There is a broad consensus that Aristotle introduced the concept of matter in order to develop a consistent account of substantial change. However, it is disputed which role matter fulfills in substantial change. According to the traditional interpretation, matter persists while taking on or losing a substantial form. According to a rival interpretation, matter does not persist in substantial change; instead, it is an entity from which a new substance can emerge and which ceases to exist in this process. In my view, both interpretations are problematic in the light of Aristotle’s broader ontological project and are at odds with the way Aristotle describes the substantial generation of living beings. On the basis of Aristotle’s biological theory, I will suggest that Aristotelian matter is a continuant in substantial generation, but does not satisfy the common criteria for persistence that apply to individual substances.
Anna Schriefl
Anna Schriefl is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (assistant professor) at the University of Bonn, and currently a visiting scholar at the New School. She has published a book about Plato’s criticism of money and wealth, and most recently an introduction into Stoicism (both in German).
We live in an era of aesthetics. Art has become both pervasive and powerful – it is displayed not only in museums and galleries but also on the walls of corporations and it is increasingly fused with design. But what makes art so powerful, and in what does its power consist?
According to a widespread view, the power of art – its beauty – lies in the eye of the beholder. What counts as art appears to be a function of individual acts of evaluation supported by powerful institutions. On this account, the power of art stems from a force that is not itself aesthetic, such as the art market and the financial power of speculators. Art expresses, in a disguised form, the power of something else – like money – that lies behind it. In one word, art has lost its autonomy.
In his talk, Markus Gabriel rejects this view. He argues that art is essentially uncontrollable. It is in the nature of the work of art to be autonomous to such a degree that the art world will never manage to overpower it. Ever since the cave paintings of Lascaux, art has taken hold of the human mind and implemented itself in our very being. Thanks to the emergence of art we became human beings, that is, beings who lead their lives in light of an image of the human being and its position in the world and in relation to other species. Due to its structural, ontological power, art itself is and remains radically autonomous. Yet, this power is highly ambiguous, as we cannot control its unfolding.
Markus Gabriel holds the chair for Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Bonn and is also the Director of the International Center for Philosophy in Bonn as well as the director of the Center for Science at Thought at Bonn.
Presented by The New School for Social Research and Philosophy Department and it is co-sponsored with the Liberal Studies Department.
The Eastern Study Group invites submissions for its 17th annual meeting to take place at Fordham University on Saturday and Sunday, May 2-3, 2020. Our host this year is Reed Winegar.
Keynote Speakers: Patricia Kitcher (Columbia)
Please send all abstracts electronically to Kate Moran, kmoran@brandeis.edu
Please submit a detailed abstract (1,000–1,200 words) with a select bibliography. Submissions should be prepared for blind review and include a word count. Please supply contact information in a separate file. If you are a graduate student, please indicate this in your contact information.
The selection committee welcomes contributions on all topics of Kantian scholarship (contemporary or historically oriented), including discussions of Kant’s immediate predecessors and successors. Presentation time is limited to 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of discussion.
The best graduate student paper will receive a $200 stipend and be eligible for the Markus Herz Prize. Women, minorities, and graduate students are encouraged to submit. Papers submitted for the Herz prize should not exceed 6,000 words.
Papers already read or accepted at other NAKS study groups or meetings may not be submitted. Presenters must be members of NAKS in good standing.
ENAKS receives support from NAKS and host universities.
For questions about ENAKS or the upcoming meeting, please contact Kate Moran (kmoran@brandeis.edu) or consult the ENAKS website at www.enaks.net.
This conference aims to initiate dialogues between philosophy and the arts. Philosophers and thinkers/ scholars across disciplines of humanities and social sciences will meet with artists and scholars from a wide variety of visual and visual artistic disciplines, including painting, photography, and literature, as well as travel, dance, and fashion. Rather than taking art as a mere object of philosophical study, this conference will explore the manifold confluences and intersections of philosophy and art, exploring how each can become the object of the other and how the boundary between the philosophical and the artistic can be sharpened or blurred. The motive is specifically to explore the “visual” and “movement” element in art of, and in everyday life and theorize it – both philosophically and critically.
Co-sponsored by: Office of Deans: New School for Social Research and School of Art & Design History & Theory; University Student Senate and Graduate Faculty Student Senate
Schedule and Location
The conference will meet on The New School campus in New York City.
On March 24th, we will meet in room B500 at 65 W 11 Street.
On March 25th, we will meet in Starr Foundation Hall UL105 at University Center (63 Fifth Avenue).
Following is the schedule for both days, (please see the website for details on panels and speakers):
11:00 am Panel 1 Speaker presentations.
12:00 pm Panel 1 roundtable and audience Q&A.
1:15 pm Lunch break.
2:15 pm Panel 2 Speaker presentations.
3:15 pm Panel 2 roundtable and audience Q&A.
4:30 pm Evening reception with free food and drinks for attendees!
This conference aims to initiate dialogues between philosophy and the arts. Philosophers and thinkers/ scholars across disciplines of humanities and social sciences will meet with artists and scholars from a wide variety of visual and visual artistic disciplines, including painting, photography, and literature, as well as travel, dance, and fashion. Rather than taking art as a mere object of philosophical study, this conference will explore the manifold confluences and intersections of philosophy and art, exploring how each can become the object of the other and how the boundary between the philosophical and the artistic can be sharpened or blurred. The motive is specifically to explore the “visual” and “movement” element in art of, and in everyday life and theorize it – both philosophically and critically.
Co-sponsored by: Office of Deans: New School for Social Research and School of Art & Design History & Theory; University Student Senate and Graduate Faculty Student Senate
Schedule and Location
The conference will meet on The New School campus in New York City.
On March 24th, we will meet in room B500 at 65 W 11 Street.
On March 25th, we will meet in Starr Foundation Hall UL105 at University Center (63 Fifth Avenue).
Following is the schedule for both days, (please see the website for details on panels and speakers):
11:00 am Panel 1 Speaker presentations.
12:00 pm Panel 1 roundtable and audience Q&A.
1:15 pm Lunch break.
2:15 pm Panel 2 Speaker presentations.
3:15 pm Panel 2 roundtable and audience Q&A.
4:30 pm Evening reception with free food and drinks for attendees!
Anja Jauernig’s recently published The World According to Kant (Oxford, 2021) defends an interpretation of Kant’s critical idealism as an ontological position, according to which Kant can be considered a genuine idealist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space time. Yet in contrast to other intentional objects, appearances genuinely exist, which is why Kant can also be considered a genuine realist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. This book spells out Kant’s case for critical idealism thus understood and clarifies Kant’s conception of appearances and things in themselves in relation to Kant’s Leibniz-Wolffian predecessors.
Anja Jauernig (NYU)
Bio:
Anja Jauernig is Professor of Philosophy at New York University. She obtained her Ph.D. from Princeton University, and held academic positions at the philosophy departments of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Pittsburgh before coming to NYU. Her research interests include Kant, Early Modern Philosophy, 19th and early 20th century German Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Animal Ethics.
Patricia Kitcher (Columbia)
Bio:
Patricia Kitcher is Roberta and William Campbell Professor Emerita of Humanities and Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Columbia. She has written two books on Kant’s theory of cognition and the self and is editor of the Oxford Philosophical Concepts volume on The Self.
Andrew Chignell (Princeton)
Bio:
Andrew Chignell is Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor in Religion, Philosophy, and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. Prior to that he was a Professor of Philosophy at Penn and Associate and Assistant Professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell. His research interests are in early modern philosophy (especially Kant) and in philosophy of religion, moral psychology, epistemology, and food ethics. From 2020-2023 he served as President of the North American Kant Society.
Desmond Hogan (Princeton)
Bio:
Desmond Hogan is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His research interests include metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics, and aesthetics, with a focus on the modern period and nineteenth century.
We are seeking submissions for our 14th annual conference hosted in Spring, 2024.
Send abstracts to newyorkcityearlymodern [at] gmail.com by December 8, 2023.
https://philevents.org/event/show/114750