Announcements

Philosophy's jury, consisting of Professors Mark Bickhard and Chad Kautzer, announced yesterday the winning papers after blind-reading all 30 entries we received!

The names of the deserving winners are:

1st prize: Xavier Piccone '24 for his paper "Meaning and Method in the Later Wittgenstein"

2nd prize: Xavier Piccone '24 for his paper "Ethical Aspects; A Responsse to Marcuse"

3rd prize: Julia Aloi '24 for her paper "Wittgenstein's Poetics"

Best FirstYear paper prize:  Thomas Kaspereen '27 for his paper "Surreal Enstrangement"

Congratulations to all, we're very proud of you! Woohoo!

Tuesday, April 16 at 4:30pm.

Virtual event: Please REGISTER to receive zoom information -OR- come and watch with us in EWFM 625.

You can access the talk's Handout here.

Abstract: In this talk, Prof. Standish will first examine Stanley Cavell’s essays on music – in particular his “Music Discomposed”, which is concerned with the “new” music influenced by Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils. Cavell’s discussion is less a reflection on the qualities of this music than a philosophical questioning of the implications of attitudes towards it, especially regarding the exercise of judgement in criticism, composition, and performance. In the course of this he provides an account of what he calls “knowing by feeling” (sometimes “in feeling”). Touching on connections with his later occasional pieces on music, published in Here and Now (2023), and exploring some late remarks by Wittgenstein on the philosophy of psychology, Standish shall, in the second part, examine the wider ramifications of the idea of “meaning it” that emerges. In particular, he considers connections between this conception of meaning and the development of AI. 

Paul Standish is Professor and Head of the Centre for Philosophy of Education at UCL IOE. He has extensive teaching experience in schools, colleges and universities, and his research reflects that range. He is the author or editor of some twenty books, with a sustained interest in Wittgenstein extending from his Beyond the Self: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Limits of Language (1992, Ashgate) to Wittgenstein and Education: On not sparing others the trouble of thinking (2023, Wiley), co-edited with Adrian Skilbeck. Aside from authoring many essays on Stanley Cavell, he is co-editor with Naoko Saito of two books - Stanley Cavell and the Education of Grownups (2012, Fordham UP) and Stanley Cavell and Philosophy as Translation: The Truth is Translated (2017, Rowman & Littlefield) – as well as a forthcoming special issue entitled Walden in Tokyo: Stanley Cavell and the Thought of Other Cultures (Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2024). He is President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.

Congratulations to Professor Filippo Casati for being chosen among a very strong pool of nominees to receive the 2024 CAS Dean's Faculty Award in the domain of Research, Scholaship, and Creative Activity!

This award follows the Stabler Award for Excellence in Teaching, as well as the Paul J. Franz, Jr. Fellowship for Research Award that Prof. Casati received in 2022.

We are fortunate to have such an inspiring scholar educating our students. Well deserved, Filippo!

Tuesday, April 2 at 4:30pm (Scheler Humanities Forum - LI 200)

In July 1656, Bento (Baruch) de Spinoza was given the harshest herem (ban or ostracism) ever issued by the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community. The text of the ban rains curses down upon the young man, for his “abominable heresies and monstrous deeds”. Unlike other bans issued by the community in the period, it was never rescinded. But why was Spinoza excommunicated with such prejudice? He was only twenty-three years old, not yet the famous (and “scandalous”) philosopher he would later become. In this lecture, we will consider the circumstances of the ban and use them as a way of examining some of the major themes of Spinoza’s philosophy.

Steven Nadler is Vilas Research Professor and the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is currently director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities. His books include Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die (Princeton, 2020); Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam (Yale, “Jewish Lives” series, 2018); A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton, 2011); The Philosopher, the Priest and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes (Princeton, 2013), Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999 [2^nd ed. 2016], winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award for Biography), and Rembrandt's Jews (Chicago, 2003, which was named a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction). His most recent books are The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World (Chicago, 2022) and Descartes: The Renewal of Philosophy (Reaktion Books, 2023). He has also published, with his son Ben Nadler, the graphic book Heretics! The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy (Princeton, 2017). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

We're happy to announce that applications are now being accepted for the Williams Prize for Philosophy.

The awards are:

• $1,000 for 1st place
• $800 for 2nd place
• $600 for 3rd place
• $200 for best First Year paper (it can added to the above)

Rules and procedure information can be found here

We are excited to announce Michael Della Rocca, Sterling Professor of Philosophy of Yale University and one of the most prominent philosophers in America today,  as the 2024 Selfridge Speaker. A rationalist, monist, skeptic, and renegade analytic philosopher, Michael Della Rocca is the author of The Parmenidean Ascent, of two books on Spinoza's philosophy, and of many articles in metaphysics and the history of modern philosophy. 

Professor Della Rocca will deliver the Selfridge Lecture on Wednesday, March 6th at 4:30pm in Neville Hall 303, on "The Original Sin of Analytical Philosophy". (Add to calendar) In this lecture, Professor Della Rocca will examine five crucial and influential episodes from early analytical philosophy in which Frege, Russell, Moore, and others play key roles.  In each episode, the debate is, he argues, structurally analogous to the debate over Cartesian mind-body interaction.  In particular, he argues that just as the Cartesian position in the interaction debate turns on whether the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR) is rejected—Descartes, the great (as will become apparent) anti-rationalist, rejects the PSR in this case—so too the seminal positions taken up by these early analytical philosophers turn on the anti-rationalist denial of the PSR.  Further and perhaps disturbingly, these seminal positions are thus as problematic as the problematic Cartesian position with regard to mind-body interaction. 

Professor Della Rocca will also give a College Talk on Thursday, March 7th at 4:30pm in the Scheler Humanities Forum (Linderman 200), on "Becoming One: Theology and Philosophy, Will and Intellect, Finite and Infinite in Spinoza"(Add to calendar). In this lecture, Professor Della Rocca  aims to shed light on Spinoza’s metaphysics and philosophy of mind by closely examining a central feature of Spinoza’s political philosophy: the relation between philosophy itself and theology, two domains which may seem radically distinct but are, for Spinoza, ultimately somehow united.  The difficult task lies in explaining what “ultimately” means here, in articulating the “how” in this “somehow,” and in spelling out the distinction-undermining nature of this union between theology and philosophy.  Professor Della Rocca then employs this kind of union in order to develop a robust account of the union between will and intellect and between finite and infinite in Spinoza.  The lecture will close with some implications of these kinds of unions in Spinoza for his view on the eternity of the mind. 

Selfridge 2024 will conclude with the Selfridge Workshop on March 8-9 on "Big Picture Metaphysics", organized by Prof. Ricki Bliss, with the participation of Professors Michael Della Rocca (Yale), Toni Koch (University of Heidelberg), Laura Guerrero (William and Mary), Nicholaos Jones (University of Alabama), Graham Priest (CUNY), Sam Lebens (University of Haifa) and Filippo Casati.

Undergraduates in Philosophy classes are invited to submit papers written for a Philosophy class this year (both semesters but no thesis please) to be considered for the Thomas M. Haynes Prize. 

Please use this form to submit your entry electronically.

RULES:

• The essay must be one submitted in fulfillment of a class requirement in a philosophy course
• Any undergraduate student at Lehigh University is eligible
• The essays can be submitted electronically or in person to the department coordinator
• The essays will be judged on a "blind" basis (no name on/in the uploaded file please)
• There's no limit on the number of essays that may be submitted by a student
• Essays may be re-written in the light of instructor's comments and suggestions
• We will attempt to secure recognition of the prize in the commencement program
• The award is $400 and a book
• The deadline for submission of candidate essays is May 3rd, 2024

Please don't hesitate to submit an entry, you never know unless you try!

The Haynes Prize in Philosophy is given in honour of Thomas M. Haynes who taught Philosophy at Lehigh University from 1952 until his retirement in 1983.

Join Philosophy's Seminar Series:

“Social Robots and AI: Last Call for Robophilosophy”

Johanna Seibt,  Professor  for Applied Process Ontology and Integrative Social Robotics, 

Aarhus University (Denmark)

Tuesday, February 6th, via zoom (watch in EWFM 625 or Register here)

 ___________________________________________________________________________________________

“Can Kant’s Cognitive Architecture be Embodied within the Whole Person?”

Kenneth Westphal, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Bogazici University

Tuesday, March 26^th, via Zoom (watch in EWFM 625 or Register here)

 ___________________________________________________________________________________________

“Why was Spinoza Excommunicated?”

Steven Nadler, Vilas Research Professor & William H. Hay II Professor,

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Tuesday, April 2, the Scheler Family Humanities Forum (LI 200)

 __________________________________________________________________________________________

“Knowing in Feeling: Music, Criticism, Performance, Perfection”

Paul Standish, Professor of Philosophy of Education, University College London

Tuesday, April 16 , via zoom  (watch in EWFM 625 or Register here)

 _________________________________________________________________________________________

Professor Filippo Casati has received a Paul J. Franz, Jr. Fellowship for Research Award. Dr. Casati will use the funds of this award toward his two current research projects: one on logical principle and ordinary language philosophy and the other on apophatic theology and analytic philosophy.