Lydia Goehr, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University gives a lecture entitled:
“Moses and the Monochrome. Thought Experiments in the Art and Theology of Modernism”
About the speaker:
Lydia Goehr is a Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She teaches courses in the history of aesthetic theory, the contemporary philosophy of the arts, critical theory, and the philosophy of history. Her research interests are in German aesthetic theory and in particular in the relationship between philosophy, politics, history, and music. With Gregg Horowitz, she is series editor of Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts, Columbia University Press. She also leads the Faculty-Students Aesthetics Group which meets weekly during the semester and welcomes students and faculty from many disciplines, from Columbia and the New York area.
Goehr is the author of The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music(1992; second edition with a new essay, 2007, with translations in Greek and Chinese); The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy[essays on Richard Wagner] (1998); Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory [essays on Adorno and Danto] (2008), and co-editor with Daniel Herwitz of The Don Giovanni Moment. Essays on the legacy of an Opera (2006). She has written many articles on the work of Theodor W. Adorno, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Arthur Danto (see below for publications list). Her current book is titled Red Sea – Red Square. Bohemian Tales of Wit and Melancholy. She is co-editor with Jonathan Gilmoreof Handbook on Arthur C. Danto, contracted with Wiley-Blackwell.
In 2009/2010 she received a Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award, in 2007/8 The Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC)’s Faculty Mentoring Award (FMA), and in 2005, a Columbia University Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.
Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research.
Conference Speakers:
Organisers:
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 Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion presents: A Fine-Tuning Extravaganza (with Luke Barnes, Barry Loewer, Tim Maudlin, Hans Halvorson, and Alex Pruss).
1. Monday, February 20th, 7pm, Luke Barnes, an astrophysicist from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy and co-author of “A Fortunate Universe”, will give a general-audience talk on the scientific side of fine-tuning. The talk will be at Hageman Hall, the large meeting room on the first floor of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary (corner of College Ave. and Seminary Place, right in the middle of the College Ave. campus). Luke is an engaging speaker and a respected scientist — this will be an excellent introduction to all the kinds of phenomena that are typically used in fine-tuning design arguments.
2. Tuesday, February 21st, 1pm-5pm, a Round-Table on Design Arguments, with remarks from Luke Barnes (Sydney), Barry Loewer (Rutgers), Hans Halvorson (Princeton), and comments from Tim Maudlin (NYU) and Alex Pruss (Baylor). This will be an open-ended exchange of ideas on the prospects and problems for using the “fine-tuning of the cosmos for life” (or for something) in arguments for a designer, or for a multiverse, or for… other things. The event will take place in the large lecture hall on the top floor of the Alexander Library on College Ave — NOT in the philosophy seminar room!
Both events are free and open to the public.
The Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion presents: A Fine-Tuning Extravaganza (with Luke Barnes, Barry Loewer, Tim Maudlin, Hans Halvorson, and Alex Pruss).
1. Monday, February 20th, 7pm, Luke Barnes, an astrophysicist from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy and co-author of “A Fortunate Universe”, will give a general-audience talk on the scientific side of fine-tuning. The talk will be at Hageman Hall, the large meeting room on the first floor of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary (corner of College Ave. and Seminary Place, right in the middle of the College Ave. campus). Luke is an engaging speaker and a respected scientist — this will be an excellent introduction to all the kinds of phenomena that are typically used in fine-tuning design arguments.
2. Tuesday, February 21st, 1pm-5pm, a Round-Table on Design Arguments, with remarks from Luke Barnes (Sydney), Barry Loewer (Rutgers), Hans Halvorson (Princeton), and comments from Tim Maudlin (NYU) and Alex Pruss (Baylor). This will be an open-ended exchange of ideas on the prospects and problems for using the “fine-tuning of the cosmos for life” (or for something) in arguments for a designer, or for a multiverse, or for… other things. The event will take place in the large lecture hall on the top floor of the Alexander Library on College Ave — NOT in the philosophy seminar room!
Both events are free and open to the public.
“Secularism and Its Discontents”
The New School for Social Research
16th Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference
Keynote Speaker: Gil Anidjar (Columbia)
Keynote Roundtable Featuring: Simon Critchley (The New School) and others TBA
With the increased social secularization in the West, philosophy, politics, and religion have become strange bedfellows. This emphasis on secularization has sparked controversies concerning the role of religion in the political sphere that have taken the form of lawsuits against forced funding of birth control, liberal democratic states outlawing hijabs, and increased focus on religious extremism as a way to define marginalized social classes. Unfortunately, in many liberal rationalizations of the political sphere there is a failure to give accounts of contemporary and historical forms of theology and specifically secularism. Questions are then raised: have politics and religion been separated by secular movements and relegated to their own jargons, ideas, and concepts, or are they both necessary to give fuller accounts of the interplays between them? With new arguments forming both in support of increased space for religion in politics and also in support of the complete separation of religion and politics under the guise of secularization – and both in the name of“freedom,” “equality,” and “rights” – one is forced to ask a fundamental question: what is the role of religion in politics? And what are the political, theological, and philosophical ramifications of this role? From ancient thought to contemporary philosophy, issues of transcendence, absence, silence, resistance, and action have been raised as theological questions within the realm of the political. However, the extent to which religion and politics intersect in the contemporary world has become increasingly contentious in terms of religious expression and secular movements.
From political theology to radical orthodoxy to studies on political myth, the meaning of the relation between the sacred and the secular has yet to secure a consistently meaningful definition despite an increased popular rhetoric among various camps in the secularism debates. As such, the question of the influence that politics and religion have on one another is of significant import. This question holds major sway in any debate concerning the possibility of and warrant for a secular society, and to understand secular movements, one must first understand the contemporary and historical connections between the secular and the sacred. In light of this question, the liberal answer to the problem of the role of religion in politics is seemingly simple: new age, new order, a new secular approach to the political. But is the answer really this simple? This is the question we wish to explore.
At this year’s NSSR philosophy student conference, we wish to consider the role of religion in politics and all of the tensions and consequences this role entails specifically in relation to movements toward secularization. By bringing politics, religion, and philosophy into conversation with one another, one will be able to more clearly understand the causes, consequences, and meanings of secularization. At this conference we will think both with and against theology, politics, and philosophy in order to think more deeply about the secular.
We invite the submission of papers no longer than 4000 words prepared for a 30 minute presentation. Papers should be submitted as .pdf files and formatted for blind review. Please include as a separate document a cover letter including your name, paper title, institutional affiliation, and contact information.
Submissions should be sent to secularismanditsdiscontents@gmail.com by January 21st, 2017.
Possible Paper Topics Include:
- · Political Theology
- · Radical Orthodoxy
- · Politics and the Problem of Ontotheology
- · The Lowtich-Blumenberg Debate
- · Theological Materialism
- · Political Myth
- · Politics and a Phenomenology of Religious Experience
- · Silence and the Political
- · Feminism and Religious Experience
- · Presence and Absence in the Political
- · The Politics of Religion
- · When Religion Becomes Law
- · Mystical Anarchism
- · Political Revolution and Religious Revelation
- · Liberation Theology
- · Race and Philosophy of Religion
- · The Doctrine of Religious Restraint
- · Religious Existentialism
- · Violence and Religion
- · Neoliberalism and Religion
The 2017 Departmental Faculty Lecture will be delivered by Prof. Giorgio Pini on September 12 at 4:30 pm in Flom Auditorium of the Walsh Family Library. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Hegel famously charges that Spinoza’s monism involves an unacceptable elimination of all finitude and all determinacy, leaving Spinoza’s God a “shapeless abyss”. I argue that the criticism is not best understood as claiming that Spinoza specifically denies finitude and determinacy. Nor as uncharitably importing Hegel’s own view of determinacy as negation. The criticism rather rests on an interpretation of Spinoza as arguing from the principle that everything must be explicable. I defend Hegel’s interpretation, or the need of Spinoza’s case for monism for this principle. Hegel’s critical point is then that precisely this principle, used in just the ways required by the proof of monism, should also force Spinoza to eliminate all determinacy and finitude. I defend the criticism, and draw out some implications about Hegel’s own project.
James Kreines is Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, in Claremont, California. He publishes work on Kant, Hegel, and German idealism, and the history of metaphysics, and metaphilosophy. His monograph on Hegel and his response to Kant—Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and its Philosophical Appeal—was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press. Current projects include the relation between Kant, Hegel and Spinoza; the topic of biological teleology in Kant and Hegel, in comparison to previous views of the is topic and more recent debates; and Kant’s position on reason, critique, and things in themselves.
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
The Department’s colloquium series typically meets on Thursdays in the Seminar Room at Gateway Bldg, 106 Somerset Street, 5th Floor at 3:00 p.m. Please see the Department Calendar or scheduled speakers and more details.
Fall 2017
- 10/19/17 Break It Down For Me Lecture Series: Alex Guerrero
- 10/30/17 Inaugural Rutgers Lecture: Sir Richard Sorabji, Alexander Library Teleconference Lecture Hall, Room 403, CAC 3:00-8:00pm
- 11/2/17 Inaugural Rutgers Lecture: Sir Richard Sorabji, Alexander Library Teleconference Lecture Hall, 3:00-8:00 pm
- 11/3/17 Inaugural Rutgers Lecture: Sir Richard Sorabji, 3:00-5:00pm
- 11/6/17 Dr. Daniel DeHaan (https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory/dehaan) – “Souls and Contemporary Neuroscience: the Possibility of Reconciliation,” 7:30pm
- 11/9/17 Break It Down For Me Lecture Series: Jeff King
- 11/16/17 Prof. Jenann Ismael (University of Arizona), 3:00-5:00 pm
- 11/30/17 Dr. Eleonore Stump (https://sites.google.com/site/stumpep/) – “Aquinas on the Atonement”, 7:30 pm
- 12/15-12/16/17 Parfit Memorial Conference, Theological Seminary, Hageman Hall, 9:30 am-5:00 pm
The Department’s colloquium series typically meets on Thursdays in the Seminar Room at Gateway Bldg, 106 Somerset Street, 5th Floor.
- 2/27/18 Goldman Lecture, 4pm
- 3/1/18 Mesthene Lecture, Prof. Miranda Fricker (GC-CUNY), 3:00-6:30 pm
- 3/22/18 RU Climate Lecture, Prof. Sally Haslanger (MIT) 3:00-5:00 pm
- 4/8/18 Karen Bennett (Cornell University)
- 4/12/18 Sanders Lecture, Prof. Linda Zagzebski (University of Oklahoma)
- 4/13/18 Rutgers Chinese Philosophy Conference, 9:30 am-6:30 pm
- 4/13-4/14/18 Marilyn McCord Adams Memorial Conference
- 4/14-4/15/18 Rutgers-Columbia Undergraduate Philosophy Conference (held at Columbia University)
- 4/17/18 Class of 1970’s Lecture, Prof. Jeremy Waldron (NYU), Alexander Teleconference Lecture Hall, 4:30-7:30 pm
- 5/21-5/25/18 Metaphysical Mayhem
- 6/8-6/9/18 Pantheism Workshop
- 7/8-7/15/18 Summer Institute for Diversity in Philosophy (held at the Rutgers University Inn and Conference Center)