Continental Philosophy

Lucid and rigorous in equal measure, Watkin’s Phenomenology and Deconstruction is both a timely intervention and a critical introduction to a vital current in contemporary European thought. It is also an essential reconfiguration of the intellectual landscape as concerns phenomenology, giving us back the bodies we need, but stranger and richer. –Prof. Patrick ffrench, Department of French, King’s College, London

Description
Phenomenology or Deconstruction? challenges traditional understandings of the relationship between phenomenology and deconstruction through new readings of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur and Jean-Luc Nancy. A constant dialogue with Jacques Derrida’s engagement with phenomenological themes provides the impetus to establishing a new understanding of ‘being’ and ‘presence’ that exposes significant blindspots inherent in traditional readings of both phenomenology and deconstruction. In reproducing neither a stock phenomenological reaction to deconstruction nor the routine deconstructive reading of phenomenology, Christopher Watkin provides a fresh assessment of the possibilities for the future of phenomenology, along with a new reading of the deconstructive legacy. Through detailed studies of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur and Nancy, he shows how a phenomenological tradition much wider and richer than Husserlian or Heideggerean thought alone can take account of Derrida’s critique of ontology and yet still hold a commitment to the ontological.This new reading of being and presence fundamentally re-draws our understanding of the relation of deconstruction and phenomenology, and provides the first sustained discussion of the possibilities and problems for any future ‘deconstructive phenomenology’.

Christopher Watkin is a Junior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is currently working on atheism and the death of God in Nancy, Badiou, Zizek and Meillassoux.

Link

Oxford Forum Public Conference — Ricoeur: On Memory, Politics and Forgiveness

20-21 March 2009, Faculty of Philosophy and Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford

Friday, 20 March, Faculty of Philosophy

14.00-15.15 Dialogue with Pamela Sue Anderson (Oxford)
On Confidence, Power and Affirmation

15.15-15.30 Break

15.30-16.45 Dialogue with Luc Bovens (LSE)
On Apologies and Forgiveness

16.45-17.15 Coffee/Tea

17.15-18.30 Dialogue with Morny Joy (Calgary)
On Solicitude and Gift

Saturday, 21 March, Regent’s Park College

11.30-12.45 Dialogue with David Klemm (Iowa-Glasgow)
On Reading Ricoeur (tbc)

13.00-14.15 Lunch (own arrangements)

14.15-15.30 Dialogue with William Schweiker (Chicago)
On Ricoeur and Theological Humanism (tbc)

15.30-16.00 Coffee/Tea

16.00-17.00 Round table
Chair: David Jasper (Glasgow)

The event is open to all and there are no registration fees. For further information and to book a place contact Roxana Baiasu, Roxana.Baiasu@philosophy.ox.acor Juliana Cardinale: 020 7955 7539, J.Cardinale@lse.ac.uk
Forum for European Philosophy European Institute, London School of Economics, WC2A 2AE www.philosophy-forum.org

The British Society for Phenomenology Conference 2009

St Hildas’ College, Oxford April 3 – 5

The full programme and registration forms are available from the BSP web-site: http://www.britishphenomenology.com.

If you have any queries, please contact David Webb: d.a.webb@staffs.ac.uk

Ullrich Haase (Manchester Metropolitan University)

‘History: Heidegger on Nietzsche’s 2nd Untimely Meditation’

David Krell (Depaul University)

‘Nietzsche in Derrida’s Politiques de l’amitié’

Will McNeill (Depaul University)

‘The Descent of Philosophy: On the Nietzschean Legacy in Heidegger’s Phenomenology’

Graham Parkes (University College Cork)

‘Nietzsche on Experiencing the Natural World – As It Really Is?’

Andrea Rehberg (Bilkent University)

‘Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty: Physiology, Body, Flesh’

John Sallis (Boston College)

‘Perspectives on Shining: Nietzsche and Beyond’

Jim Urpeth (Greenwich University)

‘The Phenomenology of Religious Life; Nietzsche and Bergson’

Book Discussion Session

Prof Douglas Burnham (Staffordshire University) & Joanna Hodge will discuss Jill Marsden’s book After Nietzsche: Notes Towards a Philosophy of Ecstasy (Palgrave)

Jill Marsden (University of Bolton) will respond.

A review of Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future by Fred Dallmayr:

The fate of reason today hangs in the balance. This is no small matter. Ever since its historical beginnings, reason or rationality has been the central focus and point of honor of Western modernity — a focus enshrined in Descartes’ cogito, Enlightenment rationalism, and Kantian (and neo-Kantian) critical philosophy. The result of this focus was an asymmetrical dichotomy: separated from the external world of “matter” (or nature), the cogito assumed the role of superior task master and overseer — a role fueling the enterprise of modern science and technology. During the past century, the edifice of Western modernity has registered a trembling, due to both internal and external contestations. Subverting the modern asymmetry, a host of thinkers – with views ranging from American pragmatism to European life philosophy and phenomenology — have endeavored to restore pre-cognitive “experience” (including sense perception and affect) to its rightful place. In the context of French “postmodernism,” a prominent battle cry has been to dislodge “logocentrism” (the latter term often equated with anthropocentrism). In the ambiance of recent German philosophy, the battle lines have been clearly marked: pitting champions of modern rationalism, represented by Jürgen Habermas, against defenders of experiential “world disclosure,” represented by Martin Heidegger. In his book, Nikolas Kompridis endeavors to shed new light on this controversy, with the aim not so much of bringing about a cease fire but of providing resources for arriving at better mutual understanding.

Read the rest of the review

Michael Tweed has translated and posted five Michel Henry texts over on his site. Great contribution.

Link

TOC

The Pregnancy of the Real: A Phenomenological Defense of Experimental Realism, Pages 1 – 25
Author: Shannon Vallor

Knowledge, Freedom and Willing: Hegel on Subjective Spirit, Pages 26 – 52
Author: Damion Buterin

Between Internalism and Externalism: Husserl’s Account of Intentionality, Pages 53 – 78
Author: Lilian Alweiss

Mental Capacity and Decisional Autonomy: An Interdisciplinary Challenge, Pages 79 – 107
Authors: Gareth S. Owen; Fabian Freyenhagen; Genevra Richardson; Matthew Hotopf

Phenomenology did not begin as a religious philosophy, but recently several prominent European phenomenologists have asked whether a coherent phenomenology of human experience must find its fulfillment in religion.

Christian phenomenologists such as Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, and Jean-Louis Chrétien have all pressed an incisive and provocative question to modern secular philosophy: do our lived human experiences of self, other and world finally make sense only when we see them as founded on God’s creative act? By answering this question affirmatively, these thinkers have asserted that a rigorous philosophical account of human experience must also involve a philosophy of God. Human experience, precisely in order to be true to itself, must include practices of religious gratitude and praise. As a corollary, philosophy must include theological analysis.

The Silverman Center’s 2009 Symposium on phenomenology and the theological turn will therefore investigate sympathetically and critically this radical turn to religion in phenomenology. We hope you will join us for what is sure to be a spirited conversation about a matter that is of far more than just theoretical interest.
Speakers

Jean-Luc Marion, University of Chicago and University of Paris-Sorbonne
“On the Foundation of the Distinction Between Theology and Philosophy”

Richard Kearney, Boston College
“Returning to God After God: Levinas, Derrida, Ricoeur”

Edith Wyschogrod, Rice University
“Confessional Memoirs: The Phenomenology of Telling It All”

Jay Lampert, University of Guelph
“Do the Arguments for Saturated Phenomena Prove That They Are Necessary or That They Are Possible? Time to Decide”

Link

1.  Editorial: In this Issue of KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy – The Editor

Featured Essay:

2. To Build or to Destroy?  The Philippine Experience with Walls and a Southeast Asian Perspective – Ranhilio Callangan Aquino

Articles:

3. Some Useful Lessons from Richard Rorty’s Political Philosophy for Philippine Postcolonialism – F. P. A. Demeterio

4. Adorno, Obama, and Empire: Reflections on the U.S. Presidential Election and the Next President – Lukas Kaelin

5. Heidegger, Hegel, Marx: Marcuse and the Theory of Historicity – Jeffry V. Ocay

6. Derrida’s Turn to Franciscan Philosophy – Marko Zlomislic

7. Deconstruction and the Transformation of Husserlian Phenomenology – Chung Chin-Yi

8. Toward a Return to Plurality in Arendtian Judgment – Jack E. Marsh Jr.

9. Mistaking Judgments of the Agreeable and Judgments of Taste – Francis Raven

10. The Limits of Misogyny: Schopenhauer, “On Women” – Thomas Grimwood

11. Haecceitas and the Question of Being: Heidegger and Duns Scotus – Philip Tonner

12. Kong Zi on Good Governance – Moses Aaron T. Angeles

13. The Problem of the Inefficacy of Knowledge in Early Buddhist Soteriology – Ryan Showler

Link

‘You cannot make a living just being a theoretician’: An Interview with Jean-Michel Rabaté
With Jeroen Lauwers & Thomas Van Parys

Michel Foucault, Philosopher? A Note on Genealogy and Archaeology
Rudi Visker

Beyond Resistance: a response to Žižek’s critique of Foucault’s subject of freedom
Aurelia Armstrong

Alain Badiou: Problematics and the Different Senses of Being in Being and Event
Sean Bowden

Eugen Fink and the Question of the World
Stuart Elden

Between Rupture and Repetition: Intervention and Evental Recurrence in the Thought of Alain Badiou
Hollis Phelps

Dan Zahavi, the known phenomenologist, has many of his artciles and book chapters as pdf on his own site.

Link

The International Journal of Philosophical Studies (IJPS) is pleased to announce free access to the 5 most read articles from volume 15 (2007).

Phenomenology of ‘Authentic Time’ in Husserl and Heidegger — Klaus Held

Biolinguistic Explorations: Design, Development, Evolution — Noam Chomsky

Sartre and Bergson: A Disagreement about Nothingness — Sarah Richmond

Perception, Judgment and Individuation: Towards a Metaphysics of Particularity — Andrew Benjamin

Perception of Duration Presupposes Duration of Perception – or Does it? Husserl and Dainton on time — Dan Zahavi

Maria Baghramian
School of Philosophy
UCD Dublin
http://www.ucd.ie/philosophy/staff/baghramian_maria.htm
Editor: International Journal of Philosophical Studies Taylor and Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/routledge/09672559.html

Taylor Carman, whose work is well known on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, has made some of his papers available on his website.

Link

Special issue: Affectivity and intersubjectivity: Perspectives from Phenomenology and Cognitive Science

Guest editor’s introduction — Brady Thomas Heiner
The role of the lived-body in feeling — Bernhard Waldenfels
Interkinaesthetic affectivity: a phenomenological approach — Elizabeth A. Behnke
Intersubjectivity in perception — Shaun Gallagher
A proposal for genetically modifying the project of “naturalizing” phenomenology — Brady Thomas Heiner, Kyle Powys Whyte
The phenomenological role of affect in the Capgras delusion — Matthew Ratcliffe
Feeling good vibrations in dialogical relations — Beata Stawarska
The rainbow of emotions: at the crossroads of neurobiology and phenomenology — Natalie Depraz

Brian Leiter has posted an article by Sean Kelly on the renewed interest in phenomenology.

Link

TOC:

Inquiry Without Names in Plato’s Cratylus — Christine J. Thomas

An Intensional Interpretation of Ockham’s Theory of Supposition — Catarina Dutilh Novaes

The Young Marx and German Idealism: Revisiting the Doctoral Dissertation — Martin McIvor

Hans Blumenberg’s Philosophical Anthropology: After Heidegger and Cassirer — Vida Pavesich

The Effects of the Agrégation de Philosophie on Twentieth-Century French Philosophy — Alan D. Schrift

A review of Reading Merleau-Ponty: On the Phenomenology of Perception

This excellent volume contains most of the papers read at an Anglo-French colloquium on Merleau-Ponty held at the Collège de France in the summer of 2005, plus two additional essays (by Sean Kelly and Mark Wrathall) not presented there. The colloquium itself may have been Anglo-French, but the authors are overwhelmingly Anglo. The book is neither an introduction for beginners wholly unfamiliar with Merleau-Ponty’s thought nor an academic exercise exclusively for specialists. Instead, the collection offers an engaging mixture of textual interpretation and critical argument to those who already have at least a rough sense of what Phenomenology of Perception is all about.

Read the rest of the review

Articles

“To use a metaphor at a time like this would be obscene”: a study of cancer, poetry and metaphor
Cathy Altmann

Burning Down the [Big] House: Sati in Sydney Owenson’s The Missionary
Frances Botkin

Wounded Space: Law, Justice and Violence to the Land
Jennifer Coralie

Seeing Stars: Reading Melancholy and Power at Madame Tussauds through the Lens of Hiroshi Sugimoto
Elizabeth Howie

Concrete Containment in Late Capitalism, Mysticism, the Marquis de Sade, and Phenomenological Anthropology
Apple Igrek

“Edging Back Into Awareness”; How Late it Was, How Late, Form, and the Utopian Demand
Dougal McNeill

Crisis of Memory

Traumatic Memory and Holocaust Testimony: Passing Judgement in Representations of Chaim Rumkowski
Adam Brown

Recreating Postmemory? Children of Holocaust Survivors and the
Journey to Auschwitz
Esther Jilovsky

Blurring the Boundaries: History, Memory and Imagination in the Works of W G Sebald
Diane Molloy

The British Society for Phenomenology Annual Conference
3rd – 5th April 2009
St Hilda’s College Oxford

Nietzsche and Phenomenology

Nietzsche has been important for many thinkers in the phenomenological tradition, yet the relation between his work and phenomenology remains very much in question. This conference will examine both phenomenological readings of Nietzsche and the influence of Nietzsche on phenomenology.

* If there are connections between Nietzschean thought and phenomenology, what form do they take?

* Can Nietzsche be seen as a phenomenologist, or is phenomenological method fundamentally different from his way of thinking?

* What links can be drawn between Nietzsche’s genealogical method and any of the various forms of phenomenology practised today?

* In what respects are Nietzsche’s hermeneutics those of phenomenology: for example, is a ‘physician’ of culture still a phenomenologist, and if so, how?

* In dealing with the theme of ‘Nietzsche and Phenomenology’ it is impossible to ignore Heidegger’s monumental study of Nietzsche. But is it still the paradigm for phenomenological approaches to Nietzsche?

By assessing Nietzsche’s relation to the various phenomenological projects of the 20th and 21st centuries, the conference aims to reconsider the parameters of phenomenology itself – what it aspired to be in the past, and what its validity is for us today.

Speakers

Ulli Haase (Manchester Metropolitan University)
David Farrell Krell (DePaul University)
Jill Marsden (University of Bolton)
Will McNeill (DePaul University)
Graham Parkes (University College Cork)
Andrea Rehberg (Bilkent University)
John Sallis (Boston College)
Jim Urpeth (University of Greenwich)

Conference organizers; Andrea Rehberg and Tony O’Connor.

Further information, including registration details, will appear on the web-site of The British Society for Phenomenology in due course: see, http://www.britishphenomenology.com.

Unfortunately, there will be no space on the programme this year for papers received in response to a call. However, we underline that postgraduate research students and undergraduates are very welcome. Two bursaries will be available for postgraduate students to offset the cost of attending the conference.

To find out more about the bursaries, or if you have any queries, please contact:

David Webb
Faculty of Arts Media and Design
Staffordshire University
College Road
Stoke-on-Trent
ST4 2XW UK
d.a.webb@staffs.ac.uk

Link

Description of Rethinking Facticity, eds, Francois Raffoul and Eric Sean Nelson

The concept of facticity has undergone crucial transformations over the last century in hermeneutics and phenomenology, but it has not yet received the attention that it warrants. Following a suggestion by Merleau-Ponty that philosophy is not about essences but rather the facticity of existence, prominent philosophers examine the significance of facticity in its historical context and reflect on its contemporary relevance. Focusing on the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, and Fanon, among others, they trace its significance from life-philosophy to contemporary European thought and explore its philosophical implications. The following questions are addressed: What thoughts of experience, of subjectivity, of finitude, of nature, of the body, of racial and sexual difference does facticity provoke? What thinking of language, of history, of birth and death, of our ethical being-in-the-world does it mobilize? Exploring these questions, the contributors offer new interpretations of facticity.

See the publisher’s site for more details, such as the table of contents and the pdf of the introduction.