Join bell hooks and Kevin Powell in a discussion about black masculinity in popular culture today.
Kevin Powell is an activist, writer, public speaker and entrepreneur.
bell hooks is an author, activist, feminist and scholar-in-residence at The New School. This fall is her fifth and final week-long visit in a three-year residency.
Visit http://www.newschool.edu/lang/bell-hooks-scholar-in-residence/ for more information.
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.
Dec. 4–Alexander Altonji, M.A. student at the New School for Social Research, “Self Knowledge and our Capacity for Conscious Reflection: How Finkelstein can Respond to Boyle,” 6 E. 16th St, room 1101
In the early 2000s two Wittgensteinian inspired books on self-knowledge and first-person authority appeared: Richard Moran’s Authority and Estrangement and David Finkelstein’s Expression and the Inner. Finkelstein is critical of Moran’s predominant concern with issues of beliefs (and intentions and attitudes), while ignoring the ‘authority’ with which we speak about, say, sensations. In his Kantian inspired defense of Moran, Boyle reads Finkelstein (and others) as subscribing to the ‘uniformity assumption’, i.e., to account for first-person authority in the same basic way. As a result of this assumption, Boyle argues that Finkelstein is insensitive to our representational (in contrast to ‘manifestation’) capacities. In the paper to be presented, I challenge Boyle’s reading and criticisms of Finkelstein by arguing that Finkelstein is neither committed to the uniformity assumption nor is he insensitive to our representational capacities.
Hannah Arendt and Rainer Schürmann Symposium in Political Philosophy Capitalism, Feminism, and Social Transformation,
Speakers:
Tithi Bhattacharya,
Sara Farris,
Kevin Floyd,
Dayo Gore,
Johanna Oksala,
Laurie Penny,
Miriam Ticktin,
Kathi Weeks
[see the linked poster on the department webpage where it says: View this semester’s departmental lecture series.]
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.
The paper draws on the first sentence of Nicomachean Ethics I, but goes beyond interpretation in putting forward a new version of the Guise of the Good (GG). This proposal is Aristotelian in spirit, but defended on philosophical grounds. GG theorists tend to see their views as broadly speaking Aristotelian. And yet they address particular actions in isolation: agents, the thought goes, are motivated to perform a given action by seeing the action or its outcome as good. The paper argues that the GG is most compelling if we distinguish between three levels: the motivation of small-scale actions, the motivation of mid-scale actions or pursuits, and the desire to have one’s life go well. The paper analyzes the relation between small-, mid-, and large-scale motivation in terms of Guidance, Substance, and Motivational Dependence. In its Aristotelian version, the argument continues, the GG belongs to the theory of the human good.
Katja Maria Vogt, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She specializes in ancient philosophy, ethics, and normative epistemology. In her books and papers, she focuses on questions that figure both in ancient and in contemporary discussions: What are values? What kind of values are knowledge and truth? What does it mean to want one’s life to go well?
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
I argue we can make progress in three contemporary debates about transnational feminisms by a) clarifying the normative commitments central to feminism and b) rethinking the role of normative ideals in transnational political practices. These debates concern the purported tension between taking seriously critiques of Western imperialism and retaining feminism’s status as a normative doctrine. Understanding feminism as opposition to sexist oppression unthethers feminism from commitments to controversial forms of individualism and antitraditionalism. Understanding transnational feminist praxis as a practice of nonideal justice-enhancement permits a universalist feminist position that is not monist about the endpoint of gender justice or the strategies that should be taken to achieve it.
The paper argues that Spinoza is influenced by epicureanism. This is evident particularly in the conflict between authority—understood as the kind of figure that is impervious to argumentation—and the calculation of utility (phronesis) that is the precondition of action. This conflict is complex because in certain circumstances we may calculate that it is to our utility to allow a person in authority to calculate on our behalf.
The paper indicates, in addition, that the way Spinoza constructs the relation between authority and utility can inform our political predicament today. Spinoza may offer an alternative to populism as to why we have political figures who lack authority. And his thinking on utility could help us reconsider instrumentality in the neoliberal age.
Dimitris Vardoulakis is the debuty chair of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. He is the author of The Doppelgänger: Literature’s Philosophy (2010), Sovereignty and its Other: Toward the Dejustification of Violence (2013), Freedom from the Free Will: On Kafka’s Laughter (2016), and Stasis Before the State: Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy (2018). He has also edited or co-edited numerous books, including Spinoza Now (2011) and Spinoza’s Authority (2018). He is the director of “Thinking Out Loud: The Sydney Lectures in Philosophy and Society,” and the co-editor of the book series “Incitements” (Edinburgh University Press).
In preparation for the next transnational feminist strike on March 8th, we will have a discussion about the new feminist wave with some of its protagonists and organizers from around the world and a conversation around Arruzza, Bhattacharya, Fraser, “Feminism for the 99%. A Manifesto” (Verso 2019).
Program:
4:00 p.m.: Welcome and Opening Remarks: William Milberg (Director of the Heilbroner Center for Capitalist Studies) and Cinzia Arruzza (NSSR)
4:15–6:00 p.m.: The New Feminist Wave
Speakers:
- Ximena Bustamante (IWS)
- Julia Cámara (National Coordination 8M, Spain)
- Luci Cavallero (Ni Una Menos, Argentina)
- Mayra Cotta De Souza (NSSR)
- Chair: Meg Beyer (IWS and NSSR)
6:00–6:15 p.m.: Break
6:15–8:00 p.m.: Feminism for the 99%. A Manifesto
Speakers:
- Cinzia Arruzza
- Tithi Bhattacharya
- Nancy Fraser
- Barbara Smith (founder of the Combahee River Collective)
- Chair: Michelle O’Brien (IWS)
Cosponsored by Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies (New School for Social Research) and International Women’s Strike
“Everyone is female”—this is the first of several “untenable claims” presented by Andrea Long Chu in her forthcoming book Females: A Concern (Verso, 2019). Drawing inspiration from Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto and her forgotten play Up Your Ass, this lecture in numbered theses whips through a variety of ugly objects (films, manifestos, performance art, psychoanalysis, porn, and the alt-right) to give a portrait of femaleness as a universal category of self-ablation against which all politics—even feminist politics—revolts.
Andrea Long Chu is a writer and critic completing her doctorate at New York University. Her writing has appeared, or will soon, in n+1, Boston Review, The New York Times, New York, Artforum, Bookforum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 4Columns, differences, Women & Performance, TSQ, and Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Her book Females: A Concern is forthcoming this year from Verso.
People in Support of Women in Philosophy is a group dedicated to the advancement of women and those who experience marginalization within the field of philosophy. Our group meets weekly to workshop papers, help members prepare for conference presentations and seminars, host guest speakers, and in general celebrate the work of our women and gender-non-conforming colleagues and mentors. Men are welcome and encouraged to take part as allies.