News & Events

News

• Congratulations to Prof. David Ciavatta, whose book manuscript, entitled Hegel's Aesthetic Ontology: The Event of Beauty, has been accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press. The book offers a new reading of Hegel's aesthetic thought, highlighting the peculiar relationship Hegel sees between beauty and metaphysical truth. Also, Prof. Ciavatta's article, "Embodied Meaning in Hegel and Merleau-Ponty," has been translated into Spanish, and published in the book: Percepciones de Merleau-Ponty, edited by Leandro Sanchez Marin. 
  

• Congratulations to Prof. Boris Hennig, who recently published these two papers:
  
  - "Aristotle on Ownership", Phronesis, forthcoming (online 2024).
  - "Avicenna’s Agent Intellect as a Completing Cause", History of Philosophy Quarterly 41(1), 2024, 45-72.
  
  
• Congratulations to Prof. Michael Milona, who was just awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Well done!
  
  
• Congratulations to Prof. Katharine O'Reilly (external link) , whose co-edited book, Ancient Women Philosophers: Recovered Ideas and New Perspectives (external link)  (Cambridge), has been receiving outstanding reviews in terrific venues, like NDPR (external link) , Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (external link) , BMCR (external link) , The Classical Review (external link) , and Mind (external link) .
  
  
• Congratulations to Profs. Daniel Rubio (external link)  and Klaas Kraay, who have signed a contract to co-edit the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Philosophy and the Multiverse. This volume will include 25 essays that discuss the connections between multiverse theories and key topics in philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion.
  
  
• Congratulations to Prof. David Hunter (external link) , whose book manuscript entitled Sortal Quality: Pleasure, Desire, and Moral Worth has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press. Here is a brief description:

My book is about the role goodness-of-a-kind plays in our moral psychology. It is the sort of goodness we have in mind when we say that something is a good pen or a good bit of evidence, or that someone is a good swimmer or a good person. I prefer the label 'sortal quality' because it better marks how it differs from simple or intrinsic goodness and absolute value. On my view, we can make good sense of pleasure and desire and of the idea of a good person even if nothing is simply good or has absolute value. In the book, I discuss how we can know about sortal quality, how we take pleasure in and enjoy it, and how the various sortals we fall under are tied to our desires. Wanting, I argue, is a matter of lacking something that would do us some good by improving our quality in some way. It is a matter of failing to be as good as one could be. The final chapter is about being a good person, understood as a case of sortal quality, and draws on John Rawls' ideas about goodness as rationality. My thinking is deeply indebted to the English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe's work. But my deepest debts are to the great writings of the American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson.
 

• The TMU philosophy department is hiring! We invite applications for a tenure-track position in Epistemology. The area of competence is open, but we have a strong preference for candidates who demonstrate willingness and ability to teach Critical Thinking. Application Deadline: Dec. 1.  [Details.]
  
  
• Congratulations to MA graduate Michael Butler (external link)  (Class of 2012), who has been appointed as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at the University of North Dakota.
  
  
• Congratulations to Prof. Michael Milona (external link) , who has just had these two papers acceped for publication in prestigious venues:

1. "The Story of Romantic Love and Polyamory" (with Lauren Weindling), forthcoming in Journal of Applied Philosophy (early view here (external link) ).
2. "Despair" (with Katie Stockdale), forthcoming in Ergo: an Open Access Journal of Philosophy (penultimate version is here (external link) ).
    

• The first issue of the TMU undergraduate student philosophy journal has just been published here (external link) ! Congratulations to BA students Alexander Casucci, Danielle Tucci, and Jade Simpson, and everyone else involved in producing it, and to all the authors whose work was selected!
   
  
• Congratulations to former philosophy student Jan Wozniak, who has been  named TMU's first recipient of an Autism Scholars Award. Jan completed his BA in English and Philosophy, and also his MA in Philosophy, at TMU, and is currently completing a BA in Psychology.
  
  

Upcoming Events

 
If you wish to be added to a listserv to receive information about upcoming events, please contact Dr. Pirachula Chulanon at pirachula@torontomu.ca.
 

• For details about our regular Visiting Speaker Series, click here.

• Prof. Pirachula Chulanon (external link)  has co-organized a conference, entitled "Other Epistemic Achievements: Global Perspectives", to take place from May 2-4, 2025. He has also co-organized two other workshops, which are about how to integrate Chinese, Sanskrit, Indigenous, Latin American, and Africana philosophy into one's pedagogy. For complete details on these events, click here (external link) .
   
• Prof. Jeta Mulaj has co-organized a series of online talks on social reproduction theory in a global context, titled “Critical Perspectives on Care.” [Details (external link) ]

 
Recent Events

• Profs. Pirachula Chulanon (external link)  and David Hunter (external link)  organized a double author-meets-critics symposium, which took place on Febrary 14-15. The subject of the symposium, titled 'From Mind to World and Back', was two new books on self-consciousness: Matthew Boyle's Transparency and Reflection (OUP, 2024) and Anil Gomes's The Practical Self (OUP, 2024). [Details (external link) ]
  
  
• Dec. 10 & 11, 2024: Virtual Conference of the Toronto Philosophy of Religion Working Group. [ (PDF file) Program].