Physicists and philosophers question the validity of one of the most observed and seemingly obvious appearance in our world: that time flows. Many in the physics and philosophy communities contend that the flow of time is not a fundamental feature of the world, nor even a fact of the world, but is an illusion. As a case in point, we will consider Brian Greene’s view of time in his PBS exposition “The Elegant Universe” holding that time may not flow, the past may not be gone, the future may already exist, and that now is not special. Most people, as observers of time’s passage, might agree with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who expressed the idea that all is change and that change occurs with the flow of time. I will explore some of the motivation and reasons given for these positions and contrast the arguments made for each viewpoint.
The schedule: a short presentation on topic of 3-D Printing, and then Stuart’s presentation for about 1 hr. plus time for questions. It is necessary to register beforehand to be admitted.
CV: Stuart Kurtz graduated from MIT with an SB in Chemical Engineering and from Princeton with an MS degree in Polymer Engineering and an MA and PhD. in Chemical Engineering. He taught at RPI and in Brazil as Professor Titular in Materials Engineering. This was followed by a research career in industry accumulating around 30 patents and publishing at least a few good papers. He now focuses on Philosophy of Science and Physics and climbing mountains because they are there. He has spoken to the Lyceum Society many times; most recently in January, 2018 he spoke on the topic: Lessons from Science Lysenko, Velikovsky and the Demarcation Problem; In February, 2018 he spoke on Geoengineering for Climate Change Mitigation. In December, 2018 he reviewed the Nobel Prize in Physics for that year.
8 February @Columbia
Patricia Kitcher: The Fact of Reason in Kant’s Moral Psychology
Response: Jessica Tizzard
22 February @NSSR
5 April @Columbia
Beatrice Longuenesse: Residues of First Nature
19 April @NSSR
Angelica Nuzzo: Approaching Hegel’s Logic Obliquely: Melville, Moliere, Beckett
Response: David Carlson
10 May @Columbia
Amy Allen: Turning Dead Ends into Through Streets: Psychoanalysis and the Idea of Progress
8 February @Columbia
Patricia Kitcher: The Fact of Reason in Kant’s Moral Psychology
Response: Jessica Tizzard
22 February @NSSR
5 April @Columbia
Beatrice Longuenesse: Residues of First Nature
19 April @NSSR
Angelica Nuzzo: Approaching Hegel’s Logic Obliquely: Melville, Moliere, Beckett
Response: David Carlson
10 May @Columbia
Amy Allen: Turning Dead Ends into Through Streets: Psychoanalysis and the Idea of Progress
In this session, Mandik will expand on his idea that persons are abstract things. To do this, he will discuss recent philosophical issues about personal identity, mind-uploading, and whether you could upload your mind to a piece of technology and survive.
8 February @Columbia
Patricia Kitcher: The Fact of Reason in Kant’s Moral Psychology
Response: Jessica Tizzard
22 February @NSSR
5 April @Columbia
Beatrice Longuenesse: Residues of First Nature
19 April @NSSR
Angelica Nuzzo: Approaching Hegel’s Logic Obliquely: Melville, Moliere, Beckett
Response: David Carlson
10 May @Columbia
Amy Allen: Turning Dead Ends into Through Streets: Psychoanalysis and the Idea of Progress
Session I – Chair: Michael Begun (Fordham)
10:00 – Samantha Matherne (Harvard University)
“Rethinking Kantian Aesthetic Normativity”
11:30 – Wiebke Deimling (Clark University)
“Kant’s Theory of Tragedy”
1:00 – Lunch Break
Session II – Chair: Daryl Tress (Fordham)
2:30 – Melissa Zinkin (SUNY Binghamton)
“Aesthetic Judgment, the Generation of Concepts, and Cognitive Mastery in Kant”
4:00 – Jay Bernstein (New School for Social Research)
“Kant and Adorno on Mind and World: From Wild Beauties to Spiral Jetty”
Sponsored by the Fordham Philosophy Department’s German Philosophy Group
Contact: Reed Winegar (bwinegar@fordham.edu)
8:30 – 9 a.m. | Registration and coffee |
9 – 9:15 a.m. | Opening remarks: Shiloh Whitney, Conference Director |
Session 1 – Organic Affectivity and Animality Moderator: Emilia Angelova, Concordia University |
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9:15 – 10 a.m. | Hermanni Yli-Tepsa, University of Jyväskylä: “How to feel like our eyes: tracing the theme of instinctive affectivity in Phenomenology of Perception” |
10 – 10:45 a.m. | Sarah DiMaggio, Vanderbilt University: “Flesh and Blood: Reimagining Kinship” |
10:45 – 11 a.m. | Break |
Session 2 – Passivity Moderator: Philip Walsh, Fordham University |
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11 – 11:45 a.m. | David Morris, Concordia University: “The Transcendentality of Passivity: Affective Being and the Contingency of Phenomenology as Institution” |
11:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. | Rajiv Kaushik, Brock University “Merleau-Ponty on Passivity and the Limit of Philosophical Critique” |
12:30 – 2 p.m. | Lunch Break |
Session 3 – Theorizing Emotion 1: Outside-in, Inside-Outside Moderator: Duane H. Davis, University of North Carolina at Asheville |
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2 – 2:45 p.m. | Ed Casey, Stonybrook University: “Bringing Edge to Bear: Vindicating Merleau-Ponty’s Nascent Ideas on Emotion” |
2:45 – 3:30 p.m. | Ondřej Švec, Charles University Prague: “Acting out one’s emotion” |
3:30 – 3:45 p.m. | Break |
Session 4 – Theorizing Emotion 2: Intersubjective Dimensions Moderator: April Flakne, New College of Florida |
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3:45 – 4:30 p.m. | Jan Halák, Palacky University Olomouc: “On the diacritical value of expression with regard to emotion” |
4:30 – 5:15 p.m. | Corinne Lajoie, Penn State University: “The equilibrium of sense: Levels of embodiment and the (dis)orientations of love” Winner of the M. C. Dillon Award for best graduate essay |
5:15 – 5:45 p.m. | Snack Break (light refreshments provided) |
Thursday Keynote Introduction: Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University |
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5:45 – 7:15 p.m. | Alia Al-Saji, McGill University “The Affective Flesh of Colonial Duration” |
8:30 – 9 a.m. | Registration and coffee |
Session 5 – Affective Pathologies and Empathy Moderator: Lisa Käll, Stockholm University |
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9 – 9:45 a.m. | Ståle Finke, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim: “Structuring Affective Pathology: Merleau-Ponty and Psychoanalysis” |
9:45 – 10:30 a.m. | Catherine Fullarton, Emory University: “Empathy, Perspective, Parallax” |
10:30 – 10:45 a.m. | Break |
Session 6 – Eating and Breathing Moderator: Ann Murphy, University of New Mexico |
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10:45 – 11:30 a.m. | Whitney Ronshagen, Emory University: “Visceral Relations: On Eating, Affect, and Sharing the World” |
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. | Amie Leigh Zimmer, University of Oregon: “Rethinking Chronic Breathlessness Beyond Symptom and Syndrome” |
12:15 – 2 p.m. | Lunch Break (and graduate student Mentoring Session in Lowenstein 810) |
Session 7 – Critical Phenomenologies 1: Work and Freedom Moderator: Whitney Howell, La Salle University |
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2 – 2:45 p.m. | Talia Welsh, University of Tennessee Chattanooga: “Toward a Critical Phenomenology of Work and Its Discontents” |
2:45 – 3:30 p.m. | Laura McMahon, Eastern Michigan University: “The ‘Great Phantom’: Merleau-Ponty on Habitus, Freedom, and Political Transformation” |
3:30 – 3:45 p.m. | Break |
Session 8 – Critical Phenomenologies 2: The “I Can” Moderator: Cheryl Emerson, SUNY Buffalo |
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3:45 – 4:30 p.m. | Kym Maclaren, Ryerson University: “Criminalization and the Self-Constituting Dynamics of Distrust” |
4:30 – 5:15 p.m. | Joel Reynolds, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Lauren Guilmette, Elon University: “Rethinking the Ableism of Affect Theory with Merleau-Ponty” |
5:15 – 5:45 p.m. | Snack Break (light refreshments provided) |
Friday Keynote Introduction: Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University |
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5:45 – 7:15 p.m. | Matthew Ratcliffe, York University “Towards a Phenomenology of Grief: Insights from Merleau-Ponty” |
8:30 – 9 a.m. | Registration and coffee |
Session 9 – Feeling Beyond Humanism Moderator: Wayne Froman, George Mason University |
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9 – 9:45 a.m. | Marie-Eve, Morin, University of Alberta. “Merleau-Ponty’s ‘cautious anthropomorphism’” |
9:45 – 10:30 a.m. | Jay Worthy, University of Alberta: “Feelings of Adversity: Towards a Critical Humanism” |
10:30 – 10:45 a.m. | Break |
Session 10 – Art and Affect Moderator: Stephen Watson, Notre Dame |
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10:45 – 11:30 a.m. | Veronique Foti, Pennsylvania State University. “Body, Animality, and Cosmos in the Art of Kiki Smith” |
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. | Rebecca Longtin, State University of New York New Paltz: “From Stone to Flesh: Affect and the Poetic Ambiguity of the Body” |
12:15 – 2:15 p.m. | Lunch Break (and Business Lunch at Rosa Mexicano, 61 Columbus Ave) |
Session 11 – Voice and Silence Moderator: Gail Weiss, George Washington University |
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2:15 – 3 p.m. | Susan, Bredlau, Emory University. “Losing One’s Voice: Merleau-Ponty and the Lived Space of Conversation” |
3 – 3:45 p.m. | Martina, Ferrari, University of Oregon. “The Laboring of Deep Silence: ‘Conceptless Opening(s),’ the Suspension of the Familiar, and the Dismemberment of the Ego” |
3:45 – 4 p.m. | Break |
Session 12 – Affectivity and Language Moderator: Galen Johnson, University of Rhode Island |
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4 – 4:45 p.m. | Silvana de Souza Ramos, University of São Paulo. “Merleau-Ponty and the Prose of Dora’s World” |
4:45 – 5:30 p.m. | Katie Emery Brown, University of California Berkeley. “Queer Silence in Merleau-Ponty’s Gesture” |
Banquet | |
7 – 10 p.m. | At Salam, 104 W 13th St. |
Abstracts:
“Giving as Spending and Spending as Giving: Buddhism and the Politics of Spending during the Chosŏn Dynasty”
Juhn Ahn, University of Michigan
The impact of the Koryŏ-Chosŏn transition on the Buddhist establishment in Korea is generally understood in current scholarship to have been a negative one. It is all too often assumed that Buddhist monasteries, who enjoyed great economic prosperity under Koryŏ’s culture of giving, were forced to undergo a radical reduction in size and number and their wealth confiscated to replenish the empty royal fisc. There is also a tendency to assume that this systematic restructuring of the Buddhist establishment, often dubbed its “decline,” was orchestrated and executed by a small group of reform-minded Neo-Confucian scholar-officials who saw Buddhism as an economic parasite and cause of unnecessary spending. It is true that the Buddhist establishment never again enjoyed the kind of wealth that it once did during the Koryŏ, but this paper argues that we should not take this as a sign of decline or the necessary outcome of state suppression. Instead, this paper will turn its attention to the politics of spending that continued to shape and reshape the Chosŏn court and show that the politics of spending provided the Buddhist establishment with an opportunity—an opportunity that it did in fact use—to redefine the conditions of its existence.
“Court Lady Ch’ŏn Ilch’ŏng (1848 – 1934) in the Making of Modern Korean Buddhism”
Hwansoo Kim, Yale University
In this talk, I will introduce the work of a forgotten Korean Buddhist laywoman who served as one of the highest-ranking ladies in the court of the late Chosŏn dynasty. I will demonstrate that Court Lady Ch’ŏn (1848 – 1934) was as integral to modernizing Korean Buddhism during the pre-colonial and colonial era as the Korean Buddhist monastics with whom she worked. By examining Ch’ŏn’s seminal role in the incipient stage of modern Korean Buddhism, the history of female Buddhist leadership can be extended.
Ch’ŏn primarily worked with the Korean monk and leader Yi Hoegwang (1862-1933), drawing on a wide network of relationships both inside and outside the court to help him establish the first modern institution of Korean Buddhism, build the first modern temple in central Seoul, and open a Buddhist clinic. However, because Yi was later condemned by historiography as the worst of Buddhists who had collaborated with Korea’s colonizer, Ch’ŏn’s leadership and legacy were likewise stigmatized and sidelined. This talk seeks to restore Ch’ŏn’s centrality as a Buddhist modernizer, thereby giving balance to a largely male-centered and ethno-centric history and lengthening the lineage of lay female leadership in the transformation of Korean Buddhism in the early twentieth century.
“Buddhism and State Violence in Modern Korea”
Jin Y. Park, American University
Historically, Korean Buddhism has been known as “State Protection Buddhism” (護國佛敎). The seemingly positive character of this description also points to the limitations of Korean Buddhism’s role in the broader context of society. A state should exist to protect its members, but history has witnessed that the state can and did exercise its power against its members. Which members did the Korean government support, and which were sacrificed in the process? What role did Korean Buddhism play in the unfolding of that history?
This presentation deals with Buddhism’s response to state violence in modern Korea. Through an analysis of a specific instance of state violence and Korean Buddhism’s response, the presentation tries to gauge Korean Buddhism’s capacity to engage with the socio-political milieu of human existence.
Co-sponsored by
The Academy of Korean Studies, Seoul Korea; Weatherhead East Asian Institute; the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures; The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life; The Department of Religion; The Center for Buddhism and East Asian Religion
Luca Corti (University of Padua) – March 6
Amy Allen (Penn State) – March 27
Andreja Novakovic (UC Berkeley) – April 3
Alberto Siani (University of Pisa) – May 8