PHILOSOPHY'S OTHER: THEORY ON THE WEB

"Nietzsches Wissenschaftsphilosophie / Nietzsche's Philosophy of Science," Technische Universität Berlin, July 18–21, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:31:00 +0000

Science in the wide sense of the German word 'Wissenschaft', covering the natural and the social sciences as well as the humanities, is one of the most significant and efficient features of modern culture. Nietzsche's philosophical work counts among the most prominent and influential reflections on this modern culture and he always put special emphasis on 'Wissenschaft'. From Nietzsche's philosophical point of view, science on the one hand is a specific mode of constructing and defending knowledge-claims, which could be qualified epistemologically, but on the other hand it is a historically contextualized and socially relevant cultural technique. On the basis of these ideas, this conference focuses on the significance and current topicality of Nietzsche's philosophy of science. Moreover, we would like to contextualize Nietzsche within the framework of his contemporary debates and investigate how his thoughts about "the problem of science" influenced the development of the 20th and 21st centuries' philosophy of science. Therefore, we will have keynote- lectures and contributed papers on these four internally connected
fields:

1. Topicality: What would be Nietzsche's contribution to current issues in the philosophy of science?
2. Reception: How were Nietzsche's ideas adopted by philosophers of natural and social sciences and humanities in the 20th and 21st centuries?
3. Content: How should we understand central themes and motives of Nietzsche's philosophy of science?
4. Context: What is the significance of Nietzsche's reception of the sciences and contemporary and classical text for his philosophy of science?

Conference languages are German and English. If you want to contribute to this conference, please send a one page abstract of your paper and a brief CV to Dr. Helmut Heit: helmut.heit@tu-berlin.de. Deadline for contributed papers is Jan.,17th 2010. For further information please consult: http://www.nietzsche-colloquium.de/.

Cfp: "The Futures of Phenomenology," Department of Philosophy, National University of Ireland, Galway, May 6-7, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:26:00 +0000

Spring Conference of Irish Philosophical Society.

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Rudi Visker (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

The conference is dedicated to raising and addressing some of the fundamental issues and concerns in post-Husserlian thought. Hence, we are seeking papers which address the theme of phenomenological critique, its limits and its relevance, from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. Papers which take up the relationship between phenomenology and other philosophical traditions such as hermeneutics, feminism, Thomism, critical theory, analytic philosophy, etc., are also welcome. We invite individual e-mail submissions for papers on any aspect of Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenology, including critiques and applications of phenomenological thinking in any area of contemporary continental thought.

Please send an abstract of approximately 750 words, which should be formatted for anonymous review and sent by email to Dr. Michael Dunne (michael.w.dunne@nuim.ie), Dr. Niall Keane (niall.keane@mic.ul.ie) and Dr. James McGuirk (James.McGuirk@hibo.no) by December 15th, 2009. In addition, on a separate sheet please include your full contact details. Submitters will be notified of the committee’s decision regarding their submission via e-mail no later than January 15th, 2010.

"The Future of Philosophy: Metaphilosophical Directions for the 21st Century," Institute of Philosophy, University of London, December 11, 2009.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:09:00 +0000

PROGRAMME

9.00 Registration & coffee

9.30 Terrell Ward Bynum (Southern Connecticut State), "Two Philosophers of the Information Age"

11.00 Timothy Williamson (Oxford), "Philosophical Expertise and the Burden of Proof"

12.30 Lunch (own arrangements)

1.30 Philip Kitcher (Columbia), "Philosophy Inside Out'

3.00 David Papineau (King's College London), "The Importance of Philosophical Intuition"

4.30 Tea

5.00 Panel: The Future of Philosophy: Metaphilosophical Directions for the 21st Century
Chair: Armen T. Marsoobian (Editor in Chief, Metaphilosophy)

6.00 Reception hosted by Metaphilosophy Wiley-Blackwell Publishing

Further information is here: http://www.philosophy.sas.ac.uk/Metaphilosophy.htm.

"Subject and Appearance: On Alain Badiou's THEORY OF THE SUBJECT and LOGICS OF WORLDS, Middlesex University, November 20, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:52:00 +0000

Hosted by the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy.

10.00 Registration

10.20 Introduction, Peter Hallward

10.30 SUBJECT

Bruno Bosteels, Theory of the Subject (Cornell University, NY)
Kristin Ross, "Badiou, Mallarmé and the Commune" ( New York University)

11.15 Discussion Chair: Peter Hallward

12.30 Lunch Break

1.45 APPEARANCE

Alberto Toscano, Logics of Worlds (Goldsmiths, London)
Ali Alizadeh "Badiou and Hegel" (CRMEP, Middlesex University)

2.30: Discussion Chair: Peter Osborne

3.45 Break

4.00 Subject, Appearance, Politics Panel:

Ali Alizadeh, Bruno Bosteels, Nina Power, Kristin Ross, Alberto Toscano
Chair: Éric Alliez

4.30 Closing discussion

5.00–6.30 Reception

Further information is here: http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/CRMEP/EVENTS/Subject&Appearance.htm.

Macarthur, David. Review of Jack Ritchie's UNDERSTANDING NATURALISM. NDPR (November 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:34:00 +0000

Ritchie, Jack. Understanding Naturalism. Cheshire: Acumen, 2008.

Naturalism is the current orthodoxy within Anglo-American philosophy, an outlook that shapes the way philosophers understand the mission and problems of philosophy. But what is naturalism? This is not an easy question to answer although the general outlines of an answer are clear. Naturalism wants to make philosophy properly responsive to the successes of modern science (rather than traditional philosophy) in providing fruitful explanations and extensive knowledge of natural phenomena. It also wants to make sense of the human condition in non-supernatural terms. Ritchie takes these two tasks to align so that making philosophical sense of ourselves and our world is best approached by looking to science, and only science, for guidance. But how is one to go beyond a general attitude of admiration for science or chanting such vague slogans as "Philosophy is continuous with science" and "There is no first philosophy"? Ritchie's clearly written, well-exampled and engaging book is an attempt to answer this question by distinguishing various kinds of naturalism within the landscape of contemporary scientific naturalism and by providing an overview of some of the most prominent naturalistic projects and programs over the past 50 years concerning knowledge, ontology, science, mind, meaning and truth. Collected volumes have covered this ground before but this is the first book that I am aware of to do so from a single point of view . . .

Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=18045.

"Thirty Years After: Richard Rorty & the Mirror of Nature," Royal Holloway College & Institute of Philosophy, University of London, November 6, 2009.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:20:00 +0000

Update:

Download podcasts of the presentations here: http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2009/11/rorty-and-the-mirror-of-nature/.

Original Post (April 10, 2009):

Programme:

9.30 Registration & coffee
10.00 Bjorn Ramberg (Oslo), "For the sake of his own generation: Rorty on destruction and edification" -- Respondent/Chair: Neil Gascoigne (Royal Holloway)
11.30 Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh), "Global Anti-Representationalism?" -- Respondent/Chair: Tadeusz Szubka (Szczecinski)
1.00 Lunch (own arrangements)
2.30 Albrecht Wellmer (Berlin), Rereading Rorty (II) -- Respondent/Chair: Andrew Bowie (Royal Holloway)
4.00 Tea
4.30 Michael Williams (Johns Hopkins), "" -- Respondent/Chair: Mark Kalderon (UCL)
6.00 Close

Further details are available at: http://www.philosophy.sas.ac.uk/Rorty.htm

Cfp: "Marxism and Psychology," Department of Psychology, University of Prince Edward Island, August 5-7, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:57:00 +0000

In the history of social thought, it is difficult to find a more divisive figure than Karl Marx. For many, the mere mention of his name conjures up images of totalitarian regimes dominating nearly every aspect of an individual’s existence. Yet for others, Marx’s critique of the capitalist mode of production draws attention to the fact that our beliefs, thoughts, and desires inevitably emerge against the background of specific cultural, historical, and social practices.

The purpose of this conference is to bring students, scholars, and activists together to discuss exciting issues at the intersection of Marxism and Psychology. While it is clear that a number of organizations are making important contributions to this area of study, we believe that the time is right to open up a space for students, scholars, and activists from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to reflect on the role that Marxism can play in psychological theory, research, and practice.

In bringing together scholars at the forefront of research in Marxism and Psychology, we also hope to give new students and activists an opportunity to interact with individuals who have made significant contributions within this area. By organizing an impressive collection of plenary participants, we hope to foster an environment where students, activists, and scholars can identify potential graduate advisors, research assistants, and participatory investigators.

This year, confirmed plenary participants include:

John Cromby
Raquel Guzzo
Lois Holzman
Gordana Jovanovic
Joel Kovel
Athanasios Marvakis
Morten Nissen
Ian Parker
Carl Ratner
Hans Skott-Myhre
Thomas Teo

Biographical information for the plenary participants can be found on the conference website.

We welcome submissions for individual papers and panel sessions. For individual papers, please submit an abstract (150-200 words) no later than January 15, 2010. For panel submissions, please include an abstract (150-200 words) for each paper as well as a brief description of the panel (150-200 words). Please submit all materials to marfken@upei.ca. Abstracts should either be in the body of the email or sent as an attachment (DOC or PDF format).

For further information, please visit the conference website: http://vre.upei.ca/mprg/

"Phenomenology and the Vulnerable Body: the Experience of Illness," Department of Philosophy, University of Hull, May 6-7, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:00:00 +0000

This workshop brings together an interdisciplinary set of speakers to look at the experience of bodily vulnerability and consider its implications for the understanding of embodiment and selfhood. The resources of phenomenology will be put into conversation with accounts of the lived experiences of those living with illness, pain or other kinds of bodily vulnerability. Contributions will be made from, philosophers, health practitioners, medics and others.

For further information, please visit:

http://www2.hull.ac.uk/FASS/humanities/philosophy/research/centre_for_research_into_embod/workshops_and_conferences/phenomenology_of_ilness_februa.aspx

or contact: M.Inahara@hull.ac.uk.

Jacobson, Eric. Review of Stephane Moses, THE ANGEL OF HISTORY. NDPR (November 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:54:00 +0000

Mosès, Stéphane. The Angel of History: Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Scholem. Trans. Barbara Harshav. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2009.

Stéphane Mosès's The Angel of History is a classic in modern Jewish philosophy and a fine choice for the Stanford series Cultural Memory in the Present edited by Mieke Bal and Hent de Vries. The new translation by Barbara Harshav has made a meaningful contribution to this chain of tradition, carefully rendering complicated phrases from French that once served as interpretations in thought and deed from German. Since the first publication of this pioneering study in 1992, it is surprising to note how much has changed in the scholarship on Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem. For one, it is no longer common to place Benjamin under the lens of Marxism. Equally, Rosenzweig is more commonly viewed in the light of Levinas, Expressionism and Heidegger today than in the shadow of Martin Buber. But perhaps even more, our picture of Scholem has considerably changed with the ongoing scholarship of the Kabbalah. We have generally come to see all three figures in their intellectual context more deeply rooted in modern German history and our understanding of the tensions evident in their work -- between thought and action, rupture and causality, and indeed a Jew in a Christian world -- has expanded considerably since the first publication of this book. The first English translation cannot help but raise questions regarding the study of modern German-Jewish thought two decades on.

The book is divided into three equal parts with each figure receiving three chapters, yet Rosenzweig emerges as the dominant figure. This is perhaps inevitable from a scholar whose earlier work entitled System and Revelation is a close reading of Rosenzweig's magnum opus, The Star of Redemption. Still there are formal grounds for Rosenzweig's preeminence. An exchange of letters from 1921 establishes the influence of The Star of Redemption on Benjamin and Scholem. There is evidence to suggest that Benjamin shapes his early Messianism in relation to The Star. Scholem's debt to Rosenzweig is evident in many places, not least in a 1930 lecture delivered in Rosenzweig's memory. With Rosenzweig as the benchmark, Mosès seeks to uncover the affinities between the three figures in the notions of history, time and language. He is the first to recognize the conceptual mutuality of the three authors and the need to understand them as part of a common tradition. However, in emphasizing their commonality, thematic structures meant to suggest fraternity occasionally ring hollow and the contrasts insufficient. For example, the association of the three with the categories of "religion", "revolution" and "Zionism", as Mosès suggests in the opening chapter, yields very little ground. Whereas the religion as leitmotif for Rosenzweig is self-evident, there is a very narrow road to revolution in Benjamin and little practical Zionism in Scholem. Much stronger is the notion of a common approach to history, which Mosès understands as a revolt against the idea of progress, a history leading to greater forms of reason that finds an epiphany in Hegel. As he remarks: "Past suffering is not abolished even by a triumphant future, which claims to give them meaning, and more than thwarted hopes are refuted by the failures that seem to sanction them" (11). . . .

Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=18006.

Frazer, Michael L. Review of J. G. Pocock's POLITICAL THOUGHT AND HISTORY. NDPR (November 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:49:00 +0000

Pocock, J. G. A. Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method. Cambridge: CUP, 2009.

As J. G. A. Pocock is wholly aware, Thomas Kuhn's paradigm of "paradigms" is of only limited usefulness outside the natural sciences. It can, however, help give us some sense of Pocock's place in recent intellectual history. Just as political philosophers today cannot help but understand their work in terms of its relationship with that of John Rawls, historians of political thought cannot help but understand their work in terms of its relationship with the Cambridge School, of which Pocock was a founding member. Pocock was coauthor of a paradigm -- or, as he would now put it, a "political language", a new method for talking about political phenomena. The essays collected in the volume under review were selected by their author because they "indicate what I have taken (and still take) this method and its intimations to be" (vii).

The method developed by Pocock and his Cambridge colleagues now wields hegemony within its self-proclaimed domain, which includes all scholars of political thought who consider themselves historians, and pointedly excludes those who consider themselves philosophers. The Cambridge School placed a barrier between political theorists and their history. It is incumbent upon those living comfortably on their respective sides of the fence, as well as those who attempt to breach it, to understand why it was erected in the first place. As such, Political Thought and History is an indispensible volume for all of those working within and across these enclosed fields today.

The essays collected in this volume span most of Pocock's career. Those in Part I -- entitled "Political Thought as History" -- are, by and large, older, the last dating from 1987. Although Part II -- "History as Political Thought" -- contains two essays from the 1960s, the other three are much more recent, as is an "intermezzo" on Quentin Skinner. For those new to Pocock's take on the Cambridge method, these essays can serve as an accessible introduction. For those already familiar with Pocock's work, the convenience of having many (if not all) of his major methodological writings together is considerable.

Political Thought and History is meant not only as an elucidation of the Cambridge method, but also as an application of it. At this late stage in his career, Pocock can look back at his place in the emergence of the Cambridge School in a distinctly Cantabrigian way. While others have already begun explaining the emergence of Cambridge contextualism as a product of its historical context, there is something strange and fascinating in watching a great scholar attempt this procedure on himself and his own ideas. . . .

Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=18005.

"Animal(s) Matter(s): the Future of Critical Animal Studies," Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool, April 23, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:43:00 +0000

Sponsored by the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, Society for Applied Philosophy, Mind Association.

Speakers:

Alistair Currie (PETA) Gauging, Changing and Mobilising Public Opinion: Challenges for AR Advocates.

Prof Celia Deane-Drummond (Chester & CAFOD) Taking leave of the animal: transhumanity as transanimality.

Jasmijn de Boo (Animals Count) Animal protection on hold in conservative UK

Prof Robert Garner (Leicester) In Defence of Sentiency: A Critique of One Version of Animal Rights

Dr Simon James (Durham) Animal Minds and the Demand for Evidence

Dr Dan Lyons (Uncaged Campaigns) Advancing animal protection: Strategic action in an adverse structural context

Dr Karen Morgan (Cardiff) Ethical veganism and animal rights: learning from feminist research and activism

Dr Anat Pike (UEL) Creaturely Ethics: Beyond the Discourse of Rights

Dr Richard Twine (Lancaster) Putting the ‘critical’ in Critical Animal Studies. What does it mean?

Dr Richard White (Sheffield Hallam) Building Alliances between academic and activist communities.

Cost (including lunch & refreshments): £40 (waged); £30 (students & unwaged), payable to University of Liverpool.

Further information from Stephen R. L. Clark, Dept of Philosophy, University of Liverpool, 7 Abercromby Square, Liverpool L69 7WY or srlclark@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK.

DEATH: Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 - 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:10:00 +0000

Update:

See the following obituaries:

Anon.: Claude Lévi-Strauss Telegraph November 3, 2009
Anon.: Claude Lévi-Strauss French Social Anthropologist Times November 4, 2009
Bloch, Maurice: Claude Lévi-Strauss Obituary Guardian November 3, 2009
Droit, Roger-Pol: L'Ethnologue Claude Lévi-Strauss est mort Le Monde November 3, 2009
Kuper, Adam: Claude Levi-Strauss . . . Father of Modern Anthropology Independent November 4, 2009
Rothstein, Edward: Claude Lévi-Strauss, 100, Dies New York Times November 4, 2009

Original Post (November 3, 2009):

Claude Levi-Strauss, the eminent Structuralist anthropologist, died today, November 3.

For more information on his life and career, see the Wikipedia entry in English here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss) or for information on his publications, visit his PhilWeb page here (http://www.phillwebb.net/History/TwentiethCentury/Continental/(Post)Structuralisms/Structuralism/Levi-Strauss/L%C3%A9vi-Strauss.htm).

See also the BBC article on his passing here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8340936.stm.

"Symposium on Joshua Glasgow, A THEORY OF RACE." SGRP (Fall 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:10:00 +0000

Glasgow, Joshua. A Theory of Race. London: Routledge, 2009.

The SGRP has posted its Fall 2009 Symposium on Joshua Glasgow's book, A Theory of Race. Commentaries are by Michael O. Hardimon (UCSD), Sally Haslanger (MIT), Ron Mallon (U. Utah), and Naomi Zack (U. Oregon) with Joshua Glasgow's reply. Please have a look and post your comments!

Download the symposium here: http://sgrp.typepad.com/sgrp/2009/10/symposium-on-joshua-glasgow-a-theory-of-race.html.

McWhorter, John. "The Cosmopolitan Tongue: the Universality of English." WORLD AFFAIRS JOURNAL (Fall 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:13:00 +0000

What makes the potential death of a language all the more emotionally charged is the belief that if a language dies, a cultural worldview will die with it. But this idea is fragile. Certainly language is a key aspect of what distinguishes one group from another. However, a language itself does not correspond to the particulars of a culture but to a faceless process that creates new languages as the result of geographical separation. For example, most Americans pronounce disgusting as “diss-kussting” with a k sound. (Try it—you probably do too.) However, some people say “dizz-gusting”—it’s easier to pronounce the g after a softer sound like z. Imagine a language with the word pronounced as it is spelled (and as it was in Latin): “diss-gusting.” The group speaking the language splits into two groups that go their separate ways. Come back five hundred years later, and one group is pronouncing the word “diss-kussting,” while the other is pronouncing it “dizz-gusting.” After even more time, the word would start shortening, just as we pronounce “let us” as “let’s.” After a thousand years, in one place it would be something like “skussting,” while in the other it might be “zgustin.” After another thousand, perhaps “skusty” and “zguss.” By this time, these are no longer even the same language.

This is exactly why there are different languages—what began in Latin as augustus became agosto in Spanish and, in French, août, pronounced as just the single vowel sound. Estonian is what happened when speakers of an earlier language migrated away from other ones; in one place, Estonian happened, in the other, Finnish did. And so while Finnish for horse is hevonen, in Estonian it’s hobune.

Notice that this is not about culture, any more than saying “diss-kusting” rather than “diz-gusting” reflects anything about one’s soul. In fact, all human groups could, somehow, exhibit the exact same culture—and yet their languages would be as different as they are now, because the differences are the result of geographical separation, leading to chance linguistic driftings of the kind that turn augustus into agosto and août. In this we would be like whales, whose species behave similarly everywhere, but have distinct “songs” as the result of happenstance. Who argues that we must preserve each pod of whales because of the particular songs they happen to have developed? The diversity of human languages is subject to the same evaluation: each one is the result of a roll of the dice.

One school of thought proposes that there is more than mere chance in how a language’s words emerge, and that if we look closely we see culture peeping through. For example, in its obituary for Eyak, the Economist proposed that the fact that kultahl meant both leaf and feather signified a cultural appreciation of the unique spiritual relationship of trees and birds. But in English we use hover to refer both to the act of waiting, suspended, in the air and the act of staying close to a mate at a cocktail party to ward off potential rivals. Notice how much less interesting that is to us than the bit about the Eyak and leaves and feathers.

For the better part of a century, all attempts to conjure any meaningful indication of thought patterns or cultural outlook from the vocabularies andgrammars of languages has fallen apart in that sort of way, with researchers picking up only a few isolated shards of evidence. For example, because “table” has feminine gender in Spanish (la mesa), a Spanish speaker is more likely—if pressed—to imagine a cartoon table having a high voice. But this isn’t exactly what most of us would think of as meaningfully “cultural,” nor as having to do with “thought.” And in fact, Spanish speakers do not go about routinely imagining tables as cooing in feminine tones.

Thus the oft-heard claim that the death of a language means the death of a culture puts the cart before the horse. When the culture dies, naturally the language dies along with it. The reverse, however, is not necessarily true. Groups do not find themselves in the bizarre circumstance of having all of their traditional cultural accoutrements in hand only to find themselves incapable of indigenous expression because they no longer speak the corresponding language. Native American groups would bristle at the idea that they are no longer meaningfully “Indian” simply because they no longer speak their ancestral tongue. Note also the obvious and vibrant black American culture in the United States, among people who speak not Yoruba but English.

The main loss when a language dies is not cultural but aesthetic. The click sounds in certain African languages are magnificent to hear. In many Amazonian languages, when you say something you have to specify, with a suffix, where you got the information. The Ket language of Siberia is so awesomely irregular as to seem a work of art. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Fall/full-McWhorter-Fall-2009.html.

IN OUR TIME with Melvyn Bragg. BBC Radio 4 October 29, 2009.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:07:00 +0000

Melvyn Bragg is joined by A.C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, and Christopher Janaway to discuss the dark, pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, which set the tone for much twentieth century thought.

Download the podcast here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/iot/rss.xml.

Rosenbaum, Ron. "The Evil of Banality." SLATE October 30, 2009.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:46:00 +0000

Will we ever be able to think of Hannah Arendt in the same way again? Two new and damning critiques, one of Arendt and one of her longtime Nazi-sycophant lover, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, were published within 10 days of each other last month. The pieces cast further doubt on the overinflated, underexamined reputations of both figures and shed new light on their intellectually toxic relationship.

My hope is that these revelations will encourage a further discrediting of the most overused, misused, abused pseudo-intellectual phrase in our language: the banality of evil. The banality of the banality of evil, the fatuousness of it, has long been fathomless, but perhaps now it will be consigned to the realm of the deceitful and disingenuous as well. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.slate.com/id/2234010/pagenum/all/#p2.

31st Annual Meeting, Nietzsche Society (USA) in conjunction with the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Virginia, October 29, 2009.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:12:00 +0000

"Did Nietzsche Follow Friedrich Ritschl to Leipzig?" by Anthony Jensen, Lehman College, CUNY
"Writing, Reading, Thinking, Feeling: Nietzsche & the Art of Living" by Alan Milchman & Alan Rosenberg, Queens College, CUNY
"Nietzsche as a Reader of Wilhelm Roux, or The Physiology of History" by Lukas Soderstrom, Université de Montréal
"Is There Hope for History? The Meanings of 'History' in Nietzsche and Heidegger" by Chiara Ricciardone, SUNY, Binghamton

Chairperson: George Leiner, Saint Vincent College

Nietzsche Society Business Meeting: Friday, Oct 30, 2009, 8 AM (TBA)

Cfp: "New Conservatisms and New Approaches: a Conference of Conservatism Studies," Anglo American University, Prague, May 14-15, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:49:00 +0000

It is hard to exaggerate the influence of Conservative ideas on the current shape of transnational, national and sub-national politics. Conservatives had been among the most powerful political actors in many societies during the 20th century and there seems no reason for a substantial change in the coming years. But the scholar interest to Conservatism still remains weak and Conservatism is mostly neglected as an ideology or a theoretical tool to interpret socio-political phenomena. New Conservatisms and New Approaches is announced with this point in mind, to provide the scholars of Conservatism an opportunity to present their researches, reflect on alternative methods and approaches of Conservatism Studies, share knowledge on peculiar forms of Conservatism in different societies, and form new links to further the scholar understanding of the Conservative ideology.

We invite all scholars and postgraduate students who are interested in Conservatism Studies to submit 200 words abstracts for a 40 minute paper (plus a 20 minute discussion time) to conservatismconference@aauni.edu by 15th of February 2010.

Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.conservatismconference.org/.

Lambert, Gregg. Review of Steven Shapiro, WITHOUT CRITERIA. NDPR (OCtober 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:41:00 +0000

Shaviro, Steven. Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.

I often enjoy those books of philosophy that begin like good science fiction. In this vein, Steven Shaviro's Without Criteria begins: "I imagine a world in which Whitehead takes the place of Heidegger." In other words, he poses the question, "What if Whitehead, instead of Heidegger, had set the agenda for postmodern thought?" (ix). Starting from this "philosophical fantasy", Shaviro sets out to describe a possible world without Heidegger, which I take to be a sort of Leibnizian wager that is bound up with the "turn to Whitehead" today. Accordingly, "a world in which Whitehead takes the place of Heidegger" must be understood as a divergence from the image of thought that belongs to a tradition of post-Kantian critical philosophy, the recurrent features of which have been an obsessive concern over the limits of representation and the critique of subjectivity, and by an allergic reaction to modern science and technology. The main objective of this tradition has been the exposure of the limits of all representational systems by a regressive procedure of critical reason that leads them into a state of crisis as an anticipatory step to their radical reconstruction; the second objective is the laying bare of all naïve and subjectivist constructions of identity, which leads to the production of difference introduced from the critical perspective of "otherness" (as in the case, most recently, in the critical perspectives surrounding the animal and the post-human).

The shortcomings of this tradition of post-Kantian philosophy have been found in the fact that the anticipated radical phase of "construction" has never become a positive event as such, and the actual discovery of new possibilities for subjectivity have been through a glass darkly. The philosophies of this tradition have never fully been able to depart from a negative or deconstructive phase; as a result, the future is posited as a static and essentially "empty form of time", often accompanied by a highly speculative image of the event itself as the undetermined and the ungrounded, hence "radical", commencement of an entirely new ontological order. In short, we have merely replaced one metaphysics with another, namely, with a metaphysics of difference; moreover, we have supplanted the universal pretentions of the Kantian Subject with a progressive number of new radical subjectivisms. What, after all, is the recent turn to the animal (or to the nakedness of zoe itself) if not yet another in a series of attempts to "de-center the metaphysics of the Western [human] subject" that is already pre-programmed by this tradition of critique (epoké)?

But let us stop here! In positing "a world without Heidegger", retracing our steps backward to a point of deviation where Whitehead takes his place, inevitably we must begin somewhere. According to Shaviro, we must start from Kant, whose transcendental philosophy takes up the first half of Without Criteria; more specifically the "Transcendental Dialectic" of the second section of the First Critique and "the Analytic of the Beautiful" of the Third Critique, which are then drawn into comparison with Whitehead's system. Beginning all over again from Kant seems like one possible solution to the impasse brought about by the previous tradition of post-Kantian critical philosophy, and it is here that Shaviro's own intentions are most clear, since we are presented with the image of philosophy at the crossroads, so to speak. Following Kant's transcendental reduction, we are given two possible routes for a philosophy of the future to take: one leads via Heidegger straight to "Derrida and his epigones" (which Shaviro implies is a dead-end for philosophy in this century); the other, offered in Without Criteria, leads to Deleuze via Whitehead, even though this route remains "virtual", that is to say, still under construction (by Shaviro and other Deleuzians, including Isabelle Stengers and Brian Massumi, who might also add James and Pierce along the way). Thus, it is not by chance that Without Criteria is the second volume of the MIT series edited by Massumi and Erin Manning, Technologies of Lived Abstraction, which proposes to publish works not content to rest with the habitual divisions (between "aesthetics" and "politics", for example, central to Shaviro's notion of "critical aestheticism") and "to catch new thought and action dawning at a creative crossroad". This could even be said to signal a "Whiteheadian revolution" that is taking place in some quarters of the Deleuzian camp, if not in the general field of continental philosophy today. . . .

Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17906.

Cfp: "Caribbeanscapes: the Vistas of Caribbean Literature," Department of Literatures in English, University of the West Indies, April 29-May 1, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:21:00 +0000

29th Annual Conference on West Indian Literature.

The Caribbean has been perceived in myriad and often contradictory ways: as paradisal isles; outposts of innocence offering Edenic beginnings; hedonistic beachscapes of tourist fantasies; the backwaters of civilization, condemned to mimicry and futile posturing; and vital centres of creative cultural hybridity, literally new worlds that prophesy our globalized futures. Anglophone Caribbean literature is a rich archive of such perceptions, often articulating them as visual tropes of space and place that conflate geography and history, language and cartography in the attempt to chart the imaginative and literal frontiers of psyche and society.

To explore this archive of Caribbean literary vistas, the 29th Annual Conference on West Indian Literature invites papers and panel proposals on the following topics:

· Tropicalized Spaces : The Power of Vistas
· Home and Garden: Domestic Ecologies
· Unhomely Spaces
· Manscape and Womantongue Trees: the Gender of Vistas in Caribbean Literature
· Rural Pastoral, Urban Dystopia? City and Country in Caribbean Writing
· Plantation, Yard, Tonelle: Metaphors of Place and Identity
· Spectacular Islands: The Visual Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Popular Culture
· Translocal and Transnational Vistas
· Travel Writing
· Bordered Vistas: Border Regimes, Border Clashes, and Border-Crossings
· Imagining Caribbean Space

Proposals are welcomed on other topics that are relevant to the theme of the Conference.
Abstracts should not exceed 250 words in length, and should include (1) a title, (2) name, status and institutional affiliation of the presenter(s), (3) a contact email address, and (4) a mailing address. Please also let us know if you require any special equipment. Papers will be a maximum of twenty (20) minutes in length.

Abstracts or proposals for panels comprising three papers should be emailed to the following addresses:
liteng@uwimona.edu.jm
litsengmona@gmail.com

The first Call for Papers will close on November 30, 2009.

Taylor, James Stacey. Review of Todd May's DEATH. NDPR (October 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:12:00 +0000

May, Todd. Death. Cheshire: Acumen, 2009.

Death exemplifies how popular philosophy should be done. It is a thoughtful, engaging, and carefully written reflection on the nature of death and what our response to it, as mortals who are aware that we will die, should be. Moreover, although it is aimed at a general audience Death is also likely to be of interest to philosophers who are professionally engaged with the questions that it addresses. May's philosophical range is broad, and so this book could profitably be used as an introduction to Ancient, Anglo-American, Continental, and Eastern views on death for persons unfamiliar with one or more of these traditions.

Death is divided into three sections of approximately 40 pages each: "Our dealings with death", "Death and immortality", and "Living with death". The volume closes with suggestions for further reading and a short reference section. . . .

Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17907.

Roth, Paul A. Review of William Rehg, COGENT SCIENCE IN CONTEXT. NDPR (OCTOBER 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:04:00 +0000

Rehg, William. Cogent Science in Context: the Science Wars, Argumentation Theory and Habermas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.

Books can easily be found that offer to examine and account for the "science wars", understood as the ongoing turf battle between philosophers and sociologists. The focus of the conflict concerns how to explain what considerations actually determine what comes to be accepted as the received views in any one of the natural sciences. The main contenders consist of two apparently opposed explanatory strategies. On the one hand, some advocate the primacy of contextual factors in order to explain why a scientific community settles on a particular view. On such accounts, the norms of scientific inquiry represent only the contingent products of historical circumstance. On the other hand, "internalist" accounts typically seek to establish that evidence can be and is rationally determinative. Evaluative procedures can have validity that transcend their context. On this view, use of proper rational procedure explains what prevails and why within a scientific community. The former view denies and the latter affirms that standards of rationality simpliciter can and do explain accepted scientific views. Unfortunately, authors of such books all too typically begin by assuming the correctness of one of the usual suspects with regard to accounts of scientific rationality.

William Rehg's book proceeds by urging that resources can be located for an account of rationality that embraces neither of these views and yet incorporates core contentions of each. Specifically, Rehg argues for the relevance of "argumentation theory", an area of inquiry that straddles several disciplines and with which most philosophers of science will probably be unfamiliar. The "argumentation theory" as Rehg portrays it refers to studies of argument that represent "an interdisciplinary endeavor that provides a set of categories -- drawn from logic, linguistics, dialectic, rhetoric, and so on -- for the description and evaluation of arguments" (4). Rehg offers a straightforward rationale for taking this approach: "Like other areas of human endeavor, the sciences exist and develop as social practices -- exercises in embodied social rationality . . . This trend challenged defenders of science to develop more realistic conceptions of scientific rationality" (3). Argumentation theory as Rehg conceives of it holds the promise of providing a general normative framework for the evaluation of scientific claims that is superior in specific ways to the alternatives scouted above. His book promises a sustained and detailed account of how to construct this framework.

Rehg employs the term 'cogency' to connote the joint process of assessing both the psychological effect and the rational strength of an argument. The appeal to cogency arises inasmuch as no one set of factors -- logical, rhetorical, or sociological -- typically suffices to make the case in favor of one view over another. The question that Rehg poses, and the litmus test for the approach of his book, concerns whether or not Rehg's contextualist version of argumentation theory offers a more robust normative framework than any of the alternatives that Rehg finds inadequate to the task of adjudicating disputes on the cogency of scientific claims. The primary challenge to the cogency of scientific argument consists in the need to bridge what Rehg terms "Kuhn's gap", understood as "a gap between logical and social-institutional perspectives, a gap that rhetorics of science attempt to bridge" (33). More specifically, in order to close Kuhn's gap, an argumentation theory must reveal "how persuasion occurs within the transitional phase itself -- the microprocesses that generate agreement on the new paradigm" (47). Kuhn's work poses the question but provides no answer. The gap will only be closed, however, in a philosophically satisfactory way by providing an account of cogency that demonstrates that scientists were persuaded to shift theoretical allegiances for the "right" reasons, i.e., that no group made a weaker argument appear the stronger. . . .

Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17905.

Cfp: "The Place of Psyche: Politics, Art, Nature," Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, April 23-24, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:55:00 +0000

Keynote Speaker:

Jonathan Lear, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago

The Greek concept of “psyche,” often translated as “soul,” “mind,”“ego,” or “unconscious,” has played a central role in philosophical interrogations of the self, nature, community, and creation. We invite submissions that, from either a contemporary or a traditional perspective, address the following metaphilosophical question: What can the concept of “psyche” do for us today, as we think about politics, art, and nature? Professor Lear works primarily on philosophical conceptions of the human psyche from Socrates to the present with an emphasis on health, happiness, and therapeutic action. He is also a trained psychoanalyst and his two most recent books are Freud (2005) and Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (2006).

Submission Guidelines:

We encourage submissions from faculty and graduate students of abstracts (300-500 words) and/or papers (3,000 to 5,000 words). Please format these for blind review—personal information, such as name, institutional affiliation, and contact information, should be either in the body of your email or on a page separate from the rest of your paper, and not in the paper itself. Please email your submissions (and any questions you may have) to vuphilconf@gmail.com by February 1, 2009.

Cfp: "Plato's PHAEDRUS," West Coast Plato Workshop, Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego, May 22-23, 2010.

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:48:00 +0000

Keynote speaker: Rachana Kamtekar, Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona

The conference organizer invites proposals for 30 minute talks (to be followed by 45 minutes of commentary or discussion) on any topic related to Plato's Phaedrus. Please send proposals (abstracts) to monte@ucsd.edu by 15 December 2009. Also, please forward this announcement to anyone who might be working on the Phaedrus or interested in attending.

The first conference, on Plato's Theaetetus, was held in 2008 at the University of California, Davis; the second, on the Euthydemus, in 2009 at the University of California, Berkeley. The conferences are open to all students and faculty, and are organized on an ad hoc basis by the host university.

Roth, Paul A. Review of Robert Piercey, THE USES OF THE PAST FROM HEIDEGGER TO RORTY. NDPR (OCtober 2009).

whitfoot@rlwclarke.net (Richard L. W. Clarke) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:25:00 +0000

Piercey, Robert. The Uses of the Past from Heidegger to Rorty: Doing Philosophy Historically. Cambridge: CUP, 2009.

Philosophy of history has been undergoing a revival in recent years after languishing too long at the margins of the discipline. Its themes include historical explanation, the reality of the past, history as a science -- in short, issues attending explanations of what now remains and what happened previously. How the reconstruction of a history influences an understanding of the present, and implicitly how one's understanding of the present shapes one's reconstruction of the past, emerge as the central themes of Robert Piercey's account of what he terms "doing philosophy historically". As he states at the outset, "the aim of this book, then, is to understand the nature of the activity that we call doing philosophy historically and to describe this activity's distinguishing features" (2). That this represents a distinctive philosophical approach Piercey has no doubts: "It [doing philosophy historically] has a distinctive object . . . It also employs a distinctive method and has a different set of goals" (ibid.). The burden the book thus assumes consists of making good on these three claims.

Piercey undertakes this task by developing an initial outline of what he takes doing philosophy historically to be (Chapters 1-3), and then filling in the outline with three case studies that he claims exemplify the theory in practice. Thus, Chapter 4 examines what he terms the "critical approach" of Alasdair MacIntyre, Chapter 5 details the "diagnostic approach" attributed to Martin Heidegger, and Chapter 6 offers what Piercey terms Paul Ricoeur's "synthetic approach". If successful, Piercey could be credited with identifying and characterizing a genre of philosophical inquiry that has grown and prospered in the last century. Indeed, this genre has emerged, it would seem, without much notice being taken or (and especially) any appreciation being given (see 3-5).

Piercey portrays doing philosophy historically as a meta-philosophical endeavor. He writes, "But its goal -- or at any rate, its hope -- is to broaden our conception of what philosophy is" (8). What exactly does Piercey imagine has passed under the philosophical radar? For certainly at least two of Piercey's own examples -- Rorty and Heidegger -- hardly make it a secret that "overcoming the tradition" in philosophy lies on their agendas. What links the philosophers whom Piercey discusses involves not their philosophic aspirations, but their use of the history of philosophy in furthering their metaphilosophical project. Each constructs a history of the discipline to further his case. In this regard, to do philosophy historically is to construct what Piercey terms a "philosophical picture". Every picture tells a story, albeit a different story, about the world seen philosophically. The first three chapters explore the nature of philosophical pictures as Piercey conceives them. . . .

Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17947.