24-26 October (Friday-Sunday)
32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy (SAGP) with the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science (SSIPS)
Lowenstein Building
Lincoln Center Campus
Contact: Daryl Tress
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
In the seventeenth century Descartes fundamentally transformed mathematics, and this transformation enabled in turn Newton’s revolution in the practice of fundamental physics. It was left to Kant, in the eighteenth century, to revolutionize the practice of philosophy. In nineteenth-century Germany, the practice of mathematics was again transformed, this time by Riemann, Dedekind, and others, and this transformation enabled in turn both Einstein’s revolution in the practice of fundamental physics and the emergence of quantum mechanics. Has philosophy similarly been again revolutionized? Some, I think, would say that it has as evidenced, and catalyzed, by the development of mathematical logic and concomitant rise of analytic philosophy. But this is a mistake. Mathematical logic, in particular, our standard first-order quantificational logic, as well as the philosophical work to which it has given rise, remains merely Kantian. The revolution in philosophy that is needed in the wake of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century revolutions in mathematics and physics has yet to happen. I aim to help it along not only by showing that it has not yet been achieved but also by uncovering some of the resources required for a transformed logic.
Angelica Nuzzo, Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, CUNY gives a lecture entitled:
“‘Living in the Interregnum’ – Hegelian Reflections on a Time of Crisis.”
This reading of the dialectic-speculative “method” of Hegel’s Logic offers the basis on which Professor Angelica Nuzzo reconstructs the structural meaning of the moment of “crisis” in historical and political processes.
Recommended reading:
Memory, History, Justice in Hegel
http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230371040
Ideal Embodiment. Kant’s Theory of Sensibility, Indiana, 2008
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=84744
Hegel on Religion and Politics, SUNY Press, 2013 (ed.)
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5642-hegel-on-religion-and-politics.aspx
Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research.
Hegel returns to the theme of human bodily expression repeatedly throughout his writings. While his early Phenomenology of Spirit offers a scathing criticism of contemporary physiognomy and phrenology, his later works contain a more nuanced view of the expressive capacities of the human body. In his late philosophy of mind, Hegel is particularly concerned with the question of how mental states which involve complex intellectual and social capacities, such as moral emotions, come to be expressed in the human body. This talk takes Hegel’s discussion of human bodily expression in his late philosophy of mind as a prism through which to approach a central question raised by Hegel’s philosophy: the question of how, for Hegel, spirit and reason on the one hand relate to nature on the other hand. I suggest that Hegel’s account of human bodily expression shows in paradigmatic fashion how he attempts to find a theoretical space between dualism and naturalistic reductionism. Furthermore, I argue that there are reasons to believe that this attempt fails: ultimately, the phenomenon of human bodily expression therefore emerges as a problem for Hegel which puts into question his central philosophical ambitions.
JULIA PETERS is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her research interests include Kant’s moral philosophy, German Idealist philosophy (especially Hegel), aesthetics and moral philosophy.
She is the author of Hegel on Beauty (2015); she has also published articles on Kant and Hegel in the European Journal of Philosophy, the British Journal for the History of Philosophy and the Journal of the History of Philosophy (among other periodicals).
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
In my talk, I wish to outline an alternative to a chapter in the history of modern philosophy, and present Kant’s tenets in the Critique of Pure Reason in the spirit of the Vienna Circle, the origin of analytic philosophy.
According to the traditional narrative, Kant overcame the limitations of British empiricism (Hume) and German rationalism (Leibniz) and with his “transcendental philosophy” raised philosophy to a new and superior level. Contemporary Leibnizian critics failed to appreciate the novelty of his approach. Although Kant complimented Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) for having best understood him among his critics, he saw no reason to accept Maimon’s criticism.
From the point of view of the Vienna Circle in the 1920-1930, the traditional narrative should be reversed. In the view of its members, there are no synthetic judgments a priori, and the Kantian project was therefore misconceived in principle. The “Kantian intermezzo”, as Neurath called it, should be skipped and philosophy should rather return to Hume and Leibniz. Exactly this was Maimon’s position. He characterized himself as a “rational dogmatist and empirical skeptic”, referring explicitly to Leibniz and Hume respectively.
I will present Maimon’s criticism of Kant’s synthetic judgments a priori and claim that it is valid. With this, questions concerning the progress of philosophy and its historiography will naturally rise.
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Gideon Freudenthal is professor emeritus at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel-Aviv University.
He is the author (or co-author) of:
Atom and Individual in the Age of Newton (1986)
Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics (1991)
Classical Marxist Historiography of Science: The Hessen-Grossmann-Thesis (2009)
No Religion without Idolatry. Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment (2012)
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.
Please join the NY German Idealism Workshop for its next event on Thursday, April 6th, from 4:30 to 6:30pm at 6 East 16th St, room D1009. Terry Pinkard will present a paper entitled “Forms of Life, Forms of Thought: Hegel and Wittgenstein,” and New School’s Jay Bernstein will respond.
For anyone interested in reading the paper ahead of time, please send an e-mail to nygermanidealism@gmail.com
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.
Alfredo Ferrarin, professor of Philosophy at the University of Pisa on “Hegel and the Actuality of Thinking”.