Graham, Daniel W. Review of Patrick Lee Miller, BECOMING GOD. NDPR (November 2011).

Miller, Patrick Lee.  Becoming God: Pure Reason in Early Greek Philosophy.  London: Continuum, 2011.

This book explores the notion, found in some early Greek philosophers, that humans can become divine or god-like through reason. Patrick Lee Miller of Duquesne University provides a general introductory chapter, followed by a chapter each devoted to Heraclitus, Parmenides and the Pythagoreans, and Plato, respectively. This is, then, something like a history of ideas focusing on some important philosophical themes and developments. The topic, if foreign to modern ways of thinking, is interesting precisely because it gets to the heart of some unique Greek concerns, and it exercises an influence into late antiquity and early Christian theology. . . .

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/27394-becoming-god-pure-reason-in-early-greek-philosophy/

Madigan, Arthur. Review of Lloyd P. Gerson, ed. CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY IN LATE ANTIQUITY. NDPR (October 2011).

Gerson, Lloyd P., ed.  Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity.  2 Vols.  Cambridge: CUP, 2010.

These two volumes are the successor to The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by A. H. Armstrong, which appeared in 1967. The difference in titles reflects a fundamental difference in outlook. Armstrong treated this era as an interim period between classical Greek philosophy and the philosophy of the Middle Ages, each of which had its own unity and coherence. The present volume conceives of late ancient philosophy as a field in itself, having its own unity and coherence. . . .

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/27054-the-cambridge-history-of-philosophy-in-late-antiquity/

"Ancient Fallacies," Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Durham, September 21-23, 2011.

Greek philosophers 'invented' the discipline known as 'logic', the study and classification of valid forms of argument and inference (the 'invention' is usually attributed to Aristotle, but less systematic reflections on logical issues can be traced back at least to Plato). Since its beginning and throughout antiquity, this inquiry remained intimately connected to the investigation, diagnosis and classification of forms of argument that are invalid or otherwise unsound, and especially of those forms of argument which, despite their invalidity, somehow appear to be valid and thus can easily induce in error. To be able to spot and unmask 'fallacies' in someone else's argument was particularly crucial in a context in which philosophy itself had an intrinsic dialectical nature, and fallacy was often used consciously or 'sophistically' to win the debate or put one's rival into a corner. The conference will investigate ancient theories of fallacies and sophisms, practices and examples of fallacious argumentation, and philosophical attitudes towards them.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/classics/events/upcoming_events/?eventno=10391

Lane, Melissa. "Ancient Political Philosophy." STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY September 6, 2010.

Ancient political philosophy is understood here to mean ancient Greek and Roman thought from the classical period of Greek thought in the fifth century BCE to the end of the Roman empire in the West in the fifth century CE, excluding the rise of Christian ideas about politics during that period. Political philosophy as a genre was invented in this period by Plato and reinvented by Aristotle: it encompasses reflections on the origin of political institutions, the concepts used to interpret and organize political life such as justice and equality, the relation between the aims of ethics and the nature of politics, and the relative merits of different constitutional arrangements or regimes. Platonic models remained especially important for later authors throughout this period, even as the development of later “Hellenistic” schools of Greek philosophy, and distinctively Roman forms of philosophical adaptation, offered new frameworks for construing politics. . . .

Read the rest here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-political/.

Richardson, Edmund. Review of William W. Cook, et al., AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS AND CLASSICAL TRADITION. BMCR (August 2010).

Cook, William W., and James Tatum.  African American Writers and Classical Tradition.  Chicago:  U of Chicago P, 2010.

The beginning must be uncertain, a note half-heard. For here is a story of the edges of memory – unquiet, Protean, astonishing. In their exploration of the richness of African-American engagements with the ancient world – from the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley to the satire of Fran Ross – Cook and Tatum have produced one of the most important and enchanting books ever written in the field of classical reception.

(And if that has the heavy finality of conclusion, it still must serve as opening gambit – such is the scope of this work.)

Wisely, the authors have not attempted an all-encompassing narrative. Instead, each of the book’s eight chapters is focused around one complex, suggestive figure, or literary strategy. The Ciceronian speech of Frederick Douglass – seized from his self-proclaimed ‘betters’ – leads into the troubled Odyssey of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, where the Cyclops lies in wait in an American psychiatric ward, and the allusive, quicksilver verse of Melvin Tolson, the ‘Pindar of Harlem.’ The chapters’ progression is broadly chronological – beginning in eighteenth-century Boston, ending in the present day and a glance, half-longing, towards times to come.

Grand narrative this is not, in any conventional sense. The past is fragile, here – hard to reach, harder still to make one’s own. While still a slave, Douglass had to ‘steal knowledge’ (58) from under the nose of his master, by persuading his white childhood friends to give him lessons. Wheatley’s antiquity is structured by loss (46). Even when past and present do meet on solid ground, the result – as in W.E.B. Du Bois’s Quest for the Silver Fleece – is often far from triumphant; ‘just because you start interpreting everything allegorically,’ as the authors remark, ‘[it] doesn’t mean you’ll be any better off’ (134). These are discourses which many conventional approaches to reception would be hard-pressed to narrate – where remembrance becomes ‘a dream as frail as those of ancient time’ (Tennyson, quoted 229). . . .

Read the rest here: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-08-63.html.

Scodel, Ruth. Review of Christopher Lyle Johnstone, LISTENING TO THE LOGOS. BMCR (August 2010).

Johnstone, Christophe Lyle.  Listening to the Logos: Speech and the Coming of Wisdom in Ancient Greece.   Columbia:  U of South Carolina P, 2009.

This is a study of the interaction of how Greek concepts of wisdom interact with the understanding of speech. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it makes Aristotle its telos, and so considers Greek intellectual history as it leads to Aristotle: after a discussion of Homer, it goes through the Presocratics, the sophists and Socrates, Plato and Isocrates.

It is a good idea for classicists, every once in a while, to read treatments of their texts by smart people who are not classicists, usually colleagues in related fields. They can profit in two very different, indeed opposite, ways: first, sometimes the comparative outsider, with a fresh perspective, can offer insights, solutions to problems, or methods or approach that the community of specialists has missed because it can be very hard to go beyond the questions that have already been defined and endlessly discussed. Second, such books can reveal how the field looks to its neighbors. There is almost always a time lag between disciplines, and even between subfields. The people who work on an area go to conferences with each other and send emails to each other; then they read each other’s articles. The rest of us often find out that something important has changed only after a major book appears and has been reviewed, or perhaps when we read job applications. So we sometimes find out that our scholarly neighbors are out of touch with developments in classics, and maybe are encouraged to inform them better. There is always a danger, though, that we can turn ourselves into scholarly police, patrolling our boundaries and looking for mistakes on which to pounce.

All this explains why I thought it would be potentially valuable and fun to read a book about wisdom in Greece by a scholar of rhetoric, but also a little nervous. I am interested particularly in Greek conceptions of practical wisdom, since I aspire to it (sophia I have never hoped for, but I like to think that a certain measure of phronesis has come with middle age). This did not turn out to be the book I expected. Its narrative is basically the old “from mythos to logos” account, which is a disappointment, although I am worried that I have missed something very important. It could be interesting and useful to look single-mindedly for the antecedents of Aristotle’s thinking about sophia, phronesis, and speech. Lyric poetry, history, and tragedy could all contribute to an understanding of wisdom and logos. A study of wisdom and speech that does not discuss Solon’s poetry and does not mention Herodotus has missed too much. But the book has defined the antecedents of Aristotle largely in the terms of Aristotle’s own history of philosophy. So the basic problem seems to be that the book is either too Aristotelian or not Aristotelian enough; it is not clearly directed towards Aristotle as telos, but it allows Aristotle too much implicit control. . . .

Read the rest here: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-08-59.html.

(Thanks to Ed Brandon for the suggestion.)

"Phenomenology & Ancient Greek Philosophy: Reappraisal and Renewal," Department of Philosophy & Social Studies, University of Crete, June 27-29, 2010.

Among both phenomenologists and scholars of ancient Greek philosophy, it is a well-known fact that the originators of 20th century phenomenology, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, understand phenomenological philosophy as having a special relation with the thought that originated in Greece two and a half thousand years before. This fact, of course, does not also mean that there is a mutual agreement between these two groups of philosophers on the legitimacy and the relevance of the phenomenological understanding of the ancient Greek philosophy. Time and again, for instance, scholars of ancient Greek philosophy have openly disagreed with the readings of the Pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle presented in the works of Heidegger. Nonetheless, he continuously tried to decipher in ancient Greek philosophical thinking the most profound sources of the history of the understanding of Being that still underpin the foundations upon which Europe and the modern world rest. Husserl’s phenomenology, in contrast, offers not so much a sustained interpretation and retrieval of ancient Greek philosophy but the attempt to establish a philosophical science by employing the central ancient Greek philosophical concepts, such as eidos, noesis, noêma, idea, essence, category, etc., to express the findings of phenomenological research. Additionally, the last period of his thought is characterized by a historical reflection on the post First World War and pre Second World War crisis in European sciences and culture that traces the origin and meaning of European philosophy to its primal establishment in ancient Greece. On the other hand, Max Scheler attempted to establish the existence of an ideal realm of values, to interpret anew the meaning of the tragic, and establish the content of a non-formal ethics that seems to maintain a close relation to Aristotle’s virtue ethics. And, likewise, Hans-Georg Gadamer, from the beginning to the end of his philosophical activity, situated his phenomenologically informed philosophical hermeneutics in terms of the critical engagement and appropriation of Plato and Aristotle. Jan Patocka, as well, is known for his endeavor to bring together phenomenological philosophy, political thinking, and thematics in ancient Greek philosophy. As a rule, phenomenological scholarship has attempted to clarify the understanding of ancient Greek philosophy offered by phenomenology’s founders. Nevertheless, it seems that the time is ripe for a reappraisal of the relation between phenomenological philosophy and ancient Greek Philosophy by a new generation of phenomenologists. In the critical times that we now live, in a milieu where the calling for a new life-paradigm keeps growing louder and louder, contemporary phenomenologists are bound by the responsibility to think critically on the current situation and its history. This is the task of thinking and elucidating anew the relationship of phenomenological philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy. The practical realization of this task may guide a revitalizing understanding of the current state of phenomenological philosophy in relation to its ancient Greek inspirations. It also promises to set this revitalized phenomenological philosophy at the vanguard of the effort to elaborate the meaning of emergency characterizing the current situation and to prepare the ground for its possible overcoming. Among the invited speakers that will come at the conference are: John Sallis (Boston College, USA) Walter Brogan (Villanova University, USA) Burt Hopkins (Seattle University, USA) James Risser (Seattle University, USA) Ivan Chvatik (Charles University, Czech Rep.) Claudio Majolino (Lille University, France) George Xiropaides (Athens Schools of Fine Arts, Greece) Pavlos Kontos (University of Patras, Greece) Panagiotis Thanasas (University of Thessalonica, Greece) Golfo Maggini (University of Ioannina, Greece) Send abstracts to Panos Theodorou (pantheo@fks.uoc.gr) not later than the 30th of April, 2010. Visit the conference website here: http://www.fks.uoc.gr/phenomenology/index.html.

Seaford, Richard. "The Greeks and Money." TLS June 17, 2009.

As I argued some years ago in Money and the Early Greek Mind (2004), the pivotal position of the Greeks in world culture stems largely from the fact that the sixth-century polis was the first society in history (with the conceivable exception of China) to be pervaded by money. Coinage was invented towards the end of the seventh century BC, and spread rapidly in the Greek city-states from the beginning of the sixth. Did not the Babylonians, for instance, use silver as money well before that? On any sensibly narrow definition of money, no they did not. This new and revolutionary phenomenon of money itself underpinned and stimulated two great inventions in the Greek polis of the sixth century, “philosophy” and tragedy. “Philosophy” (or rather idea of the cosmos as an impersonal system) was first produced in the very first monetized society, early sixth-century Ionia, and – even more specifically – in its commercial centre Miletos. The tendency of pre-modern society to project social power onto cosmology (for example, “king Zeus rules the world”) applies to the new social power of money. And the following description applies equally to money and to much of the cosmology of the early philosophers: universal power resides not in a person but in an impersonal, all-underlying, semi-abstract substance. But the relationship of money and tragedy is no less striking. Tragedy was created shortly after the introduction into Athens of coinage. This – though it has no place in the voluminous literature on the subject – seems to me one of the most important facts about tragedy. Greek myth is, of course, largely pre-monetary, but in tragedy it is shaped by the new all-pervasive power of money. It is not only the obsession with money of some tragic tyrants (Oedipus, for example) that I have in mind. An entirely new feature of money is that its possession renders unnecessary in principle all pre-monetary forms of social relationship: reciprocity, redistribution, kinship, ritual, and so on. Money allows you to fulfil all your needs. It provides the power to increase itself. And it tends to promote predatory isolation. Hence the focus of much Athenian tragedy on the extreme isolation of the individual – from the gods and even (through killing) from his closest kin. I know of no precedent for this in literature, certainly not in the pre-monetary society depicted in Homer. This horrifying possibility is embodied in the figure of the tyrant (turannos), who in historiographic, philosophical and tragic texts characteristically kills his own kin, violates the sacred, and is much concerned with money as a means of power. The word “hero”, the preoccupation of so much critical literature on the subject, barely occurs in Athenian tragedy, but turannos (or some form of that word) occurs over 170 times. . . . Read the rest here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6518502.ece.

"Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World," Department of Classics, Trinity College Dublin, July 6-9, 2009.

Communities are the cornerstone of any society, but Greek history is often focused on the communities of citizens. Studies of other groups are often defined by their opposition to this citizen community: citizen/foreigner, free/slave, male/female etc. Literary accounts, written predominantly by a wealthy male citizen elite, often emphasise these differences, but status distinctions are much less distinguishable outside of legalistic or ideological contexts. In visual culture it is difficult to discern these kinds of status differentials. In material culture it is almost impossible.This conference aims to move away from these polarities to examine the formation of communities and the networks of interaction between different groups in the classical and early hellenistic periods. Status could be a fluid concept: slaves, foreigners and citizens worked side-by-side; they lived together, dedicated to the gods together, and were receptive to similar cultural impulses. The conference therefore aims to examine the following questions: • What constituted a ‘community’ within the Greek world? • What networks did people create, belong to, and destroy? • How were different groups of people interconnected, and how did they negotiate the ‘boundaries’ between them? • How did communities change in response to social, political, economic impulses? • How can we use networks to access the lives and activities of people for whom little traditional evidence survives? Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.tcd.ie/Classics/cnagw/index.php.

Cfp: "Querying Sexual Citizenships." SEXTURES 1.1 (forthcoming).

‘Harbingers of death’, ‘the shame and ruin of humanity’, ‘anti-life’, ‘threat to the survival of the human race’, ‘moral and physical cripples’, and ‘vampires sucking the life blood of the nation’ are only some of the images of radical alterity invoked and regularly rehearsed by major political figures in post-socialist European countries when faced with native lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer (LGBTQ) claims to citizenship. Citizenship, understood here as the practicing of social, cultural, political and economic rights, and the active involvement in the organized life of a political community, is still firmly tied in most countries of Central and Eastern Europe to a heteropatriarchal social imaginary in which the nation continues to be metaphorically configured as the exclusive home of the traditional heterosexual family - the purveyor of pure ethnic bloodlines based on rigid asymmetrical power system of gender relations. The conflation of heterosexism with ethnic nationalism that permeates this imaginary also fuels a vicious politics of national belonging where the use of highly inflammatory, offensive and dehumanising language has led to a dramatic increase in violence against members of various sexual minorities, which in turn has resulted in the effective silencing of queer voices in the public sphere and the paradoxical feeling that sexually different people were somehow ‘more free’ under the previous regime. The Amsterdam Treaty, a legal document attempting to define the evolving concept of European citizenship, intends to temper the current trend of hyper-nationalist integration into ‘Europe of nations’ by moving to a vision of Europe of (individual) citizens. The Treaty, particularly Article 13, clearly states that the respect for human rights and the principle of non-discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation forms the basis of 21st century European citizenship. However, many new member-states of the EU and candidate-countries blatantly and proudly flout their human rights obligations derived from their (current or future) accession into the EU and continue to devise a raft of laws and policies denying basic human and citizenship rights to lesbians, gays, transsexuals and queers, including the right to assembly and free expression. Deep historical distrust in identity based organizations and identity politics, a weak civil society, a fragile rule of law, and the ignorance about, or unpreparedness to use, the legal and political instruments of European citizenship, create a very unique set of challenges for LGBTQ people in post-socialist Europe on their road to freedom and equality. Transnational LGBTQ rights movements arising from the institutional, legal, social, political, economic and intellectual successes of the gay, lesbian and queer movements in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand become increasingly aware that a western model of sexual politics and citizenship based on political and economic liberalism is simply unworkable in post-socialist Europe. Given this context, SEXTURES invites theoretical, conceptual and empirical essays from scholars of all disciplines (philosophy, women’s studies, gay and lesbian studies, Slavonic/Eastern European/ Balkan studies, cultural studies, sociology, geography, anthropology, political science, history, and comparative literatures) who are working on topics related to gender, sexuality and citizenship in post-socialist Europe. We are particularly interested in inter- and transdisciplinary essays, critically drawing from feminist, gay and lesbian, transsexual, queer, postcolonial and critical race theories, that examine the concept of (sexual) citizenship in all its complexity; from being a social relationship inflected by intersecting sexual, gender, ethnic, national, class and religious identities; positioning across various cross-cutting social hierarchies; cultural assumptions about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ citizens and ‘humans’ and ‘aliens’; to institutional practices of active discrimination and marginalization, and a sense and politics of belonging to an imagined community like the nation or ‘united Europe’. We welcome thoughtful philosophical reflections on the relationship between ideology, utopia and European citizenship with a particular emphasis on the utopian/revolutionary potential of the (social) imaginary as understood, for example, by Deleuze and Ricoeur. In this context, we particularly encourage submissions examining the promises and limits of the concepts of ‘flexible’ or ‘nomadic’ citizenship for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and queers living in post-socialist Europe. We are also interested in empirically grounded close examinations of actual practices of social belonging (or non-belonging) as lived by ordinary LGBTQ people in a number of everyday social situations at home, school, work, dealing with the state, etc. In this context, we welcome submissions that explore the emotional dynamic, and the cultural politics of emotions, played out in these situations. While we focus on Central and Eastern Europe, we welcome submissions that cover issues of sexual citizenship in other parts of the world. Submissions should be no longer than 8000 words. Please consult our guide for contributors when preparing your manuscripts. Deadline for submission of papers is 2 June 2009. Sextures is a refereed international, independent, transdisciplinary electronic scholarly journal that aims to provide a forum for open intellectual debate across the arts, humanities and social sciences about all aspects affecting the intricate connections between politics, culture and sexuality primarily, but not exclusively, in the Balkans, Eastern and Central Europe. It is published in English twice a year. Sextures is dedicated to fast turnaround of submitted papers. We expect this special issue to be published in September 2009. More information about the journal can be found on this website. Please direct all inquiries regarding this special issue or send manuscripts to: Dr Alexander Lambevski, Founding Editor and Publisher alex@sextures.net, editor@sextures.net. Visit the journal homepage here: www.sextures.net.

Cfp: "Phenomenology and the Theological Turn," 27th Annual Symposium, Simon Silverman Phenomenology Centre, Duquesne University, April 28-29, 2009.

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"

Further information may be found here: http://www.duq.edu/theological-turn/.

Fish, Stanley. "Faith and Deficits." THINK AGAIN BLOG. NEW YORK TIMES March 1, 2009.

Talk about the economy is everywhere, and the same things are being said. We’re in a deep hole. We may not be able to dig ourselves out. We’re underwater. Our assets are overwhelmed by our debts, which keep growing. The question is who or what can get us out of this mess? Some answer Obama. Some (a much smaller group) say Geithner. Some (in desperation) say China. But others say Jesus Christ. At first glance, Christian doctrine and economic exigencies seem unrelated, but in recent days I have come across two different ways of bringing them together. . . . Find out what these are here: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/faith-and-deficits/.

Dawkins, Richard. "Dawkins on Darwin." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT February 11, 2009.

How can you say that evolution is “true”? Isn’t that just your opinion, of no more value than anybody else’s? Isn’t every view entitled to equal “respect”? Maybe so where the issue is one of, say, musical taste or political judgement. But when it is a matter of scientific fact? Unfortunately, scientists do receive such relativistic protests when they dare to claim that something is factually true in the real world. Given the title of Jerry Coyne’s book, this is a distraction that I must deal with. A scientist arrogantly asserts that thunder is not the triumphal sound of God’s balls banging together, nor is it Thor’s hammer. It is, instead, the reverberating echoes from the electrical discharges that we see as lightning. Poetic (or at least stirring) as those tribal myths may be, they are not actually true. But now a certain kind of anthropologist can be relied on to jump up and say something like the following: Who are you to elevate scientific “truth” so? The tribal beliefs are true in the sense that they hang together in a meshwork of consistency with the rest of the tribe’s world view. Scientific “truth” is only one kind (“Western” truth, the anthropologist may call it, or even “patriarchal”). Like tribal truths, yours merely hang together with the world view that you happen to hold, which you call scientific. An extreme version of this viewpoint (I have actually encountered this) goes so far as to say that logic and evidence themselves are nothing more than instruments of masculine oppression over the “intuitive mind”. Listen, anthropologist. Just as you entrust your travel to a Boeing 747 rather than a magic carpet or a broomstick; just as you take your tumour to the best surgeon available, rather than a shaman or a mundu mugu, so you will find that the scientific version of truth works. You can use it to navigate through the real world. . . . Read the rest here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5707143.ece.

Cfp: "Critical Approaches to Ancient Philosophy," University of Bristol, March 21-22, 2009.

Update: Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.bris.ac.uk/ias/events/2009/257?t=10:27:57. Original Post (December 12, 2008): While the diversity of disciplines influenced by classical philosophers is a testament to their works’ fecundity, all too often it happens that specialists approaching them from the perspective of the history of philosophy, literary theory and 'continental' philosophy, and ancient cultural history do not communicate. When they do happen, encounters between these perspectives are sometimes marked by confusion and frustration. Even with abundant good will, we may get the feeling that we simply are not speaking about the same texts. The purpose of this workshop is to bring scholars from different backgrounds into a round-table format in order to consider the feasibility and desirability of breaking down these 'disciplinary walls.' Speakers will give a series of methodologically self-conscious papers on ancient philosophical texts, reflecting on the preconceptions about the means and aims of 'philosophy' particularly and 'scholarship' generally that underlie their approaches. Equal time will be given to papers and discussion, and there will also be a closing discussion. Speakers include:

• Kurt Lampe (Bristol),
• Miriam Leonard (UCL),
• Wilson Shearin (Stanford),
• Robert Wardy (Cambridge), and
• John Sellars (UWE).

Christopher Rowe (Durham) will chair the first day’s papers, and David Konstan (Brown) will chair the second day and introduce the closing discussion.

This workshop is supported by BIRTHA (The Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts) and the Bristol Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition. Inquiries should be directed to Kurt Lampe (clkwl@bristol.ac.uk).

Hanson, Victor Davis. "The Humanities Move Off Campus." CITY JOURNAL 18.4 (2008).

Until recently, classical education served as the foundation of the wider liberal arts curriculum, which in turn defined the mission of the traditional university. Classical learning dedicated itself to turning out literate citizens who could read and write well, express themselves, and make sense of the confusion of the present by drawing on the wisdom of the past. Students grounded in the classics appreciated the history of their civilization and understood the rights and responsibilities of their unique citizenship. Universities, then, acted as cultural custodians, helping students understand our present values in the context of a 2,500-year tradition that began with the ancient Greeks. But in recent decades, classical and traditional liberal arts education has begun to erode, and a variety of unexpected consequences have followed. The academic battle has now gone beyond the in-house “culture wars” of the 1980s. Though the argument over politically correct curricula, controversial faculty appointments, and the traditional mission of the university is ongoing, the university now finds itself being bypassed technologically, conceptually, and culturally, in ways both welcome and disturbing. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_4_classical_education.html.

Special Issue: the Dictatorship of Relativism. THE NEW CRITERION (January 2009).

See:

Kimball, Roger: "Introduction":

It was to explore the lineaments and limitations of modern relativism that The New Criterion collaborated with London’s Social Affairs Unit in organizing a conference on the subject last autumn. The papers that follow explore various facets of the vertiginous moral and epistemological inheritance we sum up in the word “relativism.” I hasten to acknowledge that this is well-trodden ground. One could go back at least to Aristotle’s dissection of Protagoras’s “man-is-the-measure-of-all-things” philosophy to find a warning flag about the species of intellectual incontinence concentrated in the doctrine of relativism. In our own day, the English historian Paul Johnson located the modernity of modern times in its embrace of relativism. In Modern Times, his magisterial procession through the political and moral history of the twentieth century, Johnson even announced the exact birthday of the era he set out to describe. The Modern World, Johnson wrote in his opening flourish, began on May 29, 1919. That was the day Einstein’s theory of relativity was experimentally confirmed, thus shattering the complacent confidence of the Newtonian world view . . . (http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Introduction--The-dictatorship-of-relativism-3981)

Daniels, Anthony. "Guarding the Boundaries":

Since I’ve received no education in philosophy whatever, it is no doubt very rash of me to make a broad generalization concerning the subject, but I shall risk it nonetheless: that in the whole history of philosophy not a single important philosophical problem has ever been solved beyond all possible dispute. I know that the late Sir Karl Popper claimed to have solved the problem of induction not merely to his own satisfaction, but also to the satisfaction of all rational men; alas, I do not think that all rational men have reciprocated by agreeing with him. Pace Popper, the philosophy of science is not now at an end, any more than is mental, political, or moral philosophy. Unless I am much mistaken, the metaphysical foundations of aesthetic and moral judgment have not been established with anything like the certainty with which, say, the circulation of the blood has been established. I know that it is fashionable to state that all scientific knowledge is provisional, and itself rests upon metaphysically uncertain foundations. Perhaps in the abstract this is correct; yet I do not think anyone seriously expects a future researcher to discover that the blood does not in fact circulate. Evidently, there are degrees even of scientific tentativeness. . . . (http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Guarding-the-boundaries-3979)

Byrne, Alex. "God: Philosophers Weigh In." BOSTON REVIEW January / February 2009.

God has had a lot of bad press recently. The four horsemen of atheism, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, have all published books sharply critical of belief in God: respectively, The God Delusion, Breaking the Spell, The End of Faith, and God Is Not Great. Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens pile on the greatest amount of scorn, while Dennett takes the role of good cop. But despite differences of tone and detail, they all agree that belief in God is a kind of superstition. As Harris puts it, religion “is the denial—at once full of hope and full of fear—of the vastitude of human ignorance.” The question of God’s existence is one of those few matters of general interest on which philosophers might pretend to expertise—Dennett is a professional philosopher, and Harris has a B.A. in the subject. Still, of the four, it is Dawkins who wades the furthest into philosophy. So what can philosophy contribute? In particular, have philosophers come to a verdict on the traditional arguments for God’s existence? . . . Read the rest here: http://bostonreview.net/BR34.1/byrne.php.

Cfp: "Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship," Annual Conference, ANZCA, Queensland University of Technology, July 8-10, 2009.

Communication exists as an everyday social practice, as a skill or art applied in a range of contexts (business, politics, entertainment, etc.), as an application of media technologies to reach audiences and communities, and as an interdisciplinary field for teaching, research and scholarship, and community engagement. As creativity is increasingly sought as a socio-cultural practice whose application extends beyond the arts to all aspects of economic and social life, new challenges are being presented for the application of communication in a range of contexts. Digital media technologies enable new modes of social networking and participation that challenge the sender-receiver, producer-consumer orthodoxies of 20th century mass media and mass communication. Meanwhile, the challenges of globalisation and multicultural societies are presenting both the need and the opportunity for new forms of citizenship that cross national boundaries. These challenges raise questions of global citizenship and public communication spaces that require new attention to be given to questions of global media ethics and intercultural communicative capacities. The 2009 meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association welcomes papers from across a range of academic disciplines, including-but not exclusive to-advertising; business and marketing communication; communication studies; digital media and Internet studies; cultural studies; film, media, radio, and television studies; journalism; organisational and interpersonal communication; public relations; and the creative, visual, and performing arts. We particularly welcome the contribution of creative and professional practitioners, as well as those involved in leading-edge research in relevant academic fields. The ANZCA09 Conference is particularly seeking papers and panels that: Engage international and comparative research perspectives; Address questions of intercultural communications media and professional practice, including teaching and pedagogical practice; Challenge and work across disciplinary boundaries and established methodologies; Critically address the role of communication in creative problem-solving; Consider the implications of social networking media and participatory media cultures in challenging the dominance of the 20th century mass communications Streams will include: Advertising and integrated marketing communication Communication and pedagogy Communication ethics Digital and social media Disability and communication Entertainment Global media and communication Intercultural communication Interpersonal and small group communication Journalism and news media Media and citizenship Mobile communication Organisational communication Political communication Public relations Radio-Audio-Sound - research and practice Science and environmntal communication Speech Communication and Rhetoric Visual Communication Stream co-coordinators will send out calls for papers identifying central themes shortly, but we encourage you to prepare and submit abstracts at the earliest opportunity. Those proposing panel sessions for ANZCA09 should contact the Conference organisers directly at the earliest opportunity. Full papers and abstracts to be submitted by Friday February 6, 2009. The contact for all conference enquiries is: Professor Terry Flew Media and Communication Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology E-mail: t.flew@qut.edu.au Phone: 61 7 3138 8188 Further information is available here: http://www.anzca09.org/.

Herrnstein Smith, Barbara. "A Cognitive Revolution? Naturalism, Otherwise." THE IMMANENT FRAME June 23, 2008.

The past fifteen years or so have been a period of extraordinary activity in pursuit of what are called “cognitive” and/or “evolutionary” explanations of religion. These include, in addition to Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (the focus of my previous post), a number of other self-consciously innovative books with titles like How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. What unites these works and distinguishes them from the broader naturalistic tradition in religious studies is, first, the centrality for their approach of methods and theories drawn from evolutionary psychology and the rather sprawling field of “cognitive science” and, second, the more or less strenuous identification of their efforts with “science,” itself rather monolithically and sometimes triumphalistically conceived. In these two respects, these and related works constitute what could be called the New Naturalism in religious studies. The New Naturalist program requires, in my view, careful review and discriminating assessment. The intellectual interest of the general program and the promise of its cognitive-evolutionary approaches for affording better understandings of important features of human behavior and culture should, I think, be recognized. But I also think that critical attention should be given to the intellectual confinements represented by some of the program’s characteristic theoretical assumptions and methodological commitments, especially when viewed in relation to existing methods in the naturalistic study of religion and alternative theories of human behavior, culture, and cognition. Indeed, in spite of the disdain New Naturalists commonly exhibit for prior achievements and alternative methods (as illustrated by Boyer’s wholesale brush-offs), their characteristic cognitive-evolutionary accounts of religion are likely to become more substantial, persuasive, and illuminating when joined to studies by researchers and scholars working with other naturalistic approaches to religion, both social-scientific and humanistic. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/06/23/naturalism-otherwise/.

"Towards a Philosophy of Life: Reflections on the Concept of Life in Continental Philosophy of Religion," Liverpool Hope University, June 26-28, 2009.

"The question whether it is still possible to live is the form in which metaphysics impinges on us urgently today." (Adorno, Metaphysics: Concepts and Problems) Traditionally, a common conception of philosophy has been as a melete thanatou or 'meditation upon death.' However, in recent years it is the significance of the concept of 'life' which has begun to receive increasing attention in contemporary European philosophy. Indeed, writing in the wake of the brutalization of life in the death camps of Auschwitz, Adorno poses a central question for current philosophical debate on life, namely, 'How might life live?' The aim of this conference is to address this question and in doing so assess recent philosophies of life. In particular, the conference seeks to explore metaphysical, phenomenological, ethical and religious underpinnings of philosophies of life, especially in light of the emergence of 'continental philosophy of religion.' By enquiring into conceptions of life in contemporary philosophical and religious thought, this conference also aims to reconsider the key project of ancient philosophy: the teaching of the good life. Keynote Speakers: Dr. Pamela Sue Anderson (University of Oxford) Professor John D. Caputo (Syracuse University) Professor Don Cupitt (University of Cambridge) Professor Jean-Yves Lacoste (Institut Catholique, Paris) Professor John Milbank (University of Nottingham) Abstracts (no more than 500 words) are invited on a broad range of themes including: - The concept of life in philosophies of immanence and vitalism (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Henry, Alain Badiou, etc) - Life, power and politics (especially Foucault, and Giorgio Agamben) - Alterity, gift and life: deconstruction and phenomenology - Rethinking life in light of the body, natality and sexual difference: feminist philosophy of religion and feminist theology - Psychoanalysis (life, death and desire) - Theologies of life (creation, incarnation, sacrament and grace) We expect to publish a selection of papers from the conference proceedings. To submit an abstract (deadline: Friday 17 April, 2009), or for further information please email: Dr. Patrice Haynes - haynesp@hope.ac.uk.