NY German Idealism Workshop

The next meeting of the NY German Idealism Workshop will be held on Friday, May 7th at The New School. Jon Burmeister (Boston College) will be giving a paper entitled, "Hegel on Ordinary and Philosophical Language." Roy Ben-Shai (The New School for Social Research) will respond.

Date: Friday, May 7th
Location: The New School for Social Research, 6 East 16th St., Wolff
Conference Room (906/913)
Time: 4:30–6:30

I will actually be at the New School, but won't make the meeting because I will be defending my dissertation at the same time.

Midwestern Study Group of the North American Kant Society (CFP)

Midwestern Study Group of the North American Kant Society
October 23-24, 2010

University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada
Keynote Speaker: Angelica Nuzzo (Brooklyn College, CUNY)

Call for papers: We welcome submissions from all areas of Kant studies, broadly construed to include not only contemporary approaches that are “Kantian” in methodology or content, but also the discussion of Kant's immediate predecessors, contemporaries, and successors.
The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2010. Papers should not exceed 25 double-spaced pages. All submissions should be prepared for blind review and should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 300 words. Papers read at any other NAKS meeting may not be submitted.

Send submissions, and direct any enquiries, to Corey W. Dyck (cdyck5@uwo.ca).Program Committee: Corey W. Dyck and Bill Harper (UWO), Brigitte Sassen (McMaster)

Link to conference website: http://publish.uwo.ca/~cdyck5/North_American_Kant_Society/index.html

The Relevance of Romanticism (Conference)

Villanova University is hosting a conference The Relevance of Romanticism April 16-17. The lineup is quite strong and the keynote speakers are Manfred Frank and Frederick Beiser, two figures that have done a lot to clarify the philosophical contribution of the German Romantics. Here you will find the conference program.

NY German Idealism Workshop

Over the last year or so posts have been quite sporadic, but I hope to get back into posting more often. So, expect more posts in the next few days/weeks.

The NY German Idealism Workshop is meeting on Friday, March 26th: "A Dialogue on Fichte and Recognition" with Jay Bernstein (The New School for Social Research) and Fred Neuhouser (Barnard College). Both are featured in the recent publication, The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch and Christopher Zurn (Lexington, 2010). Prof. Bernstein will give a short presentation of his paper, "Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte's Materialism" (see attached) to which Prof. Neuhouser will respond.

A Dialogue on Fichte and Recognition with Jay Bernstein and Fred Neuhouser
Date: Friday, March 26th
Time: 4:30–6:30
Location: Philosophy Hall, Room 716, Columbia University

For a copy of Jay Bernstein's paper email Karen Ng:
(karen.ng92@gmail.com).

International Summer School in German Philosophy

The Philosophy Department at Bonn University is pleased to announce the First Annual International Summer School in German Philosophy. This year's topic is "Transcendental Ontology and Issues in Epistemology in Post-Kantian Idealism."

Professor Markus Gabriel (Bonn University) will organize and teach the seminar, with Professors Paul Franks (University of Toronto) and Espen Hammer (Temple University) giving keynote addresses.

One of the aims of the summer school is to argue that the thinkers of Post-Kantian Idealism defend a new ontology, one which lays out the conditions of possibility for transcendental, higher-order thought. Despite Kant’s negative verdict on ontology, these conditions appear
precisely ontological as soon as the existence of the alleged transcendental subject is confirmed. Since the world cannot be reduced to a strictly ”external world” in the Cartesian sense, the
conditions of possibility for referring to determinate objects in the world come to be conceived as themselves determinate objects in the world. With this re-evaluation of the status of ontology in mind, we will read key texts by Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, with specific attention to the relation between epistemology and ontology. Through this ”ontologized” reading, we will attend to certain essential claims of each thinker: Hegel’s thinking not only substance as subject, but the subject as substance, the later Fichte’s re-introducing the notion of being into his Wissenschaftslehre, and finally, Schelling’s ontology of ”ground”, ”existence” and the ”will” in his Freiheitsschrift and Weltalter.

The Summer School will be organized seminar-style, emphasizing group discussion and close readings of key texts of German Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel).

The Summer School will run June 14-25, 2010, and all discussions will be in English. Please send your application in English (CV and short letter of intent) to idealism2010@uni-bonn.de by March 10. There are some stipends (€ 800-1000) available, which cover travel expenses and part of the accommodation. To apply for a stipend, please send your CV and a short letter of intent that explains your need for financial support. Please note that there is no registration fee for the summer school.

Other information--including a description of the syllabus, and information about stipends--can be found on the website: http://www.idealism.uni-bonn.de/ and all inquiries should be directed to idealism2010@uni-bonn.de.

NY German Idealism Workshop

On behalf of the NY German Idealism Workshop, I would like to announce the final meeting of the semester on Friday, December 11th. Jens Rometsch (University of Bonn) will be giving a paper entitled, “Hegel's Point About Knowledge of What We Are Doing”. Rocío Zambrana (The New School for Social Research) will respond.

Date: Friday, December 11th
Location: The New School for Social Research, 6 East 16th St. Room 906
Time: 4:00-6:00pm

please email karen.ng92@gmail.com for a copy of the paper.

NY German Idealism Workshop, Nov. 20th

The NY German Idealism Workshop will hold its next meeting on Friday, November 20th. Patricia Kitcher (Columbia University) will be giving a paper entitled:

“Kant’s Spontaneous Thinker and (More) Spontaneous Agent.” Robert Howell (SUNY Albany) will respond.

Date: Friday, November 20th
Location: Columbia University, Philosophy Hall, Room 716
Time: 4:30-6:30pm

Light refreshments will be served.

To receive a copy of Kitcher's paper in advance, email Matt Congdon at matt.congdon@gmail.com

Hegel and Herder

Mitchell Verter, a student at the New School for Social Research, is creating an online bilingual edition of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. I'm sure many will find this useful.

For the many readers in the NY area, Katie Terezakis, a graduate of the New School and now at Rochester Institute of Technology, will give a talk October 15, 2009 at Columbia University: "Meaning and Authority in the Thought of J.G. Herder".

German Idealism Workshop

The NY German Idealism Workshop, organized this year jointly by The New School for Social Research and Columbia, will hold its next meeting on Friday, October 16th.

Allegra de Laurentiis (Stonybrook) will be giving a paper entitled, "Garve, Kant and Hegel on the Right and the Useful in International Politics." Martin Stone (Cardozo and The New School) will respond.

Date: Friday, October 16th
Location: The New School, 80 Fifth Ave., Rm. 529
Time: 4-6pm

Light refreshments will be served.

German Idealism Workshop, April 17

On Friday, April 17, the next German Idealism Workshop will take place at the New School. Below are the details:

Andreja Novakovic (Columbia) will present a paper on Hegel titled, "Second Nature and Ethical Life".

Matt Congdon (New School) will respond.

Time: 4:30
Place: The New School, 65 5th Ave (14th St. and 5th ave).
Room: Wolf Conference Room, 2nd Floor (This is the old Wolf, not the new one)

If you plan to attend and would like to receive a copy of the paper, email me.

Kant and Non-Conceptual Content

Dietmar Heidemann (Luxembourg) has organized an exciting conference around the work of Robert Hanna. Hanna has published a number of important works on Kant, but this event appears to be organized around issues addressed in his essay "Kant and Non-Conceptual Content" in European Journal of Philosophy, 13:2 pp. 247–290. I also noticed Hanna has co-authored with Michelle Maiese a new book called Embodied Minds in Action (Oxford, 2008), which looks quite good.

KANT AND NON-CONCEPTUAL CONTENT
Workshop with Robert Hanna

28-29 May 2009
University of Luxembourg (Campus Walferdange)
Department of Philosophy

28 May 2009

14:00
Professor Dr. Robert Hanna (University of Colorado at Boulder/Cambridge University):
Kant’s Non-Conceptualism and the Gap in the B Deduction

15:00
Comment: Dr. Stefanie Grüne (University of Heidelberg)

17:00
Professor Dr. Robert Hanna (University of Colorado at Boulder/Cambridge University):
Kantian Non-Conceptualism and the Myth of the Myth of the Given

18:00
Comment: Dr. Tobias Schlicht (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

29 May 2009

10:00
Professor Dr. Robert Hanna (University of Colorado at Boulder/Cambridge University):
Kantian Non-Conceptualism and Naive Perceptual Realism

11:00
Comment: Professor Dr. Brady Bowman (Penn State)

14:00
Professor Dr. Robert Hanna (University of Colorado at Boulder/Cambridge University):
Kantian Non-Conceptualism and a Positive Solution for Benacerraf’s Dilemma

15:00
Comment: Professor Dr. Terry Godlove (Hofstra University, New York)

All talks will be given Room X2.33 (IPSE Building), University of Luxembourg-Campus Walferdange, Faculty of Language and Literature, Department of Philosophy, Route de Diekirch, L-7220 Walferdange/Luxembourg (http://wwwen.uni.lu/Contact/Campus-Walferdange)

For further information and registration (no fees), please contact the organizer Dietmar Heidemann (dietmar.heidemann@uni.lu)

-----------------------------------------
Professor Dr. Dietmar Heidemann
University of Luxembourg
Faculté des Lettres
Department of Philosophy
Campus Walferdange
Route de Diekirch / B.P. 2
L-7220 Walferdange
dietmar.heidemann@uni.lu

NY German Idealism Workshop

The next NY German Idealism Workshop will be Friday, February 20 at 4pm at the New School. Here are the details:

Sebastian Rand (Georgia State University)
"Animal Subjectivity in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature"

Place: The New School
4pm, Friday, February 20
Room: D912 (The building is located at 16th and 5th Ave. The main entrance is on 16th st. between 5th and Union Square. The address is 6 16th).

Karen Ng (New School) will respond.

If you plan to attend and would like to receive a copy of the paper, please email me.

Philosophy Today's Fichte Issue

Below is the table of contents for the Fall 2008 issue of Philosophy Today. They published the proceedings of last spring's North American Fichte Society conference dedicated to Fichte's System of Ethics. The conference was held at DePaul University April 10-13, 2008. I attended the conference though chose not to publish my paper, Fichte on Freedom: How-Possible Questions and Transcendental Arguments, since it is, as I see it, still very much a work in progress. The conference was great, and all of these papers are worth reading.

Philosophy Today

Vol. 52, Iss. 3/4

1. Credits

2. Table of contents

3. APRIORITY FROM THE GRUNDLAGE TO THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Sebastian Rand

4. BETWEEN THE IDEAL AND THE EGO IDEAL: COLLECTIVE EVIL FROM FICHTE TO FREUD
Arnold L Farr

5. FEELING IS KNOWING: THE CENTRALITY OF DRIVES AND AFFECT IN FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Michael Steinberg

6. FICHTE AGAINST KANT IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Isabelle Thomas- Fogiel

7. FICHTE AND NOVALIS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICS AND AESTHETICS
Howard Pollack-Milgate

8. FICHTE AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE MORAL LAW
Claude Piché

9. FICHTE ON THE HIGHEST GOOD: AGENT UNITY AND PRACTICAL DELIBERATION IN THE JENA SITTENLEHRE
Benjamin D Crowe

10. FICHTE, ETHICS, AND THE PLEASURES OF SELF-DESTRUCTION
F Scott Scribner

11. FICHTE, ETHICS, AND TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY
Tom Rockmore

12.FINITE AND ABSOLUTE REASON IN (AND BEYOND) FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Steven Hoeltzel

13. HEGEL ON FICHTE'S CONCEPTION OF PRACTICAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNES: A FUNDAMENTAL CRITICISM OF THE SITTENLEHRE IN THE DIFFERENZ-SCHRIFT
Liu Zhe

14. INTRODUCTION
Tom Rockmore

15. ON FICHTE'S CONCEPT OF FREEDOM IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Marina F Bykova

16. ONE DRIVE AND TWO MODES OF ACTING: COGNITION AND VOLITION
Violetta L Waibel

17. THE BEAUTIFUL SOUL, THE SOCIOPATH, AND FICHTE'S ETHICS
George J Seidel

18. THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIENCE IN FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Bärbel Frischmann

19. THE CONCEPT OF DRIVE IN THE SITTTENLEHRE (1798): FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS OF FICHTE'S DOCTRINE OF OIKEIOSIS
Mário Jorge de Carvalho

20. THE EMPIRICAL I IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Jane Dryden

21.THE FIRST-PERSON STANDPOINT OF FICHTE'S ETHICS

Daniel Breazeale

22. THE FUNCTION AND SIGNIFICANCE OF LONGING IN THE SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Adam Hankins

23.THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIAL IMPERATIVE IN FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Jacinto Rivera de Rosales

24. TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE: THE FAILED RECEPTION OF FICHTE'S SYSTEM OF ETHICS
Günter Zöller

Hamann Conference

I posted a few months back about the conference "Hamann and the Tradition", and since then the full program has been added online. Check out the program here. It is also worth noting that John R. Betz's book, After Enlightenment (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) appeared recently. Betz's book looks to be one of the most exhaustive works on Hamann in English, and is certainly one of the few.

For those of you unfamilar with the work of Hamann, check out my previous posts here and here.

Inside/Outside Conference (CFP)

Inside/Outside

An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference

hosted by the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University

April 2nd and 3rd, 2009

Keynote Speakers: Espen Hammer (University of Oslo/Essex) and Terry Pinkard (Georgetown University)

Foregrounding the relationship inside/outside, this conference seeks to consider the effects of this pervasive structuring relation across philosophy, literature, the human sciences, politics, and the arts. What work does this distinction do? How do we understand its ubiquity? Furthermore, what is our contemporary relation to this (perceived?) opposition: do we overcome, dissolve, ignore, work through, maintain, or dialectically negotiate this relationship? Papers exploring these and related questions are welcome.

Some suggestions: scheme and content, content and form, mind and world, interiority and exteriority, self and other, inclusion and exclusion, human and inhuman, literary, aesthetic, and political strategies and figures, historical investigations and genealogies, theological figurations and disfigurations, contemporary philosophical approaches ("continental" and "analytic") to this question, etc.

Please send full papers (for a 45 minute presentation), abstract (300 words max.), and contact information (including institutional affiliation) to insideoutsideconference@gmail.com

Deadline for all submissions is January 15th, 2009.

www.insideoutsideconference.com

German Idealism Workshop

For readers in the New York area, the final meeting for the New York German Idealism Workshop will be held on December 12. Terry Godlove (Hofstra) will present a paper on Kant at the Stony Brook, Manhattan Campus.

Here is all the info:

Terry Godlove (Hofstra): "The Objectivity of Regulative Principles in Kant's Appendix to the Dialectic".

Address: Stony Brook University-Manhattan, 401 Park Ave. South, 2nd
Floor (between. 27th and 28th St.) Tel.: 646 472 2025
Time: 4:30
Thomas Teufel (Baruch College) will respond to Terry's paper.

Email me if you plan to come and would like a copy of the paper.

Fichte-Kongress 2009

Below is some info about the Fichte-Kongress 2009 (site in German).The Internationalen Fichte-Gesellschaft and Internationalen Schelling-Gesellschaft are co-hosting a conference on "Fichte and Schelling: Idealism in Discussion" October 7-9, 2009 in Belgium at Académie Royale des sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles. The conference is in German, English, and French, but written contributions can also be in Italian and Spanish.

If you want to participate you must register and submit the title of your presentation by May 15, 2009. Texts for contributions must be received by 30 June 2009 at the latest. Conference email: fichteschellingkongress@gmail.com.

Here are the workshop themes and topics:

1) The Concept of Philosophy (i.e. transcendental philosophy, system, identity etc.).

2) Naturphilosophie (teleology, imagination, life-force, Spinozism)
3) Aesthetics
4) Philosophy of Religion
5) Late Philosophy in Comparison
6) Experience of the Groundless and the Irrational
7) Political and Social Conceptions
8) Freedom in Philosophy
9) Fichte and Schelling and Contemporary Philosophy

(a. The Romantics, b. 20th century philosophy, e.g. Husserl and Heidegger)

You will of course find more details at this website about possible topics and how to register and submit. Thanks to David Wood for the heads up.

Hegel and German Idealism (CFP)

CALL FOR PAPERS:

HEGEL AND GERMAN IDEALISM

Graduate Student Conference
University of Notre Dame
March 6-8, 2009

Deadline for Submission: December 15, 2008

GUEST SPEAKERS:
Robert Brandom, University of Pittsburgh
Paul Franks, University of Toronto

Graduate students of the Notre Dame philosophy department invite papers relating to the philosophy of Hegel and the tradition of German Idealism. This conference, sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, is designed to provide graduate students in philosophy and all areas of the humanities the opportunity to present research on issues related to the philosophical and historical roots, development, and impact of Hegel's philosophy and German Idealism.


Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• The philosophical origins of German Idealism (in Kant, the post-Kantians, the Romantics, etc…).
• 19th century critiques of Hegel and German Idealism.
• Influence of Hegel/ German Idealism on 19th and/or 20th century political developments.
• The impact of Hegel/ German Idealism on contemporary philosophy.
• The revival of interest in Hegel and German Idealism in contemporary analytic philosophy.

Papers should be suitable for 20-minute presentation (10-12 pages) and should be submitted in blind review format. Deadline for submission is December 15, 2008. Please include author's name, title, and institutional affiliation in email. Notifications will be made no later than February 1, 2009. Selected presenters will be provided with meals and campus hotel accommodations for the conference. Submissions and questions should be emailed to hegel.graduateconference@gmail.com.

Please see website for more details:

http://nanovic.nd.edu/hegel.html

Sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the University of Notre Dame Graduate School.

German Idealism Workshop

For those of you in the New York area, we are holding the first German Idealism Workshop on September 19 at the New School.

Kristina Engelhard (University of Cologne) will deliver a paper titled “Hegel on/in Contradiction” and Angelica Nuzzo (Brooklyn College) will respond.

The workshop will be at the New School for Social Research, 65 5th Ave, Machinist Conference Room (Mezzanine level), 4:30 pm. Please email me if you plan to attend and would like a copy of the paper.

Embodiment in Fichte’s Theory of Self-Consciousness

Here is an abstract for a paper I want to write. I just sent it off to a conference on intersubjectivity and the body.

Subtle Bodies: Embodiment in Fichte’s Theory of Self-Consciousness

The work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte is widely recognized as attempting to develop a theory of self-consciousness that grounds in a first principle Kant’s theory of knowledge and cognition. Fichte’s work is often taken to focus on issues in practical philosophy and issues in epistemology. In my work on Fichte I have been developing a mind reading that shows that Fichte has an intersubjective theory of the mind that is conditional for his moral and epistemological principles. In this paper I will argue that Fichte’s theory of the mind articulates a view of the mind as embodied.

In his Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte develops a transcendental argument or deduction that shows how we must conceive of the body as a necessary condition of self-conscious agency. The body, insofar as it is a necessary condition of self-consciousness, must be more than just a material body. For Fichte, while the body is a material body [Körper], it is also a human body [Lieb]. What is the difference between a material body and a human body? The first important difference is that the human body is the embodiment of the will or the ability to form concepts of an end and bring to fruition the end according to a particular conceptualization. However, this kind of concept formation and action is not reflective, but a conceptual pre-reflective activity. A second difference, which follows from the first, is that the human body is subtle or non-objective in that it is saturated with social commitments and is that locus of intentional expressions. In other words, the body as a human body is expressive of rational contents and plays an essential role in the education of the subject into the stance rational self-conscious agents must take.

My reading of Fichte on the body attempts to show that the body is a minded body that is intersubjectively constituted. I also argue that the body is expressive. Its expressivity plays a necessary role in the education of self-consciousness and the constitution of a rational social order.