Monima Chadha (Monash University), “No-Self and the Phenomenology of Ownership”

Abstract:

Abhidharma-Buddhist philosophers put forward a revisionary metaphysics which lacks a “self” in order to provide an intellectually and morally preferred picture of the world. I argue for a strong reading of the no-self view as a variety of no-subject or no-ownership view. The Buddhists are not just denying the diachronically unified and extended self but also minimal selfhood insofar as it associated with a sense of ownership and agency. The view is deeply counterintuitive and the Buddhists are acutely aware of this fact. Accordingly, the Abhidharma-Buddhist writings and contemporary reconstructions of the view are replete with attempts to explain the phenomenology of experience in a no-self world. The paper defends the no-ownership view using resources from contemporary discussions about sense (or lack thereof) of ownership.

Bio:

Monima Chadha is currently Head of Philosophy and Graduate coordinator of the Philosophy Program at Monash University, Australia. Her principal research area is the cross-cultural philosophy of mind, specifically the Classical Indian and Contemporary Western Philosophy of mind. Over the last few years, she has been at the forefront of research to integrate insights on mind, consciousness and the self from across these philosophical traditions and the cognitive neurosciences. The aim of this research is to create a cohesively universal philosophical framework to understand these entities and also to enrich each of these traditions by leveraging insights from the other. This work has regularly featured in leading academic journals like Philosophy East and West; Asian Philosophy; Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences; and Consciousness and Cognition. Currently she is writing a book on the philosophical evolution of mind in Buddhism and its centrality to the doctrine in the absence of self. In 2013, she was awarded the Contemplative Studies Fellowship by the Mind and Life Institute and Templeton Foundation, USA.

Where and when:

Tuesday 24 May, 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 Marilyn Stendera (University of Melbourne), “Enacting practical wisdom: Heideggerian connections between phronesis and enactive cognition”

Abstract:

The Aristotelian conception of phronesis has long been of interest to those philosophies of cognition that explain cognisers’ responsiveness to salience in terms of an always-already situated purposiveness, and features especially in accounts which are influenced by the phenomenological tradition. This paper will focus on the manner in which one such discourse, enactivism, brings together phronesis and phenomenology in modelling pragmatic context-sensitivity; the paper’s goal is to suggest that these connections run even deeper than is often appreciated in the literature. The motivation for that claim lies in the existing intersections between enactivism, the conceptualisation of phronesis and Heideggerian thought, particularly Heideggerian analyses of temporality. Heidegger’s interpretation of phronesis has contributed significantly to the ways in which Aristotle’s concept has been taken up in phenomenology-influenced discussions of cognition and mind. Temporality plays an important role in Heidegger’s reading, although the relation of the temporal concepts posited therein to those set out in Sein und Zeit is highly contested. This paper will outline a perspective from which the temporalities that Heidegger ascribes to phronesis and Being-in-the-world can be integrated, and will propose that the resulting framework can illuminate the relationship between the temporal structures of phronesis and enactive cognition.

Bio:

Dr Marilyn Stendera’s research focuses mainly on the phenomenological tradition, with a particular interest in the latter’s conceptions of temporality and intersections with the philosophy of cognition. She recently received her PhD in Philosophy from The University of Melbourne; her thesis, Dasein’s Temporal Enaction, argues that Heidegger’s model of temporality ought to play a significant role in contemporary dialogues between phenomenology and cognitive science. Marilyn is currently a tutor in Philosophy at The University of Melbourne and a Teaching Associate at Monash University.

Where and when:

Tuesday 10 May, 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 Helen Ngo (Deakin University), “White ontological expansiveness and the lived experience of racialised embodiment”

Abstract:

In her study into the unconscious habits of racial privilege, Shannon Sullivan introduces the concept “ontological expansiveness” to describe what she argues characterises white embodiment. According to Sullivan, ontological expansiveness describes the pre-reflective and often unarticulated assumption that “geographical, psychical, linguistic, economic, spiritual, bodily [spaces]…are or should be available for them to move in and out of as they wish.” (Sullivan, 2006, p.10). In this talk I draw on the work of critical race thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and George Yancy in order to explore the contrasting experience of racialised embodiment. I examine the ways in which racialised embodiment is marked not only by a disjuncture on the level of the body schema, but also by movement through social space that fails to be fluid, co-ordinated, or transparent in the way that phenomenological accounts of the body tend to assume. In doing so, I raise some questions around phenomenology’s usual treatment of the body as synchronously experienced in its temporal and spatial registers, as well as normative questions around the different relations to social and shared spaces.

Bio:

Dr. Helen Ngo is an Honorary Fellow in Philosophy at Deakin University. She completed her PhD at Stony Brook University, USA, specialising in phenomenology, critical philosophy of race, and feminist philosophy. She is currently engaged in teaching and research at Monash University, and is also working on a forthcoming book based on her doctoral dissertation, The Habits of Racism.

Where and when:

Tuesday 26 April, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

Virtual Meeting Point: ARTSED VMP SHSS. Direct dial number: (+613) 5223 9354

On joining a VMP, see here.

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 Patrick Stokes (Deakin University), “I See Dead People – But Are There Any Dead Persons?”

Abstract:

Marya Schechtman’s recently offered “Person Life View” (PLV) aims to give an account of personal identity according to which a) persons are the unified loci of our various forms of practical judgment; b) each of us is essentially a person; and c) person-identity is literal rather than metaphorical identity. She also argues that PLV recognizes the personhood of prelinguistic infants, patients in permanent vegetative states, and even developmentally impaired infants who will never achieve ‘forensic’ moral identity, even if these are ‘degenerate’ forms of personhood. As such, PLV promises to capture much of what is intuitively compelling about the two main rival theories of identity, namely animalism and neo-Lockeanism. In this paper, I argue that the features of PLV that confer degenerate personhood also entail that the dead are still persons too, contrary to the widely-accepted ‘Termination Thesis’ according to which persons cease to exist when they die. Far from being an objection to Schechtman’s position, however, this actually counts in its favour: in light of our person-tracking practices and attitudes with regards to the dead, PLV turns out to handle the question of whether there are dead persons better than its competitors.

Bio:

Patrick Stokes is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University and a Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire. He has previously held research fellowships in the UK, US, and Denmark. He is the author of The Naked Self: Kierkegaard and Personal Identity (Oxford UP, 2015) and Kierkegaard’s Mirrors (Palgrave, 2010). He is also co-editor, with John Lippitt, of Narrative, Identity, and the Kierkegaardian Self (Edinburgh UP, 2015) and, with Adam Buben, of Kierkegaard and Death (Indiana UP, 2011). Patrick is also a regular contributor to publications including The Conversation and New Philosopher, and a media commentator on philosophical matters.

Where and when:

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

Virtual Meeting Point: ARTSED VMP SHSS. Direct dial number: (+613) 5223 9354

On joining a VMP, see here.

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 John Mandalios (CTC Honorary research associate), “Beyond Nihilism: Christ the Enigma”

Abstract:

What is Nietzsche’s view of Christ beyond the standard interpretation of Christianity and the Church? Does Nietzsche have something more to say than the theologian’s blood poisons all our modern instincts and ideas? In this paper we examine the corruption that is historically foundational and formative of modern philosophy and ways of being. It focuses on his late work Der Antichrist and that which commentators most often ignore or miss, specifically the evangel. We shall have a look at two falsification theses in particular, each possessing a homology immanent to the text.

Bio:

John Mandalios has taught German metaphysics and ancient Greek philosophy for twenty years. He has worked in Paris and London and currently researches the work of Nietzsche, Leibniz and Plato. The question of atheism and post-secularism is a central research theme. He teaches philosophy at the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy.

Where and when:

Tuesday 22 March, 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.

We are very pleased to welcome Prof. Richard Shusterman from Florida Atlantic University, who will kick off the 2016 Philosophy Seminar Series with his paper ‘Affective Thought: From Pragmatism to Somaesthetics’.

Where and when: Tuesday 8 March, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Deakin Burwood Campus, Burwood Corporate Centre, Building BC, Level 2 (***please note the venue – the remainder of the seminars will take place in C2.05***).

Professor Shusterman is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, where he also directs the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture. He is the author of numerous books, including Thinking Through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics (Cambridge, 2012), Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (Cambridge, 2008), Performing Live (Cornell, 2000) and Pragmatist Aesthetics (Roman and Littlefield, 1992, 2nd edition, 2000, and published in fifteen languages).

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the Faculty of Arts and Education, with support from the School of Communication and Creative Arts.

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome. For further information please contact Sean Bowden: [email protected].

The program for Deakin’s Philosophy Seminar Series for 2016 can be found here.

Prof. Han Baltussen (University of Adelaide), “Philosophical ideas about emotions in antiquity: the case of grief and psychotherapy”

Han Baltussen was born in Maastricht, a Dutch city founded by the Romans as Mosae Trajectum (which means “crossing at the river Mosa”). Educated at the Henric van Veldeke College (starting ancient Greek and Latin), he went on to Utrecht University where he read Classics and Ancient Philosophy (BA, MA) and wrote his doctoral thesis on Theophrastus’ De sensu (PhD 1993; published in revised form 2000). Before coming to Adelaide he held prestigious postdoctoral research positions in Utrecht (Stoa edition), Washington D.C. (Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies) and Kings College London (Commentators on Aristotle Project, 1997-), and taught ancient Greek philosophy as Temporary Lecturer and Tutor (King’s College, Dept. of Philosophy 1998-2002). Since coming to Adelaide in 2002 he has made wide-ranging contributions to teaching and research in Classical studies and ancient thought. He has held further fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton 2006), at the Flemish Royal Academy (Brussels 2010), and at the Leiden University Centre for Arts in Society (Spinoza fellow 2014). He served as Head of Classics during 2009-2013. In 2011 he was appointed to the Hughes Chair of Classics, one of the University’s three foundation chairs, which had been vacant since 1992. In January 2015 he became co-Editor of Antichthon. Journal of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies (now with CUP).

Where and when:

Tuesday 27 October, 4.00 to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note that we are finally back in C2.05 ***)

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

For any inquiries, please contact Sean Bowden.

Dr John Morss (Deakin University), “The collective, the shared, and the plural: a broad and shallow interdisciplinary conspectus”

Abstract:

The collective, the plural, and the shared, among which there may be some family resemblances, play a range of roles and enjoy a range of status across the disciplines. There are diachronic as well as synchronic dimensions to this enquiry, for these features have a history and some of that history is shared. In this paper psychology (including psychoanalysis), law and a selection of other disciplines will be cursorily scrutinised with a view to shedding light on the shape and the significance of these issues and, it is hoped, stimulating some interdisciplinary conversation.

Bio:

John R Morss (Deakin Law School) obtained his degrees in Psychology in the UK in the last millennium and his degree in Law in NZ in this one. He has previously taught in the Universities of Ulster and Otago and has been a research fellow/visitor on three occasions at Cambridge, and at the EUI, Florence. He is the author of three and a half monographs and three co-edited collections among other publications. His current focus is the advocacy of a ‘collective turn’ in the theory of public international law.

Where and when:

Tuesday 13 October, 4.00 to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, N3.11 (*** Please note the new room ***)

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

For any inquiries, please contact Sean Bowden.

A/Prof Matthew Sharpe (Deakin), “Bringing the Rhetorica ad Herrenium to the Rectoratsrede: Considerations on Heidegger’s National Socialist Rhetoric”

Abstract:

After an introduction (which I won’t read due to time) reflecting on the key role of Sein und Zeit‘s sections 27, 35-38, and their depictions of modern Gesellschaft in literature on the great philosopher’s Nazism, Part 2 of this paper justifies a specific look at Heidegger’s rhetoric in the period of his most extreme activism as Rector of Freiburg.  This has been skirted but never (as far as I am aware) systematically studied in the growing literature on the interconnection of Heidegger’s thought and politics.  Part 3 looks at the arrangement or dispositio of the famous Rectorship speech, drawing on the categories of the Roman rhetorical tradition.  It notes that Heidegger’s call to retrieve ‘the essence of science’ from the Greeks to animate University reform so the German University can assume spiritual Fuhrung in the new Reich enacts the ‘authentic historicity’ formally described in SZ division II (culminating at sec. 74).  In doing so, we will show, the speech actively calls forth and then enacts in the peroration that Kamfgemeinschaft (battle community) of teachers and students the great philosopher envisages for his Gefolgschaft. Part 4 looks at Heidegger’s ‘elocutio‘, if that Roman term can stand for Heidegger’s style in the speech.  We note here how the speech exemplifies at least 11 of the 13 features of the “fanatical language” of the Nazi leadership, as analysed by John M. Young in Totalitarian Language, before focusing on Heidegger’s (no less than) 16 biconditionals in the 47 paragraphs and the way that, coupled with his extraordinarily otiose language, Heidegger’s rhetoric operates by claiming exclusive access to vital but esoteric truths, presented less as contestable ‘ontic’ validity-claims than hieratic ‘ontological’ revelations.  The concluding remarks call for further rhetorical analyses of Heidegger’s national socialist speeches and lectures, as an under-explored field in understanding both the imbrication of his politics and thought and its continuing fascination, despite everything we (as against scholars two decades ago) now know.

Bio:

Matt Sharpe teaches philosophy at Deakin, and is the author of Camus, Philosophe (Brill 2015).

Where and when:

Tuesday 29 September, 4.00 to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

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

For any inquiries, please contact Sean Bowden.