In recent decades, “mindfulness” has spread like wildfire in the United States, pervading schools, hospitals, the tech industry, and even Wall Street. Thanks to research by Professor of Medicine Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindful practices such as meditation are increasingly used to address a wide range of social, emotional, and spiritual issues—such as alienation, anger, and depression—as well as a variety of physical conditions—such as cancer recovery and psoriasis. In this talk, I encourage us to get curious about this trend of mindfulness, asking: Who does it benefit? Where did it come from? What does it owe?
Brooklyn Public Philosophers is a forum for philosophers in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience, hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library. Its goal is to raise awareness of the best work on philosophical questions of interest to Brooklynites, and to provide a civil space where Brooklynites can reason together about the philosophical questions that matter to them.
10/23 – Philosophy in the Library: Jennifer Morton on Education @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
11/6 – Philosophy in the Library: Asia Ferrin on Mindfulness @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:00-9:00 PM
12/4 – Philosophy in the Library: Sebastian Purcell on Aztec Philosophy @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
Recently, a group of scholars has challenged the moral legitimacy of Confucian democracy from a liberal philosophical standpoint. According to these scholars, including political liberals and moderate perfectionists, any attempt to create a Confucian democratic theory inevitably confronts a dilemma—let us call this the pluralism dilemma—with the following two horns: (a) a free society is characterized by the plurality of mutually incompatible, often conflicting, moral, philosophical, and religious doctrines that guide an individual’s conception of the good life and a truly democratic theory is required to accommodate as many reasonable conceptions of the good and comprehensive doctrines as possible and (b) a Confucian democratic theory gives a privileged normative standing to Confucianism over other competing comprehensive doctrines. This paper defends Confucian democracy against this pluralism challenge by articulating its political purpose and constitutional structure, which are commonly dismissed in the critics’ analytical frameworks.
With responses from: OMAR DAHBOUR (Hunter College & Graduate Center, CUNY)
The Fall dates for the Comparative Philosophy seminar:
September 20 – Justin Tiwald (San Francisco State University)
October 11 – Richard Kim (Loyola University, Chicago
November 8 – Sungmoon Kim (City University of Hong Kong)
December 6 – Paul R. Goldin (University of Pennsylvania)
More details (such as titles, abstracts, and respondents) to follow. Looking forward to seeing you soon.
Hagop Sarkissian
Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Philosophy, The City University of New York, Baruch College
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Co-Director, Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy
https://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/
The Fall dates for the Comparative Philosophy seminar:
September 20 – Justin Tiwald (San Francisco State University)
October 11 – Richard Kim (Loyola University, Chicago
November 8 – Sungmoon Kim (City University of Hong Kong)
December 6 – Paul R. Goldin (University of Pennsylvania)
More details (such as titles, abstracts, and respondents) to follow. Looking forward to seeing you soon.
Hagop Sarkissian
Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Philosophy, The City University of New York, Baruch College
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Co-Director, Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy
https://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/
The last Philosophy in the Library talk of 2019 is coming up on December 4th at 7:00 PM! Sebastian Purcell is talking about “Good Habits Aren’t Enough: The Aztec Conception of Shared Agency!” If you’re into indigenous philosophy, the history of philosophy, virtue ethics, or collective action, you should enjoy it.
Brooklyn Public Philosophers is a forum for philosophers in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience, hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library. Its goal is to raise awareness of the best work on philosophical questions of interest to Brooklynites, and to provide a civil space where Brooklynites can reason together about the philosophical questions that matter to them.
10/23 – Philosophy in the Library: Jennifer Morton on Education @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
11/6 – Philosophy in the Library: Asia Ferrin on Mindfulness @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
12/4 – Philosophy in the Library: Sebastian Purcell on Aztec Philosophy @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:00-9:00 PM
This will be the third (and, time permitting, some material from the fourth) of a series of lectures that I aim to write up formally as a book. We will begin with a brief review of the most familiar theory of Chinese aesthetics: works of art are the products of sensitive human beings who cannot suppress their sincere responses to emotional stimuli. If art is understood as a sincere statement of this kind by a great genius, it stands to reason that, by correctly interpreting the work, one can communicate with that genius’s mind (xin 心) even after his or her death–and, likewise, that an artist today can communicate with audiences yet unborn. Art is thus timeless and offers the possibility of incorporeal immortality. If there is extra time, I will also survey two interrelated phenomena that I call meta-criticism and meta-writing (since there are no technical terms for them in Chinese). Meta-criticism, i.e. criticism of criticism, is a major feature of Chinese theories about art. Meta-criticism must be related to meta-writing, or the practice of writing about writing while exemplifying the very styles and techniques that one recommends: for example, artfully rhyming a couplet about rhyming.
With responses from: SANDRA SHAPSHAY (Hunter College, CUNY)
The Fall dates for the Comparative Philosophy seminar:
September 20 – Justin Tiwald (San Francisco State University)
October 11 – Richard Kim (Loyola University, Chicago
November 8 – Sungmoon Kim (City University of Hong Kong)
December 6 – Paul R. Goldin (University of Pennsylvania)
More details (such as titles, abstracts, and respondents) to follow. Looking forward to seeing you soon.
Hagop Sarkissian
Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Philosophy, The City University of New York, Baruch College
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Co-Director, Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy
https://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/
This talk places master-student relations in the context of Confucian social theory, focusing on issues of obedience, remonstration, and respect for different sorts of authorities. I survey early Confucian accounts of the good society centered on role relations, personal development, and flourishing, both individual and communal. I then examine the question of autonomy within these relationships, looking closely at remonstration, obedience, and disobedience. The talk concludes with a broader discussion of human dependence, placing Confucian conceptions in dialogue with Eva Feder Kittay, Martha Fineman, and Alasdair MacIntyre. All three, like the Confucians, see dependency relations as central to human life and the problems of politics, in sharp contrast to most liberal views that imagine a social contract between autonomous, free, and equal individuals. Confucians view extreme dependence as a special case of the pervasive interdependence of all human beings on each other, with family relations serving in many respects as the model for other relations.
Despite contemporary American resistance to dependence as servile (and thus incompatible with freedom and autonomy), dysfunctional, or lazy, it is an essential condition of human life. None of us could flourish or even survive without care, assistance, and cooperation from others, especially in childhood and old age but also throughout the whole lifespan. As these Confucians argue, dependence on other people is socially and individually good: it satisfies our strong desires for connection to others, as well as many of our other desires, through the practices supported and wealth produced and distributed through efficient, just social cooperation.
Furthermore, despite contemporary American suspicions to the contrary, deference to experts and even to other social authorities is often good. In the case of students, it provides the most effective path to cultivating one’s own autonomy. And general social deference smooths social relations and helps society function, as long as people perform their role-specific duties well. Early Rú accounts of the varieties of authority, as well as the ritual propriety appropriate to different sorts of hierarchically ordered relations, help us to see that deference is quite different from objectionable obsequiousness or lack of judgment.
With responses from: TIMOTHY CONNOLLY (East Stroundsburg University)
We are delighted to announce our Spring meeting dates for the Comparative Philosophy seminar. Please save these dates!
January 24 – Aaron Stalnaker (Indiana University)
February 28 – Karsten Struhl (John Jay College, CUNY)
March 27 – Jin Y Park (American University)
May 1 – Sin yee Chan (University of Vermont)
Contact John Drummond for more information.
The 2020 Annual Telos-Paul Piccone Institute Conference
Keynote Speaker: Catherine Malabou, Kingston University and University of California, Irvine.
Conference Description
Although the rise of populism has often been interpreted as the atavistic return of racism and nationalism, the underlying sources have more to do with the collapse of the welfare state model in advanced post-industrial countries, which has resulted in the search for new forms of solidarity that could replace welfare state structures. These structures were first developed in the early twentieth century when a new type of nation-state and industrial economy came into being along with the developing capitalist regime of accumulation. Such a regime brought about the destruction of the existing networks of solidarity—based primarily on family, religious community, and workplace ties—thereby leading the state to intervene in different social services, including health, employment, and senior care, as well as in labor policy regarding such issues as the minimum wage, the length of the working day, retirement, and accident insurance. However, these interventions by the state, whether they responded to labor union protests or arose from anti-socialist preemptive actions by conservative forces, have been accompanied by the growing bureaucratization of its practices, which have come to constitute, along with capitalist commodification, one of today’s fundamental sources of inequalities and conflicts.
The shifting line between the private and the public has had ambiguous effects. In the end, state intervention was carried out not in the form of a true democratization but through the imposition of new forms of subordination. The social result with greater globalization and deindustrialization in most of the advanced industrial countries has been a sense of abandonment, as well as a loss of empowerment and autonomy in all segments of the population. At the same time, with the emergence of post-Fordist capitalism in the late twentieth century, this subordination to the state has taken the opposite form—that of a reduction of state intervention and care, based on the idea that the endless expansion of state services cannot serve as a panacea for all problems. As a result, new distortions in the private/public divide recently have appeared. In turn, the private sphere has become increasingly contentious, first, because of growing privatization of previously public services and, second, because gaining access to those services is left to individual initiative.
The feeling that governments are incapable of dealing with social problems has regenerated the awareness that collective self-management is perhaps inevitable, at both micro- and macroscopic levels: from neighborhood collectives up to lending circles, non-profit societies, religious organizations, and solidarity economies. The contemporary interest in structures of mutual aid relates to the fact that we are living in an era that is clearly looking for new models of human flourishing and social development. Not only must we deal with multiple and recurring crises (finance, food, energy, and environment), but there is a growing recognition that today’s normative agenda has to be much more encompassing and holistic, including issues of gender equality, fair trade, environment, and cultural and religious diversity.
A need to reconceptualize the concepts of the “common good” and “collective interest” is developing out of this set of conditions, leading to new definitions of civic sense, responsibility, and autonomy. The need for intermediary structures between the private and public sphere frames the space of intervention for mutual aid as a new form of social coherence.
But the concept of mutual aid has a complex and contradictory history. According to Peter Kropotkin, there is an innate biological evolutionary tendency toward mutualism in all living beings, an immanent social rationality that orients humanity toward a self-regulated political organization and society. Against social Darwinism, Kropotkin argues that species not only compete but also, and mainly, collaborate. Such an evolutionary vision later formed the core of Edward Wilson’s sociobiology, marking the beginning of the altruism/selfishness debates within which the problematic of mutual help has remained enclosed for decades. Libertarianism, for example, presupposes that individuals’ social behavior is grounded in a natural principle of selfishness that should then become the basis of aid. This vision allows for a deterministic idea of the capitalist economy in which Robert Nozick argues for the principle of a “minimal state” grounded on the fact that no distributive justice can come from above. Similarly, Friedrich Hayek argues that the “true” nature of liberalism lies in the doctrine that seeks to reduce to the minimum the power of the state. Democracy is then only the means for collective decision-making or a utilitarian apparatus for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. The capitalist free market, in turn, is said to be the only type of social organization that respects the principle of individual liberty.
If the theory of mutual aid can no longer be grounded in an opposition between the two poles of society and the state, but must be reconceptualized in terms of the mediation between both, the modes of its mediation become the key to the implementation of mutual aid practices. Ideas of family, nation, and religion thus take on new potential significance as the forms of mediation between individuals that can create the basis for networks of mutual aid. Are these the key categories that would embed mutual aid in broader affective, ethical, and metaphysical frameworks, or are there alternative possibilities that would establish new types of networks?
This conference seeks to develop new concepts of mutual aid that are not predetermined by conceptions of biological, economic, or political certainties. Key questions include:
- Why is mutual aid not linked with theories of social contract, and how do we determine its degrees of separation from the state?
- How can mutual aid be reconceptualized by renewing intellectual traditions?
- What are the moral implications and requisites of the concept of mutual aid today?
- What are the privileged domains of application for mutual aid and what are the organizational principles underlying them?
- Does mutual aid imply a reorganization of the economy, or is it compatible with or even essential to a capitalist organization of economic life?
- Does the concept of mutual aid offer tools for reimagining socialism in a way that avoids an overreliance on state power?
- Does mutual aid require a reconstitution of subjectivity that moves it away from the autonomous individual of liberal theory?
- What are the prospects and problems of religious frameworks, such as Pentecostalism, that function as the basis for mutual aid?
- Can the rise of populism be understood as part of a search for new networks for mutual aid? Does mutual aid imply the restriction of its networks to limited groups, implying a relationship to political identity?
- How does the concept of mutual aid relate to state power and the sovereignty of the state?
Abstract Submissions
Please note: Abstracts for this conference will only be accepted from current Telos-Paul Piccone Institute members. In order to become a member, please visit our membership enrollment page. Telos-Paul Piccone Institute memberships are valid until the end of the annual New York City conference.
We invite scholars from all disciplines to submit 250-word abstracts along with a short c.v. to telosnyc2020@telosinstitute.net by September 30, 2019. Please place “The 2020 Telos Conference” in the email’s subject line.
We all find ourselves already subject to some educational program and routinely invited into learning and teaching relationships with one another. We are inviting papers that engage philosophy and education from a wide range of perspectives. We welcome both papers that focus on philosophies of education as well as projects which engage the practice of teaching philosophy. Our conference aims to bring together graduate students that work in different areas of philosophy in order to think together about teaching and learning in a warm and convivial environment.
Possible topics may include, but are in no way limited to:
o How views of education affect how we conceive of what philosophy is
o The relation between philosophical wonder and learning
o Normative questions of what role the teacher ought to play in the student’s education
o How to best approach teaching texts from in and outside the canon
o Innovative teaching ideas or activities you have used in the classroom
o Earnest convictions about why we should teach philosophy
Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words in a doc file with name and affiliation in the header to Fordhamgradconference@gmail.com no later than Monday, December 2, 2019. Authors of selected papers will be notified by Monday, December 30, 2019.
We are delighted to announce our Spring meeting dates for the Comparative Philosophy seminar. Please save these dates!
January 24 – Aaron Stalnaker (Indiana University)
February 28 – Karsten Struhl (John Jay College, CUNY)
March 27 – Jin Y Park (American University)
May 1 – Sin yee Chan (University of Vermont)