On Restlessness; New events series; AI and the Digital; Ask The Philosopher; Inclusive Philosophies
Loads of things this week!
Dear all,
It’s a very busy week of announcements. Let’s get going!
Firstly, many of you will remember Chi Rainer Bornfree who was one of the key people in The Philosopher for many years until they stepped back to focus on being a full-time writer. Anyway, Chi and Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan have just published a Covid memoir called The End Doesn’t Happen All At Once. I had the good fortune to be one of the early readers of the book, and it is truly a wonderful and provocative read.
To balance out the good news with the bad, Kingston University are the latest academic institution to decide to crush their entire Humanities department - and, of course, in just the kind of callous and thoughtless manner we are increasingly come to expect from these wretched institutions. From my point of view, the main loss will be the extraordinary “Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy” which is one of the few global outposts of full-blown-no-compromise continental philosophy. We have featured many of their academics over the years, from Catherine Malabou to Stella Sandford, and our managing editor Andrés Saenz de Sicilia got his PhD from there. Please read the letter written by the faculty and protest this in any way you can summon the energy to do.
Monday Event: 12pm PT/3pm ET/7pm GMT/8pm CET
“On Restlessness”
Benjamin Storey in conversation with with Anthony Morgan
N.B. Due to daylight savings, this event will start one hour later than normal in many countries. To ensure you are tuning in at the correct time, use this app and check your local time against 7pm GMT time when the event will be starting.
We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, yet everywhere we see signs that our pursuit of happiness has proven fruitless. Dissatisfied, we seek change for the sake of change—even if it means undermining the foundations of our common life. Looking to politics, philosophy, and religion, Benjamin Storey will argue that the philosophy we have inherited, despite pretending to let us live as we please, produces remarkably homogenous and unhappy lives, and that finding true contentment will require rethinking our most basic assumptions about happiness. You can find out more and register here.
And here are the two posters for the spring series (with thanks as always to Nick Halliday of Halliday Books):
Ask The Philosopher
Registration is now open for this month’s “Ask The Philosopher” session, which will take place on Tuesday at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 6pm UK / 7pm CET / 11:30 pm IST for 90 minutes via Zoom.
This month, Briana Toole (and one more editorial team member - TBC) will join regular panelist Michael Bavidge for a lively and fun philosophical chat. You can register here.
Inclusive Philosophies
Please note that the date for Meena Dhanda’s event which was due to take place on Wednesday has now been changed to Thursday 5th June. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Also, we have opened some more places up for the remaining masterclasses in the series:
Monday 24th March – 1pm EDT/5pm UK (60 minutes)
Linguistic Inclusion (Lea Cantor, University of Cambridge / Jonathan Egid, SOAS University of London)
You can register here.
Thursday 27th March – 2pm EDT/6pm UK (60 minutes)
Decolonial philosophy (Nelson Maldonado-Torres, University of Connecticut)
You can register here.
Friday 28th March – 2pm EDT/6pm UK (60 minutes)
Philosophy of Disability (Joel Michael Reynolds, Georgetown University)
You can register here.
Ending
The Philosopher is unfunded and relies on your support to keep doing the work we do. Through becoming a supporter via Patreon, you can get all our print/digital issues sent to you, enjoy priority access and discounted rates for our groups/classes, join philosophical discussions with our editorial team, and more. The income we generate via Patreon helps us to keep our events series free and to pay our contributors. You can find out more and become a member here.
Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Anthony Morgan
Managing Editor