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!
When we’re asked to give examples of philosophical questions, we’re likely to think of questions that are very, very old. Is the physical world all there is? How should I live? How do we know what we know? But some philosophical problems are quite new, made possible or urgent by new developments in science and culture. These are often the most exciting problems to think through.
On March 7th at 7:30 PM, Derek Skillings joins Brooklyn Public Philosophers to share his work on the philosophical consequences of the fact that we are holobionts – biological units composed of hosts and their associated swarms of microorganisms. If you’re interested in health, the problem of personal identity, the philosophy of biology in general, or the philosophical consequences of the fact that we’re made up of a bunch of little things which are themselves alive in particular, you’ll want to check this one out. Here’s the abstract:
“I, holobiont. Are you and your microbes a community or a single entity?”
You are a holobiont – a biological unit made up of a host and its associated microbiome (bacteria, protists, viruses and other microscopic entities). What consequences does this have for how we understand ourselves and other similar organisms? What are our spatial and temporal boundaries, and what does it mean to be a healthy holobiont? In this talk I will look at some alternatives for making sense of both holobiont individuality and “healthy holobiont/microbiome” talk. I will argue that existing accounts of human health are not appropriate for microbiomes, and that notions of ecosystem health face similar shortcomings. I will end by looking at some possibilities for understanding overall host health given the importance and ubiquity of microbiomes.
As usual, we meet at the Dweck Center at the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Here’s the Facebook event! Tell everyone, please!
The theme of our conference, “Thinking and Living the Good Life,” asks participants to think upon what it means to live well in contemporary society, how we can know the right or best way to live, and the role of thought in the enterprise of human life. Evocative of ancient theories of virtue, the theme of the good life also bears on prominent areas of discussion in contemporary political philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysics. Papers topics may include, but are not limited to: the relationship between political structures and the shared goal of realizing a common good; the complexities that arise in trying to achieve knowledge of the good; and the nature of the good in and of itself. Our conference aims to bring together graduate students that work in different areas in order to think through this singular theme of the good life and to search for commonalities and intersections amongst a broad array of approaches.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted to fordhamredstarline@gmail.com by December 20, 2018. Authors of selected papers will be notified by January 10, 2019.
Keynote speakers:
Organisers:
In ethics, in epistemology, in philosophy of mind and even (Searlean protestations notwithstanding) in ontology interest has steadily been growing in the idea that intersubjectivity is a central concept for understanding various aspects of our world. Similarly, the concept of interpretation has come to attention in a new light as a key means by which the interactions between subjectivities is mediated. This line of research raises a number of philosophical questions:
– What is intersubjectivity? Can it be given ‘a clear explanation’? In what relation does it stand to objectivity? In what relation does it stand to the first-person and second-person perspectives?
– What is interpretation? What is it to interpret another person’s behaviour as that of a genuine subject of experience? Is this notion of interpretation the same as that which we employ when speaking of interpreting language, rules, art, or data?
– Does intersubjectivity require interpretation? Must we rely on interpretive practices in order to make sense of others as subjects? If so, what implications might this have for the concept of intersubjectivity, and those practices and entities that might depend upon it?
– Does interpretation require intersubjectivity? Is there a sense of interpretation for which one cannot genuinely interpret something without taking it to be the result of intentional action on the part of a subject, produced for other subjects? And if so, what implications might that have for our understanding of interpretive practices?
– How do these questions connect with issues in areas of philosophy such as epistemology, aesthetics, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, social philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, political theory?
The keynote speaker will be Jay Garfield, who will deliver a talk on “The Second Person: Reflexivity and Reflection”.
We are pleased to invite abstracts sufficiently in the spirit of the project theme of no more than 1,000 words. Abstracts should:
– Outline the paper’s principal argument(s).
– Give a good sense of the paper’s philosophical contribution(s).
– Be anonymized.
The deadline for abstracts is January 19th, 2019. Abstracts should be e-mailed to 2019cunygradconference@gmail.com. Please include with your submission a cover page that includes your name, affiliated institution, contact information, and title of paper.
We will accept submissions from any area of philosophy, and from any philosophical tradition. We strongly encourage participants from groups whose voices are disproportionately excluded from philosophical discourse to submit abstracts.
In recent years, academic philosophers have increasingly pursued what is now called “public philosophy.” Almost everyone agrees that this development is positive. But what is public philosophy? What should it be? And why does it matter? Looking back to models both ancient and modern, this talk will be an exercise in public philosophy that explores the nature and value of public philosophy.
A reception will follow the lecture.
For information, contact: nyip.events@nyu.edu
The graduate students and faculty of the Columbia and NYU Philosophy Departments invite graduate submissions in any area of philosophy for a conference to be held on Saturday, April 13th, 2019 at New York University.
Submission Guidelines
Please send submission as attachments in .doc or .pdf format to columbianyu.philgradconference@gmail.com by February 3rd, 2018 (Notification by February 17th, 2019).
Papers must meet the following requirements:
- All papers must be between 3,000 and 5,000 words in length, suitable for a presentation of 30-40 minutes to a general philosophical audience.
- Submit papers with a separate cover sheet in .doc or .pdf format that includes the following information: name, home institution, contact details, area of paper (e.g. metaphysics, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind, etc.) and an abstract of no longer than 300 words.
- Papers must be submitted by email in blind-review format.
“What is Democracy? is the latest movie from Astra Taylor, the world’s foremost philosophy documentarian. It chronicles conversations with middle schoolers, workers, activists, and political philosophers about what democracy is, its promises and pitfalls, and how to strengthen it. On Wednesday, April 17th at 7:00 PM, Taylor is coming to Brooklyn to present a free screening of the film. Afterwards, she will be joined by the political philosopher Nancy Fraser for a discussion of themes from the movie. If you know who either of these people are, you will understand how ridiculously excited I am for this.
As usual, we meet at the Dweck Center at the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Here’s the Facebook event. Please note that this event begins at 7:00 PM. Tell and bring everybody.”
The Department of Politics at The New School for Social Research is sponsoring its 8th Annual graduate student conference on the concept, history, practices and implications of radical democracy.
This year, we invite abstracts and panel proposals that deal with the questions of feminist and radical democratic theory.
The last couple of years gave rise to new democratic movements. This new stage of grassroots democratic protests in countries such as US, Brazil, Argentina, Spain or Poland has been centered around feminist issues including sexual harassment, abortion law, domestic violence, and gender inequality. The Women’s March against Trump and International Women’s Strike present only two examples of the recent and global feminist wave. Why does the current wave of political mobilization in the US, Argentina, or Brazil have a feminist face? How does it differ from earlier democratic movements, including the movements of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter? What distinguishes this new wave from other feminist struggles from the past? Finally, what issues, reactions, and obstacles do contemporary feminists face in various places around the world? Our conference aims to address this set of questions.
We welcome papers that engage with the concept of feminism and its meaning, discuss the role of feminist and gender issues within the democratic tradition, as well as elaborate on the history of feminist politics. We particularly invite papers that propose a critical analysis of contemporary feminisms, elucidating their issues, dangers, and political potential.
Proposals should not be limited to this list, on the contrary, we encourage interdisciplinary papers and panels utilizing or critiquing the concepts of feminism and radical democracy from the point of view of post- anti- or de-colonialism, queer theory, indigenous studies, disability studies, or critical race theory
Please submit your paper or panel abstracts by March 8, 2019, to radicaldemocracy@newschool.edu.
http://www.radicaldemocracy.org/
https://philevents.org/event/show/70334