John Dewey, in his resistance to foundational individualism, declares that individual autonomy so conceived is a fiction; for Dewey, it is association that is a fact. In his own language: “There is no sense in asking how individuals come to be associated. They exist and operate in association.” In a way that resonates with Confucian role ethics, the revolutionary Dewey particularizes the fact of associated living and valorizes it by developing a vision of the habitude of unique, defused, relationally-constituted human beings. That is, he develops a distinctive, if not idiosyncratic language of habits and “individuality” to describe the various modalities of association that enable human beings to add value to their activities and to transform mere relations into a communicating community.
In Confucian role ethics, Dewey’s contention that association is a fact is restated in a different vocabulary by appealing to specific roles rather than unique habitudes for stipulating the specific forms that association takes within lives lived in family and community—that is, the various roles we live as sons and teachers, grandmothers and neighbors. For Confucianism, not only are these roles descriptive of our associations, they are also prescriptive in the sense that roles in family and community are themselves normative, guiding us in the direction of appropriate conduct. Whereas for both Confucianism and Dewey, mere association is a given, flourishing families and communities are what we are able to make of our facticity as the highest human achievement.
Fordham Natural Law Colloquium
5:30-6:00 check in, 6:00-7:50 program
Location: Fordham Law School, Bateman 2-01B
Contact Michael Baur and Ben Zipursky for more information.
There is a broad consensus that Aristotle introduced the concept of matter in order to develop a consistent account of substantial change. However, it is disputed which role matter fulfills in substantial change. According to the traditional interpretation, matter persists while taking on or losing a substantial form. According to a rival interpretation, matter does not persist in substantial change; instead, it is an entity from which a new substance can emerge and which ceases to exist in this process. In my view, both interpretations are problematic in the light of Aristotle’s broader ontological project and are at odds with the way Aristotle describes the substantial generation of living beings. On the basis of Aristotle’s biological theory, I will suggest that Aristotelian matter is a continuant in substantial generation, but does not satisfy the common criteria for persistence that apply to individual substances.
Anna Schriefl
Anna Schriefl is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (assistant professor) at the University of Bonn, and currently a visiting scholar at the New School. She has published a book about Plato’s criticism of money and wealth, and most recently an introduction into Stoicism (both in German).
Selected speakers:
Contact John Drummond for more information.
A recent spate of critical engagements with Giorgio Agamben’s construction of the zōē, /bios distinction calls for renewed evaluation of the political valence of zōē in Aristotle’s political theory. While there may be ways of responding to these criticisms from within Agamben’s work, I am more interested in proposing an alternative account of zōē, one that better accommodates the breadth of Aristotle’s thinking about living beings, the context of ancient Greek conceptions of life, and a genealogical task that could be of service to a variety of strands of contemporary critical theory. Taking Aristotle’s treatment of zōē as an object of desire as my point of origin, I locate this orientation toward life within a broader conception of power as generativity and an alienated approach to the material conditions of human birth. I then trace the model of politics, zōē-politics, that arises from this framework.
Bio:
Sara Brill is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Fairfield University. She works on the psychology, politics, and zoology of Plato and Aristotle as well as contemporary feminist and political theory. She is the author of Plato on the Limits of Human Life (Indiana 2013), Aristotle on the Concept of Shared Life (forthcoming from Oxford University press in May 2020), co-editor of Antiquities beyond Humanism (Oxford 2019), and has published numerous articles on Plato, Aristotle, Greek tragedy, and the Hippocratic corpus.
Th 1/25/24: Kate Manne
Th 2/1/24: Scott Shapiro
Th 2/8/24: Ekow Yankah
Th 2/15/24: Tommie Shelby
Th 2/22/24 Gideon Rosen
Th 2/29/24: Sabeel Rahman
Th 3/7/24: Amy Sepinwall
Th 3/14/24: Erik Encarnacion
Th 3/21/24: Seyla Benhabib
Th 4/4/24: Amalia Amaya
Th 4/11/24: Debbie Hellman
Th 4/18/24: Mala Chatterjee
Th 4/25/24: Liam Murphy
Contact Aditi Bagchi: https://www.fordham.edu/school-of-law/faculty/directory/full-time/aditi-bagchi/
Th 1/25/24: Kate Manne
Th 2/1/24: Scott Shapiro
Th 2/8/24: Ekow Yankah
Th 2/15/24: Tommie Shelby
Th 2/22/24 Gideon Rosen
Th 2/29/24: Sabeel Rahman
Th 3/7/24: Amy Sepinwall
Th 3/14/24: Erik Encarnacion
Th 3/21/24: Seyla Benhabib
Th 4/4/24: Amalia Amaya
Th 4/11/24: Debbie Hellman
Th 4/18/24: Mala Chatterjee
Th 4/25/24: Liam Murphy
Contact Aditi Bagchi: https://www.fordham.edu/school-of-law/faculty/directory/full-time/aditi-bagchi/
Th 1/25/24: Kate Manne
Th 2/1/24: Scott Shapiro
Th 2/8/24: Ekow Yankah
Th 2/15/24: Tommie Shelby
Th 2/22/24 Gideon Rosen
Th 2/29/24: Sabeel Rahman
Th 3/7/24: Amy Sepinwall
Th 3/14/24: Erik Encarnacion
Th 3/21/24: Seyla Benhabib
Th 4/4/24: Amalia Amaya
Th 4/11/24: Debbie Hellman
Th 4/18/24: Mala Chatterjee
Th 4/25/24: Liam Murphy
Contact Aditi Bagchi: https://www.fordham.edu/school-of-law/faculty/directory/full-time/aditi-bagchi/
Th 1/25/24: Kate Manne
Th 2/1/24: Scott Shapiro
Th 2/8/24: Ekow Yankah
Th 2/15/24: Tommie Shelby
Th 2/22/24 Gideon Rosen
Th 2/29/24: Sabeel Rahman
Th 3/7/24: Amy Sepinwall
Th 3/14/24: Erik Encarnacion
Th 3/21/24: Seyla Benhabib
Th 4/4/24: Amalia Amaya
Th 4/11/24: Debbie Hellman
Th 4/18/24: Mala Chatterjee
Th 4/25/24: Liam Murphy
Contact Aditi Bagchi: https://www.fordham.edu/school-of-law/faculty/directory/full-time/aditi-bagchi/