Professor Veronique Foti (Penn State), will deliver a talk titled: “Nascency and Mortality as Phenomenal Non-Donation.”
Beginning with a brief historical retrospect (limited to ancient Greek and rationalist thought), this study addresses the limit phenomena of nascency and mortality. The work of Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle as well as Spinoza and Leibniz will serve as reference points. The question of how phenomenology has responded to this heritage is then addressed with reference to Heidegger’s Being and Time and Merleau-Ponty’s late lecture courses on Nature.
Veronique Foti is a Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Penn State. Her areas of specialization are Contemporary European philosophy, Continental Rationalism, Ancient philosophy, Philosophy of art, and Philosophy and literary theory.
Her recent publications include: Revisiting the Tragic Theater with Plato, Aristotle, and Hölderlin, Festschrift for Jacques Taminiaux, ed. Michael Gendre, forthcoming; The Aesthetic Dimension of Paideia in Plato’s Republic, Kostas Boudouris and Mikovja Knešević, eds.; Being-in-the-World and the Phenomenon of World, Robert C. Scharff, ed.,The Blackwell Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time, forthcoming; and Rethinking Parmenides in Dialogue with Reiner Schūrmann, The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, forthcoming.
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
NSSR Philosophy Adjunct Faculty Bernard Flynn, will give a talk entilted: “The Institution of the Law: Merleau-Ponty/Lefort”
The Thursday Night Workshop is a longstanding tradition of the philosophy department. In the past, speakers have included Robert Brandom, Adriana Cavarero, Michael Frede, Klaus Held, Jürgen Habermas, Claude Lefort, Jean-Luc Marion, and Richard Rorty. Students are encouraged to attend the Thursday night department lecture series as well as the post-lecture reception.
Keynote Speakers:
Alan Bass: New School for Social Research
Rudolf Bernet: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
James Dodd: New School for Social Research
3:00pm – 9:00pm in EST
(3:00pm – 4:50pm)
James Dodd, “Violence and Religion (On Levinas)”
(5:00pm – 6:50pm)
Rudolf Bernet (K.U. Leuven), “Husserl on Desires, Drive, and Affect”
(7:00pm – 8:50pm)
Alan Bass, “The Handkerchief and the Fetish: ‘Being and Time’ §17”
Beginning in 2003, a seminar or lecture course connected to the Husserl Archives has been occasionally offered by the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. Scholars and advanced students in the field of phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy have been invited to present and discuss their work.
The topic of the fall 2015 seminar will be: Intersections between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis. This year’s seminar will place the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas in conversation with psychoanalytic thought through a close reading of selected texts. Our speakers this year will be James Dodd, Rudolf Bernet, and Alan Bass.
(Prof. Dodd’s paper will be circulated in advance – along with a selection from Bataille’s Theory of Religion. We are also soliciting questions for this portion of the seminar. Email P.J. Gorre [gorrp967@newschool.edu] to receive the appropriate materials and to send your questions).
In continuation with our conference last spring, The New York Phenomenology Research Group once again invites regional phenomenologists to a works in progress conference emphasizing collaborative research. This event will take place on Saturday, February 27th at The New School for Social Research in New York City.
The theme for our conference is phenomenology and the mind. We construe this topic broadly, as covering anything from the intersections between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, etc. to the way in which the phenomenological mind operates experientially in its own right, or with respect to, embodiment, aesthetic experience, design, identity, gender/race/ability, and more.
This conference encourages participants to research and work through ideas with one another rather than having them present completed papers in a traditional conference style. It’s our sincere hope to bring together students working through similar problems in phenomenology, in order to build a supportive network of emerging phenomenologists and philosophers in the New York area. For this reason, this event will not host any keynote speakers. Rather, the structure of this conference will be focused on encouraging student research and community in a collaborative environment.
We welcome short, in-progress papers that deal with topics in both the canonical tradition and phenomenological methods as mediums of inquiry. Papers should be no longer than 10-15 minutes when presented, and will be organized into panels (4-5) according to topic. Each panel will be approximately two hours, with the first hour dedicated to brief presentations and the second hour to open conversation, Q&A, and collaborative research. Group research and panel proposals are also welcome.
Please submit your paper, prepared for blind review, to phenomenology@newschool.edu along with any questions you may have, by January 8, 2016.
Presentations will tackle the issue of vulnerability and reassess the ontological framework of philosophical and psychological theories in dialogue with the phenomenological tradition and contemporary moral theory. This event is aimed at (1) facilitating institutional cooperation between American and European philosophers working on phenomenology; (2) creating a transatlantic research network for young researchers interested in phenomenology; (3) showcasing the importance of phenomenology for understanding vulnerability in dialogue with other philosophical areas or other fields (anthropology, feminist theory, cognitive science, mind theory etc.); and (4) raising awareness among the general public and promoting contemporary philosophical research on vulnerability and its potential impact on society.
The Husserl Archive at the New School for Social Research was established in 1966 in honor of Alfred Schütz in an effort to promote the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, as well as the phenomenological tradition more generally. To this end, the center hosts small research groups, seminars, workshops, and conferences that bring together international students and scholars working in or near the phenomenological tradition. In concert with this aim, the conference seeks to further establish the Archive as a center for phenomenological research on the east coast for junior scholars working in phenomenology and to strengthen scholarly ties to the Husserl Archives in Leuven and Paris. This conference is the inaugural event of this organization in an effort to facilitate cross-continental collaboration between American and European scholars in addition to strengthening research activities in the area of phenomenology in the U.S. The groundwork for this organization and conference is already in place to the extent that many of the scholars The New School intends to invite already have a record of collaboration. Nonetheless, there has not yet been an umbrella research group linking the Husserl Archives in Louvain, New York, and Paris and affiliated researchers. The two-day conference will include a total of twelve (12) invited presentations with representatives from these respective research centers and others.
Phenomenology is often hailed as one of the most important philosophical movements of the 20th century, impacting virtually every area of continental philosophy, including post-structuralism, deconstruction, feminist theory, as well as areas of psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Today, phenomenology has become influential in philosophical psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science for questions of consciousness, and we aim to create a forum for the discussion of phenomenology’s cross and interdisciplinary relevance. Today, the problem of vulnerability has currency for feminist theory, care studies, moral philosophy, as well as for questions of inter-subjectivity and empathy in cognitive science. We hope to reach a wide audience with the conference and to make explicit the importance of phenomenological method and thought for the question of vulnerability, particularly as it relates to the intersection of phenomenology and global issues today.
This event is sponsored by the Husserl Archive, the Department of Philosophy, at The New School for Social Research.
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.
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.