Thursday, September 29th, 2022
Christina Van Dyke (Barnard College)
Title “I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes: Imaginative Meditation and Experience of Love in Medieval Contemplative Philosophy”
4:10-6:00 PM
716 Philosophy Hall
Poets and singers in a number of medieval vernacular languages reached non-native audiences and inspired speakers of other languages to compose in theirs; and many imagined their compositions enjoying a universality similar to that of cosmopolitan languages like Latin and Arabic. An interesting rationalization of these aspirations can be discerned in a short verse narrative of a well-known episode in the youth of Alexander the Great, conqueror of India, together with his tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. Not only does it involve Greeks and Indians singing French songs and cosplaying French lovers, but the philosopher is induced to pretend to be a horse and then justifies his behavior as “natural,” with far-reaching implications which this talk will explore.
Sarah Kay is Professor Emerita in the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University and Life Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. In Spring 2023, she is Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Columbia Society of Senior Scholars.
This talk is presented by the Columbia Maison Française, Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, The Society of Senior Scholars, the Department of Music, and Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Thinking Across the Humanities on Valentines’s Day
Tuesday, Feb. 14 of course! 4pm, McShane Center 311
A fun student-faculty roundtable discussion on topics related to love in all of its fabulous variety: erotic love, unrequited love, love and justice, love of friends, love of the Divine, sanctioned and unsanctioned love, personal and political love, and so much more! What insights can we, along with some of our favorite artists and thinkers, offer on love? Come for a roundtable where a small group of faculty and students will jump off with brief prepared remarks, followed by a discussion, food, and fun!
RSVP here
The Avoidance of Intimacy: A Reorientation in the Moral Philosophy of Love
Presented by Columbia University Dept. of Philosophy
riday, November 10
9:30–9:55 Check–in and Coffee
9:55 Welcome
10:00–12:00 Adam Smith
Speaker: Ryan Patrick Hanley (Boston College)
Commentator: Samuel Fleischacker (University of Illinois Chicago)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Immanuel Kant
Speaker: Marcia Baron (Indiana University Bloomington)
Commentator: Kyla Ebels–Duggan (Northwestern University)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 German Romanticism
Speaker: Frederick Beiser (Syracuse University)
Commentator: Owen Ware (University of Toronto)
6:30–7:30 Reception
Saturday, November 11
9:30–10:00 Check–in and Coffee
10:00–12:00 Friedrich Nietzsche
Speaker: Andrew Huddleston (University of Warwick)
Commentator: Claire Kirwin (Northwestern University)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Simone De Beauvoir
Speaker: Michelle Kosch (Cornell University)
Commentator: Susan J. Brison (Dartmouth University)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 Contemporary
Speaker: Simon May (King’s College London)
Commentator: Alecxander Nehamas (Princeton University)
6:30–7:30 Reception