A Night of Philosophy & Ideas, at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, is an all-night marathon of philosophical debate, performances, screenings, readings, music, and virtual reality experiences takes over the entirety of the iconic Central Library.
This year’s participants will consider humanity’s relationship to the world, to nature, to other living beings and species, and to technology. They will ask: What is the meaning of life? How do we live our lives from beginning to end, be it striving or barely surviving? How do we define that experience and how do we situate ourselves in this world?
French-American economist Esther Duflo, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, will kick off the evening with a keynote address. The lineup also features a French anthropologist, sociologist, and physician Didier Fassin, professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies and Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Catherine Malabou, Professor of Philosophy at Kingston University (UK) and UCI; Maïa Mazaurette, a Brooklyn-based French author, columnist, and illustrator whose work deals with contemporary sexuality and the body’s place in society; and Barbara Stiegler, professor of philosophy at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France.
Performances will include Unnamed, from Jérôme Thomas, a French juggler whose work integrates contemporary dance and theatre, and Armenian-Syrian artist Hratch Arbach’s MAWTINI: lost homelands, in a site-specific installation. The event will also feature a late-night screening of Jacques Rivette’s landmark 1971 film Out 1, and an exhibition of work by New York-based visual artist Mary Mattingly, whose “sculptural ecosystems” in urban spaces include Swale and Pull, and who founded the Waterpod Project (2009), a barge-based public space and self-sufficient habitat that hosted over 200,000 visitors in New York.
A recent spate of critical engagements with Giorgio Agamben’s construction of the zōē, /bios distinction calls for renewed evaluation of the political valence of zōē in Aristotle’s political theory. While there may be ways of responding to these criticisms from within Agamben’s work, I am more interested in proposing an alternative account of zōē, one that better accommodates the breadth of Aristotle’s thinking about living beings, the context of ancient Greek conceptions of life, and a genealogical task that could be of service to a variety of strands of contemporary critical theory. Taking Aristotle’s treatment of zōē as an object of desire as my point of origin, I locate this orientation toward life within a broader conception of power as generativity and an alienated approach to the material conditions of human birth. I then trace the model of politics, zōē-politics, that arises from this framework.
Bio:
Sara Brill is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Fairfield University. She works on the psychology, politics, and zoology of Plato and Aristotle as well as contemporary feminist and political theory. She is the author of Plato on the Limits of Human Life (Indiana 2013), Aristotle on the Concept of Shared Life (forthcoming from Oxford University press in May 2020), co-editor of Antiquities beyond Humanism (Oxford 2019), and has published numerous articles on Plato, Aristotle, Greek tragedy, and the Hippocratic corpus.
What can science teach us about how we perceive and understand art? How can art help us understand ourselves and each other? In this event, the Zuckerman Institute explores the interactions between our brains and the artistic world, finding connections and parallels between art and science.
Event Speakers
Please visit the event webpage to view the speaker list.
Event Information
Free and open to the public, registration is required by January 28, 2022. This event will also be live-streamed. Please email zuckermaninstitute@columbia.edu with any questions.
This talk is part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture series hosted by Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes you to an IN-PERSON meeting:
Allison Aitken (Columbia University)
« A Case against Simple-mindedness: Śrīgupta on Mental Mereology »
With responses from Alexander Englert (Princeton University)
ABSTRACT: There’s a common line of reasoning which supposes that the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is grounded in a mind-like simple subject. To the contrary, Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophers beginning with Śrīgupta (seventh-eighth century) argue that any kind of mental simple is incoherent and thus metaphysically impossible. Lacking any unifying principle, the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is instead an ungrounded illusion. In this talk, I will present an analysis of Śrīgupta’s “neither-one-nor-many argument” against mental simples and show how his line of reasoning is driven by a set of implicit questions concerning the nature of and relation between consciousness and its intentional object. These questions not only set the agenda for centuries of intra-Buddhist debate on the topic, but they are also questions to which any defender of unified consciousness or a simple subject of experience arguably owes responses.
Socrates’ close association of madness and philosophy from the Phaedrus’ Palinode has puzzled interpreters. How can philosophy be equated to irrationality? In this paper I argue against interpretations that either deny that the association of madness and philosophy ought to be taken seriously or downplay this association by considering madness as akin to the unreflective inspiration characterizing only the first stages of philosophizing but subsequently overcome by the mature philosopher. I show that the association of madness and philosophy is an integral part of Socrates’ polemics against what he calls “human moderation”, characterized by a cold calculation of costs and benefits. And, moreover, that madness is an ongoing feature of philosophy and of the philosopher, who is never fully in possession of all his rational and cognitive processes but has to constantly work on them in an effort of self-clarification.
External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here: https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors.
Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.
With responses from Mark Siderits (Illinois State University)
ABSTRACT: Buddhist philosophers often draw a distinction between two different kinds of truth: conventional truth (saṃvṭi-satya) and ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya). Abhidharma Buddhists philosophers typically understand this distinction in terms of an ontological distinction between two different kinds of entities: ultimately real entities (paramārtha-sat) and conventionally real entities (saṃvṛti-sat). Similar to contemporary philosophical discussions about ordinary objects, Buddhist philosophers debate the ontological status of conventional entities and the semantics of discourse concerning them. Mark Siderits (2015, 2021, 2022) has influentially argued for an eliminitivist position he calls “Buddhist reductionism” that interprets the Abhidharma position as one that denies conventional entities exist but that retains discourse involving apparent reference to them. However, in a recent article Kris McDaniel (2019), a prominent defender of ontological pluralism, challenges that view by proposing that the Abhidharma Buddhist distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth be “defined up” from a more basic distinction between two different ways an entity can exist: conventionally or ultimately. In this paper I argue that Saṃghabhadra’s account of conventional reality and truth does lends itself well to McDaniel’s proposal but I will also argue that the account of conventional and ultimate truth that results differs in important ways from the models he offers. I will end by offering a modification of McDaniel’s account of conventional truth that is derived from Saṃghabhadra’s pluralist ontology. That view will, unlike the views suggested by both Siderits and McDaniel, allow for there to be ultimate truths about what is conventionally true.
Dinner will be kindly offered by the Columbia University Seminars.
RSVP is required for dinner. Please email Lucilla with eating requirements at lm3335@columbia.edu.
With responses from Timothy Connolly (East Stroudsburg University)
ABSTRACT: Recent philosophical discussions on compassion focus on the value and the nature of compassion as an emotion. Ancient Asian philosophical traditions such as Confucianism and Buddhism, however, emphasize compassion as a character trait that should be nurtured. This paper examines the insights drawn from these traditions to help inform the nurturing of compassion. For example, is empathy a necessary tool? What is the role of love and care? Does self-reflection contribute to the process?
Dinner will be kindly offered by the Columbia University Seminars.
RSVP is required for dinner. Please email Lucilla with eating requirements at lm3335@columbia.edu.
Book discussion on Gwenda-lin Grewal’s, Thinking About Death in Plato’s Euthydemus. A Close Reading and New Translation (OUP 2022)
Speakers:
Gwenda-lin Grewal (NSSR)
Cinzia Arruzza (NSSR)
Nicholas Pappas (CUNY)
Thinking of Death places Plato’s Euthydemus among the dialogues that surround the trial and death of Socrates. A premonition of philosophy’s fate arrives in the form of Socrates’ encounter with the two-headed sophist pair, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who appear as if they are the ghost of the Socrates of Aristophanes’ Thinkery. The pair vacillate between choral ode and rhapsody, as Plato vacillates between referring to them in the dual and plural number in Greek. Gwenda-lin Grewal’s close reading explores how the structure of the dialogue and the pair’s back-and-forth arguments bear a striking resemblance to thinking itself: in its immersive remove from reality, thinking simulates death even as it cannot conceive of its possibility. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus take this to an extreme, and so emerge as the philosophical dream and sophistic nightmare of being disembodied from substance. The Euthydemus is haunted by philosophy’s tenuous relationship to political life. This is played out in the narration through Crito’s implied criticism of Socrates-the phantom image of the Athenian laws-and in the drama itself, which appears to take place in Hades. Thinking of death thus brings with it a lurid parody of the death of thinking: the farce of perfect philosophy that bears the gravity of the city’s sophistry. Grewal also provides a new translation of the Euthydemus that pays careful attention to grammatical ambiguities, nuances, and wit in ways that substantially expand the reader’s access to the dialogue’s mysteries.
The COVID-19 pandemic is said to be a once-in-a-century incident, and it brought to us a sense of crisis at various levels. What is a crisis, though? Can any unnerving moment or period be called a crisis, or are there different dimensions of a crisis to which we need to be attentive? Is solidarity possible after experiencing a crisis like Covid-19? Can Buddhism make any contribution to facilitating solidarity? This presentation explores the meaning and nature of a crisis and our responses to it by drawing on modern Korean political thinker Pak Ch’iu’s (1909–1949) analysis of crisis and feminist-Buddhist thinker Kim Iryŏp’s (1896–1971) Buddhist philosophy. By doing so, this presentation considers what social, political, existential, and even religious meaning we can draw from our experience of crises, and what questions these insights present to us.
With responses from Karsten Struhl (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY)
Presented by THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
RSVP is required for dinner. If you would like to participate in our dinner, a $30 fee is required. Please contact Lucilla at lm3335@columbia.edu for further information.
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!