Visiting Speaker Series

Every semester, our department invites several guest speakers to lecture on various topics. All lectures are free, and are open to all members of the community and to the general public.

In Winter 2025, all talks will take place at the Arts and Letters Club, 14 Elm Street.

If you have questions about our speaker series, please contact this year's organizer, Dr. Pirachula Chulanon (pirachula@torontomu.ca).

Date and Time: March 6, 3:10-5:00 p.m.
Speaker: John Hacker-Wright (external link)  (University of Guelph)
Title: "Heidegger’s Phronēsis and Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics."

Abstract: Heidegger's reading of Aristotelian phronēsis (practical wisdom) is often framed in terms of expert skill, likening the practically wise person to a chess master who perceives available moves intuitively and selects winning strategies from a vast range of possibilities with minimal explicit deliberation. It is less often recognized that for Heidegger, phronēsis includes a form of self-understanding that must be gained through a struggle that never abates but is renewed in every situation. Heidegger argues that practical wisdom arises from a struggle to maintain composure against threats posed by pleasures and pains and to attain a clear view of our present situation in relation to our lives as a whole. Success requires resolve, and a resolute agent gains insight into their possibilities as finite, mortal beings—an insight essential for the precise situational appreciation that the skill model emphasizes. In this paper, I argue that this aspect of Heidegger’s view provides an important supplement to the standard skill model, shedding light on the role of practical wisdom in shaping our ends: it reveals that understanding our ends is a form of hard-won self-insight, grounded in our historical and mortal nature and in our ongoing struggle to discern possibilities that are genuinely our own.

Date and Time: March 13, 3:10-5:00pm
Speaker: Miriam McCormick (external link)  (University of Richmond)
Title: "Fine Attention, Broad Awareness: Avoiding the Cost of Ignorance."

Abstract: Is it sometimes valuable to diminish one’s awareness? An affirmative answer has been given in a number of recent discussions. First, it has been suggested that sometimes increased awareness is too painful to be of value. Georgi Gardiner, for example, has argued that a the kind of mental block found in self-deception can be the most rational response is cases of acquaintance rape. Second, some argue that there are cases where forgetting is what is needed to treat people with respect, or in order to forgive others when forgiveness is called for. Finally, it may seem that intellectual humility demands that we diminish awareness of our intellectual capacities. I argue that in all these cases, what is being suggested is that we not place or heighten our attention on certain events, memories or capacities. But awareness and attention differ. Once this distinction is made, I argue that diminishing one’s awareness is never good.

 
Date and Time: March 20, 3:10-5:00pm
Speaker: Sosseh Assaturian (external link)  (University of Washington)
Title: "Forms and Concepts in Plato’s Parmenides."

Abstract: Throughout the history of philosophy, the notion of a concept has been invoked to explain certain features of rationality, including memory, the ability to form inferences, and processes such as learning. Given the significance of these activities in Plato’s philosophy, it is no surprise that commentators speculate as to whether concepts (or concept-like entities) have a place in his psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics. The centrality of forms in Plato’s system makes this question particularly interesting, since forms are Plato’s explanantia for many of the phenomena concepts purportedly explain in other philosophical systems. What role could concepts play in Plato’s philosophy? What would the contours of this account of concepts look like, such that they would be adequate for the job and fit within the network of Plato’s other commitments? Is there a theory of forms according to which forms are concepts? In this paper, I explore these questions primarily through the account of concepthood tacit in the assumptions motivating Socrates’ suggestion that forms are concepts (and Parmenides’ swift rejection of it) in the Parmenides.

 
Date and Time: Tuesday, March 25, 3:10-5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Paolo Stellino (external link)  (NOVA University of Lisbon)
Title: “We have been the colourists.” Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism.

Abstract: Although Nietzsche uses the word disenchantment (German: Entzauberung) only a few times throughout his corpus, there is no doubt that, in his view, the death of God and the resulting emergence of nihilism, as he diagnosed it, bring with them a disenchantment of the world. As he famously puts it in a posthumous fragment dated November 1887-March 1888: ‘Nihilism: the goal is lacking; the answer to the question “why?” is missing. What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves.’ Although Nietzsche sees the death of God as a progress in 19th-century European culture, he is nevertheless aware that human beings cannot live in a world devoid of meaning and value. But how can one give meaning and value to a world that has none? How can one colour a world that is intrinsically colourless? The goal of this paper is to scrutinize the answers Nietzsche provides to these questions. In particular, after a brief examination of the meaning of the death of God – as announced by the madman in section 125 of The Gay Science – and its connection to nihilism, attention will befocused on what can be termed Nietzsche’s projectivist stance.

 
Date and Time: April 3, 3:10-5:00pm
Speaker: Gayle Salamon (external link)  (Princeton University)
Title: "Collective Phenomenology."

Abstract: This paper reconsiders the scope, method, and purpose of collective phenomenology through an examination of Herbert Spiegelberg’s Workshops in Phenomenology. In these experimental Workshops carried out between 1965 and 1972, Spiegelberg engaged graduate students in perceptual experimentation and collaborative philosophical investigation in order to develop the practice of what Husserl named “sym-philosophizing.” I argue that Spiegelberg’s Workshops were influenced by other modes of collective inquiry in the radical activist practices of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and examine the Workshops alongside the work of Celestine Ware, the Black feminist theorist and activist who wrote Woman Power:  The movement for Women’s Liberation.  Ware and other members of the New York Radical Feminists collective championed the importance of consciousness-raising for women’s liberation, a method of collective inquiry that can be read as a critical phenomenological practice.

 

Fall 2024 Talks                                                                                                                                    
 
Date and Time: October 10, 3:10-5:00p.m
Speaker: Rajiv Kaushik (external link)  (Brock University)
Title: "Speech and Body: Reconsidering the Relationship Between Phenomenology and Language in Merleau-Ponty"

Abstract: The turn away from phenomenology in 20th Century French philosophy was in large part due to an increased emphasis on Ferdinand de Saussure’s notion of “linguistic structure” – that language is the internal system of differences between signs. Thinkers such as Paul Ricoeur and Jean-François Lyotard famously offered a “semiological challenge” to phenomenology. The idea was that phenomenology, especially Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, reduces to the sensible world and cannot think linguistic structure. Thus, the argument goes, phenomenology leaves out a basic element of human life: not only can it not think linguistic structure, but it also cannot think about elements, e.g., writing and text, which are its result. What could the idea of “flesh” in Merleau-Ponty possibly say about these? This paper takes up this challenge. I point out that Merleau-Ponty very clearly did want to take linguistic structure seriously, but, if so, we need to reconsider some of the basic themes in his ontology. Taking inspiration from the recently published “problem of speech” lectures, I reconstruct Merleau-Ponty’s idea that speech is a concrete limit situation from which we get both the idea of a language structure in which there are differences and of an ontological difference between being and beings. This is an internal criticism of both linguistic structure and formal ontology. I hope to stress the importance of linguistic structure and writing in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh. This is an ontology of fragility – a fragile ontology, a being that requires symbolization. This paper emphasizes under-developed themes in Merleau-Ponty’s work such as: bodily event, difference, symbolization, and the writing of philosophy

 
Date and Time: October 24, 3:10-5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Rebecca Rozelle-Stone (external link)  (University of North Dakota)
Title: "Out of Touch: Finding Our Way with a Praxis of Sensible Attention" (Jointly hosted by the Society for Women of Ideas)

Abstract: For those of us living in industrialized countries, our social, political, and existential present can be characterized as being “out of touch.” Our being-out-of-touch can be understood in a double fashion. In one sense, we are more mediated than ever by screens and virtual worlds, and accordingly, we are more disconnected from the earth and its creatures, including fellow persons, and from our multiple senses—particularly touch. The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated a growing trend towards isolation, privatization, and desensitization in relation to the sensuous world. In another sense, growing numbers of us are out of touch with reality. Delusion is an increasingly significant element in the social-political zeitgeist, shaping policies and election outcomes, and supplanting distraction as the primary mental debility of our time. Two recent books address each of these tendencies: Richard Kearney’s Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense (2021) and Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023). This paper argues that these two phenomena are inherently connected, and it does so by drawing on the rich thought of Simone Weil, whose concepts of the void, the falsifying imagination, necessity, limit, and attention have much to recommend in diagnosing and addressing our current crisis of touch. However, I argue that we must extend Weil’s idea of attention-as-looking to include a more holistic praxis of sensible attentiveness, since the primacy of vision has, for some time, been a major factor in putting us out of touch with the world. 

 
Date and Time: October 31, 3:10-5:00 p.m..
Speaker: Catherine Collobert (external link)  (University of Ottawa)
Title: "Emptiness as a Cure in Madhyamaka Philosophy"

Abstract: Buddhist Philosophy is conceived of as soteriological. Since its soteriological aim permeates all of Buddhist philosophy, a failure to acknowledge the centrality of soteriology constitutes a failure to grasp both what reasoning and knowledge are for and how they function within Buddhist schools. In their works, Madhyamaka philosophers remind their opponents not to lose sight of what is at stake in the intricacy and subtlety of reasoning. The knowledge of the nature of reality as emptiness is not for its own sake but for the sake of liberation. As Chandrakīrti puts it, the arguments “set forth suchness only for the sake of freedom.” (MĀ 6.118). It goes without saying that knowing the truth amounts to being free from ignorance. Yet the end of ignorance is worthwhile only because the latter results in the end of suffering, which is the primary goal. In other words, there is the crucial idea that the truth is worth pursuing solely on account of its soteriological efficacy. That means that knowing all phenomena as empty has a powerful liberating effect. In fact, the investigation into the nature of reality must lead the investigator to the realization of emptiness, which is tantamount to freedom from suffering. This paper argues for the curative function of emptiness as the truth of all phenomena and examines the chief condition for emptiness to fulfill its function. This condition lies in the mind’s capacity to radically transform itself through understanding the nature of reality. The transformation of the mind consists of moving from a state of insanity to a state of sanity, from a state of confusion and obscuration to a state of clarity. The transformation therefore amounts to the fundamental shift from a state of suffering to a state of happiness.

Date and Time: November 14, 3:10-5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Laura McMahon (external link)  (Eastern Michigan University).
Title: "The Politics of Vulnerability: Merleau-Ponty, Butler, Family Systems Theory, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict."

Abstract: This paper uses the School for Peace in Israel-Palestine as an example of what it might look like to develop a global community rooted in a recognition of shared human vulnerability. Part I offers a phenomenological account of vulnerability, putting Butler’s work into dialogue with Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “intercorporeality” and phenomenology of perception. Part II argues that family systems theory offers a framework through which to articulate the nature of our shared vulnerability, allowing us to see the manners in which problems reside not “in” individuals, but within the dynamic systems of which they are a part. Part III analyzes School for Peace “encounters” in order to explore the ways in which liberatory political change occurs through shifts in the behavioral dynamics at play in the political status quo. I conclude by arguing that our political identities are most fully realized through, rather than in spite of, our inherent vulnerability.

 
Date and Time: November 21, 3:10-5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Lydia Goehr (external link)  (Columbia University).
Title: "Resting on a Mistake: New and Old Keys for Analysis in Philosophy and the Arts."

Abstract: The talk counterpoints three forms of analysis that emerged around 1900 and which long dominated thereafter in analytical philosophy, music analysis, and psychoanalysis. Each form addresses a pursuit of meaning as a breaking down or as a break down, as a working-through either to make or to unmake a particular structure or claim of sense. Each form takes as its starting point the question what it means to make a mistake, to be in error, or to have (and even to encourage ) an accident. The talk assesses the relevance of analysis today: is analysis still relevant, and if so, on what contemporary terms? What role has analysis in the critique of concepts?