Kant and Spinoza on Prophecy, Enlightenment and Revolution
Presented by Columbia University Dept. of Philosophy
This talk explores the reflexive nature of consciousness, which consists primarily in the fact that a state of consciousness has a reflexive relation to the subject who has that state, so that the subject can typically be aware of itself as having that state. Comparing Kant’s, Fichte’s, and selected contemporary analytic theories of this reflexivity shows that there is a crucial difference in the way the relation between form (or mode) and content of a state of consciousness is conceived. The first part examines Kant’s formal theory of consciousness: reflexivity is understood not in terms of a self-referential content resulting from a reflection on the state of the subject, but as the universal transcendental form that any content must have in order to be representationally significant and potentially conscious to the subject. The second part examines Fichte’s departure from Kant in his theory of a self-positing consciousness: in the original act of self-positing, the mere form of reflexivity is turned into a self-referential content that determines the subject as an object from the absolute standpoint of consciousness. The third part examines analytic theories that explain the reflexivity (or what is often called the subjective character) of consciousness on a model of mental indexicality. These theories tend to reduce reflexivity to an objective constituent of content that, although often implicit, can be read off from the subject’s contextual situatedness in nature. In conclusion, Kant’s theory can be understood as a moderate, human-centered kind of perspectivism that navigates between Fichtean absolute subjectivity and a naturalist absolute objectivity.
Registration is free but required. A registration link will be shared via email with our department mailing lists a few weeks before the event. Please contact Jack Mikuszewski at jhm378@nyu.edu if you did not receive a registration link.
The Philosophy Department provides reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. Requests for accommodations should be submitted to philosophy@nyu.edu at least two weeks before the event.
2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop, and the beginning of a sonic, cultural and socio-political revolution that changed the U.S. and the world. To commemorate the anniversary, Brooklyn Public Library will present NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY: THE PHILOSOPHY OF HIP-HOP on Saturday, June 17th, from 7 pm – 2 am at Central Library.
Join us for this FREE event that will take over the entire Central Library building to celebrate hip-hop culture past, present and future, with keynote addresses, live DJs, film screenings, discussions, debates and contemplative engagements. BPL invites you to celebrate hip-hop and spend a NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY.
Co-curated by LeBrandon Smith and Kelly Harrison. The Dilemma Series is curated by April R. Silver, founder of AKILA WORKSONGS.
Anja Jauernig’s recently published The World According to Kant (Oxford, 2021) defends an interpretation of Kant’s critical idealism as an ontological position, according to which Kant can be considered a genuine idealist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space time. Yet in contrast to other intentional objects, appearances genuinely exist, which is why Kant can also be considered a genuine realist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. This book spells out Kant’s case for critical idealism thus understood and clarifies Kant’s conception of appearances and things in themselves in relation to Kant’s Leibniz-Wolffian predecessors.
Anja Jauernig (NYU)
Bio:
Anja Jauernig is Professor of Philosophy at New York University. She obtained her Ph.D. from Princeton University, and held academic positions at the philosophy departments of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Pittsburgh before coming to NYU. Her research interests include Kant, Early Modern Philosophy, 19th and early 20th century German Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Animal Ethics.
Patricia Kitcher (Columbia)
Bio:
Patricia Kitcher is Roberta and William Campbell Professor Emerita of Humanities and Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Columbia. She has written two books on Kant’s theory of cognition and the self and is editor of the Oxford Philosophical Concepts volume on The Self.
Andrew Chignell (Princeton)
Bio:
Andrew Chignell is Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor in Religion, Philosophy, and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. Prior to that he was a Professor of Philosophy at Penn and Associate and Assistant Professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell. His research interests are in early modern philosophy (especially Kant) and in philosophy of religion, moral psychology, epistemology, and food ethics. From 2020-2023 he served as President of the North American Kant Society.
Desmond Hogan (Princeton)
Bio:
Desmond Hogan is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His research interests include metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics, and aesthetics, with a focus on the modern period and nineteenth century.
Samantha Matherne has written the first recent book in English on the philosophy of Cassirer, covering the full range of his thought. Her research also explores the reciprocal relationship between perception and aesthetics. She approaches these issues largely through a historical lens, as they are taken up by Kant and developed in Post-Kantian traditions in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially Phenomenology and Neo-Kantianism.
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.
Nietzsche (1844-1900) is one of the few philosophers who have an intimate connection to music. This connection has much to do with his early music education. His contemporaries testify that he was a good pianist. His musical ambition, or his musical daimon, urged him to compose music, although he had no training in this area. Most of his compositions are from his late teens; his earliest inspirations are Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Schumann and Wagner. His compositions were gathered together and published by Curt Paul Janz in Friedrich Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass. Nietzsche’s music is available in several productions. However, Nietzsche did not follow a musical path and decided to become a philologist and dedicated his life to writing and philosophy.
Nietzsche’s background in music, on the other hand, influenced his way of thinking and writing. All of these interesting areas between music, literature, and philosophy and Nietzsche’s relationship to music understood on a broad spectrum have been explored by many Nietzsche scholars including Georges Liébert, Graham Parkes, Francois Noudelmann, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and others and in the anthology, An Anthology on Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments, edited by the presenters of today’s event. This event is dedicated to the exploration of this relationship between Nietzsche and music.
This conference will be hosted in a hybrid format. Accepted presenters can choose to participate in person or virtually. We will provide a limited number of need-based travel awards for graduate students and underfunded scholars who wish to attend in person.
We invite paper and panel submissions from philosophers at all career stages. We highly encourage submissions from current graduate students, as well as recent Ph.D. graduates.
We welcome submissions from Latinx philosophers in any area of philosophy, including (but not limited to) Critical Theory, Epistemology, Ethics, Feminist Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Indigenous Philosophy, Latin American Philosophy, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of Science, and Social and Political Philosophy.
In addition, we welcome submissions from non-Latinx philosophers working in Latin American Philosophy or whose work explicitly addresses issues relevant to Latinx and Latin American peoples.
Submission Instructions
Paper submissions require an 800–1000 word extended abstract (excluding notes and bibliography) prepared for anonymous review. The final version of the project should be suitable for a 25-minute presentation.
Panel proposals should be 1000–1500 words (excluding notes and bibliography) and should set out in some detail the focus of the proposed panel. Please only submit proposals if all proposed panelists have confirmed a willingness to attend if selected (either in person or online). Panels should include no more than three panelists and each panelist should plan to present for 20 minutes.
For both paper and panel proposals: submissions should be sent as a PDF file to latinxphilosophyconference@gmail.com. Below the submission title, include a word count and list the primary subfield(s) under which the submission falls, plus 1–3 keywords, e.g., epistemology (testimonial injustice, social epistemology). In a separate PDF file, please include your name(s), paper/panel submission title, academic affiliation (if applicable), career stage (e.g., graduate student, recent PhD graduate, associate professor), email address, preferred mode of attendance (in person or online), and whether you wish to be considered for a need-based travel award.
We are seeking submissions for our 14th annual conference hosted in Spring, 2024.
Send abstracts to newyorkcityearlymodern [at] gmail.com by December 8, 2023.
https://philevents.org/event/show/114750
Speakers:
Organisers:
With response by John Hare (Yale)
Presented by the NY German Idealism Workshop.