Feb
28
Fri
The difficulty of Being between Cora Diamond and Martin Heidegger. Filippo Casati (Lehigh) @ New School 1101
Feb 28 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

NYC Wittgenstein presents:

Filippo Casati (Lehigh University) on  “The difficulty of Being between Cora Diamond and Martin Heidegger”
As usual, we will being serve refreshments. We look forward to seeing you there.
Oct
22
Fri
Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy, Rupert Read @ ZOOM - see site for details
Oct 22 @ 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

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.”

Mar
31
Fri
Wittgenstein and Care Ethics. Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) @ New School D1001
Mar 31 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The NYC Wittgenstein Workshop presents:

March 31st — Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and Care Ethics

April 14th — Camila Lobo (PhD candidate in Philosophy at Nova University of Lisbon and visiting scholar) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and hermeneutical justice in connection with the so-called “problem of the new.”

April 21st — Harmut von Sass (Humboldt University Berlin and a visiting scholar) will be presenting on gratitude.

April 28th — Janna van Grunsven (Delft University of Technology) will be presenting on How Social Media Platforms Disrupt the Field of Social Affordances and Threaten Human Flourishing.

With the exception of our last talk (which will take place over Zoom), workshops will be in person from 4 to 6 pm EST, followed by a reception. As always, snacks and drinks will be provided.

Look out for an email closer to each event with more details regarding the location and materials the speaker would like to circulate.

 

Apr
14
Fri
The Child and the Foreigner: Wittgenstein on Understanding the New. Camila Lobo (Nova University of Lisbon) @ New School D1101
Apr 14 @ 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

The NYC Wittgenstein Workshop presents:

March 31st — Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and Care Ethics

April 14th — Camila Lobo (PhD candidate in Philosophy at Nova University of Lisbon and visiting scholar) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and hermeneutical justice in connection with the so-called “problem of the new.” (11am-1pm EDT)

April 21st — Harmut von Sass (Humboldt University Berlin and a visiting scholar) will be presenting on gratitude.

April 28th — Janna van Grunsven (Delft University of Technology) will be presenting on How Social Media Platforms Disrupt the Field of Social Affordances and Threaten Human Flourishing.

With the exception of our last talk (which will take place over Zoom), workshops will be in person from 4 to 6 pm EST, followed by a reception. As always, snacks and drinks will be provided.

Look out for an email closer to each event with more details regarding the location and materials the speaker would like to circulate.

 

Apr
21
Fri
NYC Wittgenstein Workshop @ New School tbd
Apr 21 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The NYC Wittgenstein Workshop presents:

March 31st — Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and Care Ethics

April 14th — Camila Lobo (PhD candidate in Philosophy at Nova University of Lisbon and visiting scholar) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and hermeneutical justice in connection with the so-called “problem of the new.”

April 21st — Harmut von Sass (Humboldt University Berlin and a visiting scholar) will be presenting on gratitude.

April 28th — Janna van Grunsven (Delft University of Technology) will be presenting on How Social Media Platforms Disrupt the Field of Social Affordances and Threaten Human Flourishing.

With the exception of our last talk (which will take place over Zoom), workshops will be in person from 4 to 6 pm EST, followed by a reception. As always, snacks and drinks will be provided.

Look out for an email closer to each event with more details regarding the location and materials the speaker would like to circulate.

 

Apr
28
Fri
NYC Wittgenstein Workshop @ New School tbd
Apr 28 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The NYC Wittgenstein Workshop presents:

March 31st — Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and Care Ethics

April 14th — Camila Lobo (PhD candidate in Philosophy at Nova University of Lisbon and visiting scholar) will be presenting on Wittgenstein and hermeneutical justice in connection with the so-called “problem of the new.”

April 21st — Harmut von Sass (Humboldt University Berlin and a visiting scholar) will be presenting on gratitude.

April 28th — Janna van Grunsven (Delft University of Technology) will be presenting on How Social Media Platforms Disrupt the Field of Social Affordances and Threaten Human Flourishing.

With the exception of our last talk (which will take place over Zoom), workshops will be in person from 4 to 6 pm EST, followed by a reception. As always, snacks and drinks will be provided.

Look out for an email closer to each event with more details regarding the location and materials the speaker would like to circulate.

 

Sep
29
Fri
The Availability of the Non-Ideal: to an Engaged Philosophy of Language. Nikki Ernst (U Pittsburgh) @ Room 1101
Sep 29 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

still scheduled, but zoom link for those who can’t travel: https://NewSchool.zoom.us/j/8479688193

Throughout the 21st century, philosophers of language have increasingly concerned themselves with the hateful, coercive, dehumanizing, and deadly. In particular, ‘non-ideal’ philosophers of language question whether received conceptual toolkits from philosophy of language manage to make contact with our non-ideal world at all. This paper takes up that methodological interest from a Wittgensteinian perspective. Drawing on critical interventions by Nancy Bauer, Avner Baz, Alice Crary, Cora Diamond, and Toril Moi, I argue that non-ideal philosophers of language neutralize their ideology-critical bite when they presume an authoritative force for their words by virtue of a normatively neutral conception of reason. This neutralization is driven and sustained by an idle picture of language that isolates our words from the activities into which they are woven. To make discursive phenomena available in their political import, we philosophers of language must acknowledge our own non-neutral involvement in the very discursive practices we’re theorizing – and this will require us to relinquish the entitlement to impose authoritative requirements on language through theories of meaning.

To illustrate the need for normatively non-neutral methods in philosophical practice, I focus on cases where philosophers’ curious gaze treats trans people
as fascinating objects of knowledge, as opposed to acknowledging us as interlocutors and recognizing the political stakes of our discursive practices. What inhibits the cultivation of acknowledgement, of normatively resonant modes of attention, is a picture of philosophical theorizing that forbids us from articulating our political solidarities through our work (and thus obfuscates what we ourselves are doing with words when theorizing). The non-ideal philosopher’s critical concept of idealization, seen aright in a normatively non-neutral light, exemplifies the sort of theoretical resource that is mobilized by members of marginalized groups to invite such modes of attention – to shape not only our epistemic resources, but also our senses of what matters.

Oct
13
Fri
An Imagistic Seeing-As: from Faces to Metaphors and Biases. Talia Morag (U Wollongong) @ Room 1101
Oct 13 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The virtually ubiquitous view of seeing-as experiences in Wittgenstein scholarship interprets them as conceptually-laden (with some exceptions, e.g. Travis 2016). The claim is that we can see the same image differently due to switching the conceptual filters, as it were, through which we experience the image (e.g. Schroeder 2010; Mulhall 2001). In this paper I focus on a specific kind of a seeing-as experience for which Wittgenstein’s example of suddenly noticing the similarity between faces is the paradigm. I argue that it is possible to have no concepts involved in this experience, and propose an understanding of what I call “the imagistic seeing-as” as a similarity association, of the kind that grounds poetic means of expression, such as metaphors. The associative nature of this imagistic seeing-as experience may also contribute to the understanding of biases – both personal (e.g. displaced offence) and social (e.g. sexism).

Nov
3
Fri
Non-Idea Justice: A Family Resemblance Approach. Nadia ben Hassine (Cambridge) @ New School room 1101
Nov 3 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The importance of incorporating value pluralism into a theory of justice is recognized in many conceptualizations of justice. This pluralism is often seen as a reason to attend to a range of perspectives, perspectives which can function as a source of information in determining which principles should guide justice. However, philosophy’s ability to properly attend to different perspectives has received extensive attention in the criticisms of various non-ideal theorists, who argue that ideal-theoretical philosophy runs the risk of excluding important aspects of actual social problems. Taking these criticisms on board, this paper builds on non-ideal theory by arguing for a Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach to justice. I will explain how this linguistic practice-embedded understanding of justice can be a helpful tool for non-ideal theory, as it can give us insight into why, in various similar but different cases, the notion of justice is seen as applicable. In light of this approach, I will suggest a reorientation of the pluralist demand towards an empirical starting point.

Feb
1
Thu
Mexican Antigones: In Search of a Stolen Mourning, presented by Rosaura Martinez @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Feb 1 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Analyzing the Mexican case of collectives of women currently looking for their disappeared relatives due to an escalation of violence related to the so-called War against Drugs that former president Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) started, this essay develops a new conception of politics grounded not only on rational thought but also on affect. These collectives put forward a materialistic, feminist, and performative mode of politics. Publicly lamenting their losses and literally digging bodies out of Mexican land, these women perform and recover the citizenship that the Mexican state has de facto disavowed of them. I propose conceptualizing them as “bad victims” since their taking action does not take away their pain; rather, the public exposure of their lament actually turns them into political agents.

 

Bio:

Rosaura Martínez Ruiz is Full Professor of Philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a member of the National System of Researchers, level III. She was coordinator of the research projects “Philosophers after Freud” and “Philosophy and Psychoanalysis as Critical Borders of the Political.” She is the author of Freud y Derrida: escritura y psique (2013) and Eros: Más allá de la pulsión de muerte (2017). This last book has been translated into English and published by Fordham University Press (2021). She has coordinated several collective books and published articles on the intersection between psychoanalysis and philosophy and on the field of the psychopolitical. In 2017 she was awarded the Research Prize in Humanities by the Mexican Academy of Sciences; in 2019 she was a Fulbright Scholar; in 2021 she received the Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz UNAM recognition; and during the Fall 2023 she was the Tinker Visiting Professor at Columbia University. She is part of the advisory board of the “International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs” coordinated by Judith Butler.