Deleuze’s “historian” style cuts across the classical opposition between objectivist history and interpretative history.  It is a style in which the most precise knowledge of texts and contexts is inseparable from the movement by which they are drawn toward Deleuze.  It partakes neither of archives nor of hermeneutics.  For at issue is one things alone, namely, that great conceptual creations return.  And the singularity of Deleuze functions as a power of reception for this return.  This is why his philosophy can restore Spinoza, Bergson, or Nietzsche to their exact eternity, which is never anything other than that of their power – and as such, an eternity that is living only when actualized in living thought.

(A. Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, trans. by L. Burchill [Minneapolis and London: Minnesota University Press, 2000], p. 99)

Free time is shackled to its opposite. (187)

And again:

Free time [...] does not merely stand in opposition to labour. [For the stressed-out PhD student,] free time is nothing more than a shadowy continuation of labour. (194)

Sound familiar…?

Neuromania is based on the incorrect notion that human consciousness is identical with activity in the brain, that people are their brains, and that societies are best understood as collections of brains. While the brain is a necessary condition of every aspect of human consciousness, it is not a sufficient condition – which is why neuroscience, and the materialist philosophy upon which it is based, fails to capture the human person. Since the brain is an evolved organism, Neuromania leads to Darwinitis, the assumption that, since Darwin demonstrated the biological origins of the organism Homo sapiens, we should look to evolutionary theory to understand what we are now; that our biological roots explain our cultural leaves. In fact, we belong to a community of minds that has developed over the hundreds of thousands of years since we parted company from other primates.

The lecture is free and open to the public, but booking is required. See the site hyperlinked above for details.

The seminars, convened by Dr Christine Lopes (visiting fellow at the IGRS), will be from 4pm to 6pm in Room ST 276 of the IGRS.  The details of the individual seminars are as follows:

27th January 2012 – What are disorders of rationality?

Contemporary analytic and phenomenologist philosophers tend to agree on the existence of disorders of rationality. We will consider in a concise manner some of the recent analytical and phenomenological accounts of such disorders, and the nature of the line that separates pathological from non-pathological reasoning.

10 February 2012 – Franz Brentano: the notions of self-evident experience and intentionality

We will discuss key passages from Brentano’s seminal Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, and critically consider what he sees as the two fundamental markers of mentality: self-evident experience and intentionality.

2 March 2012 – Ernst Cassirer: the notion of symbolic form

A concise account of the ‘Davos Disputation’ between Cassirer and Heidegger, and a critical discussion about some of the arguments involved in Cassirer’s re-conception of Kant’s theory of transcendental imagination into a system of symbolic forms. The main textual reference will be selected passages from Cassirer’s The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.

16 March 2012 – Karl Jaspers: the notion of psychopathology

We will look into some recent philosophical evaluations of the legacy of Jaspers’ seminal work on psychopathology, and consider the difficulties involved in a philosophical reduction of the notion of psychopathology to that of pathological reasoning. The main textual reference will be selected passages from Jaspers’ General Psychopathology.

One of the great analytic philosophers of the twentieth century, Michael Dummett, died on the 27th of December at the age of 86.

Here is a link to his obituary in The Guardian by A. W. Moore.

Merry Xmas!