A Forum on the Value of Research in the Humanities

July 31, 5-7pm

Clemenger Auditorium, NGV International, 180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne (North Entrance)

Opening address by Prof Aaron Russell and moderated by Dr Sean Bowden.

The speakers are:

• Prof Joy Damousi, Professor of History, University of Melbourne, and current President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
• Prof David Lowe, Alfred Deakin Professor and Chair in Contemporary History, Deakin University.
• Prof Robert Stern, Professor of Philosophy, University of Sheffield.
• Dr Miriam Bankovsky, Senior Lecturer in Politics, La Trobe University.
• Dr Emily Potter, Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and Associate Head of School (Research) of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University.

The event is supported by PHI, the Contemporary Histories Research Group and the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University.

While the event is free to attend, registrations are necessary. Please register your attendance here.

For any inquiries, please contact Sean Bowden ([email protected]).

Originally a special issue of Angelaki (23.2), Problems in Twentieth Century French Philosophy has now been published in book form by Routledge. Co-edited by Sean Bowden and Mark G.E. Kelly, it features articles by Deakin philosophers Bowden, Matthew Sharpe and Daniela Voss.

Dr Petra Brown (Deakin University), “Natality: Arendt’s challenge to the Kampfgemeinschaft (battle-community)”

Abstract:

The term ‘Kampfgemeinschaft’, variously translated as ‘battle-community’, ‘fighting-community’ or ‘struggle in common’ was a term that was invoked after World War I to explain the bonds and camaraderie formed by soldiers in the trenches. In the postwar years, the term was taken up by a broader German population, including intellectual thinkers such as Heidegger, who developed philosophies through the prism of struggle, sacrifice and destruction that focused on human mortality as the defining part of human existence.  While Heidegger emphasised the idea of polemical dialogue, of struggle amongst one another in the face of death in order to define one’s own ‘authenticity’, Arendt’s idea of community requires neither the focus on death, nor the sense of struggle against an enemy in order to become ‘authentic’. For Arendt, authenticity begins through recognising one’s own interdependence in a community.  This is evident through examining a concept that lies at the heart of her political philosophy: the concept of natality. This paper examines to what extent Arendt’s concept of natality challenges the adoption of a ‘battle-community’ mentality as a basis for philosophy and whether it is able to provide an alternative vision of community in a plural age.

Bio:

Petra Brown is an academic in philosophy at Deakin University, Australia.  Research interests and expertise are in the area of philosophy of religion, religion and ethics, German mid-20th century philosophy, political philosophy, Carl Schmitt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Soren Kierkegaard. My PhD, Bonhoeffer: Kierkegaard’s Single Individual in a State of Exception, was completed in early 2013. Publications include, ‘The Sons destined to Murder their Father: Crisis in Interwar Germany’ in Crisis and Reconfigurations, Springer, forthcoming  2016, co-authored with Ian Weeks, ‘Hans Mol, Science, and Narrative Identity’, in Sacred Selves, Sacred Settings: Reflecting Hans Mol, Douglas Davies (Ed) Ashgate, 2015, and ‘Against Fundamentalism: The Silence of the Divine in the work of Karen Armstrong’ in Secularisation and Its Discontents. Perspectives on the Return of Religion in the Contemporary West, Springer, 2013. Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy and theology, particularly in the context of her German peers is a new research interest.

Where and when:

Tuesday 27 September, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Dr Ashley Woodward (Dundee University), “Lyotard’s Post-phenomenological Aesthetics”

Abstract:

This paper argues that unity can be given to the great diversity of Lyotard’s writings in aesthetics and philosophy of art if the itinerary of his thought is seen as a post-phenomenological arc. His reflections in this area take off from an encounter with the phenomenological aesthetics of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Mikel Dufrenne (supervisor of his Doctorat d’etat) in the late 1960s, traverse various approaches to art and aesthetic perspectives, and significantly return to some reflections on phenomenological themes in his late works. This arc can be seen as almost neatly delimited by two critical reviews of Dufrenne’s works, one from 1969 and one from 1996. From both Merleau-Ponty and Dufrenne, Lyotard inherits a concern with the sensible materiality of artworks. Yet with both, he is critical of a philosophy of nature which seems to ground their approaches to aesthetics. Lyotard’s post-phenomenological arc can be seen as taking him increasingly further away from such a philosophy of nature, which to him seems to mark the phenomenologists’ works with a romantic aesthetic which he believes is out of step with the times, and with which the artworld has definitively broken. This is reflected in his increasing interest in constructivist and conceptual strategies in artworks, where rational composition seems to take precedence over gestural immediacy, and conceptual meaning seems to dominate over sensible presence. This break from the romantic aesthetic in art, Lyotard suggests, is mirrored by the crisis of foundations in science, in which rational knowledge can no longer be grounded in perceptual givens. Together, these views cast doubt on the idea that there is a ‘nature’ which might be expressed through art or science. Lyotard’s commitment to the sensible materiality of artworks persists, however, and is reasserted in his late aesthetics, where we see themes from Merleau-Ponty and Dufrenne re-emerge.

Bio:

Ashley Woodward is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee, Honorary Fellow at Deakin University, and a founding member of the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy. He has published widely on contemporary European philosophy and his most recent book is Lyotard: The Inhuman Condition. Reflections on Nihilism, Information, and Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

Where and when:

Tuesday 19 July, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Dr Laura Schroeter (University of Melbourne), Dr Francois Schroeter (University of Melbourne), “Deflationary Normative Naturalism”

Abstract:

Two core objections have been raised against naturalism about normative properties. According to non-naturalists, (1) normative properties are sui generis and cannot be reduced to causal-explanatory properties posited by the natural sciences, and (2) normative properties are “objective, universal and absolute” (Enoch). We explain how a deflationary form of naturalism can accommodate (1). We then explain how (2) involves implicit commitments about the way normative terms acquire their reference. We propose an independently plausible principle for assigning reference that can vindicate (2) while adhering to deflationary naturalism.

Bio:

François Schroeter (Dr Habil Fribourg) is a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on issues in moral psychology, metaethics, moral theory and Kantian ethics. Laura Schroeter (PhD Michigan) is currently a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. Previously she was an Austrialian Research Fellow at Melbourne and a postdoctoral fellow at the ANU. She works primarily on the nature of concepts and theories of reference. The two are currently working on a monograph on normative concepts.

Where and when:

Tuesday 12 July, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Maria Nichterlein’s and John Morss’s new book, Deleuze and Psychology, is forthcoming with Routledge.

For more information, see here.

Prof. Jack Reynolds (Deakin University), “Scientific Realism and Phenomenology: A Show down?”

Abstract:

Since Quentin Meillassoux’s influential critique of phenomenology, there has been renewed interested in understanding whether phenomenology is antithetical to scientific realism and instead supports versions of scientific anti-realism, whether instrumentalism, van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, or Fine’s NOA. This paper works through the options here, and argues against views (like Meillassoux’s and Brassier’s, but also endorsed by many phenomenologists) that hold that phenomenology and scientific realism are mutually exclusive or forced into a “show down”. I contend that where a show down exists it is due to commitments that are sometimes (perhaps often) associated with scientific realism, but are not strictly required by the position (e.g. adopting a view from nowhen; a mechanistic conception of nature and the relation between parts and wholes; an objectivist aim to eliminate or replace the first-person perspective, etc.).

Bio:

Jack Reynolds is Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. He has written four books: Chronopathologies: The Politics of Time in Deleuze, Derrida, Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology (2012), Analytic Versus Continental: Arguments on the Methods and Value of Philosophy (2010, with James Chase), Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity (2004), and Understanding Existentialism (2006). He has also co-edited various books, including Phenomenology and Science (2016), Sartre: Key Concepts (2013), Continuum Companion to Existentialism (2011), Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides (2010), and Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts (2008). He is currently writing a book on the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and the empirical sciences (and hence on meta-philosophy). In arguing for the compatibility of weak forms of methodological naturalism with phenomenology, he contests many of the standard interpretations of this relationship. It is forthcoming with Routledge and titled Phenomenology, Naturalism and Science: A Hybrid and Heretical Proposal.

Where and when:

Tuesday 7 June, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.