Nothing New

Evidence that philosophy is always in at least a little trouble (though it does not necessarily support the Straussian view!):

"And when the fame of the visiting philosophers rose yet higher in the city, and their first speeches before the Senate were interpreted, at his own instance and request, by so conspicuous a man as Gaius Acilius, Cato determined, on some decent pretext or other, to rid and purge the city of them all. So he rose in the Senate and censured the magistrates for keeping in such long suspense an embassy composed of men who could easily secure anything they wished, so persuasive were they. "We ought," he said, "to make up our minds one way or another, and vote on what the embassy proposes, in order that these men may return to their schools and lecture to the sons of Greece, while the youth of Rome give ear to their laws and magistrates, as heretofore."

Plutarch, The Life of Cato the Elder 22:4-5 (Perrin's translation)

Decline, Demise, Death

In a recent article in the New York Review of Books, the latinist Mary Beard asks the question of whether the classics have a future. Her answer, a qualified "yes," depends on her understanding classics not simply as a monological communiqué from the past but as a dialogue in which we try to understand the present, as well. Beard writes that "the study of the classics is the study of what happens in the gap between antiquity and ourselves." Is this simply too hopeful given the hard realities faced even by top departments?

Perhaps a similar point can be made about philosophy. Certainly a narrative of decline is not limited to classics, especially given the (relatively) recent bad news from philosophy departments in the UK such as Middlesex and Northampton. Does the erosion of professional philosophy (and continental-heavy departments in particular) simply mean that we are connecting with the tradition in a new way? Or is philosophy always ignored or threatened? Are the philosophers an endangered species?

some links

Critchley’s New York Times Blog

Philosophy Jobs and More Philosophy Jobs

Talks at the New School

Calls for Papers

The Pragmatist Revival

Blog

Having graduated with an MA in May 2010, I am currently on leave from the New School. However, I am happy to respond to questions or comments at jumphreys@gmail.com.

(slightly) closer to perfection

More names of philosophy graduates follow so I want to reiterate: if you would like your name or information to be removed, changed, corrected, sublated, dirempted, or turned on its head, please do not hesitate to email me. As I am away from the New School at the moment, my preferred email is currently jumphreys@gmail.com. I will endeavor to make the alteration post-haste. I also would like to thank Matthew Linck of St. John's College for providing the names of more graduates.

Louis Colombo
Bethune-Cookman University

Lester Embree (PhD 1972)
Florida Atlantic University

Joshua Hayes
Santa Clara and Loyola Marymount

Brendan Hogan
NYU

Jennifer Scuro

College of New Rochelle

Sonia Tanner
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Miguel Vatter
Instituto de Humanidades de la Universidad Diego Portales

eidos and eidelon

I just came across Megan Craig's webpage: http://www.megancraig.com/ which includes her portfolio. A philosopher and an artist!

Laclau's aside

You seem to remember a time when Brooklyn had a culture that revolved around something other than strollers, foodblogs, and incipient fascism. If asked, you say you prefer the earlier work of Ana Peru (Peru Ana). Perhaps you even think that Philosophy is something more than intellectual therapy, for example, the study of what is and what constitutes the good life. But you’re starting to feel conservative and jaded, stuck in the rut of reading and writing, your only fuel the written records of the Mighty Dead.

Then you hear a talk about something familiar but, strangely, it is new. I had this experience Thursday night when Ernesto Laclau and Katherine Mouffe spoke at NYU. Exiled to a Comp Lit conference from their native realm of truth, Laclau spoke on political antagonism and Mouffe on “the subject as a trace of an other that exceeds representation.” It would be too much to reconstruct or even summarize what was said. What struck me was a comment Laclau made that was really not much more than an aside.

Laclau said that, against Kant, Hegel returned to a negative, Platonic conception of matter. The point, which is in some sense completely obvious, had never struck me before. But if one accepts the kind of account attributed to Plato by Aristotle (e.g. ‘matter as privation’ at Metaphysics A.6) or looks closely at the Hericlitean themes in some of the dialogues (e.g. the divided line in the Republic or Diotima’s speech in the Symposium), then Laclau’s attribution makes a great deal of sense. Was this recovery the same crucial move that propelled Hegel beyond Kantianism?