Continental Philosophy

Philosophers Zone – 17 October 2009 – What would Karl Marx think?.

Commodities, capitalism and computers. At a time when the Berlin Wall has fallen but Wall Street is decidedly shaky, a self-described lapsed Marxist takes us through some of the key philosophical and practical ideas of Karl Marx and argues for what is still useful today. What is worth keeping in Marx? He had his limitations but later thinkers have built on his core concepts and used his methods to produce results that still speak to the changing nature of work in contemporary Australia.

Accounts of human action in many parts of philosophy tend to depend on the idea that action is to be characterised in terms of following norms or rules. This gives considerable emphasis to the idea of self-consciously determining yourself to do something, according to a rule. This model has considerable consequences for how procedures are codified in many areas of social and professional life. However, there are serious reasons to think that this model is inadequate as an account of how we actually do many things. This is because, even though rules are essential, so much that we need to do these things cannot come immediately to consciousness when we do them. Examples of what is involved here range from the ways in which we carry out conversations, to the example used for the talk: jazz improvisation.
Presentation includes musical examples and is followed by a performance by the Andrew Bowie Jazz Trio, featuring John Turville (piano), and Tom Farmer (bass).
URL for podcast:

http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2009/10/andrew-bowie-background-capabilities-and-prereflexive-awareness/

Here are the links for the audio recordings of Daniel Smith’s lectures that he gave as a part of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum 2009, which was directed by Peg Birmingham. Unfortunately we couldn’t record the second half of the second lecture, but all the rest is available in a pretty high-quality format.

Link

This week, we examine a division in the philosophical world, between what’s called analytic philosophy, as practised in the English-speaking world and the Nordic nations, and continental philosophy. If you’re an analytical philosopher, all that French and German stuff looks vague, verbose and romantic. If you’re sitting Paris, the analytical stuff is likely to seem abstract, dry and quite unconnected with human realities. Professor Paul Patton straddles the divide and this week he tells us whether he thinks it’s real.

Link to the audio file

The Slavoj Zizek Masterclass ‘Notes towards a definition of communist culture’ which took place at Birkbeck College last week (15 – 19 June) is now avaliable as a podcast to listen to (and download) at the following URL:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/category/academic-service/academic-service-archive/

2008 is the centenary of the birth of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He was a friend of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and a man who wanted to get philosophy back to its basics and the physical reality of the lived body. This week, we pay tribute to his work and his influence on modern cognitive science.

Audio file

Philosspher’s Zone:

Scapegoats and sacrifices – Rene Girard

Download Audio – 15112008

Have you ever found that you didn’t want something until you noticed that somebody else wanted it? Were you picked on at school, or were you one of the pickers on? Welcome to the world of the French thinker Rene Girard, who claims that desire needs to be learned and that, once learned, it leads to the finding of scapegoats. And what do we do with scapegoats? We sacrifice them.

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In French, on Nietzsche’s correspondence.

2007 Koehn Event in Critical Theory. Alain Badiou and Etienne Balibar dialogue on “Universalism.”

Link

(h/t/: Richard Clarke)

SEP has published a new entry on Pragmatism.

The Philosopher’s Zone: “Uprootedness and national conflicts“

John Protevi has posted a new draft of his “Deleuze and Cognitive Science” lecture.

A visiting legal ethicist talks to us about why a novella by Herman Melville, involving mutiny and an execution at sea, has become required reading for those interested in the intersection of literature, law and ethics.

Link

Part 2 and Part 3

And also his Culture Industry

On the BBC

h/t: Marcus Allion

Link

Or the only truly tested philosophy is that of a dead philosopher. When the philosopher dies, the philosophy is put to the test. Does is still seem valid? Or does it fade into irrelevance in the face of eternity? From the Sydney Writers’ Festival, a conversation with Simon Critchley, author of The Book of Dead Philosophers.

Link

Audio lectures

A quick roundup of some Nietzsche material:

Via cross-x forum:

•  Jason Caro, "Of Our Favorite Nietzschean Question", Political Theory, Vol 27 (6), Dec 1999
•  Michael Ure, "The Irony of Pity: Nietzsche contra Schopenhauer and Rousseau",Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 32, 2006

Audio files of Rick Roderick's lectures on Nietzsche

And Brian Leiter's response to Aaron Ridley

Joel Buxton pointed out that there are two Derrida lectures on Religion (Link)

Some  other interesting links, including the ones provided by Alex by Badiou, one on Hobbes, etc. (Link)

An interview on French TV with Alain Badiou, discussing his politics. He just published a book on Sarkozy. Link. (h/t: Ed Pluth)

The weekly Vendredis de la philosophie (Philosophy Fridays) focused on Deleuze and Guattari. Link

Many have seen (or listened to) these lectures; they are Prof. Dreyfus’ lectures on Heidegger’s Being and Time.

Link

(h/t: Greg Esplin)