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
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!
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
There are two approaches to life. The first one, which we are identifying with Sir Karl Popper, is to think before we act and to let our hypotheses die in our stead when the overall outcome is likely to be negative. We act now for a better future, and we think now which action will bring the best future. Both decision theory and backward induction are technical versions of this train of thought. The second approach, which we will identify with the Buddha, is to live in the present and not allow the future to pull us away from living in the ever present Now. The Buddha’s approach is echoed in many others who came after him, Jelaluddin Rumi, Kahlil Gibran, and even perhaps Jesus. It occurs in many contemporary teachers like Eckhart Tolle and Thich Nhat Hanh. We may call Popper’s approach “futurism” and the Buddha’s approach “presentism.”
In this talk, we will discuss various aspects of the discourse on presentism and futurism. The purpose is to contrast one with the other. We will not attempt to side with one against the other, and instead leave it as a future project to find a prescriptive action-guiding choice between the two. We merely conjecture that a better optimal choice between these two positions may be somewhere in between. (This is joint work with Jongjin Kim.)
A number of philosophers working on Buddhist traditions have recently explored similarities between the cultivated experience of not-self, and the clinical experience of depersonalization. In this talk, I will offer some reflections on this theme. But my primary aim will be to push a similar kind of exploratory project one step further. Drawing on tools from cognitive and computational neuroscience, as well as insights from Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy, I will explore some of the most significant similarities and differences between anomalous experiences evoked by meditation, and anomalous experiences that are commonly labeled as hallucinations. I will then argue that understanding how such experiences are produced offers a powerful framework for thinking about the socially and historically situated nature of everyday experience.
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:
It is commonly claimed that mind-body dualism is entirely foreign to China—or “the East” more generally. This talk will explore how engaging with the cognitive sciences and digital humanities undermines claims such as this, and more broadly can help us to do our work as scholars of comparative philosophy. Embracing an embodied view of human cognition gets us beyond strong social constructivism and its accompanying cultural essentialism. In addition, new tools from the science and digital humanities can, in combination with traditional archaeological and textual evidence, allow us to more accurately and rigorously assess claims about the philosophical and religious historical record. Specifically, I will focus on novel large-scale textual analysis techniques, online databases for sharing scholarly knowledge, and work in contemporary evolutionary anthropology and cognitive science relevant to the mind-body issue. I will conclude by considering how early Chinese views of mind-body relations do, in fact, differ from some modern Western conceptions, and how taking a more reasonable view of cultural differences can allow us to genuinely learn from other cultures.
With a response from:
Paul Goldin (University of Pennsylvania)
What does a philosopher look like? Inevitably, our mental pictures are shaped by the dominant imagery of the white male marble busts of Greco-Roman antiquity—Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca—and their modern European heirs—Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Mill. Even today Western philosophy is largely male and overwhelmingly white—about 97 percent in the U.S., close to 100 percent in Europe. Diversifying the field requires expanding our corporeal imaginary of its practitioners. This conference, timed to honor Professor Anita Allen-Castellitto (Penn), the first black female President in the 100-year-plus history of the American Philosophical Association, aims to showcase the work of a traditionally under-represented population, challenging these preconceptions. Allen and fifteen other black women will speak on their research across a wide variety of philosophical topics.
ORGANIZED BY:
Charles W. Mills & Linda Martín Alcoff
LIST OF SPEAKERS
Anita Allen-Castellitto, University of Pennsylvania
Kathryn Belle, Penn State University
Emmalon Davis, New School for Social Research
Nathifa Greene, Gettysburg College
Devonya Havis, Canisius College
Janine Jones, University of North Carolina Greensboro
Axelle Karera, Wesleyan University
Michele Moody-Adams, Columbia University
Mickaella Perina, University of Massachusetts Boston
Camisha Russell, University of Oregon
Jackie Scott, Loyola University Chicago
Kris Sealey, Fairfield University
Jameliah Shorter-Bourhanou, Georgia College, College of the Holy Cross
Anika Simpson, Morgan State University
Briana Toole, CUNY Baruch College
Yolonda Wilson, Howard University
Stay tuned for schedule details!
Hosted by: The Center for the Humanities and the PhD Program in Philosophy at the The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Co-sponsored by: The American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers, and the Advanced Research Collaborative at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
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Free and open to the public, but please register for Friday, March 15th here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-women-philosophers-conference-day-1-march-15th-2019-registration-56225763773
Please register for Saturday, March 16th here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-women-philosophers-conference-day-2-march-16th-2019-registration-56225886139
The venue is wheel-chair accessible.
To download a PDF version of the flyer, click here.
John Dewey, in his resistance to foundational individualism, declares that individual autonomy so conceived is a fiction; for Dewey, it is association that is a fact. In his own language: “There is no sense in asking how individuals come to be associated. They exist and operate in association.” In a way that resonates with Confucian role ethics, the revolutionary Dewey particularizes the fact of associated living and valorizes it by developing a vision of the habitude of unique, defused, relationally-constituted human beings. That is, he develops a distinctive, if not idiosyncratic language of habits and “individuality” to describe the various modalities of association that enable human beings to add value to their activities and to transform mere relations into a communicating community.
In Confucian role ethics, Dewey’s contention that association is a fact is restated in a different vocabulary by appealing to specific roles rather than unique habitudes for stipulating the specific forms that association takes within lives lived in family and community—that is, the various roles we live as sons and teachers, grandmothers and neighbors. For Confucianism, not only are these roles descriptive of our associations, they are also prescriptive in the sense that roles in family and community are themselves normative, guiding us in the direction of appropriate conduct. Whereas for both Confucianism and Dewey, mere association is a given, flourishing families and communities are what we are able to make of our facticity as the highest human achievement.
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