Fall 2019 Seminars

Cen­ter for Crit­i­cal Thought (CCT) and INSTITUTE FOR THE RADICAL IMAGINATION (IRI)

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1. German Idealism and its Aftermath: Philosophical and Poetic Reactions with Michael Pelias

Giv­en the mul­ti­ple Left, Lib­er­al and Neo-con­ser­v­a­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of Ger­man ide­al­ism in terms of the end(s) of his­to­ry and or its new begin­ning, we will inter­pret the world his­tor­i­cal spir­it (1) in the light of the enlight­en­ment (2) through a close read­ing of Hegel’s Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy engage the con­tem­po­rary world and its mul­ti­ple vari­a­tions. By think­ing through the after­math of the clo­sure of West­ern philo­soph­i­cal thought and its mean­ing for the neo-lib­er­al epoch, we will encounter some of the poet­ic respons­es to this clo­sure and the attempts made philo­soph­i­cal­ly to reori­ent thought. Authors read will include Kant, Hegel, Mal­larme, and Rim­baud among others.

Venue:

James Bald­win High School
Room 317
351 West 18th St
New York, NY 10011

(6:30 – 8:30pm): a ten week course start­ing Octo­ber 15th, 2019 — $15 per ses­sion or $150 for all ten sessions.

Readings:

Kant, Immanuel. “What is Enlight­en­ment?” (pg. 54–60)

*Please read Kan­t’s short piece on defin­ing the Enlight­en­ment for the first class

Hegel, G.W. F. Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy of Spir­it trans, by A.V. Miller. Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press

Schelling, F.W.J. Philo­soph­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions into the Essence of Human Freedom

**There will be some hand­outs giv­en in class as well includ­ing Marx’s cri­tique of Hegel’s dialectic.

Pur­chase all ses­sions of Ger­man Ide­al­ism and its Aftermath:

$150.00Add to cart

* It is also pos­si­ble to pay per ses­sion in per­son. Please RSVP to info@radicalimagination.institute if you would like to attend on a per ses­sion basis.

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2. The Presocratics and their Contemporary Relevance with Bruno Gulli

In this course, we exam­ine the metaphysics/ontology of indi­vid­u­a­tion, rup­ture, sin­gu­lar­i­ty, and time. Indeed, the ques­tion that starts philo­soph­i­cal think­ing (What is it?) is not only the ques­tion about the essence of real­i­ty, the what­ness of things, but it is also the ques­tion of the process of indi­vid­u­a­tion, change, and ulti­mate­ly of sin­gu­lar­i­ty. The sec­ond, but more foun­da­tion­al, ques­tion, asked by Par­menides (Is it or is it not?), will, per­haps para­dox­i­cal­ly, pro­vide us with the crit­i­cal tools for an under­stand­ing of the dialec­tics of exis­tence, the vor­tex of becom­ing described by Her­a­cli­tus. The rela­tion­ship between being and becom­ing, per­ma­nence and change (Par­menides and Her­a­cli­tus) will be cen­tral through­out the course. This is the ques­tion of time, which we will prob­lema­tize start­ing from the orig­i­nal thought of Anax­i­man­der. Yet, the point is to also appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of this ear­ly think­ing for (and in) our own times. We will also make ref­er­ence to oth­er philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions, such as Tao­ism in China.

Venue:

James Bald­win High School
Room 317
351 West 18th St
New York, NY 10011 

(6:30–8:30pm): an sev­en week course begin­ning Octo­ber 7th, 2019 — $15 per ses­sion or $90 for all sev­en sessions.

Readings: 

Patri­cia Cur­d’s Read­er of Pre­so­crat­ic Philosophy

John Bur­net’s Ear­ly Greek Philosophy

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger’s Ear­ly Greek Thinking

Pur­chase all ses­sions of The Pre­so­crat­ics and their Con­tem­po­rary Relevance:

$90.00Add to cart

* It is also possible to pay per session in person. Please RSVP to info@radicalimagination.institute if you would like to attend on a per session basis.

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3. Marxism after Marx with Stanley Aronowitz

In recent times, left schol­ars, mil­i­tants, and the­o­rists have returned to Marx in the hope of find­ing the rev­o­lu­tion­ary truth. Although the study of Marx and his immense pro­duc­tion of crit­i­cal analy­sis is nec­es­sary and demand­ing, it alone can­not replace the more cur­rent the­o­ret­i­cal inter­ven­tions of the mid­dle twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry through the first two decades of the 21st cen­tu­ry. This course will focus on three of the most orig­i­nal con­tem­po­rary ver­sions of Marx­ism which have tak­en into account cur­rent con­di­tions. We will encounter and focus on the exem­plary and orig­i­nal work of the Frank­furt School, Hen­ri Lefeb­vre, and Anto­nio Negri. The hope is to think in our times with new con­cepts and cat­e­gories need­ed for under­stand­ing and mak­ing rad­i­cal change.

*This sem­i­nar will be held at: 244 Madi­son Ave. #10‑A ( between 37th and 38th Sts.)

(12–2pm): a eight week course begin­ning Octo­ber 5th, 2019 — $15 per ses­sion or $100 for all eight sessions.

Readings: 

Lefeb­vre, Hen­ri. Every­day Life in the Mod­ern World, Chap­ter 2, “The Bureau­crat­ic Soci­ety of Con­trolled Con­sump­tion,” and Chap­ter 4, “Ter­ror­ism and Every­day Life.” 

Lefeb­vre, Hen­ri. The Cri­tique of Every­day Life, Vol­ume I

Mar­cuse, Hebert. One-Dimen­sion­al Man

Negri, Anto­nio. Insur­gen­cies, Chap­ter 1, “Con­stituent Pow­er: the Con­cept of a Cri­sis,” and Chap­ter 5. “the Rev­o­lu­tion and the Con­sti­tu­tion of Labor.”

Pur­chase all ses­sions of Marx­ism after Marx:

$100.00Add to cart

* It is also possible to pay per session in person. Please RSVP to info@radicalimagination.institute if you would like to attend on a per session basis.

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4. Methods of Inquiry: From Aristotle to Evald Ilyenkov with Arto Artinian

Much has been said about “dialec­tics” in the con­text of left­ist think­ing about pol­i­tics, yet often the con­ver­sa­tion is often vague on the specifics of what is it that dialec­tics in think­ing actu­al­ly means? What is gained by deploy­ing “dialec­ti­cal thought”? To counter this ten­den­cy, we will trace spe­cif­ic artic­u­la­tions of dialec­ti­cal move­ment in thought, with the aim of gain­ing a clear­er under­stand­ing of the fun­da­men­tal con­cepts, ideas and meth­ods that relate to this mode of thinking.

Our focus is on build­ing a ground­ing in think­ing about every­day life that seeks (rather than avoids) con­tra­dic­tions, and is capa­ble of sur­viv­ing (as Hegel said) the ten­sions that arise with­in it.

Read­ings will begin with a dis­cus­sion of sec­tions from Aristotle’s “Pri­or Ana­lyt­ics” and “Cat­e­gories”. We will then fol­low with a few excerpts from Hegel’s stud­ies of log­ic, while mak­ing explic­it Hegel’s con­ver­sa­tion with Aris­to­tle. We will con­clude with a close read­ing of Sovi­et philoso­pher Evald Ilyenkov’s pre­sen­ta­tion of dialec­ti­cal think­ing, in the con­text of the thread run­ning from Aris­to­tle, through Hegel and Marx.

Venue:

James Bald­win High School
Room 317
351 West 18th St
New York, NY 10011 

(7:00–9:00pm): an eight week course begin­ning Octo­ber 16th, 2019 — $15 per ses­sion or $100 for all eight sessions.

Read­ings: 

Aris­to­tle: “Cat­e­gories 1–5, 7, 9, 10”, (“Aris­to­tle: Cat­e­gories and De Inter­pre­tione, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2002).

Aris­to­tle: “The Syl­lo­gism and its Three Fig­ures: A1-A6” (“Pri­or Ana­lyt­ics”, Hack­ett, 1989).

Hegel: “The Syl­lo­gism”, Sec­tions #181–193” (“Ency­clo­pe­dia of the Philo­soph­i­cal Sci­ences in Basic Out­line: Part I — Sci­ence and Log­ic”, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2010).

David L. Har­vey: “The Log­ic of Com­mod­i­ty Cir­cuits” (The Philo­soph­i­cal Forum Quar­ter­ly, Vol. XV, #3, Spring 1984, pg. 280–323).

Marx, selec­tions from “Cap­i­tal Vol. 2”.

Evald Ilyenkov: “Our Schools Must Teach How to Think”, (Jour­nal of Russ­ian and East Euro­pean Psy­chol­o­gy, vol. 45, no. 4, July–August 2007, pp. 9–49).

Pur­chase all ses­sions of On Meth­ods of Inquiry:

$100.00Add to cart

* It is also possible to pay per session in person. Please RSVP to info@radicalimagination.institute if you would like to attend on a per session basis.