Schedule of Speakers
September 6
Eric Beerbohm, Harvard
September 13
Rick Brooks, NYU
September 20
Jan-Werner Mueller, Princeton
September 27
Antony Duff, University of Minnesota
October 4
Veronique Munoz-Darde, UC Berkeley
October 11
Tommie Shelby, Harvard
October 18
Michele Moody-Adams, Columbia University
October 25
Meir Dan-Cohen, UC Berkeley
November 1
Amia Srinivasan, University College London
November 8
Melissa Schwartzberg, NYU
November 15
Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago
November 29
Tom Nagel, NYU
December 6
Nancy Fraser, The New School
The Colloquium in Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy was founded by Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel in 1987. It is the original model for all of NYU Law’s colloquia. The Colloquium is now convened by Liam Murphy, Samuel Scheffler, and Jeremy Waldron, two of whom will host in any given year.
Each week on Thursday a legal theorist or moral or political philosopher presents a paper to the group, which consists of students, faculty from the Law School and other departments of NYU, and faculty from other universities. The choice of subject is left to the paper’s author, within the general boundaries of the Colloquium’s subjects, and the discussions are therefore not connected by any structured theme for the term as a whole, though in past years certain central topics were canvassed in several weeks’ discussion. The Colloquium aims, not to pursue any particular subject, but to explore new work in considerable depth and so allow students to develop their own skill in theoretical analysis. Each week’s paper is posted at least a week in advance, and participants are expected to have read it.
The public sessions of the colloquium take place on Thursdays, from 4 to 7 pm, in the Lester Pollack Colloquium Room on the 9th Floor of Furman Hall, 245 Sullivan St (view campus map). Visitors’ papers will be posted in advance of each meeting on this page.
Schedule of Speakers
September 6
Eric Beerbohm, Harvard
September 13
Rick Brooks, NYU
September 20
Jan-Werner Mueller, Princeton
September 27
Antony Duff, University of Minnesota
October 4
Veronique Munoz-Darde, UC Berkeley
October 11
Tommie Shelby, Harvard
October 18
Michele Moody-Adams, Columbia University
October 25
Meir Dan-Cohen, UC Berkeley
November 1
Amia Srinivasan, University College London
November 8
Melissa Schwartzberg, NYU
November 15
Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago
November 29
Tom Nagel, NYU
December 6
Nancy Fraser, The New School
The Colloquium in Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy was founded by Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel in 1987. It is the original model for all of NYU Law’s colloquia. The Colloquium is now convened by Liam Murphy, Samuel Scheffler, and Jeremy Waldron, two of whom will host in any given year.
Each week on Thursday a legal theorist or moral or political philosopher presents a paper to the group, which consists of students, faculty from the Law School and other departments of NYU, and faculty from other universities. The choice of subject is left to the paper’s author, within the general boundaries of the Colloquium’s subjects, and the discussions are therefore not connected by any structured theme for the term as a whole, though in past years certain central topics were canvassed in several weeks’ discussion. The Colloquium aims, not to pursue any particular subject, but to explore new work in considerable depth and so allow students to develop their own skill in theoretical analysis. Each week’s paper is posted at least a week in advance, and participants are expected to have read it.
The public sessions of the colloquium take place on Thursdays, from 4 to 7 pm, in the Lester Pollack Colloquium Room on the 9th Floor of Furman Hall, 245 Sullivan St (view campus map). Visitors’ papers will be posted in advance of each meeting on this page.
Schedule of Speakers
September 6
Eric Beerbohm, Harvard
September 13
Rick Brooks, NYU
September 20
Jan-Werner Mueller, Princeton
September 27
Antony Duff, University of Minnesota
October 4
Veronique Munoz-Darde, UC Berkeley
October 11
Tommie Shelby, Harvard
October 18
Michele Moody-Adams, Columbia University
October 25
Meir Dan-Cohen, UC Berkeley
November 1
Amia Srinivasan, University College London
November 8
Melissa Schwartzberg, NYU
November 15
Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago
November 29
Tom Nagel, NYU
December 6
Nancy Fraser, The New School
The Colloquium in Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy was founded by Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel in 1987. It is the original model for all of NYU Law’s colloquia. The Colloquium is now convened by Liam Murphy, Samuel Scheffler, and Jeremy Waldron, two of whom will host in any given year.
Each week on Thursday a legal theorist or moral or political philosopher presents a paper to the group, which consists of students, faculty from the Law School and other departments of NYU, and faculty from other universities. The choice of subject is left to the paper’s author, within the general boundaries of the Colloquium’s subjects, and the discussions are therefore not connected by any structured theme for the term as a whole, though in past years certain central topics were canvassed in several weeks’ discussion. The Colloquium aims, not to pursue any particular subject, but to explore new work in considerable depth and so allow students to develop their own skill in theoretical analysis. Each week’s paper is posted at least a week in advance, and participants are expected to have read it.
The public sessions of the colloquium take place on Thursdays, from 4 to 7 pm, in the Lester Pollack Colloquium Room on the 9th Floor of Furman Hall, 245 Sullivan St (view campus map). Visitors’ papers will be posted in advance of each meeting on this page.
Schedule of Speakers
September 6
Eric Beerbohm, Harvard
September 13
Rick Brooks, NYU
September 20
Jan-Werner Mueller, Princeton
September 27
Antony Duff, University of Minnesota
October 4
Veronique Munoz-Darde, UC Berkeley
October 11
Tommie Shelby, Harvard
October 18
Michele Moody-Adams, Columbia University
October 25
Meir Dan-Cohen, UC Berkeley
November 1
Amia Srinivasan, University College London
November 8
Melissa Schwartzberg, NYU
November 15
Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago
November 29
Tom Nagel, NYU
December 6
Nancy Fraser, The New School
The Colloquium in Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy was founded by Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel in 1987. It is the original model for all of NYU Law’s colloquia. The Colloquium is now convened by Liam Murphy, Samuel Scheffler, and Jeremy Waldron, two of whom will host in any given year.
Each week on Thursday a legal theorist or moral or political philosopher presents a paper to the group, which consists of students, faculty from the Law School and other departments of NYU, and faculty from other universities. The choice of subject is left to the paper’s author, within the general boundaries of the Colloquium’s subjects, and the discussions are therefore not connected by any structured theme for the term as a whole, though in past years certain central topics were canvassed in several weeks’ discussion. The Colloquium aims, not to pursue any particular subject, but to explore new work in considerable depth and so allow students to develop their own skill in theoretical analysis. Each week’s paper is posted at least a week in advance, and participants are expected to have read it.
The public sessions of the colloquium take place on Thursdays, from 4 to 7 pm, in the Lester Pollack Colloquium Room on the 9th Floor of Furman Hall, 245 Sullivan St (view campus map). Visitors’ papers will be posted in advance of each meeting on this page.
Liberal democratic values seem embattled as never before in the United States, and around the world. The time is right for a serious and wide-ranging exploration of the prospects for liberal democracies in a context that acknowledges the historical and contemporary tensions between democracy and liberal values, both in theory and in practice. This conference convenes a varied group of scholars, journalists, policy expert and veteran public servants, we hope to stage a real meeting of the minds, not the usual partisan sniping that occurs at most academic events – and we are trying to be as inclusive as possible, by inviting thoughtful representatives from the left, right, and center.
Though liberalism and democracy have become intertwined in some contemporary societies, they have evolved along quite distinct paths historically. Democracy is an ancient idea, liberalism a very modern one. Greek democracy was not liberal, nor was the revolutionary democracy championed by the sans-culottes in the French Revolution. To this day, there are many avowedly democratic movements and regimes, both on the left and the right, that explicitly reject liberal values. Moreover, even in liberal democratic societies, there are important tensions between the two traditions.
In this conference, we will examine the prospects for liberal democracies against the backdrop of the historical and contemporary tensions between democracy and liberalism.
Featured speakers and participants
James Miller
Helen Rosenblatt
Robert Boyers
Paul Cartledge
EJ Dionne Jr
Bill Galston
Dipayan Ghosh
Jeffrey Issac
James Kloppenberg
Bill Kristol
Yuval Levin
Marc Plattner
Aziz Rana
Rogers Smith
Michael Tomasky
T Chatterton Williams
Ben Fountain
Fedricho Finchelstein
Jennifer Roberts
Paul Krugman
Teresa Ghilarducci
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Jessica Pissano
Deva Woodly
Natasha Lennard
Astra Taylor
Ira Katrznelson
Josh Begley
- September 18 – Cristina Beltrán (NYU)
- October 9 – Jennifer Scuro (New Rochelle) – “Mapping Ableist Biases: Diagnoses and Prostheses”
- November 6 – Lillian Cicerchia (Fordham)
- March 12 – Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt)
- April 9 – Ann Murphy (New Mexico), “Hunger on Campus: Continental Philosophy and Basic Needs”
- April 16 – Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt/IAS), “Criticism and Its Discontents: A Defense of an Immanent Critique of Forms of Life”
February 12May 7 – Robin Celikates (Amsterdam/IAS), “Radical Civility? Civil Disobedience and the Ideology of Non-Violence”
Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute will jointly present the conference “Political Theology Today as Critical Theory of the Contemporary: Reason, Religion, Humanism,” to be held at Deutsches Haus at NYU, from February 15-17. Reverend Eugene F. Rivers III will deliver one of the keynote speeches. For a detailed conference schedule, please click here.
Across the globe the liberal logic of capitalism and technocracy has seemingly triumphed, and with it a culture of secularism, now the dominant ideology of the liberal establishment that prefers progress to tradition, an individualized identity to a sense of shared belonging, and free choice to common purpose. As much as this regime has produced wealth, it has also generated inequality and dissatisfaction. The populist insurgency that is sweeping the West is in large part a repudiation of this secular politics, opening the space for a post-liberal political theology. A resurgence of religion is underway that marks the failure of the secularization thesis and the need for alternative cultural resources, beyond positivism, to understand the place of humanity within the cosmos. Is this our new “Great Awakening”?
Amid the crisis of rationalism, critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas have sought to rescue the project of a reasonable humanism from the twin threats of religious fundamentalism and secular naturalism. Yet Habermas’s conception of postsecularity remains residually secularist because he does not permit faith to make any substantive or critical contribution to public discussion that could undermine the primacy of formal, procedural reason. In response Pope Emeritus Benedict invoked Adorno and Horkheimer’s dialectic of enlightenment because the slogan “reason alone” leads to the dissolution of reason—to the conclusion that only will and power have any reality. The only way to avoid this outcome is to recall—so Benedict’s argument in his much-commented but poorly understood 2006 Regensburg address—that the West’s commitment to humanist reason is grounded in the classical and Christian idea that human rationality participates in the infinite reason of transcendence. Otherwise the rational is but the illusion of our own and of nature’s will to power.
The 2019 Telos Conference will discuss the role of political theology as critical theory of the contemporary: the reappearance of faith in civic life. The focus will not be on intellectual history but rather on how faith is reshaping politics and culture today.
Please note: Sessions taking place at Deutsches Haus at NYU will be open to the general public. Attendance for break-out sessions will be limited to conference participants who have registered with the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute only. Events at Deutsches Haus are free and open to the public. If you would like to attend this event, please send an email to deutscheshaus.rsvp@nyu.edu. As space at Deutsches Haus is limited, please arrive ten minutes prior to the event to ensure you get a good seat. Thank you!
What do the worlds of global finance and nationalist populism have in common? How can we understand the rise of today’s ‘new fascisms’ through the prism of financialization? This one-day workshop brings together scholars from across disciplines to debate these key questions for our understanding of contemporary capitalism. The workshop is part of Public Seminar’s Imaginal Politics initiative and is organised jointly with the Department of Social Science, University College London. The workshop will include three panel discussions and will close with a talk by Judith Butler on ‘Anti-gender ideology and the new fascism’.
10-11.45am – Panel 1 (Wolff Conference Room, D1103)
12.-1.30pm -Panel 2 (Wolff Conference Room, D1103)
Chiara Bottici ( The New School)
4.30-6pm – Closing plenary & discussion (UL104, University Center)
‘The New Fascism of the Anti-Gender Ideology Movement’
- September 18 – Cristina Beltrán (NYU)
- October 9 – Jennifer Scuro (New Rochelle) – “Mapping Ableist Biases: Diagnoses and Prostheses”
- November 6 – Lillian Cicerchia (Fordham)
- March 12 – Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt)
- April 9 – Ann Murphy (New Mexico), “Hunger on Campus: Continental Philosophy and Basic Needs”
- April 16 – Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt/IAS), “Criticism and Its Discontents: A Defense of an Immanent Critique of Forms of Life”
February 12May 7 – Robin Celikates (Amsterdam/IAS), “Radical Civility? Civil Disobedience and the Ideology of Non-Violence”
Vera List Professor of Philosophy, Richard J. Bernstein, will present his new book on Hannah Arendt, Why Read Hannah Arendt Now (2018, Polity Press), followed by a screening of the documentary film Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt.
Free and open to the public.