Recently in Scholarly Presentation Category

WASHINGTON, DC - Today at the Advancing Public Philosophy Conference hosted by the Public Philosophy Network, Cori Wong, a graduate student in the Philosophy Department at Penn State, and I are holding a workshop entitled Philosophy and the Digital Public.

FREIBURG, GERMANY - Today at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, I presented a paper entitled The Politics of Finitude in Plato's Phaedo at the 2011 Freiburger Hermeneutisches Kolloquium, whose theme was Hermeneutik (in) der Antike.

Its eloquence, however, is not heard in the political theories it sets forth or in the dogma it allegedly establishes, but in the way the poignant things Socrates says to and with his friends on the last day of his life are woven together into a written recollection that requires those who enter into dialogue with it not merely to reflect upon, but also to act differently in the footsteps of the words encountered there.

You can, I hope, hear the influence of Gadamer here, who argued that genuine interpretation requires the willingness of the interpreter to risk entering into dialogue with the text in such a way that the interpreter's own thoughts and possibilities are brought into play (Truth and Method, 388).

LAWRENCE, KS - The paper I presented here today, entitled The Politics of Truth, argued that Socratic politics is a matter of speaking truth with a concern for justice and the good. I suggested further that the practice of Platonic writing is also a kind of politics in which texts are crafted in ways that enjoin readers to consider the course of their lives and the degree to which their lives are animated by a concern for justice.

SUNDANCE, UT - Today there was a panel on my book, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth, at the Ancient Philosophy Society held this year at Sundance in Utah. The panel included Will McNeill, Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, Drew Hyland, Charles A. Dana Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College, and John Lysaker, Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. 

BOSTON, MA - The main thesis of the paper I delivered today at the Boston Area Colloquium for Ancient Philosophy is that the practice of Socratic political speaking and the practice of Platonic political writing are intimately interconnected but distinct. 

Next week I am giving a lecture on Plato's Gorgias at Boston College for the Boston Area Colloquium for Ancient Philosophy. The title of the lecture is Attempting the Political Art.

Prior to the lecture, I will hold a seminar in which we will focus on those passages in the Gorgias in which truth is at stake as a political question. The seminar, entitled Socrates, Plato and the Politics of Truth, will begin with that strange passage from the Gorgias in which Socrates claims:

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA - Today I gave a seminar on Plato's Apology at the Universidad de los Andes to graduate and undergraduate students and faculty. The seminar was based on a paper I wrote entitled, Socratic Disturbances and Platonic Politics.

I argue in that paper that the Apology is a dialogue between Socrates and the "men of Athens." In order to discern the dynamics of this dialogue, the paper follows those moment when the "men of Athens" create disturbances (thorubein) in response to the things Socrates says. These disturbances suggest the degree to which the practice of Socratic politics provokes those with whom he is engaged to think and act differently.

The paper also further develops the difference between the practice of Socratic politics as it is performed in the Platonic dialogues and the politics of Platonic writing as it presents itself to us in the written texts. The end of the paper attempts to lend some determination to the way Plato practices politics in his writing by thinking through the deep symbolism of the proposal Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates that his punishment should be to receive free meals for life in the Prytaneion. The Prytaneion was the center of Athenian life, the site of the hearth of Hestia, and the suggestion, which is quite likely a Platonic creation, emphasizes the importance of attempting to integrate the practices of philosophical politics into the very heart of the city.

The participants in the seminar were excellent. They had prepared by reading the Apology with great care and considering the details of my paper. I was encouraged to think more deeply about a few of the issues I raise in the paper, particularly about the differences between Platonic and Socratic politics.

One suggestion by Catalina González Quintero was particularly helpful insofar as it invited me to consider further if the Socratic practice of politics is essentially provocative and negative - as suggested by the gadfly metaphor - and Platonic politics is more educative and positive, concerned to cultivate habits of thinking and acting in the citizens of the city.  I am concerned about divorcing these two dimensions of politics, but there might be a sense in which Socratic politics leads with provocation and moves only hesitantly toward education, while Platonic politics is concerned primarily with education, even if it retains always a provocative dimension.

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA - This evening I gave a public lecture at the Universidad de los Andes entitled Aristotle's Phenomenology of Truth in which I articulate the basic argument of my book, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth. The lecture, and the book, attempt to re-think the nature of truth not as correspondance, but in terms of the ability to respond together with the things of nature.

The lecture locates in Aristotle resources by which to understand truth in terms of the attempt to put words to things in ways that do justice to the ways they express themselves. I draw on Heideggerian phenomenology and American naturalism in order to identify Aristotelian phenomenology as a 'legomenology' that attends to the ways things are said in order to gain access to something of the nature of things.

The ability to respond to the logos of things is at the root of an understanding of truth in terms of justice.

EAST LANSING, MI It was particularly poignant for me to give a paper on the nature of Socratic political community at the tenth annual meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society.

The APS has been for me a professional community of education of rich fecundity and enormous depth. The values the Society embodies and the spirit of friendship in which philosophy is pursued here stands as an example of what is possible when scholars enter into relation with one another committed at once to attending to the letter of the ancient texts and to responding the demands of the contemporary social, political and historical situation.

The paper I presented focused on the manner in which Alcibiades functions as a phantom of Hermes as he intervenes of behalf of Socrates in his conversation with Protagoras in Plato's Protagoras.  I try to develop an account of how Socrates is willing to enter into direct relation with those he engages in dialogue and specifically with those young people, like Hippocrates in the Protagoras, intent on learning what it means to be just and good.

Ryan Drake and I discussed the paper on episode 31 of the Digital Dialogue.

Listen to episode 31 of the Digital Dialogue here.

I also recorded my reading of the paper, the response from Anne-Marie Bowery and the questions from the APS audience for episode 32 of the Digital Dialogue.


Digital Dialogue 32: Christopher Long at APS 2010: The Topology of Socratic Politics

To subscribe to the Digital Dialogue through iTunesU, click here.

Yesterday I presented a version of my paper on Antigone, Oedipus and Ismene to the Philosophy Department's Philosophy Research Colloquia at Penn State.

It was great to see so many Penn State Philosophy graduate students in attendance for a talk scheduled on Friday afternoon prior to spring break. The discussion afterward was very helpful to me as I continue to develop my book project on patriarchal politics.

I thought I might mention a few points from our discussion I intend to integrate into the revised paper in the hope that students and faculty and who were unable to attend or ask questions might contribute something here.

For those who were not there or who want a reminder about the content of the paper, I have a brief abstract on my Sophocles in Utah post from last November.

Kristeva and Abjection
Kristeva's conception of abjection should be pursued into the second and third moments of touching treated in the paper so that the political significance of Oedipus's abjection is amplified

I want to articulate more clearly the way the brother/father and sister/daughter ambiguity offers us a way to think a kind of political subjectivity that is non-dominational. Here something of Kristeva's suggestions about the incest taboo might be introduced.

Touch and Sight
The emphasis on touch in relation to sight will more clearly resist the tendency to fall into a simple dichotomy between the two that privileges touch over sight. In this regard, reading Ismene and Antigone as "supports of light" might help me think through how of the meaning of sight is transformed by Oedipus's blindness.

I intend to trace this transformation: when the sight of sovereign authority recognizes itself as blind, becomes blind, another possibility for vision emerges: Antigone sight involves seeing for herself and for others. Tracing this will need to focus on specific instances in the text where she sees for him - as when she describes Ismene's arrival. This might be thought in terms of ethical insight.

With regard to touch, I will need to emphasize more clearly the double meaning of reciprocity: mutual recognition can turn quickly into a grasping violence. The notion of justice as reciprocity can fall easily into the notion of justice as retribution.

I welcome other suggestions, feedback and insights in the comments below.

SUNDANCE, UT - Today I participated on a panel for the honors program at the Utah Valley University, whose director, Michael Shaw, invited Marina McCoy and me to present papers for a panel dedicated to Women in Sophocles.

Michael and Marina joined me for Digital Dialogue 20 to discuss the panel and the honors program at UVU:

Digital Dialogue 20 with Michael Shaw and Marina McCoy: Sophocles in Utah

To subscribe to the Digital Dialogue through iTunesU, click here.

Marina gave an excellent paper entitled Exile and Blindness in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus in which she argued that Theseus is the real hero of Oedipus at Colonus because he shows himself to be capable of genuine compassion and is open to the persuasive words of those around him.

My paper entitled, A Father's Touch, A Daughter's Voice: Antigone, Oedipus and Ismene at Colonus, traces three moments of touching in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus that mark the emergence of a politics other than that of patriarchal domination. 

Here is a brief overview of the itinerary of the paper:

This paper pursues a path marked by three moments of touching in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, each of which articulates something of the logic of what I call the politics of the between and the economy endemic to the community it opens. The first occurs when Oedipus reaches for his daughters at the end of Oedipus the King. It marks the institution of a community between Oedipus and his daughters no longer dominated by patriarchal sovereignty.

The second moment of touching occurs in Oedipus at Colonus when Ismene and Antigone embrace Oedipus after their abduction by Creon. In this scene, a constellation emerges that beautifully embodies the very structure of the politics of the between. Here, situated between Antigone and Ismene, Oedipus is bound to a community of reciprocal support born of a trauma that anticipates the resurgence of the politics of violence and retribution that will condition its ultimate demise.

The destitution of this community of compassion between them is marked, however, by a third moment of touching, one that mirrors the first, as Oedipus hands his daughters over to Theseus thus opening the possibility that Athens herself might once again serve as the site of a politics of the between.

For more information on the nature of the politics of the between and my critique of patriarchal politics, see my article: The Daughters of Metis: Patriarchal Dominion and the Politics of the Between, available here as a pdf file.

Two weeks ago, I was asked to present my model for Integrating Teaching and Research with Technology.  Although today I return to that material in my presentation to the University Information Technology Faculty Advisory Committee, three exciting new developments have occurred that must here be emphasized. 

These developments concern the manner in the community of learning we have cultivated on the Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue blog has expanded beyond the boundaries not only of the classroom, but also of the institution itself.

1. Marina McCoy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College has encouraged the students in her course entitled Rhetoric: Truth, Beauty, Power, to comment on our blog. Since we welcomed the BC students to our digital community last week, the conversation on the blog has exploded.
   
2. In order to encourage dialogue across universities, I worked with TLT here at Penn State to add Professor McCoy as a co-editor of the blog so she could write posts of her own.  She published a post on the question of the meaning of soul leading which generated a lot of commentary about contemporary political speech.
3. The Digital Dialogue, the podcast I have been producing dedicated to cultivating the excellences of dialogue in a digital age, now has a Facebook page and Professor McCoy has again invited her students to comment specifically on the latest episode, number 15 with Holly Moore, a former Philosophy undergraduate student at Penn State who received her PhD from DePaul University in mid-October.  My digital dialogue with her focuses on her dissertation. Professor McCoy has encouraged her students to subscribe to the Digital Dialogue via iTunesU [link opens iTunesU] and respond to episode 15 by commenting on the blog.

• This has generated a very interesting discussion around Dr. Holly Moore's work.  Although my favorite comment is the one that compares my "radio voice" to that of Peter Sagal, the most exciting thing about this is that we have on our course blog a class from BC engaged with a visiting Professor and recent PhD currently at Colby College engaged in dialogue about philosophical issues of mutual concern.
  

ARLINGTON, VA - The search for a job in any field in the midst of an economic downturn can be harrowing; for those seeking jobs in a field like Philosophy where even in good economic times, the competition for jobs is stiff, the job search can be especially demoralizing.

Here I have gathered some resources for the graduate student who attended the Graduate Student Colloquium at the 2009 Society for Phenomenology and Existentialist Philosophy (SPEP) where I spoke on a panel entitled "The Job Market in Today's Economy."

The Situation
There is no question that the job market in Philosophy and the Humanities is tightening.  Inside Higher Education emphasized in their article, The Tightening Humanities Job Market, published at the end of last year the particular difficulties in the discipline of Philosophy. Last spring, the New York Times was reporting that Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times, and it looks like we are seeing that play out in the list of job offerings in Philosophy this year.

On a more positive note, a number of institutions with which I am familiar, particularly the large state universities, have received substantive funds from the Stimulus Bill passed earlier this year.  This will allow them to proceed with some hiring this year. However, we might need to anticipate another downturn in job opportunities in two years when the stimulus money dries up.

Of the 140 jobs listed in the October 2009 Jobs for Philosophers, only 4 explicitly mention an interest in continental philosophy.  So SPEP students will have to position themselves to compete for jobs in areas that are not explicitly announced as "continental." This will not be difficult as the large majority of students at SPEP have a broad range of interests and expertise.

Good Preparation
There are a number of concrete ways to improve your chances on the job market:

• Write a marketable dissertation.  Decisions about what to write your dissertation on are complicated.  Primary consideration needs to be given to your passion for and interest in the topic.  However, such decisions ought not be made in a vacuum and one important consideration will be the degree to which you will increase your opportunities for placement by writing such a dissertation.
  
  Specifically, it is advisable to write a dissertation that goes into some depth with regard to a specific thinker or theme that cuts across a broader spectrum of traditions and is able to speak to a wide range of approaches.  Even if you don't orient your own work by those other approaches, be aware of them and able to articulate and position your work in relation to them.
  
  
• Publish something in a well-respected journal.
• Give a Paper at a Conference where they use blind review.
• Develop Pedagogical Excellence: work on your teaching, teach as much as you can, write your one page teaching philosophy, develop a teaching portfolio.
  
• Ask yourself: what distinguishes me from other candidates, what do I bring to a job that others don't?

Cultivate an online, digital identity
As we experience the transformative possibilities new social media opens for education, it is important for students to begin to think intentionally about how this media can be use to further the pedagogical and intellectual ideals of philosophy. With regard to placement, the question as to one's online, digital identity becomes critical.

• Use Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc., to articulate a serious, academic and engaged voice of your own.
• Leigh Johnson: readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore
  
• Joshua Miller: anotherpanacea
  
• Participate in social media related to Academia generally and Philosophy in particular:
• Academia.edu is a site where faculty, graduate students and institutions can establish profiles to highlight their work.
  
• Philosophywiki.org is a site where you can set up a profile about yourself and your work.
  

Opening Other Options
Post-doctoral Fellowships
Below is a list of a few post-doctoral fellowships that might be relevant to graduate student and early PhD members of SPEP working in contemporary continental philosophy and related areas in the history of philosophy.

• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for students doing work on German thinkers and topics related to German Philosophy who intend to spend time at a German University.
  
• Henry Frank Guggenheim Research Grants are given to research that can increase understanding and amelioration of urgent problems of violence, aggression, and dominance in the modern world.
• Fulbright, Council for International Exchange of Scholars offers a wide range to funding opportunities for US Scholars, both post-docs and graduate students.
• The Spencer Foundation has fellowships for doctoral students and post-docs working in research areas related to education.
• The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has a dissertation research awards available for students working in Ethics and Religion (Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship) and Women & Gender (Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies).
• The American Association of University Women has dissertation and post-doctoral fellowships for women US citizen from accredited institutions.
• The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has post-doc fellowships for work related to German philosophy.
  

Fixed term positions at home university or local colleges
Despite the economic situation, teaching still goes on, students are applying to college and colleges are offering classes. Many colleges and universities are offering fixed term positions for their students or for students from other institutions.

• Ask department chairs, directors of graduate studies if such opportunities exist at your institution.
• Talk to faculty such possibilities at the institutions of their colleagues.
  

Some Resources

• SPEP has introduced a jobs announcement section of the website, but this seems only to be as good as the institutions who submit. It does provide insight into which institutions are interested in the work being done by members of the society.
  
• American Philosophical Association publishes, of course, the Jobs for Philosophers; they also have a Job Seekers Database, which seems to be under construction at the moment, but which students should use when it is up.
  
• The Philosophy Jobs Wiki lists jobs offered by many institutions and is updated by the users.  It is only as accurate, of course, as the users are engaged and reliable. My experience, though, is that it is often very accurate, although it is important to recognize that it is not to be taken as the official mode of communication from colleges and universities.
• Penn State Philosophy Department Best Placement Practices page was developed to help our students think about how to position themselves to success on the market.  The suggestions are available for all interested students.
• Shortened URL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/spepjobpanel09

Contact Information

Christopher Long
longc@psu.edu

This presentation is based on two insights that have grown over time but came into sharp focus over the summer of 2009 during which time I was a faculty fellow at Teaching and Learning with Technology here at Penn State:

1. Education is being radically transformed by technological advances that allow communities of learning to grow in ways that cut across time, space and philosophical perspective.
2. In higher education, these technological innovations can be leveraged to integrate scholarly research and teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in ways that extend the reach of research and deepen the scholarly roots of teaching.

The Project
The figure of Socrates who appears in the Platonic dialogues is shown to practice a very peculiar form of politics: he enters into dialogue with each individual he encounters, attempting to turn their attention to the question of the Good, the Beautiful and the Just. My current research focuses on the various dimensions of the Socratic practice of politics and specifically on the question of how to cultivate the excellences of dialogue that open possibilities of human relation that are socially and politically transformative.

The Structure of Integration
I use my blog, the Long Road, which has been redesigned in as three blogs in one, to integrate my research and teaching.

The blog platform offers me a dynamic digital environment in which to develop a community of learning that roots my teaching in my scholarship and infuses my scholarship with new insights and connections that emerge out of the living dialogue of the community.

• The Pedagogy of Blogging
• Blogging Rubric (pdf)
  

The Community of Learning

• The Digital Dialogue - a podcast dedicated to cultivating the excellences of dialogue in a digital age. (Subscribe via iTunes)
  
• Invites scholars from around the country working on issues related to ancient Greek philosophy, social and political theory, the question of deliberative democracy ...
  
• Generates interest in the work, cross-pollination of ideas, and attempts to model the excellences of dialogue it seeks to theorize.
  
• Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue - a blog that hosts the Digital Dialogue, my undergraduate course (PHIL200: Ancient Greek Philosophy) and my graduate seminar (PHIL553: Ancient Greek Philosophy).
• Undergraduate Teaching: blog rubric (pdf), weekly round-up podcasts, the emergence of a community of learners engaged with the material:
  
• Jordan's Why Are You Here? post generates self-reflection
• Participants from outside the class: Holly Moore, Asher; UPDATE Nov. 2, 2009: Marina McCoy, Associate Professor from Boston College, has encouraged her students to join our digital community.  See my presentation to the IT Faculty Advisory Committee where I discuss how we are blurring the boundaries between institutions.
  
• Dynamic and substantive commenting on posts about: Religion, typical post with comments;
  
• Integration of video: Conan, Big.
• Graduate Teaching: more sophisticated level of discussion, community of scholarship via Zotero - allows for collaborative collection of references: Socratic Politics Group.
  
• Integrating the blog into the classroom: using Evernote to identify posts and comments on which to focus in-class discussion.
  
• The Search for Justice video - an attempt to provoke responses from a wider audience and to encourage those who watch it to consider: What is Justice?
  

ALTOONA, PA - Today I gave the keynote address at the West Virginia Philosophical Society being held at Penn State Altoona.

This presentation is drawn from the penultimate chapter of the manuscript for my book, The Saying of Things: The Nature of Truth and the Truth of Nature in Aristotle. In the book, I draw on Aristotle's naturalistic phenomenology in order to articulate truth in terms of the ability to respond to the ways things express themselves. This understanding of truth as co-response-ability is rooted in Aristotle's recognition that human-being is natural being and its ways of saying naturally co-operate with the logoi of things, the manner in which things express themselves. This allows me to argue that truth is a question of doing justice to the saying of things.

The chapter from which this presentation is taken is designed to suggest the degree to which truth as justice must not only be rooted in concrete encounters with individual things, but that it also must attempt to articulate things within the larger context of the whole to which they and we belong. This chapter, then, attempts to account for the peculiar way in which human-being is bound up with and related to the manner in which the whole expresses itself as beautiful and good.

"... we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization."

-- Andrea Lunsford, in Wired article "Clive Thompson on the New Literacy"

Preface
The web log, or blog, opens up new possibilities for teaching and learning by cultivating social communities of education. The power of blogging as a pedagogical practice is rooted in the recognition that meaning is made and knowledge created in social interaction. As Dewey put it in Democracy and Education:

STATE COLLEGE, PA - As one of the Teaching and Learning with Technology summer faculty fellows, I am on a panel at the 2009 Learning Design Summer Camp that focuses on new forms of digital scholarship.

This post is designed to facilitate a round table discussion of using blogs for assessment at the 2009 Penn State Assessment Conference: Putting Your Assessment Plan to Work. Over the past four years, I have used blogs regularly in my classes to facilitate philosophical discussion and assessment philosophical writing. I have used two implementations models:

1. Multiple Blogs - student owned and operated blogs with a course blog that aggregates material from the student blogs.
2. Common Course Blog - one blog with students either posting through comments or set up as editors.

There are positive and negative dimensions of each model and the assessment techniques differ in each case.

Multiple Blogs
Pros

• Student Ownership
• Diversity of Perspectives
• Student Work easy to Identify & Evaluate

Cons

• Difficult to Establish Community of Discussion
• Lack of Cross Fertilization of Ideas
• Aggregated Community
  

Assessment for Multiple Blog Model
Individual Assignments/Individual rubrics; see:

• Antigone and Current Events; example: Stephanie Marek's post on Gay Marriage
• Reading a Picture; example: Amanda Wise relates a picture of leaves to the Antigone

Ongoing Assignment, single rubric; see:

• Weekly blog posts (PHIL204 Syllabus); examples: Samantha Miller, Marianna Suslin and David Klatt.
  

Common Course Blog
Pros

• More Organic Community
• Centrally Managed
• Facilitates Cross-fertilization of Ideas through Posts and Comments
• Unified Discussion
• Cultivates Social Learning

Cons

• Work of Individual Student is More Difficult to Access and Evaluate
• Minimizes Idiosyncratic perspectives, creative outlets
• No Individual Student Ownership
  

Assessment for Common Course Model
Ongoing Assignment with a single, comprehensive scoring rubric:

• Blogging Scoring Rubric.pdf
  

PHILADELPHIA, PA - Today I presented a paper entitled The Metaphysics of Truth at the annual meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America at the American Philosophical Association's 2008 Eastern Division meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

The paper was part of a panel with Vincent Colapietro, my colleague at the Pennsylvania State University, and Brian Henning from Gonzaga University.  My paper focused on the many ways truth is said in Aristotle, arguing that the two fundamental ways in which Aristotle speaks of truth--as noetic touching and as declarative saying--must be thought together as part of an organic and unified understanding of truth. 

The panel as a whole was very well received and the discussion was lively and insightful.  I am grateful to the MSA for inviting me to be part of this panel.

NEW YORK CITY - Today I returned to the New School to present what will be the first chapter of my forthcoming book, The Saying of Things: The Truth of Nature and the Nature of Truth in Aristotle.  It was wonderful to return home to the New School to present my latest work and to engage in the tradition of rigorous and lively dialogue that makes the New School such a rich site of intellectual development. The questions were welcomed and pressed me to think through more rigorously my understanding of "doing justice to things" and "ontological response-ability."

I was happy to know that although the building has changed, the spirit of the New School for Social Research endures.

HARTFORD, CT -- Today I gave a paper here at Trinity College on the nature of truth in Aristotle entitled, "The Ethics of Truth: Saying It Like It Is".  The presentation sought in part to link the way Aristotle speaks of the truthful person in the Nichomachean Ethics to his more strictly theoretical understanding of truth which has traditionally been identified as the first articulation of the so-called correspondence theory of truth. This is part of a larger project that attempts to rethink the correspondence theory in terms of co-response-ability.

The presentation was well received and the ensuing discussion with a group of very intelligent and thoughtful undergraduates and faculty was stimulating and helpful to me as I continue to work on this issue for my book, The Saying of Things.

PITTSBURGH, PA - A panel on the work of Reiner Schürmann entitled "Philosophy-to-come: Reading Reiner Schürmann" was held today at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existentialist Philosophy.  The panel included a paper by Emmanuela Bianchi entitled, "From (Sexual) Difference to (Sexual) Differend: A queer feminist reading of Broken Hegemonies," one from Richard Lee entitled, "A Break in the Middle: From Epochal Principles to Hegemonic Fantasms," and a paper from me entitled, "Between Natality and Mortality: The Torments of Autonomy."

My paper traced what Schürmann calls the "double comprehension of being" in Kant in which the sense of being as pure givenness is said to be recognized but denied by Kant as his thinking undertakes its Copernican turn.  Schürmann suggests that this can be heard in the ambiguous ways two German terms that mean "posit or position" are used by Kant.  The terms are "Position" and "Setzung." Schürmann shows that these two terms point at various moments in Kant either to the notion of being as a category that arises from the transcendental operations of the subject or to being understood as pure givenness external to the transcendental subject.  Schürmann insists that this second sense of being threatens to undermine the entire transcendental project and so must be denied by Kant.

Drawing on this reading, I attempt to show that Schürmann's own deep skepticism about philosophical language and particularly his insistence that language always involves the violent supression of singularity is itself undermined by Schürmann's own suggestion that the singular comes to language in the tension between Position and Setzung that gives voice to the two comprehensions of being in Kant.   

This September I will be presenting at the Designs on e-Learning Conference held here at Penn State.  My presentation is entitled Blogging and Podcasting the Liberal Arts (the link is to the blog post on which the presentation is based).

FREIBURG, GERMANY - Today I present a paper entitled Ontological Response-Ability and the Ethics of Truth at a conference jointly organized by the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and the Pennsylvania State University.

In April, I will give a paper entitled "The Duplicity of Beginning: Schürmann, Aristotle and the Origins of Metaphysics" at the Eighth Annual Independent Meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society, which will meet this year at my alma mater, the New School for Social Research in New York City.

My paper on Woodbridge's reading of Aristotle entitled "The Natural History of the Soul" has been accepted for the 2008 meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The paper is part of a panel with Daniel Brunson, a graduate student here at Penn State and Rose Cherubin of George Mason University. The panel is entitled American Philosophy and the Legacies of Greek Thinking. The panel abstract is below:

Greek thinking has historically been engaged by American philosophers in at least three (not always mutually exclusive) ways. Roughly speaking, the first involves the discussion and interpretation of specific Greek texts. The second involves the development, often in new contexts, of ideas inspired by or rooted in Greek ideas, but not necessarily identical to them. The third way is the apparently independent development of ideas and ways of thinking that parallel those found in Greek thought, where there is no evidence of direct influence. The papers in this panel illustrates all three modes by which Greek thinking has been engaged by American philosophers.

The first paper, entitled The Natural History of the Soul, takes up the first and second modes by focusing on a set of lectures Fredrick Woodbridge gave in 1930 on Aristotle's De Anima in which he reads Aristotle as concerned primarily with the being and meaning of nature. The paper is divided into three sections. The first considers Woodbridge's innovative account of Aristotle's method, which is guided by Aristotle's own theoretical practice of attempting to put the natural phenomena he encounters into words. This methodological commitment to the articulation of things suggests the importance of Aristotle's own ontological orientation toward language, which is the focus of the second section of the paper. Finally, drawing on Woodbridge's account of how, for Aristotle, it is natural for things to go into language the paper will conclude with a discussion of Aristotle's understanding of the intelligibility of things that links Aristotle's naturalism to both Woodbridge's conception of cooperation and Dewey's understanding of transaction.

Illustrating the first and third modes, Peirce's Account of Pythagoras explores the speculative biography of Pythagoras written by Peirce on multiple occasions. Primarily, Peirce offers it as a methodological example of abduction based upon meager evidence, and which offers few predictions regarding possible future experience. Peirce considers his method both distinctive and superior to others because it demands an explanation of all the evidence, even, or especially, known falsehoods. That is, one should explain why a false testimony would be asserted as true, and why in one way rather than another. More broadly, Peirce implicitly argues that we should engage with the ancients seriously, rather than assigning them to the “infancy” of thought. In fact, Peirce's account concludes with an intriguing hypothesis as to the secret behind Pythagorean "mysticism," based largely on a supposition regarding Pythagoras' travels outside the Greek world.

The final paper of the panel, Inquiry, Truth, and Normativity in Parmenides and Peirce, addresses the second and third modes of the American engagement with Greek thinking by drawing Peirce's conception of philosophical inquiry into dialogue with that of Parmenides. In his search for alternatives to aspects of modern philosophy he found to be misguided, Peirce often independently took up Greek notions also used by Parmenides. The thematic study of inquiry was central to Peirce's conception of philosophy. In this his closest philosophical precursor was Parmenides. Both investigated what it is that inquiry might enjoin and require, and what its success might consist in and imply. Both also explored the normative or evaluative dimensions of the search for truth. This paper looks at these two areas of common interest. The paper examines the convergences and divergences between Peirce and Parmenides on the theme of inquiry, with the aim that the reflection of each on the other might illuminate both and further our understanding of the questions they addressed.