Calendar

Professor Kristin Boyce (Mississippi State University) will present her paper, “A Philosophical History of Analytic Philosophy of Literature“; graduate student Elliot Trapp (NSSR) will respond.

February 27th Friday 4:30-6:30, 80 Fifth Ave. Room 529, The New School

Abstract:

The history of analytic philosophy of literature could be written as a narrative of the efforts to formulate and solve a series of interrelated paradoxes. This kind of approach will strike many as uncontroversially part and parcel of an analytic philosophy of literature. I argue, though, that this is neither the only nor the best form that a distinctively “analytic” philosophy of literature can take. Instead of writing a survey of paradoxes formulated and solutions attempted, I shift to what I call “the paradox of philosophy and literature.” On one hand literature (along with the arts more generally) has consistently been of marginal importance as an object of philosophical reflection. On the other, or so I will argue, it has been of special methodological importance for analytic philosophy from the beginning.

The marginalization of aesthetics within analytic philosophy is no secret. By contrast, the  methodological centrality of the literary arts for analytic philosophy has not until recently been recognized at all. From its inception, the analytic tradition has worked hard to disentangle itself from other humanistic enterprises, especially art and religion, and to secure its proximity to modern science. Recent work in the history of early analytic philosophy by Cora Diamond and others, though, has made it possible to see how deeply tied the “analytic” ways of doing philosophy that emerged were not just to developments in the sciences, but to those in the literary arts and criticism as well. I argue that this work has important implications for aesthetics generally, and for philosophy of literature in particular, that have not yet been recognized or explored. A philosophical self-understanding, which more adequately reflects the proximity of the work of philosophy to the work of literature, should make possible new and by some measures better ways of reflecting philosophically on art.

*For a copy of the paper, please email nycwittgensteinworkshop@gmail.com

David Kishik (Emerson College), Dr Zed Adams (New School for Social Research)

Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, Joe Gould’s Oral History of Our Time, and Joseph Mitchell’s memoir each existed more in their respective author’s imagination than on the written page. In this Friday evening event, David Kishik will discuss the significance of such imaginary literary works for his own Manhattan Project (Stanford, 2015), which draws upon Benjamin, Gould, Mitchell, and others to develop a theory of Manahattan as the capital of the twentieth century. At the event, Kishik will be introduced and interviewed by New School faculty member Zed Adams.

The new season of Brooklyn Public Philosophers is upon us! Ask a Philosopher is coming back in a big way, and we have some, dare I say, dope af talks lined up for the semester – Elvira Basevich on W.E.B. Du Bois and the metaphysics of race, Christia Mercer on women in the history of philosophy, Chris Lebron on the philosophy of Black Lives Matter. Coming up on February 23rd at 7:00 P.M., Ben Abelson (Mercy College) will be kicking things off with a talk on what science fiction can teach us about what it means to be a person (human or otherwise). Here’s more about the talk, in Dr. Abelson’s own words:

“Persons in Science Fiction”

There is a crucial distinction between the concepts “human” and “person”. To be a person, one need not be a member of the human species. Science fiction is filled with a variety of non-human persons, including artificially intelligent robots, intergalactic aliens, super-evolved animals, and more. But what are the qualities that are essential to something counting as a person? This talk will examine the nature of personhood by considering myriad examples from sci-fi literature and film.

As usual, we meet at the Dweck Center at the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Bring a date! Or at least bring a sci-fi nerd! Come prepared with your favorite example of a marginal case of a person!

See you there, I hope!

Upcoming events:

3/23 – Elvira Basevich, “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Racialism and Two Liberal Conceptions of Plurality” @ the Dweck Center // 7:00 P.M.

4/27 – Christia Mercer on women in the history of philosophy @ the Dweck Center // 7:00 P.M.

5/18 – Chris Lebron on the philosophy of Black Lives Matter @ the Dweck Center // 7:00 P.M.

A talk by Anne Simon, moderated by Eliza Zingesser

Zoopoetics aims to highlight the plurality of stylistic, linguistic and narrative tools used by writers to express the plurality of animal activities, affects and worlds, as well as the intricacies of the interactions between humans and animals. Such an approach helps to understand that all life forms are in a relationship of dependence with an archè (Husserl)—an origin, a reason, a refuge, a dwelling, the Earth— and that animals are more stylistic or rhetorical beings than we usually think of them as being. Evolution and biomorphic logics allow us to intuitively understand other species related to us, to share many of their emotions and expressions, and to be able to account for them through specific human means, such as evocative and figurative language. The lecture will show that perspectivism, metamorphosis and hybridity are universal patterns and experiences that literature embodies in different ways.

Anne Simon is a Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Française and a Member of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), where she leads the Project « Animots » ; an author of Trafics de Proust, 2016 and La rumeur des distances traversées, to be published in 2018. Her research focuses on disturbing relationships between philosophy and literature, and on zoopoetics.