Cederstrom, Carl. "The Lacanian Left Does Not Exist." EPHEMERA 7.4 (2007).

Following the publication of the groundbreaking 1985 work by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, the last two decades have witnessed a surge of books dealing with the odd couple of Lacanian psychoanalysis and political theory. While Hegemony only made a few explicit references to Lacan, it has nevertheless been retroactively construed as the work that made possible a marriage between Lacan and political analysis. The reason for this construal has a name: Slavoj Žižek. This Slovene philosopher, also known as the giant from Ljubljana, not only re-read Hegemony in his first book written in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology, making the former perhaps more Lacanian than was intended, but was also the most industrious theorist among those who have tried to introduce psychoanalysis to political theory. Publishing books at an immense speed, Žižek has consistently poured his unique theoretical cocktail over the bald heads of boring and dull academics. He has, perhaps more convincingly than anyone else, shown how ideology operates not only at the level of meaning but also, and more forcefully, at that of enjoyment. Starting out with an intense intellectual friendship, even publishing a book together (Butler, Laclau and Žižek, 2000), Žižek and Laclau have gradually parted. If before only an element of animosity smouldered, then now, after their heated debate in Critical Inquiry, following on from Laclau’s latest book, On Populist Reason, it has become clear that the two are open enemies. What did this debate generate, beyond a portrayal of their mutual dislike? If it gave a few indications of their different understandings of Lacan, for example as concerns the notion of the Real, and their opposing views of what class struggle may bring about, it did not say much about their own respective theoretical standpoints. . . Read the entire review here: http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/7-4/7-4cederstrom.pdf.

Peterson, Tobias. "Discipline and Punish: the Official Functions." POPMATTERS February 7, 2008.

As the ones responsible for rule enforcement, the referees are physical manifestations of discipline and power, actors whose penalizing reinforces a larger sense of law and punishment for the rest of us. To better see how this might be so, it’s helpful to invoke the work of theorist Michel Foucault. In his book, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Foucault describes a shift in the popular conception of discipline from an external notion to a more internalized understanding. To illustrate the case, he discusses the early history of corporal punishment as a very public event, where criminals would be tortured or otherwise castigated in a ritualistic and public display. The considerable audiences that attended these floggings, hangings, beheadings, and so forth, were reminded of the threat of authorities from without (and above) should they ever be tempted to break the rule of law. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/columns/article/53667/discipline-and-punish-the-official-functions/.

Gee, Alice. "Review of Thomas Szasz's COERCION AS CURE." METAPSYCHOLOGY February 12, 2008.

Szasz, Thomas. Coercion as Cure: a Critical History of Psychiatry. Somerset, NJ: Transaction, 2007. In Coercion as Cure, Szasz covers an extensive history of the use of coercion throughout psychiatry, including the early use of various mechanical restraints (e.g. the tranquilising chair), moral treatment, the 'resting cure', insulin shock therapy, ECT, lobotomy, and finally the development of modern-day drug therapies. He maintains throughout that each one of these breakthrough 'discoveries' in psychiatric medicine are simply a reworking of old ideas, all share in common the act of coercion, that is, the depriving of innocent persons of liberty. . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4078.

Society for Interdisciplinary Feminist Phenomenology

Society for Interdisciplinary Feminist Phenomenology was created in 2006 by Dr. Bonnie Mann and Dr. Beata Stawarska, professors in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon and affiliated faculty at the Center for the Study of Women in Society. SIFP was created to establish a community of feminist scholars working in and between various disciplines (including developmental psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and philosophy) and employing phenomenology. We strongly believe that phenomenology, with its focus on lived experience, embodiment, and social relations, continues to offer valuable resources for feminist inquiry and empirical research. Feminists working in this area have recently published important philosophical accounts of female body experience (Young, 2005), racial identity (Alcoff, 2006), and disability (Weiss, 2007). Society for Interdisciplinary Feminist Phenomenology is designed to help generate, promote and disseminate cutting edge research conducted by women that is sensitive to gender and representative of women’s role in the social context. . . . Read more about this relatively new association here: http://whp.uoregon.edu/sifp/.

CFP: "Argument Cultures," Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation," University of Windsor, June 3-6, 2009.

The Organizing Committee invites proposals for papers in informal logic or rhetorical or argumentation theory on topics related to the above theme, Argument Cultures. Abstracts prepared for blind refereeing must be submitted electronically no later than Sept. 8, 2008 to H. V. Hansen hhansen@uwindsor.ca. They should be between 200 and 250 words long. Please consult the Conference website for additional information on how to prepare proposals. It is part of OSSA’s mandate to promote the work of graduate students and young scholars in the field, thus we strongly encourage submissions from this group. Please mention the degree and program at the time of submission. For the purposes of the 2009 conference, ‘graduate students’ are those who have not completed their graduate program by September 8, 2008. (The J. Anthony Blair Prize is awarded to the best student paper presented at the conference. The competition is open to all students who have their proposals accepted for the conference but Canadian graduate students who need financial assistance in order to attend should advise the Organizing Committee when they submit their proposals.

Keynote Speakers:

• Ruth Amossy, Department of French, University of Tel-Aviv
• Robert C. Pinto, Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor
• David Zarefsky, School of Communication, Northwestern University

Organizing Committee:

• H. V. Hansen
• C. W. Tindale
• J. A. Blair
• R. H. Johnson

Additional information on the conference is available on the website: www.uwindsor.ca/ossa.

SUMMER INSTITUTE ON ARGUMENTATION

The Centre for Research on Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University of Windsor will be offering a Summer Institute on Argumentation that will include the conference but begin a week earlier. The Institute will offer a course for graduate students as well as serve as an orientation to recent research in argumentation for post-doctoral students and junior faculty at universities and colleges. The course in the Institute will be taught by internationally recognized argumentation scholars. Further announcements of the Summer Institute and its programmes will be made in April and September 2008. Further information is available on the institute's website: www.uwindsor.ca/crrar.

"History, Fable and Myth: Lamming at 80," 27th Annual Conference on West Indian Literature, University of West Indies, February 28-March 1, 2008.

The conference organizers are taking the opportunity provided by the conference to mark the occasion of George Lamming’s 80th birthday and to celebrate his contribution to West Indian Literature with panels dedicated to his work as well as remarks by Mr. Lamming himself. The larger theme of the conference will of course inform all the panels. Suggested topics for panels include: 1. Lamming’s poetry/novels 2. Lamming’s essays and other writings 3. Critical responses to Lamming’s work 4. History and West Indian literature 5. Caribbean fables of identity 6. Myth and folklore in the literature of the Caribbean 7. Myth, memory and imagination: filling the voids in Caribbean History 8. Gender and sexuality in Caribbean writing: myths, legends and mischief 9. Myths, fables and migration: the literature of the Caribbean diaspora 10. Caribbean literature and the visual arts 11. West Indian literature and contemporary critical theory 12. Caribbean cinema as instrument of history, myth and fable. Further information is here: http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/specialevents/lll/wilc/.

Atlas, James. "The Nation: Leo-Cons; a Classicist's Legacy: New Empire Builders." NEW YORK TIMES May 4, 2003.

Strauss Redux: To intellectual-conspiracy theorists, the Bush administration's foreign policy is entirely a Straussian creation. Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, has been identified as a disciple of Strauss; William Kristol, founding editor of The Weekly Standard, a must-read in the White House, considers himself a Straussian; Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century, an influential foreign policy group started by Mr. Kristol, is firming in the Strauss camp. One is reminded of Asa Leventhal, the hero of Saul Bellow's novel 'The Victim,' who asks his oppressor, a mysterious figure named Kirby Allbee, ''Wait a minute, what's your idea of who runs things?'' For those who believe in the power of ideas, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to answer: the intellectual heirs of Leo Strauss. So how did it come to pass that a European-born émigré identified by the Harvard professor of government Harvey Mansfield (also a Straussian) as ''an obscure professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago who died in 1973'' now occupies a position of such disproportionate influence? . . . The rest is here: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E7D8153CF937A35756C0A9659C8B63.

Horton, Scott. "Will the Real Leo Strauss Please Stand Up?" HARPER'S MAGAZINE January 21, 2008.

Leo Strauss died back in 1973. But in the last few years it’s been hard to come up with a figure who has been more loved and reviled among those who study and write about political philosophy. And even among those who love him, there seems to be a very catty rage over just who are the proper “Straussians.” A lot of this of course has to do with the Neoconservative movement, which properly claims roots in the writing and thinking of Leo Strauss. The obvious starting point would be to note that while it may be true that the Neocons are Straussians, the suggestion that Strauss is a Neocon is more than doubtful. After all, he died in 1973, and this would seem to attribute to him rather firmly developed notions about a number of things as to which he had no documented position whatsoever. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002212.

Chaplin, Tamara. "Excerpt from TURNING ON THE MIND: FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS ON TELEVISION."

Chaplin, Tamara. Turning on the Mind: French Philosophers on Television. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007. In the decades following World War II, television laid siege to the culture of the book. However, with French television regarded less as a creative form in its own right than as a means for the transmission of the classical heritage, most early aficionados saw the medium not as a threat but rather as a boon to print culture. Television would “spread the word”—heightening public awareness about important new publications, encouraging viewers to read, and bringing the rich legacy of the French humanistic tradition directly into the homes and heads of the nation’s citizens. Few countries have worked as hard as France to merge the word and the image via the small screen. Indeed, between 1953 and 1989 alone, 106 series dedicated to literary programming sought to marry these disparate entities on French TV. Since its inception, the format known as the émission littéraire, or television book show, has also provided one of the dominant platforms for the televising of philosophy in France. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/509914.html.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. "The New New Philosophy [on Experimental Ethics]." NEW YORK TIMES December 9, 2007.

Can you really do philosophy with clipboards and questionnaires? It seems that you can. Joshua Knobe, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is the philosopher who investigated how people responded to those two stories about the company chairman. (Full disclosure: I examined him on his dissertation.) You might have supposed that whether we judge an action to be (say) blameworthy depends on whether we think it was intentional, and the nature of intentional action is something philosophers have had plenty to say about. But the so-called Knobe effect suggests that — oddly enough — it may not be clear to us whether an action is intentional until we’ve decided whether it’s good or bad. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09wwln-idealab-t.html?ex=1354856400&en=42f8ef6876e20ada&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss.

Singer, Peter. "Putting Practice Into Ethics [Review of Appiah's EXPERIMENTS IN ETHICS]." NEW YORK SUN January 16, 2008.

Appiah, Anthony Kwame. Experiments in Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. You are standing by a railroad track when you notice that a trolley, with no one aboard, is rolling down the track, heading for a group of five people. If the trolley continues on its present track, they will all be killed. The only thing you can do to prevent this tragedy is throw a switch that will divert the trolley onto a sidetrack. But there is one person on this sidetrack, and he will be killed. Should you throw the switch? In another version of this dilemma, the trolley is again rolling down the track, heading for a group of five people. This time, however, there is no switch or sidetrack. Instead, you are on a footbridge above the track. You consider jumping off the bridge, in front of the trolley, thus sacrificing yourself to save the five people in danger, but you realize that you are far too light to stop the trolley. Standing next to you, however, is a very large stranger. The only way you can stop the trolley killing five people is by pushing this large stranger in front of the trolley. He will be killed, but you will save the other five. Should you push the stranger? Philosophers have been pondering these dilemmas since the 1960s. Many — notably Judith Jarvis Thomson and Frances Kamm — have agreed that you may throw the switch, but must not push the large stranger. But why? In each case, we face a choice between bringing about the death of one person or allowing five to die. Where does the moral difference lie? The discussion has embraced a variety of moral theories, but it has not produced a truly satisfying answer. What philosophers did not do, until recently, is take an interest in empirical research about our responses to these or other dilemmas. Now, as philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah describes in his concise yet erudite and engagingly written new book, Experiments in Ethics (Harvard University Press, 288 pages, $22.95), this is changing. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nysun.com/article/69595.

Donoghue, Dennis. "On Eloquence." CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION January 18, 2008.

Eloquence is not the same as rhetoric. Eloquence isn't even a distant cousin of rhetoric — it comes from a different family and has different eyes, hair, and gait. Long thought to be a subset of rhetoric's devices, eloquence has declared its independence: It has no designs on readers or audiences. Its aim is pleasure; it thrives on freedom among the words. Unlike rhetoric, it has not sent any soldier to be killed in foreign countries. I'd like to say how I came to this one beautiful idea. . . . Find out how here: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=nyhrj8jd59dvt47dtvdzjk3g6vqqnrv9.

Papineau, David. "Power and Consciousness on the Clapham Omnibus [on John Searle]." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT January 16, 2008.

Searle is American through and through, but his formative philosophical years were spent in Oxford. He arrived as a Rhodes Scholar in 1952 and stayed for seven years, first as an undergraduate and then as a don at Christ Church. Back then, Oxonian “linguistic philosophy” was the dominant philosophical influence in the English-speaking world. It taught that careful attention to everyday language is the way to solve philosophical problems. Our common language embodies the accumulated wisdom of past generations, J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson assured their students. Philosophical clarity is best achieved by applying the intricate web of distinctions implicit in everyday discourse. Searle’s earliest published work was squarely in this tradition, focusing on foundational issues in the workings of ordinary language. But at the end of the 1950s he returned to America and joined the Department of Philosophy at Berkeley, where he has remained ever since. Over the years Searle has drifted away from his Oxford roots. Initially he continued his work in the philosophy of language. His first book, Speech Acts, published in 1969, developed Austin’s analysis of the different ways in which language can be used. But by the 1980s he had ceased to place language at the centre of the philosophical enterprise, and had come to regard the human mind as the more fundamental realm, with language merely the medium by which we make thought public. Moreover, there is something decidedly unOxonian about Searle’s current programme of explaining how humans fit into the world of basic science. His teachers would have viewed any such ambition as a species of American vulgarity. Oxford philosophy has long been deeply anti-scientific, regarding it as some kind of category mistake to suppose that scientific findings can in any way threaten or illuminate our everyday understanding of people. . . . Read the rest here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3196720.ece.

Scialabba, George. "A Great Deal of Work [on Edmund Wilson]." THE NATION January 28, 2008.

The Library of America's new two-volume issue of Wilson's essays and reviews from the 1920s, '30s and '40s is one of the summits of twentieth-century literary criticism. Edmund Wilson's life story is well-known from his many published journals (The Twenties through The Sixties), memoirs ("The Author at Sixty" and Upstate) and letters (a superb collection, Letters on Literature and Politics, edited by Elena Wilson, his fourth wife), other people's remembrances and two good biographies by Jeffrey Meyers and Lewis Dabney. He was born in 1895--with difficulty, because he already had an unusually large head. His father was a reforming lawyer and Attorney General of New Jersey but was disabled for much of his later life by hypochondria and depression. Young Edmund got an extraordinary education at the Hill School in Pennsylvania and a decent one at Princeton, especially after he encountered the literary scholar and peerless teacher Christian Gauss. At Princeton he also (like Dwight Macdonald at Yale) began several lifelong literary friendships, notably with F. Scott Fitzgerald and the poet John Peale Bishop. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/scialabba.

Prochnik, George. "Review of REVOLUTION IN MIND: THE CREATION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS by George Makari," NEW YORK TIMES January 20, 2008.

In Revolution in Mind, Makari argues that we’ve been blinded to the cultural reach of psychoanalysis by the magnitude of Freud’s stature and the magnetic pull or repulsion of his personality and theories. In Makari’s view, much contemporary discussion about the relevance of psychoanalysis is based on a false choice: “Freud as everlasting genius, or Freud as relic and fraud.” To Makari, the director of Cornell University’s Institute for the History of Psychiatry, this dichotomy is artificial. Instead, he argues, we should look to the rich, polyphonous context that gave birth to and was influenced by the analytic enterprise: “the culture of Kant; the assumptions of Geisteswissenschaft and a European classical education,” along with “evolutionary biology, positivism and Newtonian physics.” . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books/review/Prochnik-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.

Dalrymple, Theodore. "Freud and Us: Review of George Makari's REVOLUTION IN MIND: THE CREATION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS." NEW YORK SUN January 16, 2008.

What, if anything, did Sigmund Freud actually discover? What concrete human knowledge would be lacking if he, or someone very like him, had never lived? With most scientists, the same questions would not be hard to answer. In the case of William Harvey, we might say: He discovered the circulation of the blood. Though philosophers may tell us that all scientific hypotheses are provisional, no one now seriously expects a future scientist to discover that the blood does not, in fact, circulate. Freud also claimed to be a scientist in the strictest sense of the word (though his world outlook was more scientistic than scientific), but all of his supposed discoveries, such as that of the Oedipus complex, were highly speculative. With little independent empirical evidence to support them, his theories were more like inventions than discoveries. No one would take seriously a doctor who concluded from the fact that a young man had broken his leg playing football that playing football was the one and only cause of broken legs; but this was more or less Freud's method. Nevertheless his claims to be a scientist were widely accredited, particularly later in his life. When he sought refuge in Britain after the Anschluss, he was at once awarded the highest scientific honor that the country could bestow, Fellowship of the Royal Society. Ironically, the Society's motto is "Nullius in verba" ("On the word of no one"), which is to say that truth does not inhere in anyone's personal authority, however great it might be. But no one ever used personal authority to more effect than Freud, who was a master of the employment of rhetoric to deflect the need for evidence. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nysun.com/article/69618.

Wellington, Darryl Lorenzo. "History, Amnesia and the N Word." DISSENT MAGAZINE Winter 2008.

• The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why by Jabari Asim (Houghton Mifflin, 2007) 239 pp $26
• Nigger: the Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy (Vintage, 2003) 208 pp $12.95 paper

THE SUBJECT is small—a word. Yet the subject contained within the subject is immeasurable: racism American-style. It isn’t always a good idea to reduce vast social dimensions to a pithy cognomen—all the great “isms” are finally irreducible—but there are special cases, and when Jabari Asim asks us to examine American racism (particularly racism against black Americans) through the lens of a single word, it’s remarkable how much history he squeezes into the text. . . Read the rest of the review here: http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=998.

Monaghan, Peter. "Coming Together: on the 50th Anniversary of Achebe's THINGS FALL APART." CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION February 8, 2008.

Fifty years after he published Things Fall Apart, his first novel, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe recalls having modest hopes for the book. At the time, he was a young university graduate who had found a job at the Nigerian Broadcasting Company, in Lagos. "I was alone in my room, scribbling away, and if nobody had paid any attention at all to me, I wouldn't have been terribly surprised," Achebe recalls with a quiet chuckle, here in his home on the campus of Bard College. Yet the towering achievement of Things Fall Apart has been to become arguably the most influential work of fiction by an African writer. Since William Heinemann Ltd. first issued it in London, the novel has sold about 11 million copies in some 50 countries and as many languages. (This month Anchor Books will issue a 50th-aniversary edition.) In the United States, in an era of multiculturalism, it has become a fixture on college and high-school reading lists — for Americans, the quintessential novel about Africa. The influential critic Harold Bloom included it in 1994 in his selection of the canonical works of world literature, along with two of Achebe's later novels dealing with Nigeria's transition through colonization to troubled independent nationhood, No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=wwnsjpymmr1tl2jn03ghjn0t0x6s5sg2.

CFP: "Tales of Slavery: Narratives of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Enslavement in Africa," University of Toronto, May 20-23, 2009.

The export of men, women and children from Africa to the America lasted over four hundred years and touched most communities in Africa, directly or indirectly. We now know a great deal about this trade: its gender and age composition, the ways in which individuals and communities responded to the trade, the extent to which warfare, kidnapping, legal mechanisms, economic processes and religious institutions generated a pool of people to be bought and sold. We know about resistance, the formation of slave-trading states and the increased use of slaves within Africa. We have some autobiographical accounts by those who were literate or achieved literacy after their capture, but these are few. Most of the sources used to write the history of slavery in Africa are European, but the memories of the external and internal slave trade remain and are embedded in African ritual, song, and memory. We are inviting proposals dealing with the exploration of new research methodologies and the re-examination of old ones. Our major objective is to make available to students and scholars African sources on slavery, enslavement, the slave trade and to improve our understanding of these documents. The conference will deal with all parts of Africa and is open to any methodology that taps African voices. Our goal is to seek out and explore newer methodologies, to find more African sources, and if possible, to look for the voices of the slaves themselves. We also want to make these sources more widely available. We can accept sources originating from other continents only if they involve memories of Africa and the trade from Africa. This conference follows on one organized at Bellagio, Italy in September 2007 and entitled 'Finding the African Voice: Narratives of Slavery and Enslavement.' It explored a wide range of different kinds of sources: oral traditions, life histories recorded by missionaries, court documents from both colonial and Islamic courts, petitions to colonial authorities, proverbs, folk-lore, music, and personal correspondence.Because of space limitations at Bellagio, we limited ourselves to West and Northwest Africa and to the historic past. We are now interested in opening up a wider range of questions, for example, the impact of the slave experience on witchcraft belief and on contemporary representation of political power, personal and social memories relating to trajectories of emancipation/resubordination in colonial and postcolonial times, and narratives of contemporary enslavement. We are also interested in a fuller exploration of music, dance, proverbs and folklore and would like to collect as many life histories as possible from the point of view of descendants of slaves and of former masters and slave-dealers.

Interested persons should submit a title and an abstract to http://www.blogger.com/ <http://www.blogger.com/>. All participants will be expected to post on the conference web-site a month before the conference a copy of their papers and at least one document on which the paper is based. Our objective is to publish both a collection of sources and a volume ofessays. We hope to have funds available to bring scholars from Africa, including graduate students working on questions of slavery. Other participants will be expected to find their own funding.

"Toronto's Afrocentric School," Editorial, STABROEK NEWS February 7, 2008.

Last week the Toronto District School Board decided to approve a new school in which the "knowledge and experiences of peoples of African descent [will be] an integral feature of the teaching and learning environment." The school, which will be funded by taxpayers, has been proposed as one way of curbing the alarming drop out rates among the city's black students - one study suggests that as many as four out of every ten black students fail to graduate from high school. The decision has been met with a chorus of disapproval from radio talk show hosts and editorial writers across Canada. These have generally branded the idea of a separate school as a form of 'segregation' and argued that it directly contradicts modern Canada's steadfast refusal to yield to easy ethnic, cultural and religious divisions. Many critics are adamant that public money should not be used to undermine a wider sense of national identity, and they warn that the precedent could encourage further fractures within the country's large immigrant population - half of Toronto's 5.5 million residents are foreign born. Some have also questioned the idea that black students are being failed by the school system at all. A BBC report quotes a former university professor with experience of youth outreach and employment programmes saying that in one particularly problematic working-class neighbourhood, "Out of the 100 or so families I worked with … I would say 80% of the families were non-supportive of their children's education. When you'd go into a lot of the houses, there was a lot of yelling and arguing. There were lots of latchkey kids." If that pattern holds true for the wider Afro-Caribbean population, it is not easy to see what difference a new Afrocentric school would make. There are simpler objections too. Just a few decades ago, black Americans risked life and limb to integrate themselves into a hostile white education system. They did this, presciently, because they understood that a successful education in difficult circumstances is best measured by the progress one makes within the dominant culture. Communities that seek the comfort of an education among their own kind may spare themselves the stress of competition and cultural confrontation, but they also lose the knowledge that allows their rivals to keep outperforming them in the marketplace of ideas. Black America understood this in the segregation years. For all the deficiencies in their curricula, white schools still offered the best route to certification in the wider society. Multicultural societies are always vulnerable to racial insecurities. What is not clear is how well these insecurities are resolved by the supposedly changed contexts of racially-sensitive education. Take, for example, the undeniable neglect of the great Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture. In most mainstream historiography, Toussaint and his comrades appear briefly as leaders of a 'slave rebellion' that distracts Napoleon for a while during the momentous period in which he agrees to the Louisiana purchase. C.L.R. James's wonderful account of the Haitian revolution, The Black Jacobins, and an increasing body of modern scholarship, have shown that the reality was certainly quite different. Without Toussaint's extraordinary political and military leadership, the French army - which the Americans feared was unstoppable - would have been free to give its full attention to the struggling new republic in the north. In other words, without the bewildering success of self-educated former slaves against a professional army that had overrun most of Europe, there may well have been no America. The whole episode deserves far more attention than it has yet received, as does the political skill of their leader, a man who wished to live independent of French control but was also a proud inheritor of the culture and values of the French Enlightenment. L'Ouverture wanted freedom as much as anyone else, but he never wished to discard the glories of France that his education had allowed him to share. In this sense he perfectly embodies the tensions of modern Caribbean identity, and the many hesitations we all have about the turbulent pasts that have formed us. Learning more about the Haitian revolution would no doubt be part of a school curriculum that focused on "the knowledge and experiences of peoples of African descent," but what use would such knowledge be if one remained ignorant of the French and American revolutions that made Toussaint's achievement so remarkable? We are all involved says the poet, none of us can retreat to our pasts any more. Our reality is too entangled with other peoples and other cultures for us to make sense of ourselves in isolation. However noble its intentions, an education based on cultural separation will always end up proving itself too self-limiting to be of lasting value. (Thanks to Mark McWatt; the editorial is here: http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article_editorial?id=56538593.)

CFP: Collection on Shulasmith Firestone's THE DIALECTIC OF SEX: THE CASE FOR REVOLUTION.

2010 will mark the fortieth anniversary of the most radical manifesto of contemporary feminism. Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex: the Case for Feminist Revolution became a bestseller, yet unlike the other celebrated feminist polemics of that year (Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch and Kate Millett's Sexual Politics), Firestone's work is scarcely remembered today. Firestone called not only for the abolition of the nuclear family and the economic and social independence of children, but for the end of pregnancy itself. The cybernetic revolution was hailed as the technological solution to the curse of Eve and the subordination of mothers just as automation was claimed to offer an end to brutal physical labour. Today, as researchers attempt to devise a prosthetic womb, Firestone's call seems prescient. More importantly, her philosophical challenge to the cultural significance of genital difference returns us to the unresolved question of gender dichotomy, whether this is understood as discursive, social, psychological or physical, and its relation to the continuing subordination of women and homosexuals. We are requesting papers of 7,000 to 9,000 words addressing The Dialectic of Sex, its argument, its reception, its salience today. Please send 300 word synopses, together with a briefbiography, to Mandy Merck and Stella Sandford at m.merck@hul.ac.uk by April 1, 2008.

CFP: "Nietzsche, Naturalism and Normativity," Nietzsche and Modern Moral Philosophy, University of Southampton, July 10-11, 2008.

Speakers: Robert Guay Nadeem Hussain Brian Leiter Christopher Janaway Bernard Reginster Christine Swanton Richard Schacht John Skorupski Further details will be advertised shortly, including how to register for the conference. The registration deadline will be JUNE 16th, 2008. For queries meanwhile, please contact Dr. Simon Robertson at s.j.robertson@soton.ac.uk For further details about the project, visit: http://www.soton.ac.uk/philosophy/research/nietzscheproject.html.

CFP: "The Naturalness of Man and World," 10th International Conference, Spinoza Society, Philipps University of Marburg, Sept. 26-28, 2008.

Keynote Speakers: Dieter Birnbacher (Düsseldorf), Andrea Esser (Marburg), Alan Gabbey (Columbia University), Petra Gehring (Darmstadt), Barbara Merker (Frankfurt), Ursula Renz (ETH Zürich), Winfried Schröder (Marburg), Robert Spaemann (Stuttgart), Rudolf Stichweh (Luzern), Han van Ruler (Rotterdam), Lutz Wingert (ETH Zürich) Proposed Panels: - Reception of Spinozistic conceptions of nature - Nature and history - Nature and Mind - Nature and Lawlikeness - Nature and Religion. Please send abstract (German or English) under the heading of the section the paper should presented till March 31th 2008 to hampe@phil.gess.ethz.ch. Awarded Essay: "How much of Man is natural?" Essays on this question can be submitted till May 15th 2008. Enclose a CV on one page to renz@phil.gess.ethz.ch. Contributors should be under 35 at December 12th 2008 and not yet hold a professorship. Price: 1000 Euro. The elected essay will be presented on the conference and be published in the Conference Proceedings.

CFP: "Philosophy and Film, Film and Philosophy," University of the West of England, July 4-6, 2008.

Keynote Speakers: Stephen Mulhall (Oxford) Vivian Sobchack (UCLA) Robert Sinnerbrink (Maquarrie) Catherine Constable (Warwick) Karin Littau (Essex) Julian Baggini (editor, The Philosopher’s Magazine) In the last years there has been a growing interest in the relationship between philosophy and film within both analytic and European philosophical traditions. At the same time, film studies as a discipline has always raised philosophical questions and has been enriched by a variety of philosophical traditions. The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars from both disciplines to examine this shared history, as well as display the current range and state of philosophical film analysis. In what ways is film philosophically informative? What methodologies have been developed for philosophical analysis of film? What do various philosophical traditions bring to the study of film? What does the practice of film studies bring to the practice of philosophy? What vibrant areas have developed in these fields? The conference theme is deliberately broad and proposals are invited on any conjunction between film and philosophy. We welcome submissions that range from general and methodological observations about the field to readings and interpretations of specific films, genres, film movements or filmmakers. We encourage submissions from graduate students and will reserve some sessions for graduate papers. Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Film as philosophy
• The ontology of cinema
• Film and phenomenology
• Particular philosophical approaches to film (Cavell, Deleuze, Frampton etc.)
• The Epistemology of film
• Film affect
• The philosophical worldview of particular directors
• Subjectivity and cinema
• Film ‘theory’ as philosophy
• Aesthetics and film
• Political philosophy and film
• Historical developments in film-philosophy
• Genre and philosophy
• Philosophy and film movements (German Expressionism, Soviet Montage, Italian Neorealism etc.)
• Cinema as thought experiment
• Morality and movies
• Feminist philosophy and film practice
• Film making as philosophical practice
• Methodologies for philosophical film analysis

Contributions are invited for:

• Panel topics (2-4 speakers)
• Individual papers (20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion)
• Graduate papers

We will endeavour to include as many papers as possible within the time limits and are happy to discuss initial suggestions for panel discussions. NB: please send us your abstract before the deadline if you require an early response. We strongly recommend this option for overseas participants who may need to book flights.

Please send proposals (500 word abstract) by Friday 8 April, 2008 to: Dr Havi Carel Havi.carel@uwe.ac.uk Dr Greg Tuck greg.tuck@uwe.ac.uk We prefer email submissions but you can also post your abstract to: Dr Havi Carel/ Dr Greg Tuck HLSS University of the West of England (UWE) St Matthias Campus Oldbury Court Rd Fishponds Bristol BS16 2JP UK

PUB: HISTORY AND THEORY 47.1 (2008).

The Table of Contents may be found here: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/hith/47/1.

Martin, Clancy. "Review of Two Recent Translations of Nietzsche's THUS SPOKE ZARATHRUTRA." NDPR Feburary 6, 2008.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (hereafter TSZ) is a difficult book to translate. With a traditional philosophical text the translator's conscience is driven by accuracy, and when in doubt the translator will be as literal as possible. But that won't work with TSZ. While it is an undeniably philosophical work -- Nietzsche, the most widely influential philosopher of the past two hundred years, considered it his masterpiece -- it is also a work of literature. And you can't translate literature literally and have it work out well. Literature doesn't have only a sense, it also has a sound. That Nietzsche, like Kierkegaard, the German Romantics, and many of the twentieth-century Existentialists, thought philosophy and literature were ultimately inseparable arts only further complicates the translator's task. . . . Please visit the following link for the reviews of these two translations: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=12285.

CFP: "Erôs in Ancient Greece," Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, March 28-31, 2009.

One of the most exciting developments in recent classics research has been in the field of ancient emotions. We are planning a colloquium co-hosted by UCL and the Institute of Classical Studies which aims to contribute to this area, on the topic of "Erôs in ancient Greece". Chronologically this will cover the Archaic period through the Second Sophistic, including reception. Papers might consider such topics as: the psychological and/or physiological experience of erôs and related passions (e.g. jealousy, fear for a loved one); representations of those under the influence of erotic passions; actions performed by them; iconography associated with erotic passions; and philosophical approaches. Papers might range widely across a variety of topics, or be more narrowly focused on a genre or even a particular text. The colloquium will be held on Sat 28 - Tues 31 March 2009, and will include papers by both academics and postgraduate students. It is anticipated that proceedings will be published. Confirmed speakers include: David Konstan (keynote speaker), Elizabeth Belfiore, Douglas Cairns, James Davidson, Nick Fisher, Christopher Gill, Glenn Most, Ralph Rosen. Anyone interested in giving a paper at this colloquium should send a title and brief summary of content (no more than 50 words) to Ed Sanders at edsanders@gmail.com by 1 March 2008.

CFP: "Gender, Inequality, and Social Justice," North American Society for Social Philosophy, University of Portland, July 17-19, 2008.

A 300-500 word abstract should be sent to the program chairs. Individuals who wish to be considered for the award for best graduate student paper should submit their entire paper and abstract. Electronic Submissions welcomed and encouraged. The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2008 or, for those living outside the United States and Canada, January 15, 2008. Contact: Jordy Rocheleau Department of Philosophy Austin Peay State University Box 4486 Clarksville, TN 37044 tel. 931-221-7925 rocheleauj@apsu.edu or Richard Buck Department of Philosophy Mount Saint Mary’s University 16300 Old Emmitsburg Rd Emmitsburg, MD 21727 tel. 301-447-5368 buck@msmary.edu Further details are here: http://www.pitt.edu/~nassp/nassp.html.

PUB: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ACROSS DISCIPLINES 2.1 (2008).

• Donna L. Lillian "Modality, Persuasion and Manipulation in Canadian Conservative Discourse" pp. 1–16 Download PDF
• Robert De Beaugrande "The Discourse and Counter-Discourse of Hugo Chavez" pp. 17 – 30 Download PDF
• Anna Ewa Wieczorek "Proximisation, Common Ground, and Assertion-Based Patterns for Legitimisation in Political Discourse" pp. 31–48 Download PDF
• Cheng Le and Sin Kui King and Zheng Ying-Long "Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and American Court Judgments" pp. 49–58 Download PDF
• Mei Li Lean "'New Kids on the Block’: the Discursive Construction of two New Premiers by the Mass Media" pp. 59–75 Download PDF
• Joanne Jung-Wook Hong "Changes in McDonald’s Discourse and Ideology: Intertextual Analysis of McDonald’s vs. Criticisms" pp. 76 – 101 Download PDF

Download the issue here: http://cadaad.org/ejournal/2008/1.

PUB: Hiltmann, Gabrielle, ed. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY: 1908 – 2008. JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 39.1 (2008).

Articles: MAURO CARBONE The Mythical Time of the Ideas: Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze as Readers of Proust FRANÇOISE DASTUR Merleau-Ponty and the Question of the Other ELIANE ESCOUBAS Merleau-Ponty: The Body of the Work and the Principle of Utopia DUANE H. DAVIS and TONY O’CONNOR Intentionality, Indirect Ontology and Historical Ontology: Reading Merleau-Ponty and Foucault Together: BERNHARD WALDENFELS The Central Role of the Body in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology GALEN A. JOHNSON The Voice of Merleau-Ponty: the Philosopher and the Poet For more information see: http://britishphenomenology.com/aboutus.aspx.

CFP: "Levinas and the Sacred," Third Annual Conference, North American Levinas Society, Seattle University, August 31-September 2, 2008.

The North American Levinas Society invites submissions of individual paper proposals and panel proposals for the third annual meeting and conference to be held August 31-September 2, 2008, at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington. While we will organize the conference around the broad theme of “Levinas and the Sacred,” we will accept proposals for paper and panels on any topic related to Levinas in an effort to draw the widest array of interests. Without doubt, the theme of “the sacred” will stir up vigorous, productive debates, and there are a number of entry points into such dialogues. For instance, what is the relation between the state and the sacred? What are we to make of the coincidence of the political and the spiritual from, say, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right to some of the more controversial passages in Levinas’ Difficult Freedom? What important insights concerning derivations of the sacred do we find in Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger on the question of truth, being, and the sacred? How do considerations of the sacred respond to critiques of onto-theology? How might the recent postsecular turn in Continental philosophy promote discussions of the sacred as it relates to the ethical and justice? How are we to understand Levinas’ claim that the horror of existence, of the there is (il y a)…, contributes to the destruction of sacred categories? How have notions of the sacred contributed either to colonial and geopolitical violences, and how have notions of the sacred worked to correct such violences? Certainly, these are only a few questions of the sacred broadly posed, but it is clear that such questions open Levinas’ work to a more difficult, and perhaps edifying, scrutiny. We are also interested in receiving panels that address the relation between the sacred, the ethical, community, justice, and pedagogy from a variety of multicultural perspectives. Submissions: ● Individual paper proposals: Individual abstracts should be 200-300 words for a 20-minute presentation. We will assess and organize individual papers into panels of two or three. ● Panel proposal: Panel proposals should be 500 words for a 75-minute session. Please include the session title, name of organizer, institutional affiliation, discipline or department, along with the chair’s name and participants’ names in addition to brief abstracts detailing the focus of each paper. Please send materials via email attachment (preferably Microsoft Word) to: submissions@levinas-society.org. If you have questions regarding the Society or the conference, please send inquiries to secretary@levinas-society.org. The deadline for submissions is March 2, 2008 For further information on the conference, please visit: http://www.levinas-society.org/NALS_2008.doc.

CFP: Annual Conference, Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, University of Montreal, Quebec, October 30-November 1, 2008.

We invite papers or panels on any theme relevant to the broad concerns of continental philosophy. Please submit complete papers (no more than 4500 words) and a brief abstract (150 words). If you are submitting a panel proposal, send only a 750 word abstract for each paper. Please prepare your paper for blind review as an attachment in Word. All submissions (in French or English) must be sent electronically by June 1, 2008, to: Diane Enns, CSCP President, ennsd@mcmaster.ca If you are a graduate student, please identify yourself as such in order to be eligible for the graduate student essay prize. The winner will be announced at the annual conference and considered for publication in the following spring issue of Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy. Further information may be found here: http://www.c-scp.org/.

CFP: 3rd Annual Conference, North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics, DePaul University, September 26-27, 2008.

NASPH will hold its 3rd annual conference September 26-27, 2008 at DePaul University. Georgia Warnke (UC Riverside) will present the keynote address on Friday evening. Other invited presenters include Fred Dallmayr (Notre Dame) and Lawrence Schmidt (Hendrix College). Submissions for papers are invited on all themes related to philosophical hermeneutics, but we are especially interested in papers discussing the theme of Hermeneutics and Critique. In order to promote a spirit of dialogue and meaningful reflection on each paper, presenters will be asked to make their papers available for posting on our web site to be read in advance. Sessions will consist of 15-20 minutes of reflective summaries of papers, followed by 45-60 minutes of discussion. Since papers will not be read in-session, there is some flexibility regarding length: submissions may be between 3000 and 6000 words in length. Complete papers, formatted for blind review, must be submitted electronically to nasphermeneutics@gmail.com. Attachments in either .doc or .rtf format are preferable. The deadline for full-paper submissions is June 1, 2008. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by July 15, 2008. For more information about the society and/or to be put on an email list, please visit our web site or contact Lauren Barthold (lauren.barthold@gordon.edu) or Jamey Findling (findlingj@newmanu.edu). Further information is here: http://nasph.tamu.edu./.

CFP: Petrus Ramus Conference, University of St. Andrews, Schools of English and History, June 14, 2008.

Brilliant logician and rhetorician, belligerent and controversial pedagogue, conceited logic-chopper and attacker of Aristotle: these are just some of the opinions held about the scholar Petrus Ramus (1515-1572). The Petrus Ramus Conference 2008 will provide a forum for fresh discussion and debate on this controversial figure, inviting scholars from all academic backgrounds to come together to share their expertise. The conference aims to encourage interdisciplinary discussion not only of Ramus, his works, and influence, but also to situate this discussion in the wider context of early modern history, thought, intellectual development, and culture. Plenary speakers are Dr Howard Hotson (University of Oxford), Professor Peter Mack (University of Warwick), and Professor Dr Kees Meerhoff (Universiteit van Amsterdam). Further details are here: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ramus/.

CFP: "Breaking Boundaries: 1790s in Germany, Britain and France," Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, April 22-24, 2009.

Breaking Boundaries: the 1790s in Germany, Britain and France: Revolution, Liberation, and Excess This conference aims to provide a platform for an interdisciplinary and comparative investigation into the intellectual, literary and historio-political shifts that took place during this period (1789-1805), which was one of the most fertile periods of Central and Western European cultural activity, not least because of the destabilising impact of the French Revolution. The conference intends to highlight the interconnections between culture, politics and ideas with the aim of establishing a more complete picture of this decade of paradigm shifts, whose impact reverberated through the 19th and 20th centuries. Areas of investigation include: Enlightenment and Romanticism: Literature Enlightenment and Romanticism: Philosophy and Politics The French Revolution and its Impact on Literature, Politics and Cultural Theory Radicalism in Literature, Aesthetics and Politics The (Role of the) Excessive/Libertinism in Literature, Aesthetics and Politics The Origins of Feminism and Human and Civil Rights Conservative Reactions to Revolution, Liberation and Libertinism The Reception of German Ideas/Writers (in this context) in Britain and/or France The Reception of French Ideas/Writers in Germany and/or Britain The Reception of British Ideas/Writers in France and/or Germany Organisers: Dr Maike Oergel and Dr Dan Hall School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Nottingham, UK Contact: maike.oergel@nottingham.ac.uk or daniel.hall@nottingham.ac.uk Abstracts of proposals for papers should reach both the organisers by 30 April 2008. For further information: INSTITUTE OF GERMANIC & ROMANCE STUDIES University of London, School of Advanced Study, Room ST272, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. Telephone: +44 (0)20-7862 8966 Fax: +44 (0)20-7862 8672 Email: jane.lewin@sas.ac.uk Website: http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/

CFP: "Perspectives on Intercorporeality and Intersubjectivity," University College Dublin, June 6-7, 2008.

The recent surge of interest in the body and embodiment studies has helped establish the body as a site of legitimate philosophical investigation. The contributions of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and their many contemporary commentators, have helped provide a powerful framework for the analysis of the body. This framework is not limited to research by philosophers – but extends to other fields such as women’s studies, psychology, sociology, cognitive science and literary theory, among others. This conference is intended to be an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas on the theme of intercorporeality and intersubjectivity, exploring the manners and modes in which subjects relate to each other as embodied beings. Intercorporeality is an important theme which has come up in fields as diverse as management studies, artificial intelligence, ethics and education and warrants further theoretical investigation. Exploring intercorporeal relations will elucidate and enrich our understanding of intersubjective encounters and the role they play in establishing and constituting philosophical themes such as identity, ethics, subjectivity, cognition and discourse. Further information: http://www.ucd.ie/philosophy/iiconference/.

FELLOWSHIPS: Stone Summer Theory Institute, School of the Art Institute, Chicago, July 2008.

The Stone Summer Theory Institute is week-long school in contemporary art theory. It is held in Chicago, in July, at the School of the Art Institute. It will result in a series of books involving over 300 scholars. Public events include evening lectures and roundtable discussions. Materials are also available for teachers, and school groups are welcome. During the week, the faculty lead 27 hours of seminars. The seminars are closed to the public but open to 15 Fellows; the deadline for applications is May 5. Further information is here: http://www.stonesummertheoryinstitute.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=27.

PUB: Diamantides, Marinos, ed. LEVINAS, LAW, POLITICS. London: Routledge, 2007.

Emmanuel Levinas' re-formulation of subjectivity, responsibility and the good has radically influenced post-structuralist thought. Political and legal theory, however, have only marginally profited from his moral philosophy. Levinas' theme of one's infinite responsibility for the other has often been romanticized by some advocates of multiculturalism and natural justice. In this volume, political theorists, philosophers and legal scholars critically engage with this idealization of Levinas’ ethics. The authors show that his crucial formulation of the idea of 'the other in me' does not offer a quick cure for today's nationalist, racist and religious divides. Nor does his notion of anarchic responsibility provide immediate relief for the agony of dealing with matters of life and death. The rebelliousness of Levinas' thought is rediscovered here and used to challenge preconceptions of social, legal and individual responsibility. Purchasing information is here: http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=9781904385615.

PUB: Cerbone, David R. UNDERSTANDING PHENOMENOLOGY. Chesham: Acumen, 2006.

Understanding Phenomenology provides a concise and accessible guide to one of the most important schools of thought in modern philosophy. The book traces phenomenology's historical development, beginning with its founder, Edmund Husserl and his "pure" or "transcendental" phenomenology, and continuing with the later, "existential" phenomenology of Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Each chapter provides an expert distillation of each philosopher's refinements to the movement's core ideas and provides readers with a clear picture of how phenomenology moved from primarily a theory of knowledge to a new philosophical method. The final chapter assesses later, critical responses to phenomemology – ranging from Derrida to Dennett – and reflects on the continued significance of phenomenology for philosophy today. Written for those coming to phenomenology for the first time, Understanding Phenomenology guides the reader through the often bewildering array of technical concepts and jargon, and provides clear explanations and helpful examples to encourage and enhance engagement with the primary texts. It is ideally suited for courses in twentieth-century continental philosophy and for the non-specialist looking for an authoritative overview. Purchasing information here: http://www.acumenpublishing.co.uk/display.asp?K=A20060912153254129&sf1=author&st1=David%20R%20Cerbone&sort=sort_title&m=1&dc=1.

Holl, Steven, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Perez-Gomez. QUESTIONS OF PERCEPTION: PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE. San Francisco: William Stout, 1996.

3rd Ed. 2006. Further information is available here: http://www.stoutbooks.com/cgi-bin/stoutbooks.cgi/71167.

CFP: "Age / Aging: On De Beauvoir's THE COMING OF AGE," Institut für Philosophie, Universität Wien, February 22-23, 2008.

An international conference on the occasion of Simone de Beauvoir’s 100th Birthday (1908–1986). Further details here: http://beauvoir2008.univie.ac.at/.

Juan, Stephen. "Review of PHILOSOPHERS BEHAVING BADLY by Nigel Rodger and Mel Thompson." PHILOSOPHY NOW 65 (2008).

Philosophers may lead us in terms of profound ideas, but their personal lives can be quite another matter entirely. As historian Nigel Rodgers and philosopher Mel Thompson write in their marvelous little book, Philosophers Behaving Badly, “a life of reason does not necessarily lead to a reasonable life.” Their portraits of eight philosophers bring home this point again and again. Although monumental in their insights, these philosophers were screwed up! . . . Here are eight giants as philosophers, but dwarfs as human beings. Rodgers and Thompson aptly conclude that the “appreciation of their fallibility may encourage us – however aware we may be of our own follies and limitations – to dare think beyond ourselves.” Read the rest here: http://www.philosophynow.org/issue65/65juan.htm.

CFP: "THINGS FALL APART at 50," Institute of English Studies, University of London, October 10-11, 2008.

The publication of Chinua Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958 marked the beginning of a new era in African writing in English. It was an inspiration for writers and readers not only on the African continent but throughout the world. Fifty years later, and as part of a series of worldwide events instigated by the Achebe Foundation in New York, this conference seeks to revisit that novel and assess its significance then and now. Speakers will include those involved in publishing and republishing the novel, writers, readers, artists, and critics from Africa, Europe, the UK, and the United States. Among the writers who have agreed to take part are Doris Lessing, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elleke Boehmer, and Abdulrazak Gurnah. The conference will culminate with a dialogue between Chinua Achebe and the eminent Princeton scholar Simon Gikandi. Proposals for papers or panels are invited on topics such as 'Reading Things Fall Apart'; 'Teaching Things Fall Apart'; ' African literature after Things Fall Apart'; ' Reconsidering Things Fall Apart'; 'Publishing and Marketing Things Fall Apart'; ' Things Fall Apart outside Africa'. Proposals for 20 minute papers or for panels should be sent to Professor Lyn Innes by email (c.l.innes@kent.ac.uk) or post (School of English, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NX, UK), no later than March 1st, 2008. Visit the conference website here: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2008/Achebe/index.htm.

CFP: "Building Designing Thinking," University of Jyväskylä, Finland, August 30-31, 2008.

In the introduction to his essay on architecture, Abbé Laugier claims that ”in those arts which are not purely mechanical it is not sufficient to know how to work; it is above all important to learn to think.” But how should one then think about architecture, or rather, think in architecture? Is there a specific architectural way of thinking, as opposed to, say, an art historical way of looking at a building? Can design be a form of thinking? Or does it all boil down to subjective taste? The 3rd International Meeting on the Research of Modern Architecture, organised by the Alvar Aalto Academy, examines the points of contact, the influences and effects, the interactions and affiliations, the correlations and cross-fertilisations, the bonds and links between thinking, designing, and building. Chaired by Kari Jormakka, the meeting takes place in August, 2008, in Helsinki and Jyväskylä, Finland, bringing together practicing architects and architectural pedagogues, philosophers and art historians, sociologists and cultural theorists. Further information is here: http://www.alvaraalto.fi/conferences/2008/.

NEH Seminar: "Narrative Theory: Rhetoric and Ethics in Fiction and Nonfiction (Dir. James Phelan)," Ohio State University, June 16-July 25, 2008.

'Narrative understanding'; 'narrative explanation'; 'narrative as a way of thinking'; 'narrative as self-construction': these phrases are now common currency in the conversations of literary critics, historians, philosophers, social scientists, therapists, legal scholars, and even some scientists and medical professionals, as their disciplines reflect on the ubiquity of storytelling (representing characters and events in a temporal and typically casual sequence) and its power to capture certain truths and experiences in ways that other modes of explanation such as statistics, descriptions, summaries, and abstract analyses cannot. The consensus about the power of narrative invites investigation into its form and into our ways of producing and consuming it: what is it about character, plot, and ways of telling that make narrative such an important way of organizing and explaining experience and knowledge? This seminar will explore the answers to this question provided by a rhetorical theory of narrative and by a range of fictional and nonfictional narratives themselves. The seminar will have two major units: (1) the exploration of rhetorical theory and its conception of the connection between rhetoric and ethics; (2) the placement of rhetorical theory in relation to other branches of narrative theory, including other approaches to ethics, feminist narratology, and cognitive narratology. Throughout both units, we will turn to the narrative texts not only to apply the theories but also to challenge them. Indeed, one of our principles will be that narrative theory should follow the lead of narrative artists not dictate to them. One issue that we will examine from multiple perspectives is the rhetoric and ethics of unreliable narration. Further details are here: http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/Phelan1/neh/index.html.

Olson, Kevin. "Review of Bert van den Brink, et al., eds. RECOGNITION AND POWER." NDPR January 19, 2008.

van den Brink, Bert, and David Owen, eds. Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. In its best moments, academic dialogue brings together the right people at the right time to push a fertile research program to new levels. In this volume we have a carefully focused snapshot of such a moment. The research program in question is Axel Honneth's sustained, increasingly influential attempt to develop a social theory of recognition. The right people are a diverse group of philosophers and social scientists who have contributed to the broader understanding of recognition and its socio-political functions. Here, editors Bert van den Brink and David Owen bring the right people together in a carefully assembled volume focusing on a crucial and underdeveloped aspect of Honneth's theory: its relation to power. This book is made up of carefully worked out papers, but retains the energy of their original conference presentation at Utrecht University. It further captures the dialogical character of this event by including two detailed responses from Axel Honneth. The issue under consideration lies at the heart of Honneth's conception of recognition: the problem of power relations within the very practices of recognition. Honneth's theory is particularly vulnerable to such problems. It is realistic and comprehensive enough to consider recognition in many domains in which power is endemic, from intimate relations and domestic spheres to the institutional realms of law, politics, and the market economy. When we think of these domains as making vital contributions to the full development of individual subjects, we must ask whether power can at the same time exercise a hidden influence. In such circumstances, even normatively positive practices of recognition might produce effects that a critique of power -- a focus of Honneth's earlier work -- would find objectionable. This poses a further challenge for the theory: how can it separate out power-laden forms of recognition from those that are not distorted by power? Absent some such normative means, we may have to conclude that there is a problematic complicity between recognition and power. In this case both would be technologies for producing selves, equally dangerous in their capacity to create docile and useful subjects. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=12203.

CFP: "Pragmatism and Naturalism Workshop," Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS), May 7-9, 2008.

Many views are gathered under the banner of naturalism. What all of them share is a dismissal of aprioristic, high-brow philosophy, prior to all epistemic practices. This view raises major challenges that must ultimately be dealt with, such as whether naturalism allows for the formulation of norms by which our beliefs about the world can be assessed. One option that may be explored in this context is to ask whether a return to pragmatism offers a viable way out of the problems that confront naturalists more generally. Pragmatists have claimed that although all scientific statements are of a hypothetical character, intended to bring us to a state of thought at rest, they are our best guesses at the entities, processes, and structures of the universe. The aim of this workshop is to seek a better understanding of the core meaning and reach of both naturalism and pragmatism. Papers on naturalism, pragmatism and the relation between naturalism and pragmatism are invited. More information here: http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/faculties/humanities/tilps/DescartesLectures/PragNat/.

CFP: "Philosophy Emerging from Culture," Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, Soongsil University, Seoul, July 27-29, 2008.

Email to: cua-rvp@cua.edu I. Sponsored by: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP) The International Society for Metaphysics (ISM) The World Union of Catholic Philosophy Societies (WUCPS) Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea Korean Organizing Committee for the World Congress of Philosophy II. Theme (www.crvp.org) The theme of the 2008 World Congress of Philosophy in Seoul, "Rethinking Philosophy Today" is most appropriate. As groundwork for this broad task The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP) -- with the International Society for Metaphysics (ISM), the World Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies (WUCPS) and Soongsil University -- will hold a more focused conference in Seoul during the three days immediately prior the World Congress of Philosophy. Thus this pre-World Congress meeting will have as its theme "Philosophy Emerging from Culture". Its intent will be to examine this new dynamic of philosophy, moving now not only top-down to restrictively apply broad principles, but bottom-up from the full breadth of human experience and creativity to evolve more rich vision which can liberate and guide. Each morning session will consist of three studies of the day's sub-theme, each with a substantive 25 minute introduction, followed by 45 minutes of open discussion. In the afternoon parallel sessions will enable the participants to delve further into the days theme with 20 minute papers followed by equal time for open and substantive reflection upon the perspectives introduced. Submission of papers: All prospective speakers are requested to submit by March 31, 2008 a 500 word summary of their paper. These will be preprinted, along with the full texts of those selected for presentation in the morning sessions. After the conference all speakers will be asked to submit by December 1, 2008 for publication a fully elaborated edition of their paper with no upper page limit, supporting their argument with notes and references and integrating the contributions made during their discussion in Seoul. Draft Program General Sessions: Mornings Parallel sessions in the afternoons will be devoted to the day's subtheme. 1. The Dynamics of Change: What remains of modernity and why is it no longer adequate for philosophy? a. in defense of modernity: its lasting heritage b. the critique of modernity c. the philosophical dynamics of the transition to a global era 2. The Nature of Culture and its Potential as a Philosophical Source a. the subjective turn b. the new awareness of values and virtues, cultures and civilizations c. the emergence of philosophy from culture 3. The Challenges and Opportunities for Philosophy from the Global Interaction of Cultures and Civilizations a. philosophy expanded to global horizons b. philosophy deepened to basic meaning and values c. philosophy and the integration of radical diversity: again, the one and the many III. Accommodations for both the pre-Congress conference and the World Congress of Philosophy (a) Soongsil University Dormitory: Location: This older student dormitory is located within the campus of Soongsil University; one can walk to the location of the pre-Congress conference. Facilities: Multiple room occupancy with a public bathroom and shower on every floor. Cost: No room charge; a one-time administrative charge of about KRW 50,000 ($54.00); bedding to be purchased on site; further necessities reasonably charged reasonably. (b) 7 Residence Seoul University Stn.: Location: About half an hour from Soongsil University by public transportation (subway US$1.20). Full Facilities: Business Lounge, Coin Laundry Room, Fitness center, American breakfast at restaurant on 1 Floor. Daily Cost: Studio Single / Double – KRW 70,000 (approx. US$76.00) Premium Single /Double – KRW 90,000 (approx. US$98.00) IV. Transportation From the airport to Soongsil University (a) At the 4A or 10B bus stops at Incheon Airport take airport limousine bus to Gangnam Express Bus Terminal or Central City (final bus stop). Buses leave every 10 minutes; approximately 60 minutes to destination; bus fare: 13,000 won or approx US$14.00. (b) Then from Gangnam Express Bus Terminal subway station, take the subway line No. 7 bound for Onsu and get off at the Soongsil University Station. Also it is convenient to take a Taxi; average fare approximately KRW10,000 or US$11.00. From Soongsil University to the World Congress of Philosophy at Seoul National University (a) There is direct bus service from the front of Soongsil University to Seoul University. You may reach there within 30 minutes. (b) The organizing committee is planning a shuttle bus service between Soongsil University and Seoul University for which there will be additional fare. V. The Contact Information: 1. Pre-Congress Conference Registration: Email to: cua-rvp@cua.edu Name: Institution: Field of specialization: Contact information: Address: Telephone: Fax: Email: Paper: (1) title and abstract (2) subsection of the program to which your paper relates 2. Accommodations for both dormitory rooms and Residence for both the July 27-29 pre-Congress conference and the World Congress of Philosophy: Meci Tour, (Ms. Samantha Kim) E-mail: wcp2008@mecitour.com Tel: + 82-2-2082-2316 Fax: +82-2-2082-2300 3. General inquires regarding logistics for the Pre-Congress Conference: WCP2008 Secretariat (Ms. Yoon-Hye Kim) E-mail: secretariat@wcp2008.or.kr Phone: +82-2-2082-2310 Fax: +82-2-2082-2314 4. Contact Information for the World Congress of Philosophy: WCP2008 Secretariat E-mail: secretariat@wcp2008.or.kr Phone: +82-2-2082-2310 Fax: +82-2-2082-2314 The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy P.O. Box 261, Cardinal Station Washington, D.C., 20064 Tel./fax: 202/319-6089 Website: http://www.crvp.org/ E-mail: cua-rvp@cua.edu

PUB: Maddox, Brenda. FREUD'S WIZARD: ERNEST JONES AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS. Perseus, 2007.

. . . In her recent book Brenda Maddox makes a persuasive case for the possibility that Freud's ideas might never have achieved global penetration without Ernest Jones. This is a book about the turbulent, incestuous and ever-intriguing world of early psychoanalysis in its formatting (heroic) period. Maddox skillfully plots the events of Jones's domestic and professional life while outlining the competing theories which came to define different branches of psychoanalysis with clarity and perspective. As rich as anything in the book is the insight into the (personal) relationships between Freud, Jung, and Jones, Klein. . . The books also focuses on their (more or less uncritical) fascination with the psychoanalytic theory. So there is a great deal about their relentless habit of interpreting each other's professional or private conduct in terms of the new discipline, of psychoanalysis. . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4021.

PUB: Dufresne, Todd, ed. AGAINST FREUD: CRITICS TALK BACK. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007.

This work consists of a series of extended interviews with eminent critics of Freud and psychoanalysis in general. Most deal with the minutiae of the development of Freud's ideas, their relationship to his personal motives, and their logical and epistemological status. The question of the extent to which Freud's views were influenced by his biological background is discussed, and they also seek to provide the historical context in which these ideas evolved. A great deal of fascinating material is presented, little known outside the ranks of specialists. For instance, Freud' own accounts of particular cases are compared with those of the patients themselves, bringing out sharp discrepancies. The interviewers were usually skilful in drawing out and challenging the participants, though at times they interrupted the flow of the argument. From this point of view the interview with Frank Sulloway, historian of ideas, seemed to me the most coherent and enlightening one. As one might expect from the title, all are essentially engaged in a demolition job, and one wishes that some voice had been allowed to an attorney for defense. The book evoked in my mind an image of vultures feasting on the corpse of Freud. A particularly tasty morsel was Freud's abandonment of the 'seduction theory', and the question is considered whether Freud was the victim of self-deception or simply a liar. . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4020.

CFP: "Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology," Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society and Sciences Po, Paris, July 9-11, 2008.

The second in a planned series of three events on political theology, this Symposium follows on from the highly successful SCIS Symposium, "The Resurgence of Political Theology," held in September 2007 in Pisa, Italy (parallel to the SCIS-organised political theology section in the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research) and precedes a workshop, "Political Theology and Failure of Democratization" (title tbc), to be held at the Sixth Annual Conference "Workshops in Political Theory" in September 2009 in Manchester, England. Paper proposals (in English, German or French) are invited on any aspect of the significance of anti-liberalism in the intellectual history and historical actuality of political theology as well as on contemporary expressions of anti-liberal tendencies in political theologies.The twenty-first century has been called "the age of political theology." Political theology can as easily express itself as theology-cum-political thought, theology-cum-politics, or politics or social and political thought using theology for argument's sake. Prominent examples are radical Islam, Latin American "liberation theology," African "black theology," religious Zionism, and the Christian right in the United States. A recent contribution from within the discipline of Political Science, "Comparative Political Theology" (Kofmel, 2007), proposes to gain valuable insights into the theoretical foundations of the interplay between religion and politics by comparing political theologies to each other across religious and cultural boundaries. As a result of such study, it has been suggested that the single most important factor underlying all political theologies is anti-liberalism. The particular expression of anti-liberalism is of course always contextualized. The argument has been extended to imply that political theology's being anti-liberal means that it is at least potentially anti-democratic too. Papers given at the 2008 Symposium in Paris will automatically be considered for inclusion in an edited volume on "Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology," which the editors of a series with Continuum have already expressed an interest in publishing. (Papers on the topic submitted by authors unable to attend the Symposium are also welcome and will be considered for inclusion in the volume on a case by case basis.) Please send proposals for papers to be given at the 2008 SCIS Symposium in Paris and to be considered for inclusion in the edited volume to: e.kofmel@sussex.ac.uk or erich.kofmel@sciences-po.orgby 29 February 2008. Further information will also be available at: http://www.scis-calibrate.org/.

CFP: "Communication Policies and Culture in Europe," 2nd Conference, European Communication Research and Education Association, November 15-18, 2008.

The broad theme of this major international congress, "Communication Policies and Culture in Europe," refers to the confluence that can be established between the media and the different interpretations of culture in Europe nowadays. This confluence refers to the globalization effects on a diversity of spaces (multinational, national, local) with all its political implications. It moreover refers to the different mediations and interactions that configure the current European society with respect to migrations, new forms of political participation, the dialectics of identity and diversity, new cultural consumptions, etc. The broad title aims to emphasize the importance of politics and culture, but also refers to new ways of regulation and de-regulation, the technology and the management of convergence within the cultural industries the new public service remit, and the variety of communication policies that aim to guarantee cultural diversity and development in Europe. The Philosophy of Communication section (http://www.philosophy-of-communication.eu/) invites proposals within the area of philosophy of communication, broadly conceived. The Philosophy of Communication Section in particular sets out to consolidate a European forum for the philosophy of communication. The section is explicitly oriented to reflect the cultural variety and the variety of traditions in the history of thought, scholarship and science. The philosophy of communication encompasses a variety of concerns including reflective, theoretical, analytical, normative and historical questions relating to communication as a phenomenon, a dialectical or hermeneutical process, a central element of social reality, a form of expression, a theoretical construct or last but not at least a paradox. What distinguishes Philosophy of Communication from other approaches is the foundational dimension embodied by the Section. The Philosophy of Communication section welcomes contributions that deal with questions regarding theory formation and methodology in communication scholarship, and with fundamental questions regarding the place of communication in human existence. Further information on the conference is available here: http://www.ecrea2008barcelona.org/eng/home.asp.

CFP: "Italian Thought Today: Biopolitics, Nihilism, Empire," School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, April 5-6, 2008.

Against the background of a recent and widespread resurgence of Italian contemporary thought, and Italian leftist political theory in particular, the aim of this conference is twofold. First, the conference intends to explore the notions of biopolitics, Empire, and nihilism as elaborated in the recent works of some of the most important Italian living philosophers. Secondly, and more importantly, this conference aims to assess the impact of these notions on academic fields as diverse as political theory, economics, cognitive science, sociology, and literature. "Italian Thought Today" therefore aspires to promote an interdisciplinary dialogue across the humanities and social sciences that should at the same time also problematise the philosophical notions mentioned above in light of their application to a non-philosophical domain. Is Negri's idea that the globalisation of world markets has led to a progressive decline in the sovereignty of nation-states useful to explain the Realpolitik of today's diplomacy? How can Vattimo's emancipatory concept of "active" nihilism be challenged by the "passive" nihilism that seems to pervade much of contemporary Italian popular culture? Shouldn't Agamben's analyses of the politics of life be expanded in order to include detailed economical considerations? Although the notions investigated in this conference have lately been the object of much attention, the novelty of this conference lies in its intention to contextualise them beyond the boundaries of philosophical discourse. This conference will bring together some of the protagonists of today's Italian philosophical scene, a number of well-established critics of their work, as well as a number of leading scholars from across the humanities and social sciences who, in their recent research, have been confronting themselves with the concepts of biopolitics, Empire, and nihilism. Confirmed speakers:

• Professor Gianni Vattimo (Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, University of Turin, Italy): [title t.b.a.]
• Professor Roberto Esposito (Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, Istituto Scienze Umane, Naples, Italy): Totalitarianism and Biopolitics
• Dr Sergio Benvenuto (Psychoanalyst and Senior Researcher, Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian Council for Scientific Research, Rome, Italy): Return to the Real: Philosophy in the Epoch of Bio-Technologies and Bio-Politics
• Professor Andrea Fumagalli (Associate Professor of Economics, University of Pavia, Italy): Ten Theses on Bioeconomy and Cognitive Capitalism
• Professor Timothy Campbell (Associate Professor, Italian Studies, Cornell University, USA): From the Impolitical to the Impersonal: Roberto Esposito's Politics of Life
• Professor Timothy Murphy (Associate Professor, English, University of Oklahoma, USA): Pedagogy of the Moltitude: Negri on Stage
• Dr Jelica Sumic Riha (Senior Researcher, Institute of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia): Giorgio Agamben's Politics of the Remnant
• Dr Matteo Mandarini (Lecturer in Management in the Cultural Industries, Queen Mary University, University of London): Not Fear But Hope in the Apocalyspse
• Dr Alberto Toscano (Lecturer in Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London): Abstract Life: The Biopolitical Logic of Capitalism and Empire
• Dr Ozren Pupovac (Researcher in Sociology, Open University / Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands): Machiavelli, Negri, Althusser: Encounters and Detours
• Dr Shane Weller (Reader in Comparative Literature, University of Kent): The Art and Ethics of Distortion: Heidegger, Derrida, Vattimo
• Dr Lorenzo Chiesa (Lecturer in Critical Theory, University of Kent): Homo Sacer: A Franciscan Ontology

Further details are here: http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/italian/news/index.html.

CFP: "What is Second Nature? Reason, History, Institutions," 14th Evian Colloquium, July 13-19, 2008.

Human beings have always understood themselves as beings that are not (merely) natural in certain respects. They are faced for this reason with the question of how their way of life should be understood as distinct from their "first nature". As a response to this question, there is widespread agreement that understanding the human way of life involves clarifying how it is essentially shaped through human beings' engagement in practices, an engagement through which they also shape themselves. Familiarly, the concept of culture expresses this basic situation of being human in manifold ways. But insofar as human beings comprehend themselves as beings with a particular first nature, it is also legitimate to account for the human way of life in terms of the workings of this first nature. It is in this theoretical context (among other things) that the invocation of the idea of "second nature" becomes interesting as a possible alternative to that of culture. For what distinguishes the idea of second nature is its insistence that the irreducibly expressive and self-constituting activities of human beings should be understood as broadly natural phenomena, not solely cultural ones. Even if the concept of second nature plays a direct or indirect role in many philosophical traditions, it is far from clear how second nature is to be determined as a broadly natural sphere of human activities. The wide variety of its determinations, ranging in the course of Western thought from Aristotle through Hume and Hegel to Bourdieu and McDowell (to mention only a very small selection of thinkers), can be arguably captured in terms of the three concepts of reason, history, and institutions. But these concepts should not be thought as exhausting all the conceptual possibilities; nor can they be conceived as mutually exclusive alternatives. Is second nature a sphere of living tradition or the lifeworld, as Gadamer has articulated this line of thought by way of his reception of Husserl and Heidegger, one which McDowell has recently appropriated in his own philosophy? Should we rather understand tradition as something essentially informed by reason (which contemporary philosophers like Korsgaard and Davidson have emphasized in their own appropriation of broadly Kantian ideas), or is tradition something fundamentally characterized by institutions as these unfold and develop historically (which philosophers as different from one another as Hegel, Foucault, Bourdieu, and Lukács have each claimed)? Should reason, in the sense that Horkheimer and Adorno emphasize as something instrumental or applying identity logic, be understood as a meta-institution that has achieved, for better or worse, a reified mode of existence? Or should we speak less of the reification of institutions than of the familiarity of practices, as the later Wittgenstein and pragmatists like Peirce and Dewey in different ways suggest? To what extent is the concept of second nature connected with a "naturalization" of the social (and perhaps also with the mental), in a way that feminist thinkers have sought to expose and criticize? Different philosophical traditions and systematic options intersect in multiple ways in the course of reflecting on the idea of second nature. The 14th International Philosophy Colloquium Evian invites philosophers to consider and discuss these intersections in an intensive and collective way. We especially welcome suggestions about possible presentation from (post)structuralist, phenomenological, hermeneutical, and (post)analytical perspectives concerning the idea of second nature, but do not exclude suggestions that come from other philosophical traditions. We seek to discuss and make systematically fruitful the differences and convergences among these approaches in philosophy. The International Philosophy Colloquium Evian aims especially to encourage its participants to transcend the narrow confines of different traditions in philosophy. It is conceived particularly as a place where the divide between continental and analytic philosophy is overcome, or at least where their differences can be rendered philosophically productive. The passive mastery of French, German, and English (the three languages of discussion of the colloquium) is a minimal and indispensable prerequisite for its participants. For details, please visit: http://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/we01/arbeitsbereiche/ab_bertram/eviancolloquium/.

CFP: "Politics and Metaphysics in Kant," 5th Conference, European Consortium for Political Research, Potsdam, September 10-12, 2009.

The past three decades have witnessed the emergence, at the forefront of political thought, of several Kantian theories. Both the critical reaction to consequentialism inspired by Rawlsian constructivism and the universalism of more recent theories informed by Habermasian discourse ethics trace their main sources of inspiration back to Kant’s writings. Yet, much of what is Kantian in contemporary theory is formulated with more or less strict caveats concerning Kant’s metaphysics. These range from radical claims that theories of justice must be political, not metaphysical, to more cautious calls for replacing Kant’s metaphysics with a more modest ontology, for instance, one informed by the relatively recent linguistic turn in philosophy. Given the current “legitimation crisis” of modern liberal democracies, the purpose of this section is to explore the relationship between politics and metaphysics in Kant and Kantian political philosophy, in order to revisit the question concerning the role of metaphysics in political theory. We welcome papers on these and related issues, whether their primary focus is on Kant’s philosophy or on the relevance of Kant’s philosophy for contemporary political philosophy and theories of justice. After the success of last year’s section on ‘Politics and Metaphysics in Kant’ at the 4th ECPR Conference in Pisa, we are planning to put forward again a section proposal on the same theme for the 5th ECPR Conference in Postdam 10-12 September 2009. We would like to know whether anyone would like to express at this stage an interest in suggesting a panel title, chairing a panel or giving a paper. The section proposal has to be submitted by the15th of April 2008, and the more details we can give on the number and content of potential panels, the better our chances might be to be awarded a high number of panel slots for the conference. The previous section outline is copied below to give you some more information about the problems and questions which this section hopes to address, although at this stage we are also open to further suggestions. Please email Kerstin at BuddeK@Cardiff.ac.uk if you think you might be interested to chair a panel, suggest a panel title or present a paper.

"Dissent in Science: Origins and Outcomes," University of California, San Diego, March 3-4, 2008.

Today society is scrambling to figure out how to manage the uses and abuses of science to minimize harm and maximize public benefit. But we face dramatically opposed attitudes to science. On one hand, it is presumed that the correctness of what science teaches does not come into question. On the other, there is widespread dissent even within the scientific community about results, methods and consequences. This project on contingency and dissent in science aims to develop tools for the scrutiny of the correctness of methods and results in the natural and human sciences based on detailed case studies. The full programme of the workshop may be found here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CPNSS/projects/ContingencyDissentInScience/Dissentworkshop.htm.

PUB: KRITIKE: AN ONLINE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY (December 2007).

Editorial: In this Issue of KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy The Editor Featured Essays: 2. Knowledge as Addiction: a Comparative Analysis Hans-Georg Moeller 3. What is Hermeneutics? Romualdo E. Abulad, SVD Articles: 4. Dare to Compare: The Comparative Philosophy of Mou Zongsan Xiaofei Tu 5. Students Feed Monkeys for Education: Using the Zhuangzi to Communicate in a Contemporary System of Education Paul D'Ambrosio 6. The Indirect Perception of Distance: Interpretive Complexities in Berkeley's Theory of Vision Michael James Braund 7. The 'Turn' to Time and the Miscarriage of BeingVirgilio Aquino Rivas 8. The Role of Techne in the Authenticity-Inauthenticity Distinction Kristina Lebedeva 9. The Philippine Church, State, and People on the Problem of Population F. P. A. Demeterio 10.Metaphysics after Aquinas Moses Aaron T. Angeles 11. Symbolism in Religion: Ricoeurian Hermeneutics and Filipino Philosophyof Religion Allan Cacho The journal website: http://www.kritike.org/ Current issue: http://www.kritike.org/Current%20Issue.html Call for papers: http://www.kritike.org/Call%20For%20Papers.html We are also inviting you to submit your work for consideration in the June 2008 issue of the journal. Please click the link for the guidelines: http://www.kritike.org/Call%20For%20Papers.html. We will send an announcement regarding the submission due date shortly.

"Philosophical Poets," Forum for European Philosophy and Centre for Philosophy and Literature, University of Sussex, February 9, 2008.

PHILOSOPHICAL POETS draws inspiration from Three Philosophical Poets, the 1910 volume in which George Santayana discussed Lucretius, Dante and Goethe. Our presentations and panel discussion on modern poets will explore different ways that poets can be philosophical poets, that poetry can be seen as philosophy and that philosophical and poetic analysis can be related in understanding the works of the featured poets. We shall have readings of some of the poems we discuss in English and the original language. Speakers: Professor Angela Livingstone, University of Essex BORIS PASTERNAK: WHAT IS ART IF NOT PHILOSOPHY IN A STATE OF ECSTASY? Taking Pasternak to be, not so much a writer of philosophical poetry, as aphilosophical person who wrote poetry, I shall refer to his poems and hispoetic prose up to about 1930, shall look at his ideas about the origin ofpoetry in life, and shall try to identify his affinities both with thephilosopher Hermann Cohen and with the poet Pasternak admired above all others,Rainer Maria Rilke. Professor Joe Friggieri, University of Malta MONTALE'S METAPHYSICS Poetry resembles philosophy in that both are ways of directing the mind to a better apprehension of some aspect of human experience. The best poets, like the best philosophers, present us with some kind of overall view of the world and of our place in it. In different ways, they call our attention to those features of existence which we tend to lose sight of in our everyday interaction with things. It has been said that a philosophy unaware of mystery would not be a philosophy at all, and that poetry always involves some kind of revelation. This is particularly true of the works of Eugenio Montale, which may be seen as an attempt to deal with the mystery at the heart of existence and at the way the world presents itself to us, expressing a metaphysics in poetic terms. In my talk I will look at the kind of vision emerging from Eugenio Montale's poetic works and the special devices the poet uses to convey it. I will do that through a close reading of three poems, one from each of Montale's main collections: Ossi di seppia, Le Occasioni and La bufera e altro. Hilary Lawson THE POETIC STRATEGY Is poetry capable of approaching a truth which lies beyond the grasp of literal meaning? In the face of the perceived failure of the literal to describe the nature of the world, philosophers, from Heidegger to Rorty, have been tempted by poetry as a possible alternative strategy. What however is the poetic strategy capable of delivering? If poetry avoids saying something in particular how is it capable of saying anything at all? Using TS Eliot's Quartets as a focus I will explore the potential and the limits of such a strategy and outline some consequences for our understanding of language and the world. Professor Simon Critchley, New School for Social Research A FEW POEMS BY FERNANDO PESSOA, ONE BY WALLACE STEVENS AND A BRIEF SKETCH OF A POETIC ONTOLOGY I have two simple, but tricky questions: What does it mean to see poetically? and What might the poet's descriptions of the surfaces of things imply for our relation to things, ourselves and the world? Building on the words of Fernando Pessoa's major heteronym, Alberto Caeiro and a late poem by Wallace Stevens 'Description without Place', I will try and sketch a poetic ontology. APPROACHES TO PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: PANEL DISCUSSION & QUESTIONS Dr. Nicholas Bunnin University of Oxford, Chair Further information about the Forum for European Philosophy can be found on the website: www.philosophy-forum.org. Further information about the Centre for Literature and Philosophy can be found on the website www.sussex.ac.uk/clp/. Conference details are posted at these websites. To book a place, contact: Katerina Deligiorgi K.Deligiorgi@sussex.ac.uk.

CFP: "Beyond Selfishness: Janaway's Nietzsche," St. Peter's College, University of Oxford, March 8, 2008.

A symposium on Christopher Janaway’s recent Beyond Selfishness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Speakers include:

• Chris Janaway, Southampton
• Ken Gemes, Birkbeck/Southampton
• Stephen Mulhall, Oxfor
• Daniel Came, Oxford
• Peter Kail, Oxford

Supported by the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, British Society for the History of Philosophy, the European Journal of Philosophy and St. Peter’s College, Oxford.

Details of programme to follow; enquiries: Peter.Kail@philosophy.ox.ac.uk.