Cfp: White, Daniel, ed. “Philosophy as Critical Theory: the Dialectic of Enlightenment Revisited," THE EUROPEAN LEGACY 15.4 (2010).

In The Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik der Aufklärung, 1944) Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno invoked the voyage of Odysseus—especially his encounter with the Sirens—as a sustained metaphor for the emergence of the “subject” of knowledge, judgment, and discourse out of the mythic substratum of Homeric poetry. The authors understood Odysseus to be the progenitor of the modern Bourgeoisie, tantamount to the Socratic “self” derided by Friedrich Nietzsche and designated by Max Weber as the calculating ratiocinator who gave us “progress” in its various forms: capitalist, socialist, technocratic, and utilitarian. The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School which the authors founded was designed to provide a groundbreaking position. Like Walter Benjamin’s work, in Adorno’s view, “[Its] outlook on modernity as archaic does not preserve the traces of an ostensibly ancient truth, but means the genuine break-out from the dream-captivity of bourgeois immanence” (Adorno, “Portrait of Walter Benjamin, Prisms, Gesammelte Werke 10,1, 247, my translation; also see Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics, New York: Free Press, 1977, p. 61). Enlightenment in the key of Critical Theory thus escapes from the autonomous “subject” conceived by Kant in his essay “Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”; it then engages in the dialectical and communicative dialogue between “self” and “other.” Philosophy as critical theory then becomes irreducibly social and cultural. It can still recall G.W.F. Hegel’s project in which philosophy “transfigures (verklärt) reality, which appears unjust,” even if it cannot at present “reconcile (versöhnt) the real with the rational” as Hegel envisioned (Einleitung, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte [Introduction, Lectures on the Philosophy of History], Sämtliche Werke, VIII, Georg Lasson, ed. Leipzig: Meiner, 1920, p. 55, my translation). Accordingly, in the proposed special issue I would like to call for a reopening of the meeting between the Odysseus and the Sirens. The key question I would like to address is, “What is the critical role of philosophy today in its relationship to other ‘voices’ in the social sciences and the humanities?” Some questions that contributors might consider are, for example: What are the most important forms which the Sirenic encounter takes now in the 21st century? How has it been transformed by the meeting of Europeans, the “elect,” the “chosen,” the “haves,” et al. with their “others”? What do the Sirens have to say about Odysseus? Is “consciousness” principally a matter of “constraint” or “closure,” as in the case of Odysseus tied to the mast? Is “identity” a matter of self-exclusion from an ecology of “differences,” as when the unitary Odyssean subject travels through the “strange” realm of voices yet remains “himself”? What is the role of philosophy once it has deconstructed what Ezra Talmor has called “the hierarchy of narratives” in which claims of truth and legitimization of power reside (see Talmor, “Hierarchy of Narratives III,” ISSEI Listserv, October-November 1997, as well as my “Comment” and the following exchange, 97‑11‑02 ff.)? Socratic “Philosophy,” as Nietzsche saw it, arose from the construction and rationalization of subjectivity in Greek texts from Homer through Plato. What is its “fate” or “course” now when it is undertaken as an interdisciplinary critical theory that can no longer assume the hegemony of the “subject” or its “reason”? How does Odysseus fare now that he must traverse the virtual dream-world of The Matrix? Papers should be 6,000 words in length, submitted by email in MS Word format, and in the documentation style specified by The European Legacy; they should include full contact information at the bottom of the cover page; they should be sent, by August 1, 2009, to Daniel White: dwhite@fau.edu, Wilkes Honors College, Florida Atlantic University, 5353 Parkside Drive, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA.

Bruns, Gerald L. Review of Two Books on Animals and J. M. Coetzee. NDPR (May 2009).

Cavell, Stanley, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Ian Hacking, and Cary Wolf. Philosophy and Animal Life. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. Mulhall, Stephen. The Wounded Animal: J. M. Coetzee and the Difficulty of Reality in Literature and Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. In 1997 the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee was invited to give the annual Tanner Lectures at Princeton University. His presentations were entitled, "The Philosophers and the Animals" and "The Poets and the Animals," and were later published as The Lives of Animals (Princeton University Press, 1999), a volume that also included texts by Princeton's original respondents to Coetzee's lectures -- Peter Singer (a philosopher), Marjorie Garber (a literary critic), Wendy Doniger (an historian of religion), and Barbara Smuts (a primatologist); the philosopher Amy Gutmann provided an introduction. Some of the respondents were brought up short by the fact that Coetzee's lectures were not really lectures at all but rather a two-part short story about a lecture and a seminar presented by a fictional Australian novelist, Elizabeth Costello, at Appleton College, an imaginary American university. As Coetzee developed it, the subject of Costello's lecture is our pervasive indifference to the horror of raising and killing animals for food -- a blindness Costello compares to the willful ignorance of Nazi death-camps among ordinary Germans and Poles during World War II. As it happens, Costello's argument is not so much in behalf of animal rights or vegetarianism as it is a polemic against the support that philosophy, with its genius for categories and distinctions, has always given to our inhumane treatment of non-human creatures. Hers is a bitter critique of reason as a distancing factor that insulates us against animal suffering. After complaints against Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes, she cites Thomas Nagel's famous question, "What is like to be a bat?," in order to reject his answer that there is no getting inside bat consciousness. Costello thinks Nagel is just withholding himself and his concepts of subjective experience from the bat. She proposes instead something like Keats's idea of "negative capability," namely the poet's ability to inhabit imaginatively the lives of others, whether human or otherwise (a nightingale, for example). For Elizabeth Costello, the mere fact of fiction-writing refutes Nagel's position: "If I can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster, any being with whom I share the substrate of life." Sharing here means empathy with the "fullness of life" that every creature enjoys. Whether it is embodied in humans or non-humans, this fullness of life is Elizabeth Costello's definition of the good, and empathy is the requisite of the good life. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16106.

Dobson, Roger. "Creative Minds: the Links between Mental Illness and Creativity." THE INDEPENDENT May 5, 2009.

At first glance, Einstein, Salvador Dali, Tony Hancock, and Beach Boy Brian Wilson would seem to have little in common. Their areas of physics, modern art, comedy, and rock music, are light years apart. So what, if anything, could possibly link minds that gave the world the theory of relativity, great surreal art, iconic comedy, and songs about surfing? According to new research, psychosis could be the answer. Creative minds in all kinds of areas, from science to poetry, and mathematics to humour, may have traits associated with psychosis. Such traits may allow the unusual and sometimes bizarre thought processes associated with mental illness to fuel creativity. The theory is based on the idea that there is no clear dividing line between the healthy and the mentally ill. Rather, there is a continuum, with some people having psychotic traits without having the debilitating symptoms. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/features/creative-minds-the-links-between-mental-illness-and-creativity-1678929.html.

Davis, Jordan. "Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis's NARNIA." THE NATION May 25, 2009.

Miller, Laura. The Magician's Book: a Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia. Boston: Little, Brown, 2008. In his criticism and the Narnia books, Lewis puts a premium on lush physical description, going beyond sight and sound to emphasize smell, taste and touch whenever possible. And he has the knack for what Soviet critic Viktor Shklovsky called ostranenie, or "enstrangement"--presenting familiar objects, scenes, feelings or even religious beliefs in an unfamiliar light so that the reader can experience them as if for the first time. These are indispensable qualities of Lewis's best work, but they do not in themselves explain the fervor with which young readers form lifelong attachments to his stories. In The Magician's Book, Laura Miller has written an account of returning as an adult to the Narnia books, trying to understand what in them stunned her 9-year-old self into a life of wanting nothing more than to read. It is a strange, often dispiriting book, announcing itself as both memoir and literary criticism; in fact, Miller submerges her own story and never quite focuses completely on the work at hand or, for that matter, on what in Lewis's reading helped lead him to create an imaginary place she once longed to visit. Miller's declared goal is to illuminate the Narnia books' "other, unsung dimensions, especially the deep roots of the Chronicles in the universal experiences of childhood and in English literature." What Miller ends up doing is revisiting for a while the pleasure of identifying wholeheartedly with a character in a story. This immersion, incidentally, was a particular interest of Lewis's. His remarkable book-length essay An Experiment in Criticism is an attempt to suspend labeling books as good or bad. Instead, looking closely at what people do when they read, he works from the premise that discussion of books takes place only among that small, odd group of readers who take pure pleasure in reading and rereading books not for self-improvement or snob appeal but because going even a few days without reading makes them ill. The many, he writes, read books to gratify personal wishes, finding what they look for, as opposed to hearing what the books have to say, experiencing what they mean to do to the reader. Unfamiliar description is, for this kind of reader, an impediment, "like trying to sell him something he has no use for at a price he does not wish to pay." And the necessary conditions of good writing--excitement, mystery and what comes of seeking happiness--are mistaken for sufficient. Lewis diagnoses the habit of reading to identify with characters as "castle-building," the egoistic fantasizing dramatized in the (soon to be remade) Danny Kaye comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It is, he acknowledges, a pleasurable way to read, and it isn't fatal. He cites Anthony Trollope as an example of someone who began as a castle-builder and who went on to imagine worlds not entirely populated by himself. But for a critic, it is not the ideal mode when looking for what makes a book. There is, after all, something besides the reader to find. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/davis/single?rel=nofollow.

White, Hayden. "The Aim of Interpretation is to Create Perplexity in the Face of the Real." HISTORY AND THEORY 48 (2009).

An Interview with Erlend Rogne. What structuralism taught me was that the situation is always structured. And like language, from the beginning it’s arbitrarily structured, or it is structured to the advantage of certain groups in the totality. The rules themselves are arbitrarily put in place. They also make communication possible. But one of the rules of language use and of social being is that humans not only can live by rules, but they can change rules, and can make a distinction between rule-governed activity and rule-changing activity. One comes to situations in which the press of the situation is to force you to come to one and only one conclusion about what you should do. But in reality you come trailing with all of these other obligations, so that you have to constantly think dialectically. I think structuralism ultimately is critical of highly structured societies. It tries to explain how social systems are possible, and how they function, but always behind it was the question of how social systems change. And that’s what poststructuralism dealt with: how does noise in the system build to the point where it explodes the system itself? That’s what Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan are all about. Post-structuralism is a necessary supplement, or complement, to structuralism. And it played itself out over a period of about thirty years, like all systems do. In came structuralism, in the period just before and during the Second World War, at a point in which capitalist society had reached a period of hyper-structuralization for purposes of war. A society shuts down any kind of individualism in times of war. It becomes a state of the exception, as Giorgio Agamben calls it. They say: “OK, once you had all of these freedoms and rights, but we can’t afford that now. The terrorists are about to attack us.” Just like President George W. Bush's perplexit y in the face of the real 67 is seeking to restrict the rights of Americans on the grounds that the terrorist threat requires that we can’t afford them, they’re luxuries. (Let me say that I don’t think they’re luxuries.) So structuralism, with Claude Lévi-Strauss and people of that ilk, and also like sociologists of Weber’s type before the War, really provides the solution to the question of how people like Adolf Eichmann, who thought they were just ordinary guys doing their job, could do what they did. How was it possible? They were so completely assimilated to the system that they’d lost all sense of there being an option to their performing these kinds of deeds. I think structuralism is really about the nature of advanced capitalist society, a society that becomes more and more structured and more and more determinative of the nature of the choices of the individual, while at the same time providing them with the sense that their choices are free! They say that it’s an open market, when in reality the advertising propaganda so condition the individual that there’s no choice involved! Structuralism explains how this terrible machine of advanced capitalist society, which is responsible for the destruction of the whole ecosphere, is possible. And post-structuralism explains how it is possible to oppose this machine. That’s the way I would put it. And by the way, I think that the French versions of structuralism and post-structuralism owe everything to Sartre and his attempt to combine existentialism and Marxist conceptions of history and society. Another person who really has had a profound influence on me is Roland Barthes. I think that Barthes was the most inventive writer and critic of the post-World War Two generation in France. It was under his inspiration that I turned not so much to linguistics as to discourse theory, and began to see history as discourse rather than as discipline. I would say that that was very liberating for me, as I know it has been liberating for others. Discourse has to do with the production of meaning through combination and through what Georg Lukács called composition. Research is a necessary part of the rules of the game of professional historiography—it sets restraints on what you can do—but still, the payoff is nothing if it doesn’t get distilled into a discourse. And the discourse can either be a narrative or it can be a structural work. But once you begin to see the human sciences, and the social sciences in general, as discourse, you see that these have their functions in the self-production of the human in response to different situations across time and space. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/Rogne.pdf.

Spiegel, Gabrielle M. "The Task of the Historian." AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 114.1 (2009): 1-15.

Traditionally, for historians, the ethical core of our professional commitment has been a belief that our arduous, often tedious labor yields some authentic knowledge of the dead “other,” a knowledge admittedly shaped by the historian's own perceptions and biases, but nonetheless retaining a degree of autonomy, in the sense that it cannot be made entirely to bend to the historian's will. This founding belief in the irreducible otherness of the past conferred on history its proper function, which was to recover that past in as close an approximation of “how it actually was” as possible. In the interest of preserving the autonomy of the past, the historian practiced modesty as a supreme ethical virtue, discreetly holding in abeyance his or her own beliefs, prejudices, and presuppositions. Yet this traditional understanding of the nature, epistemological grounding, truth‐value, and goals of historical research faced a significant challenge beginning in the late 1960s and the 1970s with the emergence of what came to be known as the “linguistic turn,” the belief that language is the constitutive agent of human consciousness and the social production of meaning, and that our apprehension of the world, both past and present, arrives only through the lens of language's precoded perceptions. Moreover, language, once understood as a relatively neutral medium of communication, sufficiently transparent to convey a reasonably accurate sense of reality, itself had been reconceptualized with the emergence of structural linguistics or semiotics, a movement that began with the publication in 1916 of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. Far from reflecting the social world of which it is a part, language, Saussure argued, precedes the world and makes it intelligible according to its own rules of signification. Since for Saussure such rules are inherently arbitrary, in the sense of being social conventions implicitly understood in different ways by differing linguistic communities, the idea of an objective universe existing independently of speech and universally comprehensible despite one's membership in any particular language system is an illusion. Such was the “semiotic challenge” posed to the practice of historiography by the rise of structural linguistics and continuing with the successive emergence of structuralism, semiotics, and poststructuralism, including the elaboration of deconstruction. The principal impact of these cognate developments was felt most intensely in the period after World War II; after 1965 they assumed the name “linguistic turn,” a term disseminated by the pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty in his essay “Metaphysical Difficulties of Linguistic Philosophy” and generalized to various disciplines throughout the course of the seventies and after. Whether or not the linguistic turn constituted the kind of epistemological crisis for historiography that several of my predecessors in this office believed, it is clear that it represented a massive change in our understanding of the nature of historical reality, the methods of research we deployed in seeking to recover the past, and the nature of the truth claims that could be asserted about the product of our labors. Never entirely accepted in the full range of its claims, it nonetheless had a significant impact on how historians construed their basic tasks and the procedures and language in which they were conducted. Anyone who has lived through the last four decades of change in historiographical praxis can appreciate the need to investigate how such a profound transformation in the nature and understanding of historical work, both in practice and in theory, could have taken place. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/ahr.114.1.1?cookieSet=1.

Miller, Russell. "R. D. Laing: the Abominable Family Man." TIMES April 12, 2009.

Eighteen months before she died of leukaemia at the age of 21, Susan Laing, RD Laing’s second oldest daughter, was interviewed by The Sunday Times Magazine for a 1974 feature about the children of celebrities. Her contribution was unutterably sad. She claimed that her father, then the best-known psychiatrist in Britain bar Jung and Freud, could not get accustomed to his children being grown up. “We’ve got too many problems for him,” she said. “He can solve everybody else’s, but not ours.” It was a rare insight into the chaotic private life of a man lauded as one of the most controversial and remarkable figures in the history of psychiatry. RD Laing frequently asserted that mental illness was rooted in the family, yet he treated his own family abominably. He abandoned his first five children and left them in penury. He went on to father five more children with three different women, had innumerable affairs, was subject to violent drunken rages and became obsessed with his own fame. Yet he treated patients with extraordinary compassion and empathy, qualities he denied his own family. . . . Read the rest here: http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article6058901.ece.

Grayling, A. C. "Brain Science and the Search for the Self." NEW SCIENTIST March 20, 2009.

Belief in the idea of a substantial soul - a "you" that is separate from your body - was waning. In the absence of this metaphysical entity as a convenience for underpinning personal identity, what, asked Molyneaux, makes the retired general continuous with the eager subaltern of 40 years before, and he with the red-cheeked baby in his nurse's arms 20 years before that? In response, Locke added a chapter to his second edition which instantly caused a storm of controversy and has been famous ever since in the annals of philosophy. In that chapter Locke argued that a person's identity over time resides in their consciousness (he coined this term, and here introduced it to the English language) of being the same self at a later time as at an earlier, and that the mechanism that makes this possible is memory. Whereas a stone is the same stone over time because it is the very same lump of matter - or almost, allowing for erosion - and an oak tree is identical with its originating acorn because it is the same continuous organisation of matter, a person is only the same through time if he or she is self-aware of being so. Memory loss interrupts identity, and complete loss of memory is therefore loss of the self. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127006.800-will-brain-science-reveal-a-self.html.

Morton, Brian. "It's the Greatest Show on Earth." OBSERVER March 8, 2009.

Dutton, Dennis. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution. London: Bloomsbury, 2008. The peacock's tail gave Darwin considerable grief. A single feather made him feel "sick". The bird's cumbersome display seemed to confound the guiding principle of natural selection: that any evolved form should answer fittedness to environment. Not until his last book, The Descent of Man, did he come up with a satisfactory answer based on "natural selection in relation to sex". Even in his final years, Darwin had little to say about aesthetics but his theory of evolution does prepare the way for a comprehensive understanding of what art is and why we make it. Denis Dutton's title is also his conclusion. In 250 elegant pages, he demonstrates that aesthetics are linked at the profoundest level to our biological and cognitive prehistory, and that our "tastes" - those famously wavering and manipulable urges - emerged in the Pleistocene, and haven't changed in essentials since then. For Dutton, cultural relativism is an academic parlour game. Human arts speak to a universal human nature different only in plumage. This is an interpretation that runs counter to the view - held by Stephen Jay Gould among others - that art is merely the by-product of an over-sized brain and should be excluded from the natural selection rulebook. Evolutionary biologists have argued that human emotions emerged as a mechanism for orchestrating specific biological needs, harmonising potential actions in a useful way. Fear is a way of getting the body prepared for potential dangers. When risk and therefore fear are no longer aspects of day-to-day survival - no sabre-tooths on Hampstead Heath! - fear remains with us as an objectless emotion, and evolution leads smoothly on to Hammer House of Horror. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/08/art-instinct-brian-morton-review.

Shermer, Michael. "A Skeptic's Take on the Public Misunderstanding of Darwin." SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (February 2009).

On July 2, 1866, Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, wrote to Charles Darwin to lament how he had been “so repeatedly struck by the utter inability of numbers of intelligent persons to see clearly or at all, the self acting & necessary effects of Nat Selection, that I am led to conclude that the term itself & your mode of illustrating it, however clear & beautiful to many of us are yet not the best adapted to impress it on the general naturalist public.” The source of the misunderstanding, Wallace continued, was the name itself, in that it implies “the constant watching of an intelligent ‘chooser’ like man’s selection to which you so often compare it,” and that “thought and direction are essential to the action of ‘Natural Selection.’” Wallace suggested redacting the term and adopting Herbert Spencer’s phrase “survival of the fittest.” Unfortunately, that is what happened, and it led to two myths about evolution that persist today: that there is a prescient directionality to evolution and that survival depends entirely on cutthroat competitive fitness. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=darwin-misunderstood.

"Has Einstein Failed Physics?" SCIENCE CENTRIC May 13, 2009.

The GBP3.6bn Large Hadron Collider is one of world's most advanced scientific experiments, built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang. Unfortunately it doesn't work. Now a new paper by a North East academic presents the intriguing possibility that the Large Hadron Collider didn't work not because of mechanical failure, but because basic theories of physics may be wrong. Dr Peter Hayes says: 'Theoretical physicists have been barking up the wrong tree for the last hundred years - because Albert Einstein's theory of relativity is inconsistent. 'Over the years many people have pointed out that there are logical flaws in the theory. Back in the 1960s Professor Herbert Dingle warned that large scale experiments drawing on relativity theory might end by destroying the world. Perhaps we are lucky that the Large Hadron Collider merely broke down!' Read the rest here: http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/article.php?q=09051352-has-einstein-failed-physics.

Cfp: Philosophy and the Work of Art, Annual Meeting, Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, Monash University, November 29-December 1, 2009.

Keynote Speakers will include: Tina Chanter - De Paul University, Chicago Miguel de Beistegui - Warwick University, UK Rosalyn Diprose - University of New South Wales, Australia Steven Crowell - Rice University, Houston The conference will also include special sessions on the work of: Genevieve Lloyd - Macquarie University, Australia Jeff Malpas - University of Tasmania, Australia Paul Redding - University of Sydney, Australia Further information is here: http://www.conferences.monash.org/ascp2009/.

Barber, Michael. Review of Bill Martin's ETHICAL MARXISM. NDPR (May 2009).

Martin, Bill. Ethical Marxism: the Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Chicago: Open Court, 2008. Bill Martin seeks to restore to Marxist discourse, characterized often by an economic reductivism and philosophical positivism traceable to Karl Marx himself, neglected or even rejected ethical dimensions that have found a high point of expression in the ethics of Immanuel Kant. This admirable project of restoration recaptures ethical dimensions at least implicit in the work of Marx and more explicit in the early work, insofar as Marx's "fourth" formulation of the categorical imperative, namely to overthrow the conditions that degrade humanity, suggests how his project extends Kant's insights to the political and economic realm. This recovery of ethics also will entail that Marxists must address issues of subjectivity, intentionality, and normativity, which Marx may have thought his systemic analyses rendered irrelevant. It further entails that they must examine what is ethically required beyond simply advancing class interests, particularly of those to be found only in advanced capitalist nations. An ethical Marxism will also oppose any teleology or strict laws for history, in which humanity's goals could be achieved without any free, human effort and in which, as a result, such effort would seem no longer really to matter. At the same time, because ethics cannot transform society by itself, Martin wants to retain Marx's systemic analyses that begin with a primary focus on production and the commodification of labor, the producer of value. Marx, however, did not appreciate as well as Lenin did how capitalism was expanding globally through the colonial era until it reached its present imperialist status in which those who are competitively advantaged economically employ assorted strategies (including military force) to dominate others, instrumentalize their lives, and acquire resources, cheap labor, and markets. Since for Martin imperialism, with its devastating effects, is the ethical question of our time, he opposes Ronald Aronson's reformist and social-democratic post-Marxist foundationalism in favor of one that is revolutionary and communist. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16065.

Hsu, Jeremy. "Why Dead Authors Can Thrill Modern Readers." LIVE SCIENCE April 15, 2009.

Classic stories still retain their storytelling power centuries later, and smart remakes do well to retain much of the original plot. That's the case in a new literary mash-up, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," where Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy take time away from courtship to hone their martial arts skills on the walking dead – a twist welcomed by both critics and "Janeite" fans of British author Jane Austen. Such fascination with stories has compelled a small group of researchers to mine theories in evolutionary biology and psychology, in hopes of finding a connection between storytelling and the evolved human mind. Most agree that stories represent products of humanity's highly social existence, but debate rages over whether stories themselves may have evolved as an adaptation or social byproduct. Their early findings could help explain why the best stories endure, and why remakes can find success despite seemingly retreading old ground. After all, Austen and other beloved storytellers may have found the sweet spot in tickling the social sensibilities of a modern mind not far removed from early Homo sapiens, let alone 19th-century British society. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.livescience.com/culture/090415-zombie-austen.html.

Miller, Cheryl. "Bad Little Fictions." CLAREMONT REVIEW OF BOOKS (Fall 2008).

Fisher, Paul. House of Wits: an Intimate Portrait of the James Family. Boston: Little, Brown, 2008.

Occasionally, I like to imagine my ideal dinner party. The guest list changes frequently, but George Eliot, Edith Wharton, and Jane Austen are always welcome at my table. Not the Jameses, however—at least not given Paul Fisher's wearying account of them in House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family. By turns self-pitying, hypochondriacal, and—it cannot go unmentioned—sexually repressed, a more frustrated (and frustrating) clan of eminent Victorians one could scarcely imagine. In any event, the scheduling would be a nightmare, what with their many engagements and even more numerous nervous breakdowns. House of Wits might have been much more aptly titled "House of Fits." The trouble begins on the very first page, where Fisher, currently a professor of American literature at Wellesley, arranges epigraphs from Nietzsche and psychologist Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child (1983). Yes, it's that kind of book. Success, the Nietzsche selection declares, is the "biggest liar," and "great men" are "bad little fictions invented afterwards." The Miller quotation is all sympathetic psychobabble, with the poor "gifted child" suffering the agonies of "depression," "emptiness," and "self-alienation." There is no better summary of House of Wits: Fisher takes his "great men" and lays them out on the psychiatrist's couch, where he exposes the "gifted children" within, their fragile psyches still bruised from childhood traumas. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1576/article_detail.asp.

Romano, Carlin. "An Author's Favorite Wittgenstein." CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION April 24, 2009.

Waugh, Alexander. The House of Wittgenstein: a Family at War. London: Bloomsbury, 2008. Who cares about Kant's eight siblings, or Kierkegaard's six, even if the early death of five of the latter helped trigger what we now call Kierkegaardian gloom? Doesn't the singular fame and importance of a cultural immortal rightly eclipse our interest in family members, unless they deserve attention on their own merits? Aren't such icons usually rebels anyway, honoring their families mainly by breaching their traditions and beliefs? Think back to the most discouraging experience a serious reader ever faces — starting one of those huge, putatively definitive biographies about a genius in the arts or politics. Publishing folk used to call them "Blotner bios," after a kitchen-sink effort on Faulkner, but the term has faded. You wade at the beginning through generations of Faulknerian mammies and pappies, grandmammies and grandpappies, greatand not-so-great uncles and aunts, on the theory that they significantly influenced the subject of the biography and should affect our understanding of his or her life. By Page 130, you find yourself praying for the birth of the book's subject as a Tibetan might pray for the next Dalai Lama. Happily, we're occasionally spared those doorstops, as with ancient notables. It's tough enough providing decent sketches of Plato's or Aristotle's actual lives, given our fragmentary evidence for much of the classical past. With an ancient luminary, it's simply impossible for an obsessive biographer to ramble on for scores of pages about whether Plato's allegory of the cave involved unrequited feelings for his grandmother. Of course, we can all think of exceptions to antifamily bias in intellectual biography. In the United States, we have the James gang — William, Henry, and Alice — who attract a new biographer about as often as Slavoj Zizek publishes a new book. They, at least, boast consequential, independent careers and a fascination and intimacy with one another that warrants exploration. But aren't most excessive voyages into the undiscovered country of a great figure's family simply a data dump by the author, or a showing off of exclusive material? Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War (Doubleday) stirs such thoughts for multiple reasons. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i33/33b00401.htm.

Cfp: "The Politics of Life: Michel Foucault and the Biopolitics of Modernity," Södertörn University College, Stockholm, September 3-5, 2009.

Confirmed Speakers: Thomas Lemke Maurizio Lazzarato Julian Reid Boris Groys Catherine Mills Johanna Oksala Frédéric Gros Vikki Bell Ever since the concepts of “biopolitics” and “biopower” appeared in the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality in 1976, they have continued to provoke responses. In 1976 Foucault picks up themes already developed in Discipline and Punish, and describes a shift in the structure of power that takes us from the epoch of sovereignty, in which the right of the ruler is to take life or let live, to the modern conception of power as a way to enhance, render productive, compose, maximize, and administer life. In some respects this is an undeniable progress toward a more “humane” world, but, as Foucault underlines, it also leads to a biological conception of politics. To exterminate the enemy, to expel the degenerate, the enemy of the people or the class from the social body in order to attain purity—all of this will become possible precisely because the body politic comes to be perceived as a living entity that must be attended to, and not just a source of disturbances that must be repressed. Foucault’s research, which soon came to graft the concept of biopolitics onto the idea of a specifically modern idea of “governmentality,” and then to the idea of “apparatus of security”—all of which also constitutes a self-critique with respect to the earlier “disciplinary” model—has been a major source of inspiration for philosophy, political science and gender studies, as well as in bioethics and analyses of security apparatuses and techniques of surveillance. Foucault’s ideas have been critically extended in highly diverse ways, often taking them far beyond their initial formulations—all of which indicate the extent to which thinking with, through, beyond and perhaps also against the questions posed by Foucault has proved to be a fertile ground for research. The conference takes its point of departure in the work of Foucault, but seeks to gather researchers from all relevant fields in assessing the applicability of his thought to the present, which undoubtedly also means to envisage the possibility of different and alternative futures. It offers a limited space for presentations of ongoing research (approximately 20 non-invited papers will be accepted). Sessions will be organized primarily around the following three general topics: A) Body, gender, individuation: how has the question of biopolitics transformed the conceptualization of subjectivity, desire, and sexuality? How should we understand the processes of subject formation and of ”subjectivation” in contemporary societies, in which medical and other technologies have come to increasingly determine our ideas of selfhood? What are the political and ethical issues involved in such an ongoing redefinition of subjectivity? B) Surveillance, security, control: to what extent are Foucault’s analyses of surveillance and security apparatuses applicable today? Have we entered into a “society of control” (Deleuze), and if so, what are the challenges for current political theory and for the idea of resistance and for insurgent practices? What kind of techniques are today employed to survey, generate security, and control? C) Architecture, urbanism, and the ordering of space: how should we understand biopolitics in architecture and urban space? Are emancipatory architectures and urbanisms possible, in a situation in which, as Hardt and Negri claim, the Metropolis has replaced the Factory as a spatial paradigm? Can the concept of “heterotopia” be useful for the development of spatial and urban strategies? Send in your abstract of maximum 200 words, including information of affiliation and degree major to: jakob.nilsson@mail.film.su.se. Deadline for abstracts is May 15. Further information may be found here: http://filosofia.fi/node/4403.

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

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

Rudd, Anthony. Review of W. Glenn Kirkconnell's KIERKEGAARD ON ETHICS AND RELIGION. NDPR (May 2009).

Kirkconnell, W. Glenn. Kierkegaard on Ethics and Religion: from Either/Or to Philosophical Fragments. London: Continuum, 2008. This book is an attempt to read Kierkegaard's early pseudonymous writings in the light of his early (non-pseudonymous) Upbuilding Discourses, and vice versa. Kirkconnell notes in his brief introductory chapter that we tend either to read only the pseudonymous works or to read them and the Discourses separately from one another. But, he notes, "Kierkegaard imagined an ideal reader who would divine the works were related and would compare the two series to one another . . . noting the contrasts and convergences between them" (2). So he proposes, as a hermeneutical experiment, that we should read these works in the order in which they were written, looking for connections between the signed and the pseudonymous works. And, he concludes: "This experiment does indeed yield interesting results" (146). Kirkconnell argues that his approach brings out the religious agenda underlying even what seem to be largely secular works such as Either/Or and Repetition, and shows the development of an increasingly rigorous religious outlook, from Judge William's accommodating inclusion of the religious within an autonomous, humanistic ethics in Either/Or to the radical Lutheran emphasis on human sinfulness and the need for grace in the Fragments. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16045.

"Narrative Medicine and Rare Diseases," Aula Pocchiari Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, June 26, 2009.

This meeting aims to promote among health workers the knowledge of narrative medicine as a functional tool in the management of patients, with particular attention to people with rare diseases. Rare diseases are often severe, chronic, and disabling conditions with a low prevalence in the population. They are difficult to diagnose and often non treatable. Patients and their families may have a perception of intense isolation, alike the sense of powerlessness felt by medical and health professionals who take care of these people. Therefore, it strongly emerges the need to build up a strong relationship between the affected person with a rare disease and the health workers. Narrative medicine aims to fill the gap between the bedside clinical knowledge of physicians (and more in general of health professionals) and the patient's subjective experience and to short that distance, "taking together” both actors in the management of the disease. This tool consists in different contributions from a number of approaches and techniques. The event includes the presentation of different perspectives and methodologies in the field of narrative medicine, through invited lectures, programmed speeches, plenary sessions and a poster session mainly devoted to practical experiences. Further information is available here: http://www.iss.it/.

"Towards a European Political Thought: in the Footsteps of Herodotus," European University Institute, Florence, July 6-7, 2009.

For further information on the inaugural conference of the European Society for the History of Political Thought, including the programme, please visit: http://europoliticalthought.wordpress.com/inaugural-conference/.

Pub: HISTORY AND THEORY 48 (February 2009).

Articles:

• STEVEN G. SMITH, "Historical Meaningfulness in Shared Action" abstract Wiley InterScience
• ANTOON DE BAETS, "The Impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the Study of History" abstract Wiley InterScience
• MARK THURNER, "The Founding Abyss of Colonial History: Or 'The Origin and Principle of the Name of Peru'” abstract Wiley InterScience

Interview:

• ERLEND ROGNE, "The Aim of Interpretation is to Create Perplexity in the Face of the Real: Hayden White in Conversation with Erlend Rogne" Wiley InterScience [downloadable for free here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/freearticle.html]

Review Essays:

• MARTIN JAY on Charles Taylor, A Secular Age Wiley InterScience A Secular Age
• LLOYD KRAMER on Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey Wiley InterScience Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey
• NOËL BONNEUIL on David J. Staley, History and Future: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future Wiley InterScience History and Future: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future
• JAMES CRACRAFT on Martin Malia, History’s Locomotives: Revolutions and the Making of the Modern World Wiley InterScience History' s Locomotives: Revolutions and Making of the Modern World
• MICHAEL PRINTY on Annabel Brett and James Tully, ed., Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, and on D. N. DeLuna, ed., The Political Imagination in History: Essays Concerning J. G. A. Pocock The Political Imagination in History: Essays concerning J.G.A. Pocock Wiley InterScience
• GEORG G. IGGERS on Jörn Rüsen, ed., Meaning and Representation in History Wiley InterScience Meaning and Representation in History
• GIUSEPPINA D'ORO on Karsten R. Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences (Bradford Books)
• DAVID KONSTAN on Salvatore Settis, The Future of the 'Classical' Wiley InterScience The Future of the Classical

Visit the journal homepage here: http://www.historyandtheory.org/index.html.

"Art, Aesthetics and the Sexual," University of Kent, May 21-22, 2009.

An international conference investigating the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pictures and films with sexual imagery and themes. Speakers and respondents include: David Davies (McGill University, Canada) Elizabeth Cowie (University of Kent, UK) Susan Dwyer (University of Maryland, USA) Jerrold Levinson (University of Maryland, USA) Alex Neill (University of Southampton, UK) Michael Newall (University of Kent, UK) Elisabeth Schellekens (Durham University, UK) Murray Smith (University of Kent, UK) Kathleen Stock (University of Sussex, UK) Cain Todd (Lancaster University, UK). The conference programme and registration form are now available at: http://www.aesthetics-research.org/.

Hassan, Ihab. "Literary Theory in an Age of Globalisation." PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE 32.1 (2009).

When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" Forget the blackbirds for now. The question is: how many ways are there of questioning theory in our age? And if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the earth wobbles under the weight of six billion beholders, what is beauty then? Or is beauty unmentionable in academe, despite the indiscretions of some scholars–Elaine Scarry, Fred Turner, Charles Jencks, among others–who have recently taken the name of beauty in vain? Again, forget beauty and the blackbirds; think of geography. Thomas Friedman went home one day and said to his wife, "Honey, I think the world is flat." He was echoing a technocrat in Bangalore who said to him, "Tom, the playing field is being leveled." Leveled or flattened, they both meant the world is very round: interactive, interdependent, instantaneous, contemporaneous–and viciously fractious withal. The Taliban vandalize priceless Buddhist statues; thieves armed with computers loot Aztec and Assyrian treasures; fatwa establish new guidelines for literary criticism; and the great museums of the world wrangle with governments, with history itself, about the patrimonies of art. This is a nasty condition, both flat and round. What kind of literary theory, what kind of aesthetics generally, can emerge from a world that defies Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries with every diurnal spin? The answer to these real and mock queries seems lost in partisanship and prejudice, abrasive ideologies and slick skepticism. Sane critics may look for a way out in ideas of pluralism, eclecticism, hybridity, and cosmopolitanism, recently propounded by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Sooner or later, though, these ideas crash on the realities of our time: "ethnic violence, economic volatility, and empires in decline," as Niall Ferguson puts it in The War of the World. Above all, they crash on the obdurate self, on self-interest without borders. Is there a way out? . . . Get the answer here: http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/32.1.hassan.html.

Edmundson, Mark. "Against Readings." CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION April 24, 2009.

If I could make one wish for the members of my profession, college and university professors of literature, I would wish that for one year, two, three, or five, we would give up readings. By a reading, I mean the application of an analytical vocabulary — Marx's, Freud's, Foucault's, Derrida's, or whoever's — to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art. I wish that we'd declare a moratorium on readings. I wish that we'd give readings a rest. This wish will strike most academic literary critics and perhaps others as well as — let me put it politely — counterintuitive. Readings, many think, are what we do. Readings are what literary criticism is all about. They are the bread and butter of the profession. Through readings we write our books; through readings we teach our students. And if there were no more readings, what would we have left to do? Wouldn't we have to close our classroom doors, shut down our office computers, and go home? The end of readings, presumably, would mean the end of our profession. So let me try to explain what I have in mind. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i33/33b00601.htm.

Cfp: "The Encultured Brain: Neuroanthropological Explorations," University of Notre Dame, South Bend, October 8, 2009.

The First Neuroanthropology Conference. One main part of the schedule will facilitate a kind of collective brain-storming, make connections (both mental and practical) meeting, rather than the standard anthropology panel set-up, where just a few people present 15 minute versions of their research. We will have two keynote presentations, as well as a lot of ’speed presentations’ in which participants will be able to briefly (about five minutes) talk to the whole assembled conference about what they are working on or would like to work on. We will have pre-printed message pads to allow the whole conference to share thoughts, as well as ample chances during breaks to grab the person you just heard share a great idea. There will also be an ongoing poster session for presenters so that we really get an opportunity to network in this emerging area of research. So much of what we hope to do is to create conversations over the fences that separate our respective disciplinary backyards, so we’re going to do our best to get people in touch. There will also be a roundtable on research methods for breaking new ground in neuroanthropology. In addition, we’ll have keynote lectures by Prof. Patricia Greenfield of UCLA and Prof. Harvey Whitehouse of Oxford University . Further information may be found here: http://neuroanthropology.net/2009/04/21/big-news-first-neuroanthropology-conference/.

"Neuropsychoanalysis: Who Needs It?," 10th International Neuropsychoanalysis Conference, Paris, June 26-29, 2009.

Neuropsychoanalysis has been the major international development within psychoanalysis in recent decades. However, opinions differ as to whether it will have a positive or negative impact on the future of the discipline. At this congress, the leading exponents of the new approach will present their findings and discuss their points of view with some of France’s outstanding psychoanalytic and neuroscientific authorities. The Unconscious, child development, and the clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis in particular will be discussed. The congress will be an historical event, the impact of which will be felt for many years to come. Speakers at the Congress include: György Gergely, Claude Gottesmann, André Green, Catherine Morin, Lionel Naccache, Georg Northoff, Philippe Rochat, René Roussillon, Howard Shevrin, Mark Solms, Daniel Stern, Daniel Widlöcher and Yoram Yovell. Visit the conference webpage here: http://www.neuro-psa.org.uk/npsa/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=61.

"International Law and Global Justice," Centre for Study of Social Justice & Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford, May 20-21, 2009.

Debates on international law and on global justice have for the most part proceeded separately. Only very few theorists have suggested that the project of designing principles of international/global justice is closely related to that of designing principles of international law. Taking the lead from this often underappreciated suggestion, in this workshop we aim to explore the connections between international law and global justice. In particular, we welcome papers – both legal and philosophical – discussing the following topics: The relation between coercion, law and (global) justice: an increasing number of political theorists have argued that obligations of justice only apply within political communities by virtue of the existence of a coercive legal system. What are the implications of this view for the question of global justice? Can we plausibly claim that international law is coercive in the same way in which domestic law is? If not, does this mean that principles of justice should not apply to it? The effectiveness of international law as a means to realising global justice: if international law is one of the most powerful instruments at our disposal to bring about a morally better world, what sort of reforms of the current international legal system would be necessary to move closer to the goal of global justice? Given the sui generis nature of the international legal system, how can such reforms be most fruitfully brought about? Global justice, international law and state sovereignty: is the principle of the sovereign equality of states itself a principle of international/global justice or a hindrance to the quest for global justice? Would a world inhabited by states which are genuinely – as opposed to merely formally – equally sovereign be a just world? Or does the realisation of a just world require us to transcend the very idea of state sovereignty, moving from a system of international law to a global legal system? Keynote Speakers: Prof. David Armstrong (University of Exeter) Prof. Allen Buchanan (Duke University) Prof. Terry Nardin (National University of Singapore) Dr Amanda Perreau-Saussine (University of Cambridge) Further information is available frmo globaljustice@politics.ox.ac.uk.

Pub: GLOBAL JUSTICE: THEORY, PRACTICE, RHETORIC 2 (2009).

Articles:

• Manfred Steger ‘Political Ideologies and Social Imaginaries in the Global Age’ pp. 1-17
• Regina Kreide ‘The Ambivalence of Juridification. On Legitimate Governance in the International Context’ pp. 18-34

Reviews:

• Clara Brandi ‘We the Stakeholders: The Power of Representation beyond Borders?Terry Macdonald, Global Stakeholder Democracy. Power and Representation Beyond Liberal States, Oxford,Oxford University Press, 2008′ pp. 35-41
• Miriam Ronzoni ‘Making Access to Trade Conditional on Labour Standards?Christian Barry and Sanjay Reddy, International Trade and Labor Standards: A Proposal for Linkage, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008′ pp. 42-46
• Tiziana Torresi ‘The Cosmopolitan Future Of DemocracyDaniele Archibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2008′ pp. 47-49
• Laura Valentini ‘Social Liberal or Cosmopolitan?David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007′ pp. 50-53

Visit the journal homepage here: http://www.theglobaljusticenetwork.org/journal.

Cfp: "Knowledge and Pain," Hebrew University of Jerusalem, May 24-26, 2010.

Pain, physical or emotional, as a field of knowledge about suffering, is a subject of scholarly attention in the humanities and social sciences, in parallel with the scientific study of pain mechanisms and controls. The conference "Knowledge and Pain" will be devoted to the voices of the sufferers (rather than to those of inflictors, healers, or managers of pain). Bypassing, as much as possible, the messages of professional mediators, it will focus on the light that sufferers themselves shed upon their condition through verbal or visual expression. The organizers of the conference welcome proposals that deal with the following questions: * How does discourse function as an intermediary between sufferer and listeners? Is pain destructive of language or does it merely challenge it? * How and in what contexts does body language communicate suffering in different cultures and inter-culturally? * What social capital (if any) do sufferers gain from communicating their pain? * Is pain exclusively destructive of the subject's world or can it yield cognitive or spiritual gain? * Is it ethically problematic to ascribe meaning to pain beyond its function as a symptom? * What are the relationships between physical and emotional pain? * How are the media used to represent pain, and with what side effects? * Do artistic representations of suffering improve our understanding of the pain of another? * How does the voice of pain implicate the hearer? A selection of papers based on the work of the conference will be published by an academic press. Paper proposals of 300 to 500 words should be sent to msecohen@mscc.huji.ac.il by September 8, 2009.

"Are We Beyond the Two Cultures?" SEEDMAGAZINE.COM May 11, 2009.

May 7 marks the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures lecture. Half a century ago the prominent novelist and speaker, who studied under Lord Rutherford, described a chasm between literary intellectuals and scientists, a gulf that impoverished both sides and impeded efforts to relieve suffering around the world. Science was not understood or respected by the dominant culture, to the detriment of all, he said. At some point scientists had ceased to be considered intellectuals, Snow noted, and though any educated person was required to know Shakespeare, almost none knew the second law of thermodynamics. Snow’s words touched off decades of debate on both the existence of the “Two Cultures” and the possibility of a “Third Culture” — a group Snow envisioned as curious non-scientists who could bridge the gap between scientists and humanists. In 1991, literary agent John Brockman wrote an essay entitled “The Third Culture,” which made the point that “scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.” In 1991, his Edge Foundation launched a website  — Edge — explicitly to bring together intellectuals of the Third Culture — many scientists, but also writers and philosophers—with the goal of bringing empirical studies directly to the public. The Third Culture has grown beyond Edge, as scientists have become increasingly public — and even famous  — figures. Seed approached six thinkers to ask where we are now: Whether the Two Cultures are still divided, and what role the Third Culture is playing. . . . Read the rest here: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/are_we_beyond_the_two_cultures/.

Crease, Robert P. "TWO CULTURES Turns 50." PHYSICSWORLD.COM May 1, 2009.

Half a century ago this month, the physicist and author Charles Percy Snow (1905—1980) delivered the annual Rede Lecture in the Senate House of the University of Cambridge. (Usually referred to as C P Snow, he was later made a life peer and enjoyed appearing in the House of Lords as Baron Snow, despite being a self-professed socialist.) Its title — The Two Cultures — referred to a gulf Snow diagnosed between “literary intellectuals” and “natural scientists”, and it elaborated themes he had mentioned in the New Statesman three years earlier. The talk was published in Encounter in June and July 1959, and then as a book. Soon after the book appeared, critics attacked Snow’s abilities as a writer, his achievements as a scientist, the rigour of his concepts, the legitimacy of his characterizations and the validity of his claims. Yet the book remains in print, and its famous phrase continues to describe the gulf still perceived to exist between the arts and sciences. Read the rest here: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/38894.

"The Ethics of Interpretation from Ancient to Postmodern Times," Marquette University, May 13-14, 2009.

Sponsored by the Seminar on Phenomenology and Hermeneutics and the Midwest Seminar in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Wednesday May 13 1:45-2:00 Greetings 2:00-3:00 Dr. Franco Trivigno (Marquette University) "Childish Nonsense? The value of Interpretation in Plato's Protagoras" 3:00-4:00 Mr. Shazad Akhtar (Marquette University) "Merleau-Ponty Reads Husserl: A Case Study in the Ethics of Appropriation" 4:00-4:30 Coffee Break 4:30-6:00 Dr. Kenneth Dorter (University of Guelph) "Platonic Hermeneutics: Plato Reading, Reading Plato" Thursday, May 14 9:00-10:00 Mr. Geoffrey Holsclaw (Marquette University) "Can Hermeneutics Overcome Historicism? The Ethics of Textual and Sacramental Practices" 10:00-11:00 Mr. Nathan Blackerby (Marquette University) "Knowledge and Society: Two Interpretations of Alfarabi's Political Philosophy" 11:00-11:30 Coffee Break 11:30-12:30 Dr. Sebastian Luft (Marquette University) "Interpreting 'Correctly': Authors' Intentions, Readers' Interpretations, and the Problem of a 'Correct Reading'" 12:30-2:00 Lunch Break 2:00-3:00 Dr. Steve Long (Marquette University) "The Unity of Interpretation: Augustine’s Understanding of Language in Light of Mignolo’s Post-colonial Theory" 3:00-4:00 Dr. Pol Vandevelde (Marquette University) "The Ethics vs. the Politics of Interpretation" 4:00-4:30 Coffee Break 4:30-6:00 Dr. Vincent Colapietro (Pennsylvania State University) "Transgressive Fidelity" Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.sem-phen.org/NextPresentations.html.

Anderson, Thomas C. Review of Jonathan Webber's THE EXISTENTIALISM OF JEAN-PAUL SARTRE. NDPR (May 2009).

Webber, Jonathan. The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. London: Routledge, 2008. On his first page Jonathan Webber informs his readers that his aim "is to present a single coherent picture of the central themes of Sartrean existentialism" (xi) presented in Being and Nothingness and published works immediately preceding and following it. He argues that Sartre's philosophy is an "elaboration of one basic idea," which is that an individual's character consists in the projects the person pursues. The author's thorough explication of Sartre's notion of character is highly original as is his use of that notion to make better sense of bad faith, good faith, sincerity and authenticity. Also, Webber's claim that a study of Sartre's notion of character can contribute significantly to contemporary discussions of ethics, especially virtue ethics, seems to this reviewer on the mark. The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, which confronts an impressive number of the major interpreters of Sartre, is an extremely valuable scholarly contribution to that study. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15985.

"Carl Gustav Jung." GREAT LIVES. BBC Radio 4. May 1, 2009.

Matthew Parris presents the biographical series in which his guests choose someone who has inspired their lives. Ruby Wax discusses the life and work of Carl Gustav Jung, who has been called 'the father of analytical psychology'. Along with author and Jungian analyst Professor Andrew Samuels, Ruby discusses Jung's theories of personality and psychological types, and reveals how his work has affected her own life. To listen, visit the following URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jxhdd.

"Phenomenology, Social Sciences and the Arts," University of Konstanz, May 14-16, 2009.

The international and interdisciplinary conference “Phenomenology, Social Sciences, and the Arts” focuses on the specific interrelationship of a philosophical, epistemological position and a particular social scientific perspective with distinct analytical potential to investigate art phenomena. While the phenomenological perspective allows reflection on the subjective point of view of artists and interpreters, the social science perspective reconstructs the sociohistoric preconditions of the triad artist and interpreter, and the objectified work of art. The theory of the life-world developed in the interface of phenomenology and social sciences, allows an interpretation of diverse reality spheres involved in the work of art, thus describing the symbolically established meaning structure which is responsible for the function of the art work as such. The most significant social scientist and philosopher dedicated to the analysis of interrelations between phenomenology, and social science, was Alfred Schutz. As part of his work, he used phenomenology to describe the epistemological foundations of social science, in particular Max Weber’s concept of social action, which was declared the nucleus of social science. Furthermore, Schutz developed a theory of the life-world concept, as well as a theory of sign and symbol which especially serve the interpretation of art phenomena; in relation to this, Schutz’s work on literature and music in particular, became most crucial. Especially well-known among researchers in phenomenology and social science, are his analyses of multiple reality spheres within Don Quixote, as well as his interpretation of Mozart’s operas. This conference will commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Alfred Schutz’s death. The thesis supported within the theoretical framework of the symposium, claims that the analysis of production, as well as the perception and interpretation of art work, needs to take into consideration the subjective viewpoint of the artist, in addition to that of the interpreter. Phenomenology allows a description of the subjectively centered life-world of the individual actor – artist or interpreter – while the perspective of social science, serves to reconstruct the socio-historical structure involved in the creation and reception of the art work. This specific theoretical focus which combines both the disciplines phenomenology and social science offers an innovative framework for the analysis of art phenomena, and allows the conference participants a creative interpretation of a variety of distinct art forms and works, in addition to the realization of theoretical reflections on the interdependence of arts, phenomenology and social science. Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/soziologie/archiv2/projekte/humboldt/pssa/index.html.

Cfp: "French Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalysis in French: Language, Literature, Culture," University of South Carolina, March 18-20, 2010.

38th Annual French Literature Conference. Psychoanalysis in France has a long and rich history. From the early work of Marie Bonaparte, the interventions of the surrealists, and the dissertation of a young medical student named Jacques Lacan in the 1920s to the heights of the École Freudienne, the expulsion of Luce Irigaray, and Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus in the 1970s, psychoanalysis played a central role in French intellectual life throughout the twentieth century. Indeed, whether in the work of Lacanian and postLacanian intellectuals and analysts (such as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Jacques Derrida), or in that of psychoanalytic skeptics such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault, specifically French debates on and within analysis have shaped the culture of literary, philosophical, cinematic, and historical studies around the globe. At the same time, the postcolonial world of Francophone literature and film have radically called into question the very universality of the Freudian family romance, forcing us to pose the question, in the words of a famous book title: is there an 'Oedipe Africain'? Finally, both inside France and beyond its borders, there is a rich tradition of psychoanalytic interpretation of the classic texts of French literature. This conference seeks to pose the following questions: is there a specifically French form of psychoanalysis and what are its characteristics; does the psychoanalytic narrative also have purchase on the larger world of Francophonie or are such pretensions to universalism necessarily ahistorical and imperialistic; what is the future of psychoanalysis as method of interpreting French literature and film and will its insights continue to produce new understandings or has its time now passed? Twenty-minute papers addressing these subjects should be sent by e-mail to Allen Miller (pamiller@sc.edu) by November 1, 2009. All papers accepted for this conference will be published in volume 38 of French Literature Series (FLS).

"Déconstruire, dit-il...: Autour de l'Oeuvre de Jacques Derrida," Université de Paris IV - Sorbonne, May 20-23, 2009.

Intervenants/Speakers: Geoffrey Bennington (Atlanta) Gérard Bensussan (Strasbourg) Gisèle Berkman (Paris) Fernanda Bernardo (Coimbra) David Brezis (Paris) Mireille Calle-Gruber (Paris) Joseph Cohen (Dublin) Danielle Cohen-Levinas (Paris) Marc Crépon (Paris) Michel Deguy (Paris) Simon Glendinning (Londres) Jean Grondin (Montréal) Ebe Gruber (Paris) Jean-Luc Guichet (Paris) Andrew Haas (Dublin) Stéphane Habib (Paris) Werner Hamacher (Francfort) Felix Heidenreich (Stuttgart) Stefan Lorenzer (Francfort) Michel Lisse (Louvain) René Major (Paris) Marie-Louise Mallet (Paris) Serge Margel (Paris) Raoul Moati (Paris) Tim Mooney (Dublin) Ginette Michaud (Montréal) Michael Naas (Chicago) Jean-Luc Nancy (Strasbourg) Orietta Ombrosi (Bologne) Raphael Zagury-Orly (Tel-Aviv/Jerusalem) For Programme information, please contact Dr. Joseph Cohen : joseph.cohen@ucd.ie Pour toutes informations relatives au colloque présenté, veuillez contacter M. Joseph Cohen : joseph.cohen@ucd.ie.

"The Two Cultures in the 21st Century," New York Academy of Sciences, May 9, 2009.

In 1959 the prominent British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow gave a pivotal lecture before a crowd of his colleagues in Cambridge. The lecture focused on what he saw as a serious divide between the sciences and the humanities. As a researcher and creative writer he had a unique perspective on the problem and its impact on society at large. Now, 50 years after that famous lecture, Science & the City is gathering together a wide array of experts to discuss whether or not the divide still exists and how it affects contemporary society. This full-day symposium will feature keynotes by E.O. Wilson, Dean Kamen, and former Congressman John Edward Porter, as well as panel discussions on politics, education, and the history surrounding the two cultures debate. Visit the conference page here: http://www.nyas.org/snc/twocultures/index.asp.

Fish, Stanley. "God Talk." THINK AGAIN BLOG. NEW YORK TIMES May 3, 2009.

Eagleton, Terry. Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. New Haven: Yale UP, 2009. In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, Reason, Faith and Revolution, the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?” Eagleton acknowledges that the links forged are not always benign — many terrible things have been done in religion’s name — but at least religion is trying for something more than local satisfactions, for its “subject is nothing less than the nature and destiny of humanity itself, in relation to what it takes to be its transcendent source of life.” And it is only that great subject, and the aspirations it generates, that can lead, Eagleton insists, to “a radical transformation of what we say and do.” The other projects, he concedes, provide various comforts and pleasures, but they are finally superficial and tend to the perpetuation of the status quo rather than to meaningful change: “A society of packaged fulfillment, administered desire, managerialized politics and consumerist economics is unlikely to cut to the depth where theological questions can ever be properly raised.” . . . Read the rest here: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/god-talk/.

Cfp: "Writing Research Across Borders II," George Mason University, February 17-20, 2011.

As societies become more knowledge-intensive and communication technologies draw us more closely together, the importance of writing in economic, scientific, civic, personal, and social development becomes more apparent. Correspondingly, the imperative to conduct research on writing in schools and the workplace, in relationship to learning and development, and in all aspects of our lives has invigorated work among scholars in all regions of the world. The conference Writing Research across Borders II will provide an opportunity for researchers to share their findings and set research agendas for the coming years. Continuing the success of the three previous international research conferences held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the 2011 Writing Research Across Borders II will be held at George Mason University in the Washington D.C./Northern Virginia area. We invite proposals that will continue to deepen the cross-disciplinary, international dialogues across the many different domains of writing research. As in past years, this conference will focus on writing development across the lifespan, including the impact of new technologies on learning to write, early acquisition of writing, writing across grade levels (K-20), writing in the disciplines and professions, and writing in the workplace or other community and institutional settings. We invite proposals presenting research in these areas. We also invite proposals on any other areas of writing use and practice, such as writing in progressive or large scale educational programs, or proposals that link writing research and policies. We welcome papers raising methodological issues about researching writing. We invite work from any research tradition that is grounded in the tradition’s previous research and pursues the methodical gathering of qualitative or quantitative data appropriate to its claims. Proposals should identify the format preferred (panels, roundtables, individual presentations, and poster presentations). Individual or poster proposals should be a maximum of 500 words. Proposals with multiple presentations (panel and roundtable) should contain a short overview statement and then no more than 400 words per speaker. Proposals should specify the relevant research literatures, research questions, methods, data, and findings, as well as the scope and duration of the research projects. The deadline for proposals is May 3, 2010. Please submit proposals in .doc or .rtf format by email attachment to writing@education.ucsb.edu. Also, be sure to include a title for your proposal and each speaker’s individual talk, as well as contact information for each individual presenter. For further information, contact: Professor Charles Bazerman Department of Education Gevirtz Graduate School of Education University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 phone: 805-893-7543 bazerman@education.ucsb.edu http://www.education.ucsb.edu/bazerman.

Joint Conference, Hegel Society of Great Britain and UK Kierkegaard Society, St. Edmund Hall, University of Oxford,September 3-4, 2009.

Thursday, 3rd 1.00 - 1.30 Conference Registration 1.30 - 3.00 Clare Carlisle (Liverpool), "Kierkeggard and the Question of Motion: the Sphere of Thought and the Sphere of Freedom" 3.30 - 5.00 Genia Schönbaumsfeld (Southampton), "Kierkegaard contra Hegel on the 'Absolute Paradox'" 5.30 - 7.00 George Pattison (Oxford), "Antigone and the End of Art" Friday, 4th 9.30 - 11.00 Paul Cruysberghs (KU Leuven), "Soul-Consciousness-Mind in Hegel, Rosenkranz and Kierkegaard" 11.30 - 1.00 Dan Watts (Essex), "Subjective Thinking: Kierkegaard on Hegel’s Socrates" 2.00 - 3.30 Jon Stewart (Copenhagen), "Kierkegaard’s Notion of Actuality and the Criticism of Hegelian Abstraction"

Balakrishnan, Gopal. Review of Terry Eagleton's TROUBLE WITH STRANGERS. NDPR (May 2009).

Eagleton, Terry. Trouble with Strangers: a Study of Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Trouble with Strangers is the latest reflection on ethics from the distinguished literary critic Terry Eagleton. Best known for his witty and sympathetic popularizations of critical theory, Eagleton once claimed that its main contemporary currents -- Marxism, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis -- were devoid of practical ethical corollaries, thereby contributing to a wider condition of relativistic malaise. Eagleton was probably the only proponent of post-structuralism at the time to be troubled by this. But even if it were true that the main variants of post-structuralism once exhibited such nihilist tendencies, one could say that they have all subsequently sought to make amends, for after their 80's heyday, all of them made a turn towards ethical inquiry, along lines laid out by Levinas, Derrida and the late Foucault. Indeed, even Lacanians like Žižek who dismiss the post-structuralist ethics of difference and undecidability, invariably do so in ethical terms. It might also be noted that this development seems to conform to a broader trend that has brought us bio-ethics, professional ethics, and ethical consumerism. Eagleton has addressed this broader ideological context in other works, but in Trouble with Strangers, he limits himself to providing a comparative overview of some of the different conceptions of ethics coming out of that mixture of continental intellectual traditions that is still called 'Theory'. The plan of the book might initially seem whimsical: the author divides ethical philosophies into categories drawn from Lacan's schema of psychic relations -- the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real -- here offered as little more than a loose framework of classification. Indeed the book's architrave is not even specifically Lacanian, and replicates the terms of Kierkegaard's familiar account of three existential worldviews -- the aesthetic, ethical, and religious. While lumping different bodies of thought together in this way might fail to capture the problems they raise on their own terms, Eagleton often employs this heuristic device to good effect, bringing to light shared assumptions, rhetorics, and blind spots. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15890.

"Power to the People?," Radical Philosophy Conference, Birkbeck College, University of London, May 9, 2009.

... masses, proletariat, workers, soviets, nation, community, subalterns, multitude, commons... `Power to the people!' was once a revolutionary slogan, but reference to government by the people and for the people soon became an empty cliché of the post-revolutionary status quo. The people has become a notoriously ambiguous and contested term, for which numerous alternatives have been proposed: the proletariat, the workers, the masses, the soviets, the nation, the community, the multitude, the commons... And now? How might we assess the different conceptions of political change embodied in these often conflicting ideas? What is the political and philosophical significance of `the people' today?

PROGRAMME:

Plenary (chair: Peter Osborne, RP):

• Gayatri Spivak (Columbia University, NY), "They, the People"

1. The General Will (chair: Peter Hallward, RP)

• David Andress (Portsmouth), "The General Will on the Street: Parisian Activism, Sovereignty and Power, 1789–93"
• Sophie Wahnich (CNRS, Paris), "How Do the People Make Themselves Heard?"

2. Urban Collectivities (chair: David Cunningham, RP)

• AbdouMaliq Simone (Goldsmiths), "Urban Intersections and the Politics of Anticipation"
• Erik Swyngedouw (Manchester), "Reflections on the Post-Political City"

3. Population & Biopolitics (chair: Claudia Aradau, RP)

• Couze Venn (Nottingham Trent), "Biopolitics, Diasporas and (Neo)Liberal Political Economy"
• Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez (Manchester), "Feminist Strategies Revisited – Sexopolitics, Multitude and Biopolitics"

4. Class, Commons & Multitude (chair: Esther Leslie, RP)

• Massimo De Angelis (UEL), "Crisis, Tragedies and the Commons"
• Daniel Bensaid (University of Paris-VIII), "Can We (Still) Break the Vicious Circle of Domination?"

£25/£10 unwaged Registration and further details: matt.charles@blueyonder.co.uk.

Stikkers, Kenneth W. Review of Sergio Franzese's THE ETHICS OF ENERGY: WILLIAM JAMES MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN FOCUS. NDPR (May 2009).

Franzese, Sergio. The Ethics of Energy: William James's Moral Philosophy in Focus. Frankfurt: Ontos, 2008. Every scholar and reader of William James is aware of his frequent uses of "energy," especially in his discussions of ethics and most notably in his 1906 Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association, "The Energies of Men". But while other interpretations treat James's use of "energy" as merely one of his several folksy metaphors, The Ethics of Energy: William James's Moral Philosophy in Focus is the first monograph, as its author, Sergio Franzese, rightly claims, to focus upon "energy" as a central concept in James's ethics. Ethics, for James, is not about values, goods, or principles but about the organization of energy, especially into habits, in the service of personal, aesthetic ideals. As such this book is an original and valuable addition to the literature on James, and it does much to bring James into closer dialogue with other recent efforts to rethink ethics without appeal to some rule of reason, whether it be in the form of an utilitarian calculus or a categorical imperative. Such efforts include those of Friedrich Nietzsche, whom Franzese discusses extensively, Max Scheler, whom he mentions only briefly (51-52), and especially Michel Foucault, whom he does not mention at all. Previous scholars have missed the importance of "energy" in James's philosophy, and thereby have misunderstood his ethics, because, Franzese argues (11-17), they have uncritically followed Ralph Barton Perry's early interpretation of James's 1891 essay "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" as an outline of some new ethical theory and thus missed the truly revolutionary thrust of that essay. Rather than merely adding one more ethical theory to the lot, James's essay was a radical assault upon ethical theory as such, "a critical analysis of the validity of any moral theory," "intended to show the futility of that traditional philosophical task" (3). The essay aimed to clear the ground for the rethinking of ethics radically anew, to rethink it, as the title implies, in relation to life, rather than as theory abstracted from life. Furthermore, James was not merely cashing in on the popular use of "energy" in his day, as he did with so many other popular terms. "Energy" meant for him no metaphysical substance but rather activity -- living itself (166) -- and for James the pluralist there could be no singular, universal form of right living. The task of ethics is therefore not to prescribe theoretically the features of some universal Good, under which all particular goods are to be arranged and to which all moral agents must submit, but to organize practically the energies of life in service to one's own personal and ideally unified desires and demands against evil, namely, against "limits on the full and free expression of human life" (7): "the ethics of energy does not set moral aims and values"; rather, "it is . . . the way in which one becomes the master and author of one's own energy" (199). . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15926.

Hodge, Jonathan. Review of Michael Ruse, et al., eds. CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. NDPR (May 2009).

Ruse, Michael, and Robert J. Richards, eds. Cambridge Companion to The Origin of Species. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. It will be as well to begin with a clarification and a declaration of interest. As readers of NDPR will know, Cambridge University Press has for some years now been publishing a series of volumes on the philosophers: their Cambridge Companion series. A few of these volumes have been devoted to scientists. There is one on Darwin, now out in a second edition. It is edited by Gregory Radick and myself. The same press has also been publishing a series of Companion volumes on particular books. The volume under review here is devoted to Darwin's Origin of Species, first published in 1859. There is only a little overlap between the two Companion volumes. Each has a chapter by John Brooke discussing Darwin's religious views, but the emphasis is different enough that interested readers will want to consult both. Again, Darwin's analogy between natural and artificial selection is discussed in both volumes and also naturally enough his theory of natural selection. There is no chapter in the Origin volume on the structure of the whole argument of that book. However there is a chapter -- by the philosopher of biology, Kenneth Waters -- on just that in the Darwin Companion. As for philosophy: the Origin volume has only one chapter (by Tim Lewens) by a philosopher writing with philosophers in mind. The Darwin Companion has half a dozen. The contents of this Origin volume are diverse. The editors' introduction usefully gives synopses of all the chapters. After the short first chapter, by Michael Ruse, on how and why Darwin came to write the Origin as he did, the remaining chapters fall into four groups. The first group is devoted to the topics Darwin himself takes up in his book, in the order he adopted. So we have a chapter each on: the selection analogy, variation and inheritance, natural selection, species, the principle of divergence, the objections Darwin anticipated and countered, geology, biogeography, classification, and embryology and morphology. Then there is a second group, of three chapters: on Darwin's botany, on his rhetoric, and on his religion. Next come three chapters on the legacies: for literature; for political thought, and for philosophy. Finally, there is a chapter on the Origin as a book rather than a text: its production, publication, sales and so on. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15965.

Cfp: Conversations V: Theories of Knowledge, Department of History and Philosophy, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, November 19-20, 2009.

The broad theme for the fifth Cave Hill Philosophy Symposium (CHiPS) will be epistemology. This area of philosophy has seen some dramatic changes especially in the past three decades, with the alternative approaches offered to traditional mainstream epistemology by social epistemology and naturalized epistemology. These developments have brought about a shift in the old ordering of perception, memory and testimony as sources of knowledge—where perception and memory usually ranked as the best and most secure sources, and testimony as a distant third. Several works over the past two decades have pointed to testimony being an increasingly urgent and interesting topic of epistemological analysis. These works also open space to consider—as feminist and other post-colonial theorists have long been doing—the extent to which the epistemic authority of testimony varies across situations and circumstances of social and political inequality. Likewise they call into question earlier lack of concern for the ways of conceiving the knower and his or her being in the world. CHiPS V will therefore focus on these developments, examining themes such as testimony, epistemic authority, objectivity/subjectivity, knowledge and power, and related issues. The Symposium welcomes papers that offer philosophical explorations of these and related topics. The tradition that has developed in our philosophical conversations at CHiPS is one where views from varying philosophical traditions and regional philosophies are welcome, and the hope is that the contributions for Conversations V will continue this trend. The Symposium also welcomes papers of a theoretical nature in the disciplines that share a boundary with philosophy; disciplines such as critical theory, cultural studies, gender studies, law, linguistics, political theory, theology, and others. Papers with such an orientation should grapple with the social dimensions of epistemology within their respective disciplines. Our keynote speaker will be Dr Lorraine Code. She is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at York University in Toronto Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Dr Code specializes in Epistemology, Feminist Epistemology and the Politics of Knowledge; Epistemic Responsibility; Twentieth-century French Philosophy (Foucault, Beauvoir, Le Doeuff); Ecological Theory and Post-Colonial Theory. Her books include: Epistemic Responsibility (1987), What Can She Know? (1991), Rhetorical Spaces (1995), and Ecological Thinking (2006); she was editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories (2000), and Feminist Interpretations of Hans-Georg Gadamer (2003); and co-translator of Michèle Le Doeuff The Sex of Knowing (2003). In an effort to ensure well-prepared, quality presentations, abstracts (300-500 words) are due by August 31, 2009. Participants whose abstracts are accepted by the vetting committee will then be required to submit their completed papers via email as an attachment in Open Office, Word or Wordperfect by the firm deadline of October 19, 2009. (These papers will then be posted on-line for other participants to consult prior to the conference with the intention that time at the Symposium can be devoted much more to discussion than to exposition of the written papers.) We hope that revised papers will continue to be available online: those from the earlier symposia can be accessed from http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/histphil/Philosophy/ChiPS/. Contact persons: Dr Frederick Ochieng’-Odhiambo: frederick.ochieng-odhiambo@cavehill.uwi.edu; Mr Ed Brandon: edbrandon@gmail.com; Ms Roxanne Burton: roxanneeburton@gmail.com.

Cfp: "Philosophy in East Africa: Towards Critical Thinking, Professionalism and Democracy," University of Dar es Salaam, November 18-20, 2009.

In cooperation with: UNESCO, Dar es Salaam; Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Dar es Salaam; Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Nairobi; Department of Philosophy, Makerere University, Uganda; Department of Social and Moral Philosophy, University of Helsinki, Finland; The Embassy of Finland, Dar es Salaam (to be confirmed). Teaching philosophy * critical analysis and independent thinking, political philosophy and (professional) ethics * plays a central role in the development of democracy and enlightened citizenry. Focusing on the protection and promotion of human rights, professional conduct, good governance, issues of social justice, as well as on research ethics, philosophers within the East African Community have a significant role in developing, leading, as well as implementing the appropriate codes of conduct both within as well as outside the academia. Concentrating especially on social, political and moral philosophy as well as on ethics (including professional ethics and development ethics), the Philosophy Unit at UDSM gives essential training, and contributes to the public discussions by providing well argued, critical perspectives on public policies, research ethics (including medical ethics and bioethics), and current affairs. The UDSM also leads the way in setting the standards of teaching philosophy in Tanzania, being the only Philosophy Unit within the country. The Philosophy Departments at the University of Nairobi and Makerere University in Kampala * with longer traditions in teaching philosophy * also have strong focuses on combining academic philosophy with the current state of affairs, including specifically tailored Masters programmes in Ethics and Public Management, and in Human Rights (Makerere). Despite the central role of (especially) social and moral philosophy for the development within the region, the Philosophy Units and Departments face enormous challenges, both internally as well as in finding their place in the often complicated relations between the governmental and non-governmental organizations, academic institutional structures, as well as the general public. Besides the lack of material resources, qualified staff and the ever increasing number of students, the expansion and development of Philosophy is often slowed down by bureaucracy and by the lack of political will. Being a relatively new discipline at the Universities in East Africa, Philosophy Units and Departments are still in the process of establishing their places both within the academia, as well as in the public sphere. This conference brings together scholars from the University of Nairobi, Makerere University, UDSM, as well as from other African universities (including several universities within Tanzania, who are currently only able to offer few courses in philosophy) to discuss the current state, challenges and future developments of teaching philosophy in East Africa. The conference aims at creating a forum for scholars from different countries to discuss the current state and role of Philosophy within the East African Community, and establish more institutionalized links between the Philosophy Units and Departments within the region. The conference also advances research co-operation, and the North-South *link between University of Helsinki and the collaborating universities of Nairobi, Makerere and Dar es Salaam. For general enquiries, please contact: Dr. Masoud Nassor masoudnassor@yahoo.com; Tel. +255 71 369 1011; Fax. +255 22 241 0648.

"Philosophy in the Digital Age," Maison Francaise d'Oxford, May 6, 2009.

Morning Session: Philosophical Content 10.00-10.40: Paolo D’Iorio (CNRS-MFO), "Nietzsche’s Works and Manuscripts on the Web" 10.40-11.20: Alois Pichler (Wittgenstein Archive, Bergen), "5000 pages of the Wittgenstein Nachlass online" 11.20-12.00: Cristina Marras / Antonio Lamarra (CNR-ILIESI, Rome), "Daphnet: Classic and Modern Philosophy on the Web" 12.00-12.40: Valentina Gasbarra (RAInet, Rome), "Sophiavision: video interviews with contemporary philosophers" 12.45am-2.00pm: Lunch (registration required) Afternoon Session: Semantic Technologies for the Humanities 2.00-2.20: Christine Madsen (OII, Oxford), "Europeana Interoperability for Philosophical Content" 2.20pm-3.10: Michele Barbera (Net7, Pisa), "Talia: a Semantic Web powered Digital Library for the Humanities" 3.10-4.00: Christian Morbidoni (Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona), "Philospace: a Semantic Web Digital Notebook" Convener: Paolo D’Iorio (CNRS-MFO); Registration required by email (maison@herald.ox.ac.uk) before 5pm, May 6.

Brownlee, Timothy. Review of Robert Pippin's HEGEL'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. NDPR (May 2009).

Pippin, Robert P. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency and Ethical Life. Cambridge: CUP, 2008. Robert Pippin's Hegel's Practical Philosophy is a book-length investigation of Hegel's conception of action and agency. Pippin claims that the distinguishing feature of actions for Hegel is that they are "the distinct sorts of events for which we may appropriately demand reasons or justifications from subjects whom we take to be responsible for such events occurring" (3). He goes on to argue that this conception of practical reason rests on a specific account of freedom, and the primary task of the book is to spell out the elements of Hegel's conception of freedom. In this sense, Hegel's Practical Philosophy provides a practical complement to the largely theoretical investigations of Pippin's earlier Hegel's Idealism, and has the potential to be of equal importance for our understanding of Hegel. The book should prove to be a significant one not only for scholars of Hegel's practical philosophy, but also for those interested in German idealism more generally, the history of ethics and political philosophy, as well as philosophers interested in issues related to action and agency and contemporary political thought. Indeed, one of the merits of Pippin's work is that, unlike some other treatments of the work of German idealists, and Hegel in particular, the book should prove accessible to non-specialists and those not initiated into the often perplexing vocabulary engineered in the wake of Kant's critical revolution in philosophy. At the same time, the work is not simply a narrative restatement of the central elements of Hegel's conception of freedom. Pippin indicates an admirable sensitivity to the argumentative significance of Hegel's stance, and he does much to situate that stance in relation to contemporary issues in the philosophy of action. He clearly intends the work to be not only of antiquarian interest, but actually to constitute something like a defense of Hegel's position. Of course, readers should not expect lengthy discussions of many questions central to mainstream discussions of the freedom of the will. While Pippin claims that Hegel rejects voluntarism, incompatibilism, and dualism in favor of a form of compatibilism, he also argues that Hegel takes issue with many of the ontological presuppositions at work in modern treatments of action ("the isolation of subjects as ontologically distinct individuals and of a subject's reasons as episodic or dispositional and perhaps uniquely causal mental states") and, for that reason, elements of the argument will no doubt appear to be heterodox (9). . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16005.