The concept of invisibility is powerful, pervasive, and multifaceted. It is paradoxically double-edged, affording the possibility of great power as well as the complete absence of power. It is both magical and a spur to scientific experimentation and exploration. It is a central concept in science—whether as something to be achieved or overcome. It is evident in the development of technologies that allow us to find new evidence of the invisibly small (e.g. the Large Hadron Collider revealing the Higgs boson) and the invisibly far-away (a new planet in the solar system); conversely, it is also evident in devices that allow us to render objects invisible, devices that may have implications for warfare and for medicine.
In addition, invisibility is present in the social sciences, as evidenced most clearly by the economic concept of the “invisible hand” and by the troubling phenomenon of social invisibility, which affects large groups of people who are ignored, underrepresented and under-served by the dominant culture. But that is not all. The concept of invisibility has also played a central role in the thinking of many philosophers, literary figures, and in theological thinking.
Thus this conference is designed to explore the multitude of ways in which invisibility figures in our intellectual and social lives, as a thread running through our human endeavors, and the ways in which the power of invisibility can lead to a quest for understanding as well as render us altogether disenfranchised. The first three sessions will address the concept of invisibility in different fields, and the concluding session will bring together experts from various fields who will seek to underscore the shared aspects of invisibility that account for the important role it has played in our lives and in our thinking in the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Each session will include a Q&A in which panelists can address questions to each other and audience members can address their questions directly to speakers.
This conference will offer a unique opportunity for experts to reach across fields to better understand their own explorations of invisibility, through discussion with others, and with the public.
This conference is made possible with generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
This event is part of the Nth Degree Series with the The New School.
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Session of note:
3:00 – 5:30 PM
Location: Theresa Lang Student and Community Center, 55 W. 13th St, NY, NY
SESSION 2: Invisibility in Cultural Context
This session examines invisibility in the context of the humanities, economics, and philosophy. Discussion will range over the philosophical explanatory power of invisibility, e.g. Kant’s noumenon or Plato’s eidos; its role in economic theory, e.g. “the invisible hand”, its place in literature, e.g Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and in mythology, e.g. the Ring of Gyges
Adam Bradley, Associate Professor of English, University of Colorado, Boulder
Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
Mark Johnston, Walt Cerf Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
William Milberg, Dean of the New School for Social Research, The New School
Moderator: Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy, The New School
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.
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.
In this paper I draw attention to Sophie de Grouchy’s 1798 distinction between negative and positive right, which, upon examination, prefigures the famous distinction between positive and negative liberty. I analyse her treatment, and I argue that she should be accorded a significant place in the discussions of the tradition(s) of reflection on the famous distinction.
First, I frame my discussion by revisiting Isaiah Berlin’s famous lecture and a recent editorial by Jason Stanley and Vesla Weaver; I note the presence of a paternal liberal tradition going back to Constant which gets invoked alongside the famous distinction between the two concepts of liberty. Insofar as a tradition can be conceived as a lineage or an offspring, it is striking that the matriarchs are absent from it.
Second, I discuss De Grouchy’s neo-Lockean analyses of justice and property rights, which form the context in which she introduces her distinction between positive and negative right. I illuminate her views by way of comparison with the writings of Rousseau and Adam Smith.
Third, I offer evidence and analysis of De Grouchy’s version of the distinction and show how it can be mapped onto the more famous distinction. Fourth, I close by arguing that if there is a liberal tradition worth reviving and extending, De Grouchy ought to have an honoured place in it.
Eric Schliesser (PhD, Philosophy, The University of Chicago 2002) is Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He publishes widely on early modern philosophy (especially Spinoza and Hume) and science (including political economy, especially Newton and Smith), philosophy economics, the history of feminism, and so-called meta-philosophy. He has just published Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker (OUP) and edited numerous volumes, including most recently Sympathy: A History of a Concept and Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy (both with OUP).
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
This talk focuses on two concepts that are central to discussions of minority politics and social justice: intersectionality and the epistemic privilege of the oppressed. Both concepts are often misunderstood as leading to separatism and essentialism, but this paper shows why they should be seen instead as crucial components of an adequate social theory and a cogent theory of social identity, theories that can be the basis of a progressive politics of coalition and solidarity.
Satya P. Mohanty was born in Orissa, India, and was educated in India and the United States. His work in literary criticism and theory has focused on issues that are shaped by his bi-cultural background and his commitment to a vision of culture as “a field of moral inquiry” (on this view of culture, see chapter 7 of Literary Theory and the Claims of History). In the field of literary and cultural theory, Mohanty is best known for his “post-positivist realist” theory, a position that is simultaneously a critique of postmodernist theory and an elaboration of a radical alternative to it. Postpositivist realism draws on recent analytic philosophy and has major implications for such key theoretical questions as the nature of social identity, the value of objectivity as an epistemic goal, and the epistemic status of our moral and political values. Mohanty’s theory of identity has been the subject of a major book published by the U of California Press, a collection of essays by literary scholars, intellectual historians, and philosophers that is titled Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism (edited by Paula Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia).
Mohanty has edited or coedited the following books: Colonialism, Modernity, Literature: A View From India; Identity Politics Reconsidered; The Future of Diversity; and the forthcoming China, India and Alternative Asian Modernities. He is completing a book titled Thinking Across Cultures, to be published by Duke Univ Press.
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
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.
Many academics work on issues of social justice, and in this politically tumultuous moment, we want to ask: What is our social responsibility as academics? What does it mean to assume this responsibility?
In response to the untimely suspension of all Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature programs at Stony Brook University, the final graduate conference (co-sponsored by Minorities and Philosophy, NSSR) will be an interdisciplinary event where we aim to confront the limitations of our position as academics and conceive possibilities for moving beyond those limitations.
Schedule
9:45–10:15 Participant Registration/ Coffee & Bagels
10:15–10:30 Opening Remarks
10:30–12:00 Panel 1: Humanities & Political Insight
10:30–11:00 Amy Cook (Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English, Stony Brook University): “Disciplinary Futures and the Political Impact of Counter Casting”
11:00–11:30 Jack Wilson (PhD Student History, UCLA): “The View from the Waste Land: Poetry as Anti-Totalitarian Critique in Postwar Japan and Beyond”
11:30–12:00 Sabrina Tremblay-Huet (LLD Student Université de Sherbrooke, Visiting Research Fellow Fordham School of Law): “Human Rights and the Trap of Speaking for Others: Law in Literature as a Better Source of Resistance Discourse?”
12:00–1:30 Lunch Break
1:30–2:30 Panel 2: Institutional Critique
1:30–2:00 Jonathan Rawski (PhD Student Linguistics, Stony Brook University): “Pirates and Emperors: On Publishers, Journalists, and Academic Elites”
2:00–2:30 Forrest Deacon (PhD Student, Politics, The New School for Social Research): “Foucault’s Clinic and the Academy: Systems of Truth, Intelligibility, and Repetition”
2:30–2:45 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
2:45–3:45 Panel 3: The Praxis of Academics
2:45–3:15 Andrew Dobbyn (PhD Student Philosophy, Stony Brook): “Praxis Makes Perfect: Why Politics Isn’t like Riding a Bike”
3:15–3:45 Laura Pérez (Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, Cornell University Society for the Humanities): “The Objects of Philosophical Inquiry as Public Entities”
3:45–4:00 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
4:00–5:00 Keynote: Professor Patrice Nganang (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, Stony Brook University, Visiting Professor Princeton University): Title TBA
5:00–5:15 Closing Remarks
5:15–6:30 Reception (wine and refreshments)
Presented by The New School for Social Research.
The New School for Social Research Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy
Discourse concerning the role of bridges and walls has become commonplace in our contemporary political scene. Xenophobic, racist, and nationalistic calls for the building of walls are opposed by calls to construct bridges by those seeking to form coalitions of solidarity and resistance. An example of this is given by the way in which colonialism/imperialism has repeatedly used ‘bridges’ as Trojan horses of sorts, by means of which distances were lessened and inequality worsened. Thus, this conference wishes to explore the normative consequences of the ubiquitous discourse of epistemic and geographic stratification by interrogating the way in which this metaphor is used—implicitly and explicitly—within philosophy, to the extent that the latter, as a frame of epistemological and experiential articulation, also builds its own bridges and walls.
It is with this in mind that at this year’s NSSR Graduate Student Philosophy conference we wish to provide a platform for a very particular kind of ‘philosophical investigation’ in which a vast range of approaches concerning the significance and use of spatial metaphors within philosophical debates could take place. Such an investigation of margins, bridges, walls, localization and beyond should be undertaken in a manner that makes room for ontological, ethical, epistemological, phenomenological, political and psychoanalytic discourses. To this end, we encourage full liberty and creativity with how this topic could be approached. This is because we conceive this investigation as an open, interdisciplinary kind of quest whose aim will be to rethink the way in which we conceive of boundaries, gaps, stages and common spaces for the purpose of interrogating the tensions underpinning our current political discourse, while also showing the ways in which these affect the way in which we conceive of Philosophy.
Possible Topics (This list is in no way exhaustive):
- Walls and Bridges as Philosophical Metaphor
- Migration and (In)Justice
- Decolonial Theory and the Use of Walls/Bridges
- The role of Bridges and Walls in the construction of Imagined communities
- Walls/Bridges and Political Membership
- Walls and Solidarity
- Walls/Bridges and Globalization
- Social Epistemology and Imagined Walls
- Persuasion as an Epistemological Bridge
- Political Topologies and the Role of Walls/Bridges
- Privacy, Space and the Political
- Walls/Bridges and Human Rights
- Administrative Violence
- Philosophical Topologies/Political Topologies
- Space and Violence
- Localized Violence
- Violence in Bodies
- Bridges/Walls and Cross-cultural Discourse
- Digital divisions and Digital Connections
- Technology and Changing Spatial Relations
Please submit complete papers by December 20th in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to NewSchoolOnBridgesAndWallsConf@gmail.com
Include your name, institution, and degree-program in the body of the message.
Deadline:
December 20th 2017
Word Limit: 3500
It has been common in modernity to think of history as singular and universal, progressively moving forward to a particular end. Although few contemporary philosophers and historians maintain the view that there is strict universality and teleology in history, according to Professor Dmitri Nikulin in his most recent work, The Concept of History (Bloomsbury, 2017), the remnants of these positions still affect our understanding of history. In the account he gives, which he traces back to antiquity, Nikulin interrogates what we mean when we talk of history and the philosophical problems we get into by conceiving of it in certain ways. If we jettison the idea of an objective universal end to history, are we left in a morass of relativism? Can we embrace a view of history as an amalgam of genealogies and geographies while still doing justice to constituents of our accounts of history that seem to be historically invariant?
On Saturday, April 28th from 3:00-5:00pm, the Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal will host a roundtable discussion of Professor Nikulin’s latest book and the philosophy of history, more generally. Professor Nikulin (who is currently serving as Chair of the Philosophy Department, NSSR) will be joined for the roundtable discussion by Jeffrey Bernstein (Professor of Philosophy, College of the Holy Cross), and Massimiliano Tomba (Professor of History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz, and former Visiting Professor at the Department of Philosophy, NSSR).
Please join us for the roundtable event, which will take place in Room E206, 25 East 13th St. (“The Glass Corner”) on Saturday, April 28th, from 3:00pm-5:00pm. A reception with drinks and light refreshments will follow. During the reception, the GFPJ will also be selling recent books from their stacks along with copies of its most recent issue (38:2), which includes papers from the Hilary Putnam memorial conference held at The New School in 2016.
The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal is a professional biannual journal of the history of philosophy with a distinguished tradition of publishing high-quality scholarly work. In our more than 45 years’ existence, we have published original essays by, among others, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Judith Butler, Robert Pippin, Giorgio Agamben, Alphonso Lingis, and Julia Kristeva.
9:15 – 9:30 Coffee & Opening Remarks
9:30 – 10:50 Anna Katsman: Freighted Love
11:00 – 12:20 Federica Gregoratto: Eros and Freedom Today
12:20 – 1:30 Lunch Break
1:30 – 2:50 Sara Macdonald: The Art of Friendship: Hegel and Plato
3:00 – 4:20 Gal Katz, “Love’s Rage Is Shame”: Hegel on Sex
4:20 – 4:45 Break
4:45 – 6.05 Paul Kottman: Love as Human Freedom
New York German Idealism Workshop
A joint undertaking of the philosophy departments of Columbia University & the New School for Social Research presents:
MATTERS OF LOVE: A CONFERENCE