Organizers of the 2017 North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress invite all philosophers with relevant interests to submit proposals for 15-20 minute presentations to be delivered as part of a philosophy-oriented panel.
Proposals drawing from any branch of philosophy are welcome, provided that they have relevance to the contemporary discussion and debates surrounding basic income.
Held annually in the US or Canada, the NABIG Congress brings together a wide variety of academics, researchers, policy advocates, social activists, government officials and other individuals interested in the idea and implementation of a basic income guarantee.
Topics of other sessions at the 2017 Congress have not been fully settled at the time of this writing. They may include (but are not limited to) the following: past and present pilot studies, welfare rights, degrowth, technology and AI, labor perspectives on basic income, and race and gender issues as they relate to basic income.
Information regarding previous NABIG Congresses is available at usbig.net. Additional details about the 2017 Congress will be available soon at the same website.
Those interested in participating in the panel on philosophy should submit an abstract of no more than 500 words to Kate McFarland (mcfarland.309@osu.edu) by January 31, 2017.
Selections will be announced no later than February 15, 2017.
Late in life, William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is “boring,” said the founding father of the American right. “Devoting your life to it,” as conservatives do, “is horrifying if only because it’s so repetitious. It’s like sex.” With this unlikely conversation began Robin’s decade-long foray into the conservative mind. What is conservatism, and what’s truly at stake for its proponents? If capitalism bores them, what excites them?
Written by a keen, highly regarded observer of the contemporary political scene, Robin’s newly reissued The Reactionary Mind ranges widely, from Edmund Burke to Antonin Scalia, from John C. Calhoun to Ayn Rand. It advances the notion that all rightwing ideologies, from the eighteenth century through today, are historical improvisations on a theme: the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back. The new edition includes a chapter on Donald Trump.
Mr. Robin will be in conversation with Eddie Glaude, a professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton. His books on religion and philosophy include African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction and Exodus! Religion, Race and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America, which was awarded the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Book Prize. His most well-known books, Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, and In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, take a wide look at black communities and reveal complexities, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for hope.
This study explores the increasingly troubled relationship between humankind and the Earth, with the help of a simple example and a complicated interlocutor. The example is a pond, which, it turns out, is not so simple as it seems. The interlocutor is Jean-Paul Sartre, novelist, playwright, biographer, philosopher, and, despite his several disavowals, doyen of twentieth-century existentialism. Standing with the great humanist at the edge of the pond, the author examines contemporary experience in the light of several familiar conceptual pairs: nature and culture, fact and value, reality and imagination, human and nonhuman, society and ecology, Earth and world. The theoretical challenge is to reveal the critical complementarity and experiential unity of this family of ideas. The practical task is to discern the heuristic implications of this lived unity-in-diversity in these times of social and ecological crisis. Interdisciplinary in its aspirations, the study draws upon recent developments in biology and ecology, complexity science and systems theory, ecological and Marxist economics, and environmental history. Comprehensive in its engagement of Sartre’s oeuvre, the study builds upon his best-known existentialist writings, and also his critique of colonialism, voluminous ethical writings, early studies of the imaginary, and mature dialectical philosophy. In addition to overviews of Sartre’s distinctive inflections of phenomenology and dialectics and his unique theories of praxis and imagination, the study also articulates for the first time Sartre’s incipient philosophical ecology. In keeping with Sartre’s lifelong commitment to freedom and liberation, the study concludes with a programmatic look at the relative merits of pragmatist, prefigurative, and revolutionary activism within the burgeoning global struggle for social and ecological justice. We learn much by thinking with Sartre at the water’s edge: surprising lessons about our changing humanity and how we have come to where we are; timely lessons about the shifting relation between us and the broader community of life to which we belong; difficult lessons about our brutal degradation of the planetary system upon which life depends; and auspicious lessons, too, about a participatory path forward as we work to preserve a habitable planet and build a livable world for all earthlings.
Matthew C. Ally was supposed to be an ecologist. During the same semester in which he took a required course in “Temperate Forest Ecosystems,” he took an elective philosophy course called “Tyranny and Freedom.” The rest is history. He is professor of philosophy at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York and coordinator of the BMCC Sustainability Studies Project. He has published articles on Sartre’s philosophy, progressive and radical pedagogy, philosophical ecology, environmentalism, and sustainability.
“Is Truth Dead?” asked Time Magazine last year. Since people clearly care about the truth, at least in mundane matters, truth is alive. If an airline agent tells you the flight to Dallas is leaving from Gate B16, you expect the flight to Dallas to be leaving from Gate B16, and complain sorely if it’s not.
But if the truth does still matter, why do we elect people who don’t seem to care what the truth is?
The answer to this question, argues philosopher Louise Antony, has partly to do with the structure of human knowledge, and partly to do with the structure of our society. We can’t do anything about the first matter, but we can do plenty about the second.
Louise Antony is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of numerous essays on the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and feminist theory. She is also a past president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association.
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).
Discussion with Seth Binsted, Michael Steinmann, and Yunus Tuncel. If you like to attend, Please RSVP by sending email to Luke Trusso at trussol@nietzschecircle.com
Are you miserable? If you are, you certainly have company. Misery has been on the rise in our society for some time, and the suffering is widespread: we, the people, feel lonely, neglected, forgotten, increasingly poor in health, in habit, and in purchasing power. A sense of helplessness shrouds the land. The manifestations of this are grim. Some take the agony of their despair and direct it outward, destroying the lives of concert attendees, night club patrons, students, and those who have the temerity or misfortune to set foot on the wrong side of the street. Others take aim at themselves, opting to end their lives either swiftly by the gun or slowly by a prescription. From many more we see anger and resentment as they spew racism, sexism, religious prejudice, and generalized contempt for anyone who believes differently. Political anger and polarization swells to fill the void as hope retreats and the willingness to see ourselves in each other withers away. But why? How come? What is the source of this misery? And how might we go about relieving it? How might we heal? Join us – and help us – as we raise these questions and more.
Oh, and there will be singing!
This event will be held twice!
Tuesday, May 15, 2018 at 6pm. At Cornelia Street Café, 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)
AND…
Thursday, May 24, 2018 at 8pm. At Las Tapas Bar and Restaurant, 808 W 187th Street, New York, NY 10033. (Take the A Train) Admission is $15, which includes one complimentary tapa and drink. Reservations are recommended. (646.590.0142)
Leo Glickman is a partner in Stoll, Glickman & Bellina, LLP. He has devoted his professional life of over two decades to holding the powerful accountable and obtaining justice for the underserved. As a civil rights litigator, he has successfully represented hundreds of people whose rights have been abused by police and correction officers. He has also upheld the rights of protestors, successfully litigating settlements for high-profile Occupy Wall Street participants.
Jane LeCroy is a poet, performance artist and educator who fronts the band The Icebergs and was a part of Sister Spit, the famed west coast women’s poetry troupe. Since 1997 Jane has been publishing student work and teaching writing, literature and performance to all ages through artist-in-the-schools organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and DreamYard, and as adjunct faculty at the university level. Her poetry book, Names was published by Booklyn as part of the award winning ABC chapbook series, purchased by the Library of Congress along with her braid! Signature Play, her multimedia book from Three Rooms Press, features a poem that was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Joseph S. Biehl, earned earned a B.A. in philosophy from St. John’s University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School and University Center, CUNY. He has written on ethics, meta-ethics, and politics. He has taught philosophy in New York and in Cork, Ireland, and is a member of the Governing Board and former co-director of the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs. He is the founder and executive director of the Gotham Philosophical Society and Young Philosophers of New York.
Are you miserable? If you are, you certainly have company. Misery has been on the rise in our society for some time, and the suffering is widespread: we, the people, feel lonely, neglected, forgotten, increasingly poor in health, in habit, and in purchasing power. A sense of helplessness shrouds the land. The manifestations of this are grim. Some take the agony of their despair and direct it outward, destroying the lives of concert attendees, night club patrons, students, and those who have the temerity or misfortune to set foot on the wrong side of the street. Others take aim at themselves, opting to end their lives either swiftly by the gun or slowly by a prescription. From many more we see anger and resentment as they spew racism, sexism, religious prejudice, and generalized contempt for anyone who believes differently. Political anger and polarization swells to fill the void as hope retreats and the willingness to see ourselves in each other withers away. But why? How come? What is the source of this misery? And how might we go about relieving it? How might we heal? Join us – and help us – as we raise these questions and more.
Oh, and there will be singing!
This event will be held twice!
Tuesday, May 15, 2018 at 6pm. At Cornelia Street Café, 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)
AND…
Thursday, May 24, 2018 at 8pm. At Las Tapas Bar and Restaurant, 808 W 187th Street, New York, NY 10033. (Take the A Train) Admission is $15, which includes one complimentary tapa and drink. Reservations are recommended. (646.590.0142)
Leo Glickman is a partner in Stoll, Glickman & Bellina, LLP. He has devoted his professional life of over two decades to holding the powerful accountable and obtaining justice for the underserved. As a civil rights litigator, he has successfully represented hundreds of people whose rights have been abused by police and correction officers. He has also upheld the rights of protestors, successfully litigating settlements for high-profile Occupy Wall Street participants.
Jane LeCroy is a poet, performance artist and educator who fronts the band The Icebergs and was a part of Sister Spit, the famed west coast women’s poetry troupe. Since 1997 Jane has been publishing student work and teaching writing, literature and performance to all ages through artist-in-the-schools organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and DreamYard, and as adjunct faculty at the university level. Her poetry book, Names was published by Booklyn as part of the award winning ABC chapbook series, purchased by the Library of Congress along with her braid! Signature Play, her multimedia book from Three Rooms Press, features a poem that was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Joseph S. Biehl, earned earned a B.A. in philosophy from St. John’s University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School and University Center, CUNY. He has written on ethics, meta-ethics, and politics. He has taught philosophy in New York and in Cork, Ireland, and is a member of the Governing Board and former co-director of the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs. He is the founder and executive director of the Gotham Philosophical Society and Young Philosophers of New York.
Join us as Harper’s Magazine and Book Culture on Columbus present D.D. Guttenplan on his new book The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority on Tuesday, October 2nd at 7pm! D.D. Guttenplan will be joined in conversation by Harper’s president Rick Macarthur!
Who are the new progressive leaders emerging to lead the post-Trump return to democracy in America? National political correspondent and award-winning author D.D. Guttenplan’s The Next Republic is an extraordinarily intense and wide-ranging account of the recent fall and incipient rise of democracy in America.
The Next Republic profiles nine successful activists who are changing the course of American history right now. Additionally, the introduction to The Next Republic ties in the election and first year of the Trump presidency to the current rise of populism of the left, and there are three historical chapters that describe key moments in American history that shed light on current events: the Whiskey Rebellion, the Lincoln Republic, and the Roosevelt Republic. Guttenplan understands the magnitude of the problem of democracy, and at the same time the great possibilities for its resurgence. Like a cross between George Packer’s The Unwinding and John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, The Next Republic is both unyielding and deeply hopeful, the first book to come out of the Trump ascendency that stakes a claim for seeing beyond it.
As the lead Nation election correspondent throughout the 2015-16 election season, D.D. Guttenplan set the highest standard for election reporting, traveling across the country throughout the primary season, present at the major speeches and rallies of all the candidates, offering deep as well as topical coverage in dozens of articles including many that graced the Nation magazine’s cover. Guttenplan’s first book, The Holocaust on Trial, was highly praised in The New Yorker and elsewhere. His biography of I.F. Stone, American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone won the Sperber Prize for Biography. Guttenplan wrote and presented two radio documentaries for the BBC, Guns: An American Love Affair, and War, Lies and Audiotape, about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as well as producing an acclaimed film, Edward Said: The Last Interview. A former editor at Vanity Fair, senior editor at the Village Voice, and media columnist at New York Newsday, Guttenplan’s reporting on the Happy Land Social Club fire in the Bronx won a Page One Award from the New York Newspaper Guild. His investigative reporting on New York City’s fire code was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He divides his time between homes in the U.S. in Vermont and London, England.
DATES:
October 4 and 5, 2018
LOCATION:
Feil Hall, Forchelli Conference Center, 22nd Floor, 205 State Street Brooklyn, New York
Sponsored by The Hastings Center and Brooklyn Law School’s Center for Health, Science and Public Policy; co-sponsored by Columbia University’s Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics
Access the conference flyer here.
SPEAKERS:
| Catherine Bliss (University of California, San Francisco) | Alondra Nelson (Columbia University) |
| Catherine Clune-Taylor (Princeton University) | Carolyn Neuhaus (The Hastings Center) |
| Eva Kittay (SUNY Stony Brook) | Jenny Reardon (UC Santa Cruz) |
| Melinda Hall (Stetson University) | Sandra Soo-Jin Lee (Stanford University) |
| Colin Koopman (University of Oregon) | Joe Stramondo (San Diego State University) |
| Leslie Larkin (Northern Michigan University) | Jessica Kolopenuk (University of Alberta) |
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE:
Thursday, October 4, 8:15 am – 5:00 pm
REGISTRATION AND CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST: 8:15-9:00
- 9:00-9:10 Erik Parens, Welcome on Behalf of The Hastings Center
- 9:10-9:20 Karen Porter Welcome on Behalf of Brooklyn Law School
- 9:20-9:30 Joel Michael Reynolds Welcome and Introductory Remarks
- 9:30-10:20 Colin Koopman “Coding the Self: The Biopolitics & Infopolitics of Genetic Sciences”
SHORT BREAK: 10:20-10:40
- 10:40-11:40 Lesley Larkin “On Contemporary Literature and the ‘Good Bionarrative Citizen”
LUNCH: 11:40-1:00
- 1:00-1:50 Sandra Soo-Jin Lee “How Is Social Networking and Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Testing Shaping The Choices and Conundrums of the Biocitizen?”
- 1:50-2:40 Melinda Hall “On The Language of Risk and the Marginalization of Bodies”
BREAK: 2:40-3:10
- 3:10-4:00 Catherine Clune-Taylor “What Does The History of Medicine Teach about the Advent of Genomics as “Truth” Concerning Categories of Embodiment such as Sex and Sexuality?”
- 4:00-5:00 Joseph Stramondo “How Does Genomics Shape Categories of Disability and How Might the Virtuous Biocitizen Respond?”
Friday, October 5, 2018, 8:15 am – 5:00 pm
REGISTRATION AND CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST: 8:15-9:00
- 9:00-9:50 Jessica Kolopenuk “How Does Colonialism and Racism Inform Genomic Knowledge and How Might Such Legacies Be Undermined?”
- 9:50-10:40 Catherine Bliss “Given Genomics’ Potential for Reinscription of Erroneous Notions of Race, How Should One Think about Race Ethically in the Genomic Age?”
SHORT BREAK: 10:40-11:00
- 11:00-11:50 Eva Kittay “How Much of a Gift or Weight Is Genomics from the Perspective of Care?”
LUNCH 11:50-1:00
- 1:00-1:50 Carolyn Neuhaus “On the Rhetoric that Exaggerates the Weight and Elides the Gift”
- 1:50-2:40 Alondra Nelson “The Politics of Genomics in the USA: the OSTP and the PMI”
SHORT BREAK: 2:40-3:00
- 3:00-4:00 Jenny Reardon “How Should We Understand the Relationship between Genomics, Justice, and Democracy?”
- 4:00-5:00 Roundtable Discussion
This conference will have live on-screen captioning and will be livestreamed. Send inquiries about the conference and any accessibility-related requests to reynoldsj@thehastingscenter.org. Requests for a reasonable accommodation based on a disability to attend this event should also be made to Louise Cohen, the BLS Reasonable Accommodations Coordinator, at louise.cohen@brooklaw.edu or (718) 780-0377.