A conference on Nancy’s work, in Oxford, in 2019. Information here: https://thinkingwithnancy2019.wordpress.com/
All posts by Michael Lewis
Philosophy Across Disciplines – Student Conference – Newcastle – 6th June 2018 – Recordings
The primary aim of the conference is to open a space for pre-doctoral students to present their philosophical research within a professional and academic environment. We intend to highlight the ways in which philosophy is interdisciplinary and hence can be utilised across other disciplines such as economics, theology and even geology.
Please note that the conference is for undergraduate and master’s papers and is, therefore, a space for works in progress.
Running order & Recordings:
Dr Mike Lewis (Guest Speaker):
Hannes Ingo Torbohm:
Ben Glaister:
Leo Kyle:
Rema Grace Gifford:
Gillion Salmon:
Zoe Waters:
Michael Bavidge (Guest Speaker):
Any queries, feel free to get in touch with the organisers.
Best Regards,
Organisers of the Philosophy Across Disciplines Conference.
Contact details:
Hannes Ingo Torbohm
H.Torbohm@Newcastle.ac.uk
Zoe Waters
Z.Waters1@Newcastle.ac.uk
Boris Groys in Durham
Poster available here: please disseminate widely
A message from across the Moors:
Boris Groys will be in Durham for the annual MLAC Leslie Brooks lecture on the evening of June 21st. To mark the occasion, we will also have a reading group on his Introduction to Anti-Philosophy book the morning after, on Friday 22nd, hopefully with Groys present.
https://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/?eventno=38430
Philosophy Across Disciplines Student Conference, Newcastle, 6th June 2018.
[**Recordings now available: below**]
The primary aim of the conference is to open a space for pre-doctoral students to present their philosophical research within a professional and academic environment. We intend to highlight the ways in which philosophy is interdisciplinary and hence can be utilised across other disciplines such as economics, theology and even geology.
Attending the conference is free, and there will be light refreshments provided on the day during breaks. The conference will run in the Barbara Strang Teaching Centre at Newcastle University, first floor Room 1.46 from 12:00 to 17:00. The organisers and guest speakers will be heading to a local public house afterwards to continue the discussion in a more informal manner. Although this is a student conference, it is open to all who desire to attend. Please note that the conference is for undergraduate and master’s papers and is, therefore, a space for works in progress.
Running order:
Dr Mike Lewis (Guest Speaker):
Hannes Ingo Torbohm:
Ben Glaister:
Leo Kyle:
Rema Grace Gifford:
Gillion Salmon:
Zoe Waters:
Michael Bavidge (Guest Speaker):
We hope many of you will join us on the first year of this annual student philosophy conference. Attached is a poster to advertise this event or to forward to anyone whom you think may be interested. For any queries, feel free to get in touch with the organisers.
Best Regards,
Organisers of the Philosophy Across Disciplines Conference.
Contact details:
Hannes Ingo Torbohm
H.Torbohm@Newcastle.ac.uk
Zoe Waters
Z.Waters1@Newcastle.ac.uk
Journal of Italian Philosophy, Volume I – Published!
Dear All,
The first Volume of the Journal of Italian Philosophy has been published.
It’s available here: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/italianphilosophy/current%20issue/
The full contents are as follows:
Giorgio Agamben, ‘L’albero del linguaggio’.
Giorgio Agamben, ‘The Tree of Language’. Trans. Connal Parsley
Lorenzo Chiesa, ‘Superpolitically Apolitical: On Agamben’s Use of Bodies’
Stephen Howard, ‘Archaeology and/or Genealogy: Agamben’s Transformation of Foucauldian Method’
Lars Cornelissen, ‘Violence, Political Evil, and Simona Forti’s New Demons: A Counter-Genealogy of the Dostoevsky Paradigm’
Andrea Bellocci, ‘Interpretation and Demythologisation: The Problem of Truth in Luigi Pareyson’s Hermeneutics’
Reviews
Lucio Privitello, ‘Umberto Eco’s Adventurous Orders. A Critical Review-Essay on Claudio Paolucci, Umberto Eco: Tra Ordine e Avventura’
Sevgi Doğan, ‘Review-Essay. Roberto Esposito, Da Fuori: Una filosofia per l’Europa’
Michael Lewis, ‘Virno’s Philosophical Anthropology. Review-Essay. Paolo Virno, An Essay on Negation’
Any submissions for future issues, please write to michael.lewis@newcastle.ac.uk
The Journal is based at Newcastle University, in Newcastle upon Tyne, in the north-east of England, which has a thriving Philosophy programme.
For information on the undergraduate degrees, please visit: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/philosophy/undergraduate/
Postgraduate degrees including the MLitt (Masters by research, 1/2 years) and PhD, visit: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/philosophy/postgraduate/#programmes
And the list of faculty: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/
Philosophy Events
Philosophy Events
2017–18
Plenty of spaces still available for the events with Bernasconi and Andres de Saenz Sicilia, both of which will be excellent. So please register and come along.
Semester II
16/5 Robert Bernasconi (Penn State), ‘Rethinking the Anthropocene in Terms of Race’ (Contact michael.lewis@ncl.ac.uk if you want to attend this event)
Other, extra-mural events, organised by Bigg Books/Newcastle Philosophy Society
Unless otherwise indicated: Time: 7pm. Place: Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Admission: £3
Tuesday 15th May: (Keith Ansell-Pearson’s event has had to be cancelled: it will be replaced by:) Prof. Edith Hall (KCL), Aristotle on True Happiness
Saturday May 19th: Andres de Saenz Sicilia — Philosophical Materialism, 2–4pm (Hosted by the Newcastle Philosophy Society), St. John the Baptist Church Hall, Newcastle. Venue tbc. (Andres will also be giving an extra session for Newcastle students and others with a little background in philosophy, in the morning. Those interested in attending should contact Anthony Morgan to express their interest (a.t.morgan@live.co.uk).)
Tuesday 5th June: Gregory Claeys (Royal Holloway) — Why Marx Matters
Conferences
June 6th: Philosophy Undergrad-Postgrad conference: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/philosophy/2018/01/29/philosophy-across-disciplines-newcastle-philosophy-undergraduate-and-postgraduate-conference-june-6th-2018/
The Friedrich Nietzsche Society is holding its conference here in September: https://fns.org.uk/node/342
Summer School in Genoa on the Animal
GSH – GENOA SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES
2018 Summer Seminars
GENOA, 6th-11th SEPTEMBER 2018
THE ANIMAL (Nature/Science)
Organised by Lorenzo Chiesa and Raffaello Palumbo Mosca
SPEAKERS AND SEMINAR LEADERS:
DAVIDE BRULLO (novelist and poet)
TIZIANA CERA ROSCO (artist)
GIORGIO CESARALE (philosopher)
LORENZO CHIESA (philosopher)
CRISTIANA CIMINO (psychoanalyst)
RAFFAELLO PALUMBO MOSCA (literary critic)
Established in 2013 and directed by Lorenzo Chiesa and Raffaello Palumbo Mosca, the Genoa School of Humanities (GSH) offers weekly series of seminars in English held by scholars of philosophy, literature, and other subjects, as well as by psychoanalysts, filmmakers, poets, and novelists.
In the 2018 Summer Seminars, we will focus on the animal in its close connection with nature in general and science as today’s hegemonic discourse. Our interdisciplinary approach will be from the standpoints of philosophy, psychoanalysis, poetry, literary criticism, and fine art.
Since its origins, Western philosophy has given great importance to the thresholds that would allegedly separate the non-rational life of the animal from both the political commonality of human beings as endowed with language and the life of plants as merely nutritive and reproductive. But the modern state, which was founded theoretically on the exclusion of a state of nature where “man is wolf to man”, has now been mostly reduced to the anarchic administration of the bare life of human animals increasingly deprived of basic rights (terrorists, migrants, precarious workers), if not surviving in a semi-vegetative condition (the terminally ill, so-called “lifers”). How do Agamben’s critique of biopolitics and Derrida’s investigations of the “animal that therefore we are” help us to clarify this predicament? Are the current weakening of the state and concurrent withering away of traditional sovereignty inevitably doomed to pave the way for an apocalyptic, and unprecedented, “war of all against all”?
The consolidation of Darwinism as a dominant scientific paradigm in turn problematised the natural divisions created by classical philosophy and Christian religion. On the one hand, evolutionary theory seems to have refuted anthropocentrism. On the other hand, it still widely relies on a genetic determinism that runs the risk of projecting onto animality a human-all-too-human model of competition and selection (the “survival of the fittest”). Can Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis contribute to elucidating this conundrum? Is human sexuality fundamentally different from animal sexuality? And, if we assume that the former revolves around the sexual difference between woman and man as symbolically constructed categories, how should we map this difference back onto the animal while avoiding both a sexist naturalisation of woman as unable “to attain the ideal” and a hysterical bestialisation of man as “predatory”?
The animal has always played a central role in literature, from Aesop’s fables to Kafka’s nightmares, Borges’s bestiaries, Montale’s ornithology, and Ted Hughes’ zoology. How do the more recent engagements of prominent novelists, including Ishiguro and Houellebecq, with the dystopian possibilities created by cloning complicate the already tenuous border between humans, animals, and plants? Can the writer emerge as the spokesperson for a renewed notion of pietas capable of tackling the ethical dilemmas of a highly advanced – and potentially uncontrollable – technological society, which more and more sees itself as post-human? Conversely, in what sense could one claim that, following the title of a well-known story by Henry James, the poet is himself a beast in the jungle of bodies and signs, whose savage identity awaits to be fully unfolded? Would it be possible to reverse this very identity, extended to the artist’s practice, into a “spiritual hunt”?
The GSH provides a venue where young scholars can deepen their knowledge, not only by attending seminars, but also by actively discussing in an informal context their own research projects with highly qualified teachers and among themselves. One of the basic ideas of the GSH is that learning is enhanced by the suspension of formalisms, hierarchies, and the principle of authority that usually define traditional academic contexts. Each seminar day revolves around one or two presentations by an invited speaker and is enriched by roundtables, small study groups, and debates that are always attended by one or more seminar leaders. The exchange of knowledge and ideas is facilitated by the limited number of students (up to fifteen), and by the interdisciplinary nature of the seminars.
Speakers and seminar leaders at the GSH are leading international figures in their academic and extra-academic fields. They are based both in Italy and abroad. Participants are thus exposed to different cultures, teaching methods, and disciplinary perspectives. They are also enabled to establish new research networks and acquire practical information on how to access PhD and post-doctoral programmes. The GSH has welcomed students from several countries, including Italy, the UK, Russia, Iran, Israel, and the Ukraine.
Please visit the GSH website (www.gsh-education.com) for a complete schedule of seminars and for information on registration.
May 16th, Spinoza at Durham
An announcement from the Centre for Cultural Ecologies, a quondam partner of Newcastle Philosophy:
We are pleased to announce Psycho-Physical Causations, a seminar with HENRI ATLAN, on occasion of the publication of his new book on Spinoza and Contemporary Biology (Odile Jacob, 2018).
Prof. Atlan will offer a reading of Spinoza’s Ethics, Part III, Proposition 2:
“The body cannot determine the mind to thinking, and the mind cannot determine the body to motion, to rest, or to anything else (if there is anything else).”
The seminar will include the response of Dr. Michael Mack (Durham University) and a Q&A.
Wednesday 16th May, 4pm to 6pm (venue TBA)
Suggested reading: Henri Atlan, The Sparks of Randomness, Vol. II Chapter 6 (“A Spinozist Perspective on Evolution and The Theory of Action”)
Henri Atlan is an emeritus professor of biophysics, as well as the founder and director of the Research Centre in Human Biology at the Hadassah Hospital, in Jerusalem. He is also directeur d’études in philosophy of biology at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris. He is the author of seminal works such as Entre le cristal et la fumée (Editions du Seuil, 1979), Les Étincelles de hazard (Editions du Seuil, 1999; The Sparks of Randomness, Stanford University Press, 2011-2013), and Le Vivant post-génomique (Odile Jacob, 2011).
Michael Mack is the author of Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity: The Hidden Enlightenment of Diversity from Spinoza to Freud (New York: Continuum, 2010).
For more information, please contact Dr. Mauro Senatore (Durham University), mauro.senatore@durham.ac.uk
This seminar is organised thanks to the support received from the British Academy and the Centre for Cultural Ecology at Durham University.
Another Gabriel event, 25th April, in Durham
Durham Castle Lecture – Professor Markus Gabriel
25th April 2018, 20:00 to 21:30, Senate Room, Durham Castle, University College
‘Are We Real? Consciousness and Fiction’
It is a widespread believe in our contemporary natural scientific culture that central features of our mind are fictions or illusions of sorts. The prominent philosopher Daniel Dennett even claims that illusionism about phenomenal consciousness (our qualitative experience of reality as rich with colors, sounds, tastes, smells, etc.) should be “the obvious default theory of consciousness.” Remarkably, illusionists about consciousness typically do not offer actual error theories that tell us in what precise sense consciousness counts as a fiction or an illusion. I will argue that this blind spot is not a coincidence, but rather a consequence of theoretical deficiencies in the hypothesis of illusionism itself.
In my talk, I will dismantle the assumptions motivating views about ourselves as minded agents that claim that we are subject to some kind of user-illusion created by the brain (or some better specified subsystem of our organism). In this context, I will distinguish various forms of illusion about ourselves and argue that illusionism and fictionalism about the mental lives of humans (and other minded animals) are themselves cases of a thoroughgoing ideological delusion. They serve the function of denying facts that would otherwise lead to an insight into the normative dimension of the human being.
Biography: Markus Gabriel is Chair in Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Bonn where he is also the director of the International Centre for Philosophy. He received his Dr. (2005) and his Habilitation (2008) from the University of Heidelberg. He has been a Visiting Scholar and (Visiting) Professor at many institutions (including NYU, the New School for Social Research, UC Berkeley, the University of Lisbon, the University of Palermo and the Catholic University in Rio de de Janeiro). He primarily works in epistemology, metaphysics/ontology and the history of philosophy (Ancient Philosophy, Post-Kantian Idealism). He is the author of more than 10 books, among which his recent Why the World does not Exist (Polity Press).
This lecture is free, and open to all.
No tickets or registration are required. Seats are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
Doors open 7.30pm, lecture commences 8pm.
Contact castle.lectures@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Markus Gabriel, Brains. 24th April, Lit and Phil
Dear All,
An extra-mural event to which you’re warmly invited, by an exceptional philosopher, Markus Gabriel:
The 21st Century Brain
Markus Gabriel
24 April at 19:00–20:30
Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne
23 Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1SE
Professor Markus Gabriel from the University of Bonn will offer a critical perspective on the rise of the brain sciences in shaping who we think we are. What are the consequences, both individual and social, of recoding ourselves at a neuronal level? Gabriel became Germany’s youngest-ever professor of philosophy at the age of 29. He already has over 20 books to his name and his most recent one is /I Am Not a Brain/.
Admission is £4 for this event or £10 for all three talks in the season. Free for students of unwaged. No advance tickets being sold. Just turn up on the night!