Calendar

Todd May is Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities at Clemson University.  He is the author of fourteen books of philosophy, most recently A Fragile Life and A Significant Life, both from University of Chicago Press.

Abstract:

Ineffability is in the air these days, and has been for some time. In many areas of Continental philosophy, it is the very ethos in which thought is conducted. I argue that the realm of the normative, at least, is deeply linguistic. In contrast to the attempt of some thinkers to remove the normative from the conceptual or the linguistic, I try to show that it is central to normativity to have a linguistic reference, a reference rooted precisely in the sense of conceptual categories that so concern thinkers of the ineffable.

Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.

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

We often make our thoughts clear to ourselves in the process of putting them into words. In this lecture I introduce a new puzzle about this process—one that’s reminiscent of the famous paradox about inquiry in Plato’s Meno. The puzzle is that, on the one hand, coming to know what we’re thinking seems to require finding words that would express our thought; yet, on the other hand, finding such words seems to require already knowing what we’re thinking.

I consider and reject two possible solutions to this puzzle. The first solution denies that language contributes to our knowledge of our thoughts. The second solution denies that we have a fully formed thought that we try to articulate in the first place. The failure of these solutions points to a positive account of the role of language in the pursuit of self-knowledge, on which language mediates between two different “formats” or modes of thought. Among the broader implications of this account is a richer conception of the aims and methods of philosophy.

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)

Abstract: On the standard reading, Heidegger’s account of authenticity in Being and Time amounts to an existentialist theory of human freedom. Against this interpretation, John Haugeland reads Heidegger’s account of authenticity as a crucial feature of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology: i.e., Heidegger’s attempt to determine the meaning of being via an analysis of human beings. Haugeland’s argument is based on the notion that taking responsibility for our existence entails getting the being of entities right. Specifically, Haugeland says that our ability to choose allows us to question and test the disclosure of being through which entities are intelligible to us against the entities themselves, and he adds that taking responsibility for our existence involves transforming our disclosure of being when it fails to meet the truth test. Although I agree that Heidegger’s existentialism is a crucial feature of his fundamental ontology, I argue that the details of Haugeland’s interpretation are inconsistent. My objection is that if, as Haugeland claims, entities are only intelligible via disclosures of being, then it is incoherent for Haugeland to say that entities themselves can serve as intelligible standard against which disclosures can be truth-tested or transformed. Finally, I offer an alternative to Haugeland’s truth-based take on authenticity and cultural transformation via an ends-based onto-methodological interpretation of Heidegger and Kuhn. Here I argue that the ends pursed by a specific community determine both the meaning of being and the movement of human history.

Bio: Aaron James Wendland completed his PhD at Somerville College, Oxford and he is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the HSE’s Center for Advanced Studies in Moscow. Aaron is the co-editor of Wittgenstein and Heidegger (Routledge, 2013) and Heidegger on Technology (Routledge, 2018), and he has written scholarly articles on Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and Kuhn. Aaron has also published several pieces of popular philosophy in The New York Times, Public Seminar, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He currents serves as an art critic for The Moscow Times and Dialogue of Arts. And as of January 2019, Aaron will be the Director of the Center for Philosophy and Visual Arts at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.