Sep
11
Wed
Critique 1/13: Foucault and Nietzsche with Amy Allen @ Jerome Greene Annex, Columbia Law
Sep 11 @ 6:15 pm – 8:45 pm
The first seminar in the Critique 13/13 Series.

About this Event

Wednesday, September 11, 2019 6:15 – 8:45 pm at Columbia University

With Professor Amy Allen and Bernard E. Harcourt

Readings include:

Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, 76-100. New York, Pantheon Books, 1984.

_____. “Nietzsche, Freud, Marx.” In The Essential Works of Michel Foucault: Power, ed. James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley et al., 277-278. New York: New Press, 2000.

Harcourt, Bernard E., “The Illusion of Influence: On Foucault, Nietzsche, and a Fundamental Misunderstanding” (May 24, 2019). Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-627 (2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3393827

These events are free and open to the public. Please RSVP.

The syllabus is available here.

Sep
25
Wed
Critique 2/13: Horkheimer and Adorno with Axel Honneth @ Columbia Maison Française, Buell Hall
Sep 25 @ 6:15 pm – 8:45 pm
The second seminar in the Critique 13/13 Seminar Series.

About this Event

Wednesday, September 25, 2019 6:15-8:45 pm at Columbia University

Professor Axel Honneth and Bernard E. Harcourt discussing the early Frankfurt School, specifically Max Horkheimer’s 1937 essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” and Theodor Adorno’s 1931 essay, “The Actuality of Philosophy.”

This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française.

Readings include:

Horkheimer, Max. “Traditional and Critical Theory, in Horkheimer, Max. Critical Theory: Selected Essays. New York: Continuum, 1992.

Adorno, Theodor W. “The Actuality of Philosophy.” Telos 1997, no. 31 (1997): 120-133.

These events are free and open to the public. Please RSVP.

 

The syllabus is available here.

Jan
29
Wed
Seyla Benhabib and Bernard E. Harcourt on Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition @ Columbia Maison Française, Buell Hall
Jan 29 @ 6:15 pm – 8:45 pm

Reading and discussing The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt

Mar
11
Wed
Homi Bhabha and Bernard E. Harcourt on Edward Said: Orientalism @ Columbia Maison Française, Buell Hall
Mar 11 @ 6:15 pm – 8:45 pm

Reading and discussing Orientalism by Edward Said

Sep
27
Mon
Robert Iliffe – ‘A Thousand Fictions’: Cultism and Delusional Metaphysics in the Newton-Leibniz Disputes @ ZOOM - see site for details
Sep 27 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

The rich philosophical and mathematical disputes that took place between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz at the start of the eighteenth century have received more historical attention than any other exchange in the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, in this talk, Robert Iliffe discusses a prominent but neglected aspect of their disagreement, namely the mutual claim that their opponents’ conceptual foundations were fictional, and were the product both of diseased thinking and of illegitimately organized intellectual structures. Newton assailed Leibniz’s allegedly debased metaphysics in various prominent places, and mobilized allies such as Roger Cotes and John Keill to do the same. Nevertheless, by far the most sophisticated critique of illicit philosophical assumptions was launched against Newton by Leibniz in his correspondence with Samuel Clarke. In the Fifth letter to Clarke, Leibniz identified core Newtonian positions as infantile, vulgar, and profoundly irreligious, asserting that they were dangerous fictions that were less plausible and much less edifying than the rational romances of writers in the previous century. Although Leibniz saved his most potent intellectual weapons for his final letter to Clarke, Robert Iliffe suggests that his attack on the fictional status of Newton’s work was no mere codicil to his general critique of Newton’s philosophy, but instead lay at the heart of it. This famous debate, while of course somewhat sui generis, is indicative of more general and dynamic features of intellectual debate.

Event Speaker

Robert Iliffe, Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oxford

Event Information

This event is free and open to the public; Registration required. Please contact scienceandsociety@columbia.edu with any questions.

This event is part of the New York History of Science Lecture Series.

Sep
30
Fri
Buddhist Conventional Truth and Ontological Pluralism. Laura P. Guerrero (William & Mary) @ Faculty House, Columbia U
Sep 30 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

With responses from Mark Siderits (Illinois State University)

ABSTRACT: Buddhist philosophers often draw a distinction between two different kinds of truth: conventional truth (saṃvṭi-satya) and ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya). Abhidharma Buddhists philosophers typically understand this distinction in terms of an ontological distinction between two different kinds of entities: ultimately real entities (paramārtha-sat) and conventionally real entities (saṃvṛti-sat). Similar to contemporary philosophical discussions about ordinary objects, Buddhist philosophers debate the ontological status of conventional entities and the semantics of discourse concerning them. Mark Siderits (2015, 2021, 2022) has influentially argued for an eliminitivist position he calls “Buddhist reductionism” that interprets the Abhidharma position as one that denies conventional entities exist but that retains discourse involving apparent reference to them. However, in a recent article Kris McDaniel (2019), a prominent defender of ontological pluralism, challenges that view by proposing that the Abhidharma Buddhist distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth be “defined up” from a more basic distinction between two different ways an entity can exist: conventionally or ultimately. In this paper I argue that Saṃghabhadra’s account of conventional reality and truth does lends itself well to McDaniel’s proposal but I will also argue that the account of conventional and ultimate truth that results differs in important ways from the models he offers. I will end by offering a modification of McDaniel’s account of conventional truth that is derived from Saṃghabhadra’s pluralist ontology. That view will, unlike the views suggested by both Siderits and McDaniel, allow for there to be ultimate truths about what is conventionally true.

 

Dinner will be kindly offered by the Columbia University Seminars. 

RSVP is required for dinner. Please email Lucilla with eating requirements at lm3335@columbia.edu. 

Feb
15
Thu
Verity Harte (Yale) @ 716 Philosophy Hall
Feb 15 @ 4:10 pm – 6:00 pm

Verity Harte is a specialist in ancient philosophy, with particular research interests in ancient metaphysics, epistemology and psychology, especially of Plato and Aristotle. She is the author of Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure, and is the editor of several important books on ancient philosophy.