The New York German Idealism Workshop is pleased to announce the first talk of the semester. Alison Stone (Lancaster University) will be giving a talk entitled, “Bettina von Arnim’s Romantic Philosophy in Die Günderode” on September 17 from 10am-12pm EST. Giulia Valpione (Università degli Studi di Padova) will be providing comments.
Join Zoom Meeting https://NewSchool.zoom.us/j/93096095303?pwd=ZjVWaTdLZ0VlNTlPUHFuWmJDVE9DZz09
Please email nygermanidealism@gmail.com to request the paper (and join our listserv), which has already been distributed (as of 9/8/21).
The second talk of the semester will be by Elisa Magrì (Boston College), who will be giving a talk entitled, “Sedimentation and Ethical Memory in Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit.” The talk will take place on October 15 from 4:30-6:30pm EST.
A Zoom link will be provided in advance. Please stay tuned for a poster containing all the events for the fall semester.
Professor Rupert Read (Personal Website link) will be joining us on the 22nd of October from 1-3 PM EDT on Zoom in presenting the introduction from his book, Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy: Thinking Through His Philosophical Investigations, in which he argues that “the key to understanding Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is to understand its liberatory purport.”
A conference celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Political Concepts Journal.
Friday, February 4th
1:30 – Lay of the Land
Ann Stoler
Jacques Lezra
J.M. Bernstein
Michael Sawyer
2:00 – 4:00 – Panel I
Emily Apter – Ecosophy
Axelle Karera – Anthropocene
Moderator: J.M. Bernstein
4:30 – 6:30 – Panel II
Jacques Lezra – Cop
Rocío Zambrana – Coloniality
Moderator: Susan Buck-Morss
Saturday, February 5th
11:00 – 1:00 – Panel III
Étienne Balibar – Communism
Neni Panourgiá – Dis-Continuities
Moderator: Michael Sawyer
2:00 – 4:00 – Panel IV
Barbara Nagel – Domestic Violence
Andreas Kalyvas – Oligarchy
Moderator: Emily Apter
4:30 – 6:30 – Panel V
Adi Ophir – Divine Violence
Abou Farman – Terminality
Moderator: Ann Stoler
Registered attendees will receive the zoom link via email.
Presented by the Philosophy Department and Anthropology Department at The New School for Social Research.
Please join Cornel West, 2021-2022 Presidential Visiting Scholar at The New School, for a public in-person lecture, “Philosophy in Our Time of Imperial Decay.”
Welcome by Dwight A. McBride, New School President
Moderated by Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy
PLEASE NOTE: Proof of vaccination and a booster are required for campus access; no exceptions will be granted. You must remain masked during the event. You will receive additional information about this closer to the event date.
Dr. Cornel West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. West teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects — including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music.
Dr. West is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies.
Dr. West is a frequent guest on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span and Democracy Now. He has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.
Since Plato, western philosophy has been set down a path paved by a disavowal of the sensuous, bracketed material bodies, and delimited aesthetic conceptions, leaving human beings and their built environments separated from the natural world. Such exclusions have left philosophy ill-equipped to deal with the various environmental crises we currently face, as economic rationality and utilitarian logic further de-animate the world and sharpen the human/nature distinction. Even the concept “environment” often, and ironically, brings with it implicit anthropocentric assumptions, conceptualizing, and thereby separating, the human as independent from the surrounding world and reinforcing the human/nature divide. As a result, our (mis)understandings of “nature” and “environment” may make us insensitive to and perpetuate, rather than address, climate change and other environmental catastrophes. To avoid ambiguities and clarify our understanding, we must ask: what role does Nature play within our theories and practices concerning so-called Environmental Philosophy? Furthermore, what spaces, practices, and questions are made possible when we broaden our understanding of “environment” to include a more robust conceptualization of the natural world and how the human being ought to be contextualized within it?
This conference asks how we might reorient the language and practices of philosophy in a way that can enable us to adequately respond to ongoing environmental crises. As a starting point, we propose a need to reimagine the concepts “human,” “nature,” and “environment,” as well as the reciprocal relations that constitute them. To recognize humans as natural organisms, we must reevaluate the sensuous, the material, and the aesthetic and the roles they play in our attempts to construct, understand, and preserve our environment(s). How should we make sense of our practices and our relations to those with whom we share our surroundings? How can we re-situate the human with/in the environment? Do we have the right tools to guide these investigations? How might philosophy look beyond itself—to literature, architecture, music, film, design—to better bring Environment, and thus the world, into view? In the spirit of this, we invite paper as well as project submissions from current graduate students in any discipline.
Possible Topics:
● Environmental Aesthetics: Re-Considering Beauty + the Sublime
● Environmental Justice + Restorative Justice + Transformative Justice
● Environmental Ethics + Sustainable Practices
● Diversity + Biodiversity
● Capitalism and Climate
● Eco-phenomenology
● Eco-deconstruction
● Environmental Racism/Racist Environments
● Ecofeminist conceptions of nature
● Land Rights and Property Relations
● Posthumanism + Object Ontologies
● Afrofuturism + Technological Utopias
● Environmental Ethics In Narratives
● Mastery of Nature in Philosophy
● Anarcho-primitivism
● Queer and Trans Ecologies
● Local and Global Ecologies
● Regionalisms and Globalisms in the Ecological Imagination
Confirmed Conference Keynotes:
Sandra Shapshay, CUNY Graduate Center, New York
Emanuele Coccia, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
Dates and Location:
This conference will be held at the New School for Social Research in New York City from Thursday, April 14, to Saturday, April 16. While we (tentatively) plan to hold the conference primarily in-person we would also like to provide a hybrid option for those who would prefer to participate remotely. Following the conference, on Sunday, April 17, all participants and attendees are invited to participate in a conference hike in Cold Spring, NY (about an hour and a half north of NYC and accessible by the Metro North commuter train).
Call for Papers: Submission Procedure:
Please submit complete papers (Word Limit: 3500) and an abstract of 250 words or less by January 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) or PDF to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com. Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information from the body of the paper. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and paper title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.
Call for Projects: Submission Procedure:
Please submit a project description (Word Limit: 1000) by December 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com, as well as:
For Visual Arts projects: submit 5 images of your work as .jpeg.
For Performing Arts projects: submit video/ audio of your work in .mp4 format
Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and project title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.
If you have any questions please email WithInEnvironments@gmail.com
Socrates’ close association of madness and philosophy from the Phaedrus’ Palinode has puzzled interpreters. How can philosophy be equated to irrationality? In this paper I argue against interpretations that either deny that the association of madness and philosophy ought to be taken seriously or downplay this association by considering madness as akin to the unreflective inspiration characterizing only the first stages of philosophizing but subsequently overcome by the mature philosopher. I show that the association of madness and philosophy is an integral part of Socrates’ polemics against what he calls “human moderation”, characterized by a cold calculation of costs and benefits. And, moreover, that madness is an ongoing feature of philosophy and of the philosopher, who is never fully in possession of all his rational and cognitive processes but has to constantly work on them in an effort of self-clarification.
External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here: https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors.
Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.
Book Panel with:
Chiara Bottici (NSSR and Lang College), Judith Butler (UC Berkeley and NSSR) and Romy Opperman (NSSR and Lang College).
Abstract:
How can we be sure the oppressed do not become oppressors in their turn? How can we envisage a feminism that doesn’t turn into yet another tool for oppression? By arguing that there is no single arche explaining the oppression of women and LGBTQI+ people, Chiara Bottici proposes a radical anarchafeminist philosophy inspired by two major claims: that there is something specific to the oppression of ‘the second sexes’, and that, in order to fight that, we need to untangle all other forms of oppression and the anthropocentrism they inhabit. On the basis of a Spinozist philosophy of transindividuality, Anarchafeminism calls for a decolonial and deimperial attitude and for a renewed awareness of the somatic communism connecting all different life forms on the planet. In this revolutionary vision, feminism does not mean the liberation of the lucky few, but liberation of the planet from both capitalist exploitation and an anthropocentric politics of domination. Either the entire planet, or none of us will be free.
External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here: https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors.
Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.
Sponsored by the NSSR Philosophy Department & The Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute (GSSI)
We are excited to announce that the first workshop of the semester will take place in person on Friday, September 23rd from *4-6pm* (please note the change in the usual time). Robert Stern (University of Sheffield) will be giving a talk entitled, “Found or Sought? Hegel vs MacIntyre on the Good Life and the Virtues.” Please note that the talk will take place at The New School, Room M104 (The Bark Room), Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center is on the southwest corner of 5th ave and 13th street)
To attend the talk in person you will need to be up-to-date with vaccinations and boosters and set up a CLEAR Health Pass account in advance. Directions for visitor access are below.
The event has been organized by the Wittgenstein Workshop.
Abstract: This paper draws a contrast between Hegel and MacIntyre, treating both as post-Kantian perfectionists. The claim is that while Hegel treats the good life as something found, and to be implemented in the rational state, MacIntyre treats it as something to be sought. This difference, it is argued, is reflected in their respective accounts of the virtues: for Hegel, the key virtue becomes rectitude, whereas for MacIntyre a wider range of virtues is required, to make this quest for the good achievable. Using the characters of Walt and Travis from Paris, Texas to illustrate the argument, it is suggested that the MacIntyrean option is to be preferred.
GUEST AND VISITOR ACCESS AND VACCINATION POLICY
Guests and visitors must be up-to-date with their COVID-19 vaccinations, including a booster when eligible.
Beginning Monday, August 15, The New School will use CLEAR’S Health Pass, an online tool that safely and simply verifies proof of COVID-19 vaccination, to issue guest passes. The CLEAR Health Pass replaces on-site manual vaccination checking and physical guest passes. CLEAR accounts should be set up in advance of arrival on campus and will remain active for a month, requiring only a selfie to reactivate. Details and instructions about creating and setting up a CLEAR account can be found on our website.
The Welcome Center Visitors Desk will remain open in a limited capacity to support the guests who may not be able to use CLEAR.
Before coming to campus, guests must verify vaccination records with the university.
If visitors are all of the below:
- 18 years of age or older.
- Or, are under 18 years of age and visiting campus with someone over 18.
- Have access to a mobile device.
- Have proof of vaccination accepted by CLEAR
- Domestic: Pictures of CDC card and Smart QR Codes
- International: EU Digital COVID Certification (DCC) and UK National Health Service (NHS) COVID Pass.
- Have a picture ID with the name matching the name on the vaccination record.
If visitors are at least one of the below:
- Under 18 years of age coming alone.
- Do not have access to a mobile device.
- Have proof of vaccination that is not accepted by CLEAR (e.g., other countries than the US, UK, EU).
- Do not have a picture ID with the name matching the name on the vaccination record.
- Cannot create or use a CLEAR account.
Use CLEAR to verify vaccination records and receive a guest pass in the app.
We recommend creating and verifying your account in advance of coming to campus.
11:00am: Cinzia Arruzza and James Dodd, Greetings and Introduction
Part 1. Celebrating Ross Poole
11:05-12:35am: Ben Nienass, “The Force of Memory” and Basak Ertur, “Learning to Live with Ghosts”
12:35-12:40 pm: Coffee Break
12:40-1:30 pm: Roundtable Discussion
Participants:
Omri Boehm, Lynne Segal and Mick Taussig
1:30-3:30 pm: Lunch Break
Part 2. Celebrating Bernard Flynn
3:30-6:00pm: Roundtable Discussion on the Work of Bernard Flynn
Participants:
Peg Birmingham, James Dodd, Frank Chouraqui, and Simon Critchley
External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here: https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors.
Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.