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).
Presented by Metro Area Philosophers of Science
Spring 2020 Schedule:
Anthony Aguirre (UCSC) – “Entropy in long-lived genuinely closed quantum systems”
6:30-8:30pm Tuesday Feb 4; NYU Philosophy Department (5 Washington Place), 3rd floor seminar room.
David Papineau (King’s College London & CUNY) – “The Nature of Representation”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday March 3; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Jim Holt (Author of Why Does the World Exist?) – “Here, Now, Photon: Why Newton was closer to EM than Maudlin is”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 7; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech)
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 28; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Naked Statistical Evidence and Verdictive Justice
Poets and singers in a number of medieval vernacular languages reached non-native audiences and inspired speakers of other languages to compose in theirs; and many imagined their compositions enjoying a universality similar to that of cosmopolitan languages like Latin and Arabic. An interesting rationalization of these aspirations can be discerned in a short verse narrative of a well-known episode in the youth of Alexander the Great, conqueror of India, together with his tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. Not only does it involve Greeks and Indians singing French songs and cosplaying French lovers, but the philosopher is induced to pretend to be a horse and then justifies his behavior as “natural,” with far-reaching implications which this talk will explore.
Sarah Kay is Professor Emerita in the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University and Life Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. In Spring 2023, she is Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Columbia Society of Senior Scholars.
This talk is presented by the Columbia Maison Française, Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, The Society of Senior Scholars, the Department of Music, and Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
This talk will develop the idea that racial identities are best understood as formed through large scale historical events, and that this genesis can only be obscured by disavowals of racial categories as conceptually mistaken and inevitably morally pernicious. In this sense, races are formed not simply as ideas, or ideologies and policies, as many social constructivists about race argue, but as forms of life with associated patterns of subjectivity including, as a wealth of social psychology has shown, presumptive attitudes and behavioral dispositions (Jeffers 2019; Steele 2010; Sullivan 2005). Because they are historical formations, racial identities are thoroughly social, contextual, variegated internally, and dynamic. It is history that will alter them, not merely policy changes.
The speaker will be Prof. Lewis Gordon of the University of Connecticut, on “From Harlem to the World: Philosophy from a Center of the Black World with Questions for the 21st Century.” Gordon will talk about worldliness and public aspects of philosophy, placing them in the context of Harlem both at City College and the public world of Africana philosophy from Du Bois to Malcolm X to contemporaries such as Nathalie Etoke. He will conclude with a set of questions for 21st century philosophy to consider.
Lewis R. Gordon is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs; Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies; Honorary Professor in the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University, South Africa; and Distinguished Scholar at The Most Honourable PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy at The University of the West Indies, Mona. He co-edits the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs, the Rowman & Littlefield book series Global Critical Caribbean Thought, and the Routledge-India book series Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-Covid World. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021) and Fear of Black Consciousness (hardcover, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022; in the UK, London: Penguin Books, 2022), Picador paperback 2023. He is the 2022 recipient of the Eminent Scholar Award from the Global Development Studies division of the International Studies Association.
This talk reads contemporary debates about structural racism and US history from the perspective of philosophical questions about identity and difference. While many people have argued that America needs to come to terms with or “work through” the racism in its history that has shaped and continues to shape its present structures, it remains difficult to explain what connects this past and the present. Are we talking about one racism with many different past and present forms? Or are there multiple racisms that only share some similar features? In this talk, I draw attention to how these divisions play out particularly in contemporary Black Studies and argue that the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze can offer us resources for thinking about these questions through his discussions of repetition. I argue that understanding our conversations about structural racism and history as conversations about a racism that repeats, can help us to better understand why racism seems to reappear, how to think its disparate forms together, and what presuppositions operate in many attempts to “work through” the past.
Bio: Eyo Ewara is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. His teaching and research explores the relationships between 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Queer Theory. His work has appeared in Theory and Event, Puncta, Philosophy Today, Critical Philosophy of Race, Political Theology, and other venues. His current research project is particularly interested in engaging work in Continental Philosophy, Queer Theory, and Black Studies to address questions of identity and difference amongst concepts of race, forms of racism, and forms of anti-racism. How can we better account for the relations between at times radically disparate concepts, structures, and practices such that they can all specifically and recognizably be called racial? What might our account of these relations say about our ability to address racism’s harms?