Japanese Philosophy; Thinking Together; Critical Race Theory and Pseudoscience
A review by Leon Krings and Francesca Greco, and two online events featuring Thomas Wild, Jana Schmidt, Victor Ray, Sam Hoadley-Brill, and Jana Bacevic
Dear all,
It’s a busy week on the events front. Digital events on Monday and Tuesday, then our in-person London event, “Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience”, on Thursday. A lot of the editorial team at The Philosopher (including myself as I am currently in the UK) will be at Thursday’s event. Come along and say hello!
Your Sunday Read
“Japanese Philosophy between Eurocentrism and World Philosophy”: Bret W. Davis is an old friend of ours, having written an awesome essay a few years back and appeared in a couple of our events. For this week’s Sunday Read, Leon Krings and Francesca Greco have written a comprehensive review of Davis’ Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy (2022). Their review offers an excellent overview of some of the key contemporary debates in the field of Japanese Philosophy, as well as overviews of many of the chapters in Davis’ handbook. You can read their review here.
Monday Event: 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK
Thinking Together Through Writing
Thomas Wild and Jana Schmidt with Jana Bacevic
How do texts become intermediary objects of thought? In this event, Thomas Wild, Jana Schmidt, and Jana Bacevic will reflect on thinking together through engaging with writing. What happens in reading together, both in collectives such as reading groups but also in more ad-hoc situations? How do we resolve disagreements around interpretation? What can this teach us about the nature of thinking? The focus of this conversation will be on Hannah Arendt’s acceptance speech for the Lessing Prize (published in “Men in Dark Times”, 1968) to highlight the relational nature of thought and its evolution through both reading and writing. You can find out more and register here.
Tuesday Event: 7pm ET/11am (Wed.) AET
Critical Race Theory, Science, and Pseudoscience
Victor Ray and Sam Hoadley-Brill with Jana Bacevic
Critical race theory (CRT) is an approach to racial scholarship born in law schools in the 1980s that operates from the premises of pervasive racial inequality and a social constructionist (i.e. anti-essentialist) conception of race; challenges the idea that the superficially colorblind nature of the law means the law is race-neutral; and seeks to explain how landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s failed to deliver on its promises of equality for the racial minorities it was supposed to uplift.
Amongst other things, critics of CRT have argued have that it is an anti-scientific research program, rejecting core tenets of science, such as universality and objectivity. But are these claims correct? Furthermore, to what extent have pseudoscientific claims played an instrumental role in fomenting the increasing backlash against CRT? Join CRT scholars Victor Ray and Sam Hoadley-Brill to find out more! You can register for this event here.
Event on Thursday February 22nd at Conway Hall, London
Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience
Lyndsey Stonebridge in conversation with Samantha Rose Hill
Tickets sold out for our in-person event in London later this week, so we have moved it to a bigger room! Buy your tickets here.
Recording of Bassiri/Ramos conversation
For those of who missed Monday’s conversation between Nima Bassiri and Marco Ramos on “Madness, Psychiatry, and Economic Reason”, you can watch the recording here.
Ending
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Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Anthony Morgan
Editor