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Burning Issues in African Philosophy builds off of the sophisticated work that has now become part of an international conversation on how African philosophy makes unique interventions into almost every important question of politics, ethics, aesthetics, ontology and epistemology. Indeed, the very definition of these fundamental philosophical conceptions is both challenged and enriched. In this way, African philosophy is not only crucial in understanding what constitutes its uniqueness but also in providing us with new and innovative ways to think about some of the most burning issues of our time as far reaching as what is the meaning of being human to how we can effectively challenge climate change. The aim of this seminar then is not simply to bring some of the most important African philosophers to participate so that their work can be known, but perhaps more importantly that they can bring African philosophy into the political and ethical debates about what it might mean to have a more just future. The series begins by challenging the conventional Afro-pessimistic view of time as being unable to organize a future perspective that would allow for adequate industrialization and development. If time is what happens inseparable from events, this does not mean that there is no future in African philosophy. What it means is that there is no future that can be foreclosed or known in advance and thus possibilities for the future remain open. It is therefore up to our actions to bring about the future that we want.
All Seminars are held on Wednesday evening (7-9PM) in the Heyman Common Room.
Wednesday September 28, 2016, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Presenter: Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University
Discussant: Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University
Location: Heyman Common Room
Wednesday November 2, 2016, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Presenter: Michael Monahan, Marquette University
Discussant: Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University and Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University
Location: Heyman Common Room
Wednesday January 25, 2017, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Presenter: Nkiru Nzegwu, SUNY-Binghampton
Discussant: Doug Ficek, University of New Haven
Location: 208 Knox Hall
Wednesday February 22, 2017, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Presenter: Olufemi Taiwo, Cornell University
Discussant: Jane Gordon, University of Connecticut-Storrs
Location: Heyman Common Room
Wednesday March 8, 2017, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Presenter: Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Univeriste Paris 8
Discussant: Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University
Location: 208 Knox Hall
Wednesday April 19, 2017, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Presenter: Lewis Gordon, University of Connecticut-Storrs
Discussants: Max Hantel, Dartmouth College and Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University
Location: Heyman Common Room
This series is made possible by financial support from the Provost Office and Arts & Sciences at Columbia University and the Partnership University Fund (PUF) of the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE). The venue for this series is provided by the Heyman Center for Humanities.
April 25, Saray Alaya-Lopez (Cal. State, Sacramento), “Agency in Structural Explanations of Injustice.” 6:30-8:00pm, CUNY Graduate Center 5414.
May 23, Karen Jones (U. Melbourne), “Radical Consciousness and Epistemic Privilege.” 6:30-8:00pm, CUNY Graduate Center 5414.
The aim of this conference is to bring scholars from numerous disciplines into conversation across the historical timeline. Just as freedom and liberty are slippery concepts, so are ideas of debt, value, and payment. But rather than simply viewing these terms as rhetorical devices that make freedom seem worthwhile, we deploy debt, value,and payment as analytical tools for understanding how freedom works – while also keeping in mind that these are concepts that themselves demand investigation. These ideas unite the discourses of freedom and liberty, from ethical and economic discourses, which describe freedom as either physical labor or a mental activity, as well as the language of religion and science. Often our innumerable ways of assessing value bleed one into another, especially in conversations regarding individual and shared liberties.
By explicitly juxtaposing the different methodologies used in asking “what does freedom cost?” from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present, we hope to explore overlapping areas of research and help expand the existing conversations in each discipline. In addition to providing vocabularies, practices and theories of freedom that we still use today, Ancient Greece and Rome provide many examples of peoples who lacked freedom but strove to obtain it, including slaves, women and conquered peoples. By simultaneously examining the Greco-Roman antiquity and modernity, we bring to light recurrent historical patterns of the costs that people have and continue pay for freedom.
We will be offering a minimum of six bursaries of up to 500 dollars to be awarded on the basis of greatest need, taking into account access to institutional funding and the distance of the conference from the participant’s home institution.
31 October 2016 is the deadline for the submission of abstracts. Please include the following as separate files: (1) title, abstract of 300-500 words, a one page bibliography (no self identifying information please!); (2) your name, title of your proposed talk, institutional affiliation, short academic bio, and an indication of whether you’d like to be consider for a bursary, a budget for the amount requested, and any information we should take into consideration when making our bursary allocations.
Critiques of beauty in art and in everyday life assume the traditional idea that aesthetic value is a kind of power to please. An entirely new picture comes from a close look at intricately structured networks of agents who interact with each other in aesthetic enterprises. Aesthetic values give us reasons to act in the context of social practices. The “network theory” explains why, despite the critiques, beauty never disappeared from art, why it’s as humanly important as ever, and how it can be harnessed to address pressing social problems.
Introduction by Noël Carroll, CUNY Graduate Center
a lecture by Dominic McIver Lopes
Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, the author of Understanding Pictures, Sight and Sensibility, Computer Art, Beyond Art, Four Arts of Photography, and Being for Beauty (in progress).
6pm, Wednesday, 27 September
Lang Recital Hall, Hunter College
(North Building, 4th Floor)
Sponsored by the departments of
Art and Philosophy
The Rutgers Philosophy Department, in partnership with Oxford University Press, is pleased to present the second annual Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy! This annual series brings some of the world’s greatest living philosophers to Rutgers University–New Brunswick where they present three original lectures to be published by Oxford University Press. The lectures are free and open to the public.
Last year, the inaugural series featured Kit Fine on a novel approach to the problem of vagueness. This year, Rutgers is hosting Sir Richard Sorabji[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com] for three lectures on the history of free speech. Here are the details:
Lecture I – Freedom of Speech for all: the gradual discovery, East and West.
Date/Time: Monday Oct. 30th, 2017, 3:00-5:00pm (reception to follow)
Location: Alexander Library, Teleconference Room (Room 403) (https://rumaps.rutgers.edu/location/alexander-library[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com])
Lecture II – Freedom of speech: voluntary boundaries when it stops discussion and the art of continuing discussion by other means
Date/Time: Thursday Nov. 2nd, 2017, 3:00-5:00pm (reception to follow)
Location: Alexander Library, Teleconference Room (Room 403) (https://rumaps.rutgers.edu/location/alexander-library[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com])
Lecture III – Freedom of Speech: Difficulties in framing and policing legal boundaries
Date/Time: Friday Nov. 3rd, 2017, 3:00-5:00pm (reception to follow)
Location: Rutgers Academic Building, Room 2125 (https://rumaps.rutgers.edu/location/rutgers-academic-building[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com])
All three lectures are free and open to the public. Please see the attached posters for more details. Abstracts for the talks are available here[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com].
About The Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy:
In the Fall of 2016, The Rutgers Philosophy Department in partnership with Oxford University Press were pleased to announce the launch of The Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com]. This annual series brings some of the world’s greatest living philosophers [na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com]to Rutgers University–New Brunswick where they present three original lectures to be published by Oxford University Press. The lecturers also hold workshops with faculty and graduate students, and meet with undergraduates. The lectures are free and open to the public.
The Rutgers Philosophy Department, in partnership with Oxford University Press, is pleased to present the second annual Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy! This annual series brings some of the world’s greatest living philosophers to Rutgers University–New Brunswick where they present three original lectures to be published by Oxford University Press. The lectures are free and open to the public.
Last year, the inaugural series featured Kit Fine on a novel approach to the problem of vagueness. This year, Rutgers is hosting Sir Richard Sorabji[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com] for three lectures on the history of free speech. Here are the details:
Lecture I – Freedom of Speech for all: the gradual discovery, East and West.
Date/Time: Monday Oct. 30th, 2017, 3:00-5:00pm (reception to follow)
Location: Alexander Library, Teleconference Room (Room 403) (https://rumaps.rutgers.edu/location/alexander-library[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com])
Lecture II – Freedom of speech: voluntary boundaries when it stops discussion and the art of continuing discussion by other means
Date/Time: Thursday Nov. 2nd, 2017, 3:00-5:00pm (reception to follow)
Location: Alexander Library, Teleconference Room (Room 403) (https://rumaps.rutgers.edu/location/alexander-library[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com])
Lecture III – Freedom of Speech: Difficulties in framing and policing legal boundaries
Date/Time: Friday Nov. 3rd, 2017, 3:00-5:00pm (reception to follow)
Location: Rutgers Academic Building, Room 2125 (https://rumaps.rutgers.edu/location/rutgers-academic-building[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com])
All three lectures are free and open to the public. Please see the attached posters for more details. Abstracts for the talks are available here[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com].
About The Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy:
In the Fall of 2016, The Rutgers Philosophy Department in partnership with Oxford University Press were pleased to announce the launch of The Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com]. This annual series brings some of the world’s greatest living philosophers [na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com]to Rutgers University–New Brunswick where they present three original lectures to be published by Oxford University Press. The lecturers also hold workshops with faculty and graduate students, and meet with undergraduates. The lectures are free and open to the public.
The Rutgers Philosophy Department, in partnership with Oxford University Press, is pleased to present the second annual Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy! This annual series brings some of the world’s greatest living philosophers to Rutgers University–New Brunswick where they present three original lectures to be published by Oxford University Press. The lectures are free and open to the public.
Last year, the inaugural series featured Kit Fine on a novel approach to the problem of vagueness. This year, Rutgers is hosting Sir Richard Sorabji[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com] for three lectures on the history of free speech. Here are the details:
Lecture I – Freedom of Speech for all: the gradual discovery, East and West.
Date/Time: Monday Oct. 30th, 2017, 3:00-5:00pm (reception to follow)
Location: Alexander Library, Teleconference Room (Room 403) (https://rumaps.rutgers.edu/location/alexander-library[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com])
Lecture II – Freedom of speech: voluntary boundaries when it stops discussion and the art of continuing discussion by other means
Date/Time: Thursday Nov. 2nd, 2017, 3:00-5:00pm (reception to follow)
Location: Alexander Library, Teleconference Room (Room 403) (https://rumaps.rutgers.edu/location/alexander-library[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com])
Lecture III – Freedom of Speech: Difficulties in framing and policing legal boundaries
Date/Time: Friday Nov. 3rd, 2017, 3:00-5:00pm (reception to follow)
Location: Rutgers Academic Building, Room 2125 (https://rumaps.rutgers.edu/location/rutgers-academic-building[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com])
All three lectures are free and open to the public. Please see the attached posters for more details. Abstracts for the talks are available here[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com].
About The Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy:
In the Fall of 2016, The Rutgers Philosophy Department in partnership with Oxford University Press were pleased to announce the launch of The Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy[na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com]. This annual series brings some of the world’s greatest living philosophers [na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com]to Rutgers University–New Brunswick where they present three original lectures to be published by Oxford University Press. The lecturers also hold workshops with faculty and graduate students, and meet with undergraduates. The lectures are free and open to the public.
Kant tried to explain how free moral action was possible. Unfortunately, he is often interpreted as explaining free choice of action in terms of the unexplained free choice of a Gesinnung by a faculty of choice. By avoiding this mistake, we can see him as offering an informative decomposition of the task of free or moral action. Further, one of Kant’s reasons for thinking that morality could not be explained by science depended on his assumptions about then current science. Since we can now reject that view of science, it is now possible to give a plausible scientific account, and so metaphysics, for Kant’s plausible account of the necessary conditions for free or moral action.
Patricia Kitcher is Roberta and William Campbell Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She is the author of two books on Kant’s conceptions of cognition and the self, Kant’s Transcendental Psychology (Oxford University Press, 1990) and Kant’s Thinker (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
The CUNY Graduate Center Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) and the Philosophy Program present a talk and book panel on:
RACIAL JUSTICE
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3 (Rooms 9204-5)
4:15-5:00 PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIUM LECTURE:
“Racial Justice”: Charles W. Mills, Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
5:00-5:05 Break
5:05-5:45 BOOK PANEL on Charles W. Mills’s 2017 book, Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism
Frank M. Kirkland (CUNY Hunter College & the Grad Center)
John Pittman (CUNY John Jay College)
5:45-6:30 Q & A
6:30-7:30 BOOK PARTY—Philosophy common room, 7113 (food and drink)
The workshop, which is now in its 9th year, aims to foster exchange and collaboration among scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in Early Modern Philosophy. This year’s workshop will focus on the topic of “Freedom and Evil” in Early Modern Philosophy (roughly the period from 1600-1800).
We welcome submissions on the conference topic, which may be broadly construed to include the problem of free will, theodicy, political and social liberty, and evil practices and institutions. For consideration, please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com no later than December 31, 2018.