Presentations will tackle the issue of vulnerability and reassess the ontological framework of philosophical and psychological theories in dialogue with the phenomenological tradition and contemporary moral theory. This event is aimed at (1) facilitating institutional cooperation between American and European philosophers working on phenomenology; (2) creating a transatlantic research network for young researchers interested in phenomenology; (3) showcasing the importance of phenomenology for understanding vulnerability in dialogue with other philosophical areas or other fields (anthropology, feminist theory, cognitive science, mind theory etc.); and (4) raising awareness among the general public and promoting contemporary philosophical research on vulnerability and its potential impact on society.
The Husserl Archive at the New School for Social Research was established in 1966 in honor of Alfred Schütz in an effort to promote the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, as well as the phenomenological tradition more generally. To this end, the center hosts small research groups, seminars, workshops, and conferences that bring together international students and scholars working in or near the phenomenological tradition. In concert with this aim, the conference seeks to further establish the Archive as a center for phenomenological research on the east coast for junior scholars working in phenomenology and to strengthen scholarly ties to the Husserl Archives in Leuven and Paris. This conference is the inaugural event of this organization in an effort to facilitate cross-continental collaboration between American and European scholars in addition to strengthening research activities in the area of phenomenology in the U.S. The groundwork for this organization and conference is already in place to the extent that many of the scholars The New School intends to invite already have a record of collaboration. Nonetheless, there has not yet been an umbrella research group linking the Husserl Archives in Louvain, New York, and Paris and affiliated researchers. The two-day conference will include a total of twelve (12) invited presentations with representatives from these respective research centers and others.
Phenomenology is often hailed as one of the most important philosophical movements of the 20th century, impacting virtually every area of continental philosophy, including post-structuralism, deconstruction, feminist theory, as well as areas of psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Today, phenomenology has become influential in philosophical psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science for questions of consciousness, and we aim to create a forum for the discussion of phenomenology’s cross and interdisciplinary relevance. Today, the problem of vulnerability has currency for feminist theory, care studies, moral philosophy, as well as for questions of inter-subjectivity and empathy in cognitive science. We hope to reach a wide audience with the conference and to make explicit the importance of phenomenological method and thought for the question of vulnerability, particularly as it relates to the intersection of phenomenology and global issues today.
This event is sponsored by the Husserl Archive, the Department of Philosophy, at The New School for Social Research.
9th Meeting of the SIPP-ISPP
Our next meeting on ‘Any Body, Anybody : The Matter of the Unconscious’ will take place from November 9-12, 2016, at the New School for Social Research, New York.
With this title, we invite reflections on the body and the materiality of the unconscious. How does psychoanalysis help us think about how bodies become laden with and deprived of identity in a social and political space? The term “Anybody” also asks us to think about how the unconscious is not bound to a known identity but rather emerges from and belongs to a “nobody” that is nevertheless material; the phrase “Any body,” conjures up the psychic ambiguities subtending the way sexuality affects every body including but not limited to trans-sexual bodies. This conference also offers us an opportunity to think about how the targets of recent acts of terrorism are construed as “anybodies” and/or “nobodies.”
For more information, please read our CFP or write to 16SIPP@gmail.com.
A Memorial conference for Hilary Putnam
Pragmatic Themes in the Philosophy of Hilary Putnam
Sponsored by Department of Philosophy, New Social for Social Research
10 A. M. Richard J. Bernstein Pragmatist Enlightenment
11 A. M. Alice Crary Putnam and Propaganda
12-2 P. M. Lunch
2 P.M. Naoko Saito Pragmatism, Analysis, and Inspiration
3 P.M. Brendan Hogan and Lawrence Marcelle: Putnam,
Pragmatism and the Problem of Economic Rationality
4 P. M. Philip Kitcher Putnam’s Happy Ending? Pragmatism
and the Realism Debates
“Secularism and Its Discontents”
The New School for Social Research
16th Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference
Keynote Speaker: Gil Anidjar (Columbia)
Keynote Roundtable Featuring: Simon Critchley (The New School) and others TBA
With the increased social secularization in the West, philosophy, politics, and religion have become strange bedfellows. This emphasis on secularization has sparked controversies concerning the role of religion in the political sphere that have taken the form of lawsuits against forced funding of birth control, liberal democratic states outlawing hijabs, and increased focus on religious extremism as a way to define marginalized social classes. Unfortunately, in many liberal rationalizations of the political sphere there is a failure to give accounts of contemporary and historical forms of theology and specifically secularism. Questions are then raised: have politics and religion been separated by secular movements and relegated to their own jargons, ideas, and concepts, or are they both necessary to give fuller accounts of the interplays between them? With new arguments forming both in support of increased space for religion in politics and also in support of the complete separation of religion and politics under the guise of secularization – and both in the name of“freedom,” “equality,” and “rights” – one is forced to ask a fundamental question: what is the role of religion in politics? And what are the political, theological, and philosophical ramifications of this role? From ancient thought to contemporary philosophy, issues of transcendence, absence, silence, resistance, and action have been raised as theological questions within the realm of the political. However, the extent to which religion and politics intersect in the contemporary world has become increasingly contentious in terms of religious expression and secular movements.
From political theology to radical orthodoxy to studies on political myth, the meaning of the relation between the sacred and the secular has yet to secure a consistently meaningful definition despite an increased popular rhetoric among various camps in the secularism debates. As such, the question of the influence that politics and religion have on one another is of significant import. This question holds major sway in any debate concerning the possibility of and warrant for a secular society, and to understand secular movements, one must first understand the contemporary and historical connections between the secular and the sacred. In light of this question, the liberal answer to the problem of the role of religion in politics is seemingly simple: new age, new order, a new secular approach to the political. But is the answer really this simple? This is the question we wish to explore.
At this year’s NSSR philosophy student conference, we wish to consider the role of religion in politics and all of the tensions and consequences this role entails specifically in relation to movements toward secularization. By bringing politics, religion, and philosophy into conversation with one another, one will be able to more clearly understand the causes, consequences, and meanings of secularization. At this conference we will think both with and against theology, politics, and philosophy in order to think more deeply about the secular.
We invite the submission of papers no longer than 4000 words prepared for a 30 minute presentation. Papers should be submitted as .pdf files and formatted for blind review. Please include as a separate document a cover letter including your name, paper title, institutional affiliation, and contact information.
Submissions should be sent to secularismanditsdiscontents@gmail.com by January 21st, 2017.
Possible Paper Topics Include:
- · Political Theology
- · Radical Orthodoxy
- · Politics and the Problem of Ontotheology
- · The Lowtich-Blumenberg Debate
- · Theological Materialism
- · Political Myth
- · Politics and a Phenomenology of Religious Experience
- · Silence and the Political
- · Feminism and Religious Experience
- · Presence and Absence in the Political
- · The Politics of Religion
- · When Religion Becomes Law
- · Mystical Anarchism
- · Political Revolution and Religious Revelation
- · Liberation Theology
- · Race and Philosophy of Religion
- · The Doctrine of Religious Restraint
- · Religious Existentialism
- · Violence and Religion
- · Neoliberalism and Religion
Many academics work on issues of social justice, and in this politically tumultuous moment, we want to ask: What is our social responsibility as academics? What does it mean to assume this responsibility?
In response to the untimely suspension of all Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature programs at Stony Brook University, the final graduate conference (co-sponsored by Minorities and Philosophy, NSSR) will be an interdisciplinary event where we aim to confront the limitations of our position as academics and conceive possibilities for moving beyond those limitations.
Schedule
9:45–10:15 Participant Registration/ Coffee & Bagels
10:15–10:30 Opening Remarks
10:30–12:00 Panel 1: Humanities & Political Insight
10:30–11:00 Amy Cook (Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English, Stony Brook University): “Disciplinary Futures and the Political Impact of Counter Casting”
11:00–11:30 Jack Wilson (PhD Student History, UCLA): “The View from the Waste Land: Poetry as Anti-Totalitarian Critique in Postwar Japan and Beyond”
11:30–12:00 Sabrina Tremblay-Huet (LLD Student Université de Sherbrooke, Visiting Research Fellow Fordham School of Law): “Human Rights and the Trap of Speaking for Others: Law in Literature as a Better Source of Resistance Discourse?”
12:00–1:30 Lunch Break
1:30–2:30 Panel 2: Institutional Critique
1:30–2:00 Jonathan Rawski (PhD Student Linguistics, Stony Brook University): “Pirates and Emperors: On Publishers, Journalists, and Academic Elites”
2:00–2:30 Forrest Deacon (PhD Student, Politics, The New School for Social Research): “Foucault’s Clinic and the Academy: Systems of Truth, Intelligibility, and Repetition”
2:30–2:45 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
2:45–3:45 Panel 3: The Praxis of Academics
2:45–3:15 Andrew Dobbyn (PhD Student Philosophy, Stony Brook): “Praxis Makes Perfect: Why Politics Isn’t like Riding a Bike”
3:15–3:45 Laura Pérez (Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, Cornell University Society for the Humanities): “The Objects of Philosophical Inquiry as Public Entities”
3:45–4:00 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
4:00–5:00 Keynote: Professor Patrice Nganang (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, Stony Brook University, Visiting Professor Princeton University): Title TBA
5:00–5:15 Closing Remarks
5:15–6:30 Reception (wine and refreshments)
Presented by The New School for Social Research.
The New School for Social Research Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy
Discourse concerning the role of bridges and walls has become commonplace in our contemporary political scene. Xenophobic, racist, and nationalistic calls for the building of walls are opposed by calls to construct bridges by those seeking to form coalitions of solidarity and resistance. An example of this is given by the way in which colonialism/imperialism has repeatedly used ‘bridges’ as Trojan horses of sorts, by means of which distances were lessened and inequality worsened. Thus, this conference wishes to explore the normative consequences of the ubiquitous discourse of epistemic and geographic stratification by interrogating the way in which this metaphor is used—implicitly and explicitly—within philosophy, to the extent that the latter, as a frame of epistemological and experiential articulation, also builds its own bridges and walls.
It is with this in mind that at this year’s NSSR Graduate Student Philosophy conference we wish to provide a platform for a very particular kind of ‘philosophical investigation’ in which a vast range of approaches concerning the significance and use of spatial metaphors within philosophical debates could take place. Such an investigation of margins, bridges, walls, localization and beyond should be undertaken in a manner that makes room for ontological, ethical, epistemological, phenomenological, political and psychoanalytic discourses. To this end, we encourage full liberty and creativity with how this topic could be approached. This is because we conceive this investigation as an open, interdisciplinary kind of quest whose aim will be to rethink the way in which we conceive of boundaries, gaps, stages and common spaces for the purpose of interrogating the tensions underpinning our current political discourse, while also showing the ways in which these affect the way in which we conceive of Philosophy.
Possible Topics (This list is in no way exhaustive):
- Walls and Bridges as Philosophical Metaphor
- Migration and (In)Justice
- Decolonial Theory and the Use of Walls/Bridges
- The role of Bridges and Walls in the construction of Imagined communities
- Walls/Bridges and Political Membership
- Walls and Solidarity
- Walls/Bridges and Globalization
- Social Epistemology and Imagined Walls
- Persuasion as an Epistemological Bridge
- Political Topologies and the Role of Walls/Bridges
- Privacy, Space and the Political
- Walls/Bridges and Human Rights
- Administrative Violence
- Philosophical Topologies/Political Topologies
- Space and Violence
- Localized Violence
- Violence in Bodies
- Bridges/Walls and Cross-cultural Discourse
- Digital divisions and Digital Connections
- Technology and Changing Spatial Relations
Please submit complete papers by December 20th in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to NewSchoolOnBridgesAndWallsConf@gmail.com
Include your name, institution, and degree-program in the body of the message.
Deadline:
December 20th 2017
Word Limit: 3500
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
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
The Philosophy Department of The New School for Social Research invites you to a conference in honor of the life and work of Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy Yirmiyahu Yovel.
The conference will be on March 29th and 30th in the Wolff Conference Room, D1103, 6 E 16th Street.
Celebrating Yirmiyahu Yovel
Friday, March 29th
Chair: Richard J. Bernstein
9 AM – 11 AM: Agnes Heller “The Other Within”
11 AM – 1 PM: Jay Bernstein “Yovel and Hegel’s Phenomenology
Lunch
2 PM – 4 PM: James Dodd “The Historical Antinomy”
4PM – 6PM: Jonathan Yovel “Normativity as a Poetic Quality”
Saturday, March 30th
Chari: Dmitri Nikulin
9 AM – 11 AM: Joel Whitebook “Immanence, Finitude, and Emancipation: A Psychoanalytic Perspective”
11 AM – 1 PM: Omri Boehm “Immanence, Knowledge, and Immortality: Spinoza’s Ethics as an Inversion of the Biblical Fall”
Lunch
2 PM – 4 PM: Chiara Bottici “Marrano of Reason”
4 PM – 6 PM: Eli Friedlander “On the Different Ways to the Highest Good”
Conference Schedule
Friday May 10
- 1pm: Rachel Goodman (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Introductory Overview1:30pm: Jake Quilty-Dunn (University of Oxford)
On Elisabeth Camp’s “Putting Thoughts to Work”4:30pm: John Kulvicki (Darmouth College)
On Jacob Beck’s “Perception is Analog”
Saturday May 11
- 1pm: Jacob Beck (York University)
On Jake Quilty-Dunn’s “Perceptual Pluralism”4pm: Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University)
On John Kulvicki’s “Modeling the Meanings of Pictures”
The Five Essential Readings for the Conference
The conference is predicated on the assumption that everyone in attendance will have read all five of these essays:
- John Haugeland, Representational Genera
- Elisabeth Camp, Putting Thoughts to Work
- Jacob Beck, Perception Is Analog
- Jake Quilty-Dunn, Perceptual Pluralism
- John Kulvicki, Modeling The Meanings of Pictures (excerpt)
Some Helpful Background Readings
Here are ten additional readings that help to fill in some of the background to the topics that will be discussed at the conference. Those new to these topics might start with the Kulvicki, Camp, and Giardino and Greenberg readings, and then move on to the others.
- John Kulvicki, Images in Mind
- Elisabeth Camp, Thinking With Maps
- Valeria Giardino and Gabriel Greenberg, Introduction: Varieties of Iconicity
- John Haugeland, Analog and Analog
- Fred Dretske, Sensation and Perception
- Jerry Fodor, Preconceptual Representation
- Michael Rescorla, Cognitive Maps and the Language of Thought
- Tyler Burge, Origins of Perception
- Tyler Burge, Steps Towards Origins of Propositional Thought
- Jacob Beck, The Generality Constraint and the Structure of Thought
- Whit Schonbein, Varieties of Analog and Digital Representation
If you have any questions about the conference, please contact Zed Adams at zed@newschool.edu.