary human being must craft his/her own identity through self-realization and do so without relying on anything transcending that life—such as God or a soul. This way of living should be affirmed even were one to adopt, most problematically, a radical vision of eternity, one suggesting the “eternal recurrence” of all events. According to some commentators, Nietzsche advanced a cosmological theory of “will to power.” But others interpret him as not being overly concerned with working out a general cosmology. Questions regarding the coherence of Nietzsche’s views–questions such as whether these views could all be taken together without contradiction, whether readers should discredit any particular view if proven incoherent or incompatible with others, and the like–continue to draw the attention of contemporary intellectual historians and philosophers. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/nietzsch/.

Pub: KB JOURNAL 6.1 (2009).

Contents:

• KB Editorial for Fall 2009 - Interview with William Bailey
• BURKE DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS SERIES: An Interview With David Cratis Williams
• Athlete as Agency: Motive in the Rhetoric of NASCAR by Deron Williams & Jim A. Kuypers
• Burke’s Comic Frame and The Problem of Warrantable Outrage by Herbert W. Simons
• All That Is Solid Melts into Words: An Exercise in Burking Burke by Robert Perinbanayagam
• Burke's Lacanian Upgrade: Reading the Burkeian Unconscious Through a Lacanian Lens by Kevin A. Johnston
• Criticism in Context: Kenneth Burke's "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'" by Garth Pauley
• A Pentadic Analysis of Celebrity Testimony in Congressional Hearings by Christopher R. Darr and Harry C. Strine IV
• A Review of Kenneth Burke’s On Human Nature

Cfp: "Savage Thoughts: Interdisciplinarity and the Challenge of Claude Lévi-Strauss," McGill University, September 24-26, 2010.

Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas. Claude Lévi-Strauss was one of the great interdisciplinary writers of the twentieth century whose influence has been felt far beyond his home discipline of anthropology. His inquiry illuminated the border lands between primitive and non-primitive, self and other, myth and history, human and animal, art and nature, and the dichotomies that give structure to culture. At the same time his method troubled those borders and dichotomies, through the bricolage he adopted that illuminated connections amongst literature, art, psychology, music, religion, and law. Our call for ‘savage thoughts’ seeks out new work influenced by this inquiry and these methods, and reflections on Levi-Strauss’ legacy across the whole range of the humanities and beyond, including: 1) Recent interdisciplinary research in the reception, critique, and development, of Lévi-Strauss’ work. How have these inquiries been transformed in recent years? Are the children of Lévi-Strauss as savage as he? 2) Consideration of Lévi-Strauss’ larger intellectual influence, explicit or otherwise, right across the humanities. Perhaps there is something savage at the heart of interdisciplinary thought itself—refusing to be tamed by the intellectual borders of a discipline, it forages at will. Where has Lévi-Strauss’ method spawned such wildness and hybridity? 3) Looking beyond the academy to consider how Lévi-Strauss’ ideas have embedded themselves in the culture, values, social organization, and framework of modern society. What is the public life and impact of these ideas? In what ways has our world been altered by his mode of apprehending it? Conference website: http://www.mcgill.ca/iplai/savagethoughts/.

"Afromodernisms 1: Re-Encounters with the French and Anglo-Atlantic Worlds, 1907 to 1961," University of Liverpool, April 15-17, 2010.

Keynote Speakers: Professor David Scott, Columbia University, NY Professor Demetrius Eudell, Wesleyan University, CT In the context provided by Paul Gilroy’s configuration of the black Atlantic as a counterculture to modernity, this symposium is the first in a series seeking to re-examine the Atlantic as a locale for the emergence of modernism. Over the period 2010–12, we hope to consider the centrality of black folk, artists, writers, intellectuals, social scientists, musicians, as core members of the modernist avant-garde, and of “blackness” as a key representative and political category in the work of other modernists. We begin from a formulation of modernism as a heterogenous cluster of responses to locally specific experiences of modernity, rather than as a qualitative set of aesthetic indicators privileging formal innovation over political rhetoric. In doing so, we hope to enable further discussion of a widening spectrum of modernist languages in which the experience of modernity is delineated and inscribed. The symposium addresses the interactions, exchanges, conflicts, and collaborations occurring across the French and Anglo Atlantic, and within experienced and imagined spaces of blackness, in the period 1907–61. We begin therefore with Picasso’s masked Demoiselles, and end with the publication of Fanon’s radical rejection of western colonialism in Les damnés. The aims of the symposium are fourfold: First, it seeks to stage a re-encounter with avant-garde aesthetic, political and social practice in the context of black responses to modernity across the French and Anglo Atlantic. Second, it explores the emergence of new disciplines or schools, and underexplored interdisciplinary relationships in the human sciences that may have effected or at least contributed to the formal innovation or “newness” considered so characteristic of modernism. Third, it takes Perry Anderson’s claim that one of the indispensible co-ordinates for locating modernism is its “proximity to social revolution” and resituates it in the context of an anti-colonial avant-garde operating across the Atlantic in the inter- and postwar years. Fourth, it considers the degree to which a variety of actors operating from what might be termed “alternative” or “displaced” metropoles interacted to produce, in Jameson’s terms, an “active sense” of the history of modernity, one in which a black presence was of key aesthetic, political and cultural importance. Individual papers and proposals, in English, for panels addressing any aspect of the interrelationship between Afromodernism and the French and Anglo-Atlantic worlds are invited from, but not limited to, the disciplines of literature, anthropology, history, art history, philosophy, music, or combinations of these; and concerning regions including but not limited to: Africa, the Caribbean, insular and continental Europe, Canada, the United States, Latin America. Teaching or curating panels and papers are also welcomed. Topics might include: The Harlem Renaissance/New Negro; Performance and/of blackness; Expressionism; fascism; exoticism; the tropics; ethnographic fieldwork narratives/collections; the WPA; négritude; negrophilia; World War 1; configurations of the Black Atlantic; masking; marxism and modernity; World War 2; primitivism; folk and established religious expression; jazz; blues; surrealism; Boasian anthropology; tragedy; Windrush; aesthetic politics; drumming; new histories; revisionist historiography; beauty; comedy; revolution and anticolonialism; myth; reaction; gender and modernity; nationalism; the metropole(s); psychoanalysis; science and relativism; positivism; migration and/or displacement; civilization; degeneration. Contact: Fionnghuala Sweeney (email: fsweeney@liverpool.ac.uk) or Kate Marsh (email: clmarsh@liverpool.ac.uk) Deadline for submission: Thursday, 21 January 2010. Conference website: http://www.liv.ac.uk/soclas/conferences/Afromodernism/index.htm.

"Culture and Justice in the Contemporary World," International Society for African Philosophy and Studies, University of Ghana, March 17-19, 2010.

16th Annual Conference. This conference examines the validity of international standards in our multicultural and diverse world. Is justice possible in a world where there are diverse standards, cultures, values and other socio-cultural norms? All over the world, the policies and practices that affect legal interpretation, governance, international peace and security, economic rights, religion, education, health (and all other domains of human activity and interaction) are significantly influenced by how people perceive, interpret and apply their own values, cultures and customs. The questions can therefore be asked: can international and worldwide standards be improved through the interrogation of different cultural points of view? Is justice ever objective, or is it always relative to particular cultures? Can the prevailing notions of rightness and fairness be improved by the input of specific African and Africana cultural perspectives? The 16th Annual ISAPS conference will deliberate the many issues of cultural difference, diversity and convergence that define the human family, under the pressures of today’s rapidly changing world. We welcome theoretical, empirical, comparative and other submissions concerning the effects of culture on justice, fairness and action in any sub-field of the humanities, social sciences, management, and the natural sciences. The 16th annual conference of ISAPS is organised in collaboration with the University of Ghana’s Philosophy Department and its Faculty of Law. We invite papers that explore questions covered by the following sub-themes (and any other relevant issues and concerns): Distributive justice & economic rights Conflict resolution & reconciliation Class, caste, children’s rights and gender Health care rights Geography and imperialism Corporate responsibility Environmental ethics Education for change Pan Africanism, nationalism & liberation Rethinking African history Consensus politics Cyber crime Education and emancipation Human rights & culture Global trade and the world economic order Islam and Sharia law Multiculturalism and justice Science & knowledge Indigenous African politics & juridical systems Information technology in African domains Further information is available here: www.isapsonline.com.

Simon Critchley Workshop, Department of Philosophy and Classics, University of Texas, San Antonio, February 22-23, 2010.

Professor Critchley will deliver the keynote address on Monday evening. Confirmed participants include: Anne Marie Bowrey (Baylor) Costica Bradatan (University of Wisconsin-Madison/Texas Tech) Tina Chanter (DePaul) Paul Lewis (University of the Incarnate Word) Anne O'Byrne (SUNY Stonybrook) Davide Panagia (Trent) Philip Quadrio (University of New South Wales/ Macquarie University, Centre for Research on Social Inclusion) Jill Stauffer (Haverford College). The workshop will be free and open to all. For more information, please contact Alistair Welchman (alistair.welchman@utsa.edu) or visit colfa.utsa.edu/pc.

Moyar, Dean. Review of Kenneth Westphal, ed. BLACKWELL GUIDE TO HEGEL's PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT. NDPR (December 2009).

Westphal, Kenneth R. ed. Blackwell Guide to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Blackwell, 2009. It is no small irony that Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, a book that is supposed to serve as a ladder for ordinary consciousness to reach the standpoint of Science, should itself have required scores of commentators to make its rungs intelligible and its ascent even conceivable for generations of readers. The major challenge of commenting on Hegel's work is to stay close enough to the text that the reader feels that he can really read Hegel's text alongside the commentary without having to bypass large stretches, while at the same time actually to interpret (rather than paraphrase) the text so that its philosophical import is evident to today's reader. Forcing everything into one's own interpretive framework can leave the reader disconnected from Hegel's actual words, while just paraphrasing Hegel's text, though reassuring for a beginning reader, does not let one connect Hegel's philosophical project to the wealth of philosophical debates to which it is relevant. The outstanding single-author commentaries on the Phenomenology in English in the past twenty years (chief among them being Terry Pinkard's Hegel's Phenomenology, H.S. Harris' Hegel's Ladder, and Jon Stewart's The Unity of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit), managed this challenge in different ways, producing works with distinctive priorities that have together opened up the Phenomenology to a generation of students. The Blackwell Guide to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, edited by Kenneth Westphal, is billed as a "collective commentary". Such a collective approach can illuminate the work through multiple perspectives and by drawing on the particular strengths of the commentators, each of whom can write on that stretch of text that he/she know best. However, the collective approach also runs the risk of producing a number of isolated contributions that leaves the reader in the dark about the interconnections of systematic unity of the whole. The relative strengths and weaknesses of such a commentary largely stem from how "collective" it really is -- whether there has been a truly collaborative effort, including some agreement on a rough interpretive framework, mutual commenting on each other's contributions, etc. Westphal's volume is "collective" in a rather minimal sense. There does not appear to have been any joint work in conceiving of the specific or general interpretive approach in the essays. (I should mention here that the volume of essays on the Phenomenology edited by myself and Michael Quante, though also a "guide" to the text and thus something of a competitor to the present book, was conceived neither as collective nor as commentary.) Westphal writes in his Introduction that the book "develops a significant consensus about the integrity of Hegel's text and issues. This point is examined expressly in chapters 1, 12, and 13, while chapters 10 and 11 say much about it too" (xvii). The "integrity" at issue concerns whether all the diverse parts of the Phenomenology hang together, or whether it is really two projects hurriedly and clumsily melded into one. While it is true that the authors in this work seem to agree that Hegel was in control of his text and are sympathetic to the overall project, it is not clear to this reader what "significant consensus" is developed. There have not been many recent defenders of the view that Hegel's text lacks integrity, so the mere fact that these authors assume such an integrity is not terribly significant. The discussions of the basic method and goals in the chapters do not complement each other, but rather lead the reader to various different (and necessarily incomplete) views of Hegel's goals and method. This is not to say that each of the essays dos not stand on its own. This is a very impressive collection of essays by some of the most acute readers working on Hegel today. Yet as a commentary, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Each contribution is well worth reading, both for the new and seasoned reader of the Phenomenology, yet one is left without a clear grip on Hegel's main philosophical innovations and without a reliable way to translate Hegel's prose into a more philosophically fungible idiom. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=18387.

Evaluation, Judgement and Critique, Theory and Philosophy Summer School, School of Sociology and Philosophy, University College Cork, May 3-8, 2010.

The Annual Theory and Philosophy Summer School is an interdisciplinary residential course for postgraduate students in the arts, humanities and social sciences. To optimize students’ learning experience at TAPSS the number of participants is limited to 30. Postgraduate work in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences has, at its core, problems of evaluation, judgement and critique. We are expected to ‘evaluate’ such things as a text, a report, or an artifact; to ‘critique’ such things as a position, an institution, or an argument; and to make a ‘judgement’ on such things as a practice, a belief, or a form of life. ‘Evaluation’, ‘Judgement’ and ‘Critique’ clarify and illuminate principles and alternative courses of action, help to weigh the truth or falsity of a belief or idea, to act justly, and to justify actions. But what does it mean to ‘judge’, to ‘evaluate’, or to ‘critique’? On what bases, on whose authority, and with what justification do we do these things? Faced with the different contexts of relativism, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and postmodernism, is this level of competency blocked or even counter-productive? Might the practices of judging, evaluating and critiquing encourage the appropriate responses to local and global crises, or might they instead deepen our growing problems? Credits: 5 or 10 ECTS credits; 3 or 6 American credits Fees: 500 Euro (includes course fees, accommodation, half-board and the final dinner) Applications will be considered immediately; closing date: March 1, 2010.

Inquiries to: admin@tapss.ie

Applications to: applications@tapss.ie

Cfp: 6th Annual Joint Conference, Society for European Philosophy and Forum for European Philosophy, July 6-10, 2010.

To be held at Loyola University Chicago, John Felice Rome Center. Coordinator: Stefano Giacchetti Ludovisi, Loyola University Chicago Coordinator for the USA: Andrew Cutrofello, Loyola University Chicago Keynote Speakers: Deborah Cook, University of Windsor, Andrew Feenberg, Simon Fraser University, Alessandro Ferrara, University of Rome, Tor Vergata David Ingram, Loyola University Chicago Stefano Petrucciani, University of Rome, La Sapienza David Schweickart, Loyola University Chicago Francesco Saverio Trincia, University of Rome, La Sapienza Confirmed Speakers: Steven Barbone, San Diego State University; Andrew Benjamin, Monash University Melbourne; Adam Berg, Otis College, Los Angeles; Clive Cazeaux, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff; Paul Davies, University of Sussex; Peter Dews, University of Essex; Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Vanderbilt University; Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon, Simon Fraser University; James Gordon Finlayson, University of Sussex; Fabian Freyenhagen, University of Essex; Samir Gandesha, Simon Fraser University; Simon Glendinning, London School of Economics; Andy Hamilton, Durham University; Johan Frederik Hartle, University of Amsterdam; Jennifer Holt, Vanderbilt University; Anders Johansson, University of Gothenburg; Célia Linhares, University Federal Fluminense; Maurizio Meloni, University of Nottingham; Hugh Miller, Loyola University Chicago; Alastair Morgan, University of Nottingham; John Mullarkey, University of Dundee; Johanna Oksala, University of Dundee; Peter Osborne, Middlesex University; Laureen Park, New York City College of Technology; Ken Parsons, Avila University; Leena Petersen, Sussex University; Henry W. Pickford; University of Colorado, Boulder; Lars Rensmann, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; David Schauffler, University of Silesia, Poland; A. D. Smith, University of Warwick; Ruth Sonderegger, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Wien; Karin Stoegner, Central European University, Budapest; Simon Susen, Newcastle University; Italo Testa, University of Parma; Margherita Tonon, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; Fotini Vaki, Ionian University Corfu; Paolo Vinci, University of Rome, La Sapienza; Carol L. Yang, National Chengchi University; Rocío Zambrana, New School for Social Research. Anyone interested in presenting a paper should submit a 1-2 page abstract to Prof. Stefano Giacchetti Ludovisi at stefano.giacchetti@tiscali.it; Tel: (+39) 06-81905467; http://www.blogger.com/www.seponline.net. The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2010. Please include your name, institutional affiliation, and mailing address. Decisions regarding the program will be made by May 31, 2010. In addition to proposals for individual papers, proposals for themed panels of (up to) five speakers on any area of European Philosophy are also invited. If you would like to organize a themed panel, please contact Prof. Andrew Cutrofello at acutrof@luc.edu. Deadline Summary: Paper abstracts by April 30, 2010 to stefano.giacchetti@tiscali.it Panel proposals by April 30, 2010 to acutrof@luc.edu Graduate papers in full by June 1, 2010 to acutrof@luc.edu

Cfp: "Continental Philosophy in the Desert," Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy, University of New Mexico, May 28-29, 2010.

Keynote Speakers: Steven Crowell (Rice University) and Claire Katz (Texas A&M) If you are interested in participating, please send a completed paper (or work in progress) of not more than 4000 words. (We will schedule hour long sessions for participants; so presentations should not be longer than 35-40 minutes, in order to leave time for discussion.) Please send papers (ready for blind review, with name on a separate title page) to Iain Thomson (ithomson@unm.edu) by March 1st, 2010.

DVD Release: EXAMINED LIFE.

In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas. Peter Singer’s thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue’s posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek questions current beliefs about the environment while sifting through a garbage dump. Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution while surrounded by symbols of wealth and leisure. Judith Butler and a friend stroll through San Francisco’s Mission District questioning our culture’s fixation on individualism. And while driving through Manhattan, Cornel West—perhaps America’s best-known public intellectual—compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be. Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy’s power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it.Featuring Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor. For further information, visit: http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/examinedlife/.