Ronald Dworkin’s work always spanned a wide array of topics, from the most abstract jurisprudence through the details of American constitutional law all the way over to political philosophy and theories of justice and equality. In the last decades of his life, however, Dworkin’s work flowered in ways that went beyond even this prodigious range. Though he continued his central work in the philosophy of law and constitutional theory, he also addressed issues in international law, human dignity, the philosophy of religion, the relation between ethics, morality and legal theory, and the unity of practical thought generally. This conference will explore some of these themes in Dworkin’s late work. Beginning with a panel on his understanding of religion, we will also convene discussions of his work on legal integrity, international law, and the relation between law and morality. There will be a total of nine presentations, with plenty of time for discussion. All are welcome.
Panel 1 (Friday 1:30 p.m.): Dworkin’s Religion without God.
Eric Gregory (Princeton),
Moshe Halbertal (NYU and Hebrew U.) Ronald Dworkin Religion Without God: Morality and the Transcendent
Larry Sager (Texas) Solving Religious Liberty
Panel 2 (Friday 4:30 p.m.): Dworkin on international law.
Samantha Besson (Fribourg)
The Political Legitimacy of International Law: Sovereign States and their International Institutional Order
John Tasioulas (King’s College, London)
Panel 3 (Saturday 10 a.m.): The idea of integrity in Law’s Empire.
Andrei Marmor (Cornell) Integrity in Law’s Empire
Jeremy Waldron (NYU) The Rise and Decline of Integrity
Panel 4 (Saturday 2:15 p.m.): Law and morality in Justice for Hedgehogs.
Mark Greenberg (UCLA)
What Makes a Moral Duty Legal? Dworkin’s Judicial Enforcement Theory Versus the Moral Impact Theory
Ben Zipursky (Fordham)
Zionists and anti-Zionists alike agree that Zionism consists in the idea that the Jewish People has the right to their own nation state. They deeply disagree about the legitimacy of such politics. Whereas anti-Zionists maintain that a Jewish State is necessarily discriminatory and even racist, Zionists tend to reject anti-Zionist arguments as anti-Semitic. I argue that both sides of this familiar debate are wrong. (Or worse: all too often, both are right.) A Jewish State indeed cannot be a liberal democracy; and yet Zionist politics — contrary to the consensus held by Zionists and anti-Zionists alike — does not require a Jewish State. That’s a form of Zionism that’s legitimate, important and still viable: the liberal Zionism of the future.
Learn more about the book A Future for Israel, Beyond the Two-State Solution, by Omri Boehm.
September 20: Matthias Michel
Philosophy and Laboratoire Sciences, Université Paris-Sorbonne and NYU
“Consciousness and the Prefrontal Cortex”
October 4: Ryan McElhaney
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
“Explanation and Consciousness”
October 18: Sascha Benjamin Fink
Philosophy-Neurosciences-Cognition, University of Magdeburg and NYU
“Varieties of Phenomenal Structuralism”
November 1: Jesse Atencio
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Title TBA
November 15: Frank Pupa
Philosophy, Nassau Community College
“Getting Between: Predicativism, Domain Restriction, and Binding”
December 6: Susana Martinez-Conde
Neurology and Integrative Neuroscience, Downstate Medical Center
Title TBA
https://philosophy.commons.gc.cuny.edu/cognitive-speaker-series-fall-2019/
Meetings are held on Tuesdays at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan in the Plaza View Room on the 12th floor of the Lowenstein Building (113 W 60th St).We meet from 5:30 to 6:45 and papers are read in advance. If interested in attending, contact sahaddad@fordham.edu, swhitney@fordham.edu, or jeflynn@fordham.edu.
2019-20
- September 24 – Rosaura Martínez (UNAM) “Alterability and Writing. Rethinking an Ontology of Dependency”
- October 15 – Jesús Luzardo (Fordham) “The Wages of the Past: Whiteness, Nostalgia, and Property”
- November 19 – Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson (Syracuse) “Conceptualizing Terrorism ‘From Below’: Lynching as Racial Terrorism”
- February 11 – Jill Stauffer (Haverford)
- March 10 – Sina Kramer (Loyola Marymount), “How to Read a City: Toward a Political Epistemology of Gentrification.”
- April 7 – David Lay Williams (DePaul) “’Too much abundance in one or a few private men’: Hobbes on Inequality and the Concentration of Wealth”
ERIK OLIN WRIGHT spent the last years of his life thinking about ways to challenge and transform capitalist societies. He distilled his thinking in a book, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century (Verso, 2019). The symposium is designed to launch a debate about the strengths and weaknesses of Wright’s approach. We seek to both honor our colleague’s memory and assure that his ideas become part of current discussions of socialism and socialist strategy. The event will consist of three panels during the day and an evening session that will include tributes to Wright and a keynote by his friend, Ira Katznelson.
This event is co-sponsored by the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at The New School for Social Research, and the journal, Politics & Society.
September 20: Matthias Michel
Philosophy and Laboratoire Sciences, Université Paris-Sorbonne and NYU
“Consciousness and the Prefrontal Cortex”
October 4: Ryan McElhaney
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
“Explanation and Consciousness”
October 18: Sascha Benjamin Fink
Philosophy-Neurosciences-Cognition, University of Magdeburg and NYU
“Varieties of Phenomenal Structuralism”
November 1: Jesse Atencio
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Title TBA
November 15: Frank Pupa
Philosophy, Nassau Community College
“Getting Between: Predicativism, Domain Restriction, and Binding”
December 6: Susana Martinez-Conde
Neurology and Integrative Neuroscience, Downstate Medical Center
Title TBA
https://philosophy.commons.gc.cuny.edu/cognitive-speaker-series-fall-2019/
Meetings are held on Tuesdays at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan in the Plaza View Room on the 12th floor of the Lowenstein Building (113 W 60th St).We meet from 5:30 to 6:45 and papers are read in advance. If interested in attending, contact sahaddad@fordham.edu, swhitney@fordham.edu, or jeflynn@fordham.edu.
2019-20
- September 24 – Rosaura Martínez (UNAM) “Alterability and Writing. Rethinking an Ontology of Dependency”
- October 15 – Jesús Luzardo (Fordham) “The Wages of the Past: Whiteness, Nostalgia, and Property”
- November 19 – Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson (Syracuse) “Conceptualizing Terrorism ‘From Below’: Lynching as Racial Terrorism”
- February 11 – Jill Stauffer (Haverford)
- March 10 – Sina Kramer (Loyola Marymount), “How to Read a City: Toward a Political Epistemology of Gentrification.”
- April 7 – David Lay Williams (DePaul) “’Too much abundance in one or a few private men’: Hobbes on Inequality and the Concentration of Wealth”
Although the Colloquium on Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy is on hiatus this year, it will convene a special “pop-up” session on Thursday, October 17 from 4-7 p.m. in the Faculty Library on the third floor of Vanderbilt Hall. Professor Joseph Raz, who has long been an important member of the Colloquium community, will present a pre-circulated paper on this occasion, which marks the end of many years during which he has taught regularly at Columbia Law School each fall. Professor Raz’s paper will be posted on the Colloquium website in due course.
September 20: Matthias Michel
Philosophy and Laboratoire Sciences, Université Paris-Sorbonne and NYU
“Consciousness and the Prefrontal Cortex”
October 4: Ryan McElhaney
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
“Explanation and Consciousness”
October 18: Sascha Benjamin Fink
Philosophy-Neurosciences-Cognition, University of Magdeburg and NYU
“Varieties of Phenomenal Structuralism”
November 1: Jesse Atencio
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Title TBA
November 15: Frank Pupa
Philosophy, Nassau Community College
“Getting Between: Predicativism, Domain Restriction, and Binding”
December 6: Susana Martinez-Conde
Neurology and Integrative Neuroscience, Downstate Medical Center
Title TBA
https://philosophy.commons.gc.cuny.edu/cognitive-speaker-series-fall-2019/
In public discourse, but also in political theory, the opinion prevails, that democracy is incompatible with aspirations of truth. Some assume, in the Hobbesian tradition, that civic peace requires that truth assertions be restricted to science and religion (normative positivism), whereas the political sphere is constituted by interests, bargaining and collective decisions based on interests, bargaining and rules of aggregation, be they implicit or explicit. In this perspective Collective Choice as preference aggregation is paradigmatic for the understanding of democracy. Postmodernist and neo-pragmatist thought dismisses truth, because it threatens solidarity and belonging. Libertarian political thought relies on market mechanisms reducing citizens to consumers and producers of material and immaterial goods like security and welfare. Accounts of deliberative democracy focus on reasoning in the public sphere but dismiss a realistic understanding of truth, because it is thought to threaten collective and individual self-determination.
In my talk I will argue that a realistic understanding of empirical and normative truth is compatible, even necessary, for an adequate understanding of democracy, that truth assertions do not threaten civic peace, that postmodernist relativity undermines democratic practice, that libertarian market-orientation is incompatible with the status of citizens in democracy and that even deliberative, but anti-realist, accounts of democracy do not allow for an adequate understanding of democracy. My argument is based on a Davidsonian, or pragmatist, understanding of truth, therefore one might say: it critizises normative positivism, postmodernism, libertarianism, and critical theory using pragmatist insights.
Julian Nida-Rümelin presently holds a chair for philosophy and political theory at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, is a member of the European Academy of Sciences, was president of the German Philosophical Association (DGphil) and state-minister for culture and media in the first government of Gerhard Schröder. The topics of his books include Democracy as Cooperation (1999); Democracy and Truth (2006), translated in Chinese and Italian, Philosophy and the form of Life (2009), Realism (2018) and A Theory of Practical Reason (2020, forthcoming, de Gruyter and PUP).
Generous support provided by the New York Institute of Philosophy.