THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes:
JOSEPH WALSER (Tufts University)
With responses from:
SANDEEP SREEKUMAR (Baruch College)
Please join at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27 at 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:
“Reading Nagarjuna as a Political Philosopher”
Scholars of Buddhist philosophy are quite comfortable thinking of Nagarjuna as a “philosopher” or as an “epistemologist”, and indeed he does have a lot to contribute to ongoing discussions in these areas. For some reason, Nagarjuna’s writings have yet to be studied for their contributions to political philosophy. I argue here that Nagarjuna did not have to argue for the relevance of his philosophy on emptiness to the political realm because both he and his audience would have already assumed it. I contend that the epistemological regress discussed in the Vigrahavyavartani would also have been understood as addressing a legitimation regress that was the subject of court debates at the time. As such, we can position Nagarjuna’s philosophy of emptiness as a new entry into debates vying to define secure grounding for the royal coronation rites and rites of priestly installation in vogue at the time.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27
5:30-7:30 pm
Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave, Columbia University
– See more at: http://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/2015/02/february-25-2015-reading-nagarjuna-as-a-political-philosopher-joseph-walser.html#sthash.pU5EdBj6.dpuf
The 1st Latinx Philosophers Conference is an initiative of some Latin American PhD candidates in the Columbia Philosophy Department. We hope to initiate a tradition of annual conferences to serve the following ends. First, to foster the creation and development of a Latinx Philosophers Network in the United States. This network, in turn, will help us provide a space for camaraderie and collaborative work, as well as identify and pursue the common interests of Latinx Philosophers in the U.S. Second, to provide a space for discussing issues of particular relevance to Latinx from a philosophical perspective.
The conference will take place on April 29-30 and will be organized around two clusters of topics. The first day will be devoted to issues in Epistemology, Logic, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science. The second day will focus on Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, and Latin American Philosophy. We are happy to announce that Otavio Bueno and Jorge Gracia will be our keynote speakers for each day, respectively.
We invite graduate students who identify as Latinx or who are interested in forming part of the Latino/a Philosophers Network to submit papers on any of the topics mentioned above. We encourage submissions by women. We also encourage submissions that discuss issues relevant to the Latinx experience.
Papers should not exceed 4000 words (or the equivalent of a 30-minute presentation). They should be prepared for blind review and sent as a PDF file to latinophilosophersnetwork@gmail.com. In a separate PDF attachment, please include your name, academic affiliation, email address, telephone number, paper title, and an abstract of no more than 250 words. Any questions can be directed to César Cabezas (cgc2125@columbia.edu), or Ignacio Ojea (ignacio.ojea@columbia.edu). Acceptances will be announced by March 15.
This event is supported by:
MAP (Minorities and Philosophy), and
The Center for Race, Philosophy and Social Justice at Columbia University
The extraordinary power of music to communicate complex emotions and thoughts has fascinated scholars for centuries. Music taps into cognitive mechanisms that govern our daily interactions with the world, such as expectations and violations of these expectations, and appears to have much in common with language. In addition, music plays social and ethical functions that can be understood from philosophical, historical, and cultural perspectives.
Join us for a discussion with three renowned scholars from the humanities and cognitive science who will show how these modes of inquiry bear on each other – and explain what makes music mean.
Speakers:
David Huron, Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor, School of Music & Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Ohio State University
Aniruddh D. Patel, Professor of Psychology, Tufts University
Elizabeth Tolbert, Professor of Musicology, Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Moderators:
Andrew Goldman, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
Jacqueline Gottlieb, Professor of Neuroscience, Columbia University
The event is co-sponsored by the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies and Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience. Free and open to the public.
Speakers:
Amanda Pustilnik, Professor of Law, University of Maryland
Tor Wager, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder
Moderators:
Federica Coppola, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
Lan Li, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
We will provide additional information as soon as possible.
Free and open to the public, but RSVP is required via Eventbrite. This event is part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.
How is the ancient exhortation to “know thyself” related to consolation, virtue, and the study of nature? How did the commitment to self-knowledge shift over the centuries in writings by Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and early modern natural philosophers? How did medieval women contribute to modern notions of self, self-knowledge, and knowledge of nature? This conference explores the meditative “reflective methodology” from its ancient roots, through medieval Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions to the so-called “new” methodologies of early modern science. Speakers include Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Pierre Force, Clémence Boulouque, Christia Mercer, and Pamela Smith.
Points of focus will be: (1) the relation between the ancient imperative to “know thyself” and medieval concerns to reflect on one’s self as a means to find ultimate truths; (2) the meditative genre as it developed from Augustine’s Confessions through Christian and Islamic spiritual exercises to late medieval Christian meditations and early modern kabbalist writings; (3) the continuity between medieval meditations and the reflective methodology of early modern science; and (4) the meditative genre’s afterlife in Freud, Foucault, Arendt, and contemporary science.
Conference co-sponsored by the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, the Departments of Philosophy, French, English and Comparative Literature and the Maison Française
To download a PDF about this event click here.