How can we know what it’s like to be someone else? Classical Indian philosophers found the answer in theater, arguing that it’s not just a form of entertainment, but a source of knowledge of other minds. In this talk, I’ll explore how this theme is developed in Śrī Śaṅkuka (c. 850 CE) and examine the reasons his views were rejected in the later tradition. I’ll argue that those reasons are unsound, and that we can see why by turning to contemporary studies of the relationship between knowledge and luck.
Jonardon Ganeri is the Bimal. K. Matilal Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a philosopher whose work draws on a variety of philosophical traditions to construct new positions in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His books include Attention, Not Self (2017), a study of early Buddhist theories of attention; The Concealed Art of the Soul (2012), an analysis of the idea of a search for one’s true self; Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves (2020), an analysis of Fernando Pessoa’s philosophy of self; and Inwardness: An Outsiders’ Guide (2021), a review of the concept of inwardness in literature, film, poetry, and philosophy across cultures. He joined the Fellowship of the British Academy in 2015, and won the Infosys Prize in the Humanities the same year, the only philosopher to do so.
This series is curated and co-presented by Brooklyn Public Philosophers, aka Ian Olasov.
For a decade, 1993-2003, Jacques Derrida taught at New York University as Global Distinguished Professor. During those years he gave seminars on important topics of his later work: testimony, hospitality and hostility, perjury and pardon, and the death penalty, Shakespeare’s calculative grid and racism. They represent for many the most sustained and considered engagement by deconstruction with political questions. Most of these seminars have now been posthumously published, both in French and in English translation. Commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Derrida’s death in 2004, the Departments of Comparative Literature teams up with the Maison Française and Department of German, which hosted Derrida when he came to NYU. On 21 November 2024 the Maison in conjunction with the two departments invites scholars of Derrida’s work to speak at a one-day conference devoted to the topics of Derrida’s New York teaching.
Full schedule coming soon!