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.
Does art have anything interesting to do with pleasure? The aesthetic hedonist answers positively, claiming that the value of artworks qua artworks lie in their power to please those who are properly engaged with them. Recent critics of hedonism answer the question in the negative, arguing that the power to please cannot properly explain the value of artworks. In this paper, I point to a blind spot in the dialectic between the hedonic orthodoxy and its recent critics: though the hedonist is wrong to claim that artworks are valuable because they are endowed with the power to please, the contemporary critic of hedonism mistakenly disconnects art from pleasure. The bulk of the paper consists in a challenge to the two assumptions that underlie this dialectic: (1) the assumption that pleasure is merely subjective and so incapable of disclosing the value of its object, and (2) the assumption that pleasure can be connected to art only hedonically, as the answer to the question “what makes artworks valuable?” By undermining these assumptions, I carve out space for a neglected alternative between aesthetic hedonism and its non-affective denial: this is the view that, though pleasure does not constitute the value of artworks, it does constitute proper aesthetic evaluation. On this neglected alternative, pleasure is connected to artworks insofar as it is the proper response merited by their value, value that the pleasure discloses. It is the value of artworks that gives us reasons to feel pleasure rather than the feeling of pleasure that gives us reasons to attribute value to them.
Reception to follow in 6th floor lounge.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a brilliant, suspenseful mystery exploring the often dangerous intimacy between love, compulsion, and death. It is also a profound meditation on the power of art. While it invites us to go on seeing art as a mimesis – a “representation,” or “imitation” of life – it also cryptically asks whether art objects might do more than merely represent life, even whether they might exercise power over death. James Stewart’s Scotty has been compared to Orpheus in quest of Eurydice; I suggest that he’s worth comparing to Admetus, who wished he could be Orpheus, and who imagines clinging to a statue to recapture his lost wife. The spell cast by Hitchcock in Vertigo shows us just how bewitching art can be when it has us under its sway.
Monday, March 19, 2018 at 6pm. This event is part of the Philosophy Series at The Cornelia Street Café, located at 29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY 10014 (near Sixth Avenue and West 4th St.). Admission is $10, which includes the price of one drink. Reservations are recommended (212. 989.9319)
Nickolas Pappas is Professor of Philosophy at City College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, where he has taught since 1993. He is the author of several books and around 40 articles, mostly on topics in ancient philosophy. His books include the Routledge Philosophical Guidebook to Plato’s Republic, now in its third edition; and most recently The Philosopher’s New Clothes (Routledge, 2016).
Two CUNY Philosophy professors (Noël Carroll and Jesse Prinz) will present research alongside PhD student Zoe Cunliffe and alumna Laura Di Summa-Knoop in the upcoming Workshop on “Naturalized Aesthetics of Film”, taking place March 27th from 2-6pm in GC Room 5307. Additional presenters include Joerg Fingerhut (postdoc, Berlin School of Mind and Brain) and Murray Smith (University of Kent). The workshop celebrates Smith’s new monograph Film, Art, and the Third Culture, which defends an interdisciplinary approach to film studies.
See the poster below for additional details (including the workshop schedule).
Click here to download it as a PDF.
Elliot Paul, assistant professor of philosophy, and Joan Snitzer, cochair and director of visual arts in the Department of Art History, come together to discuss the relationship between creative expression and appreciation in this installment of From the Faculty Lounge. Paul and Snitzer will explore creativity’s role in our happiness and moral choices, and how an artist’s ownership of their creativity compares to an audience’s influence.
Moderated by Provost Linda Bell
Space is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please arrive early as this event will be filmed and doors will close promptly at 6:30 PM.
From the Faculty Lounge
What is Creativity?
Thursday, May 3, 2018
6:30 PM
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall
For more information, visit barnard.edu/events. View previously recorded conversations here.
Over the course of his 49 year career (48 years of which were spent at Rutgers), Peter established himself as a giant in the field of aesthetics, especially in the philosophy of music. Sadly, Peter passed away in 2017. To honor his memory, the Rutgers Philosophy Department is hosting a one-day conference on October 26, 2018, celebrating his life’s philosophical work.
The Conference will include talks by Christy Mag Uidhir (Houston), Jenefer Robinson (Cincinnati), Jerrold Levinson (Maryland), and David Davies (McGill). In addition, Aaron Meskin (Leeds) will introduce and read Peter Kivy’s unpublished ‘The Case of (Digital) Wagner.’ Finally, there will be a time set aside for remembrances from Peter’s friends and colleagues.
All are welcome to attend the conference. There is no registration fee; however, attendees are encouraged to pre-register (so that we have an accurate headcount for the lunch and reception). To pre-register, please email us at kivymemorial@philosophy.rutgers.edu
Conference Information
October 26, 2018
9:30 am – 5:00 pm – Conference
5:00 am – 6:15 pm – Reception
The conference and reception will take place at the Teleconference Room on the 4th Floor of Alexander Library (169 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ). In addition to the reception at the close of the conference, a catered lunch will be served.
The exact conference schedule will be posted soon.
Questions can be directed to kivymemorial@philosophy.rutgers.edu
You probably know the Lucas Brothers from their Netflix comedy special On Drugs or their appearances in TV shows and movies like Lady Dynamite and 22 Jump Street. You might not know that they are serious students of philosophy. Join us on Wednesday, November 28th at 7:30 PM in the Strand Bookstore’s 2nd Floor Art Department as Kenny and Keith Lucas join Michael Brownstein (Associate Professor of Philosophy at John Jay College and author of The Implicit Mind) to discuss how philosophy shapes their comedy, how comedy works, the weirdly popular idea that comedians are today’s philosophers, and more.
The price of admission is a $5 gift certificate to the Strand. (You were probably going to spend $5 at the Strand some time soon, anyway.) Please purchase tickets here and share the Facebook event. I will take all the help I can get in spreading the word.
Stay tuned for more info about Kwame Anthony Appiah’s December 4th talk about identity at Philosophy in the Library!
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.
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.
Keynote speakers:
Organisers:
Professor Barbara Gail Montero is the director of (and a performer in) the upcoming multimedia, interdisciplinary event Curved Spacetimes: Where Friedrich Nietzsche Meets Virginia Woolf. Prof. Nickolas Pappas will also perform (reading spoken word as Friedrich Nietzsche), and Prof. Jonathan Gilmore is a member of the team that brought the project to fruition.
According to the American Society for Aesthetics (who partially funded this project with a $7,000 grant), Curved Spacetimes is “multisensory event focused on the Physics, Aesthetics, and Metaphysics of Time. . . .[T]he evening will commence with a Nietzsche-Woolf-curved-spacetime-inspired reception that will allow you to test your knowledge of our central figures. Following the reception, you will experience Nietzsche, Woolf and curved spacetime coming to life on the stage (through dance, live music and the spoken word), and then listen to a panel discussion that will take you more deeply into the ideas guiding the performance.”
When: Sunday, March 17, 2019: 6-9 pm
Where: The Tank, 312 W. 36th St. 1st floor, New York City.
Schedule of Events
- 6 PM: Pre-performance catered reception—pass the Woolf/Nietzsche pre-test for a free drink!
- 7 PM: Performance
- 8 PM: Panel discussion on the physics, aesthetics, and metaphysics of time
Choreography: Logos Dance Collective (Barbara Gail Montero, Theresa Duhon, Patra Jongjitirat, and Gregory Kollarus)
Performers: Elise Crull, Theresa Duhon, Maxine Flasher-Duzgunes, Patra Jongjitirat, Gregory Kollarus, Barbara Gail Montero, and Nickolas Pappas
Music: Selections from Bach’s Cello Suites, performed live by cellist Ivan Luza
Text: excerpts from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Gay Science, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Diary of Virginia Woolf
Panelists for the after-performance discussion:
- Jeff Friedman, Associate Professor of Dance Rutgers University
- Kathleen Higgins, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
- Timothy Maudlin, Professor of Philosophy, New York University
- Heather Whitney, JD, Harvard Law School & PhD Candidate, New York University
Moderator: Rebecca Ariel Porte, Writer and member of the Core Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.
Free tickets for students in philosophy, literature, dance and physics are supported by the ASA grant and are available from bmontero@gc.cuny.edu
For all others, tickets are on sale now on-line at The Tank
Project Team:
- Barbara Gail Montero (Project Director), Professor of Philosophy, CUNY and Founder and member of the Logos Dance Collective
- Jonathan Gilmore, Professor of Philosophy, CUNY
- Maxine Flasher-Duzgunes, BFA student in Dance at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and member of the Logos Dance Collective
- Cliff Mak, Assistant Professor of English, Queens College, CUNY