Merleau-Ponty and the Philosophy of Nature

Workshop: FRIDAY 30TH MAY 2003

The aim of the workshop is to gather various speakers around Merleau-Ponty's lecture courses on Nature from the late 1950s. What will be discussed is the nature of the relation between philosophy and science since Kant. Each speaker will take up one aspect of Merleau-Ponty's wide-ranging engagement with philosophy, physics and biology, asking whether phenomenology can reconfigure this relation constructively. It is hoped that a critical purchase can be developed on Merleau Ponty's quest for a new conception of nature, rethinking of the body, and the contemporary significance of a philosophy of nature.

Programme

All sessions will take place in room S0.10 (Social Studies Building)

9.30 am Coffee & Registration, outside room S0.10

10.15 am - 11.30 am Robin Durie: Nature from the Perspective of Immanence

break

11.45 am - 1.00 pm Alberto Toscano (Greenwich): Micro-Phenomenology as Anti-Phenomenology, or, The Case of Whitehead

1.00 pm - 2 pm Lunch

2.00 pm - 3.15 pm Howard Caygill (Goldsmiths College, London): Force and Productivity

break

3.30 pm - 5.00 pm Nuno Nabais (Lisbon): From Possibility to Power: An Archaeology of the Experience of Nature in Husserl

5.00 pm Coffee, outside room S0.1

5.30 pm - 6.00 pm Final Discussion

N.B. Speakers' talks last 45 minutes with 30 minutes for discussion, with the exception of Professor Nabais who will talk for up to one hour with 30 minutes discussion.

Please register by 21st May 2003.

Registration Fee: Waged £18, Unwaged £10, Warwick Student £5.

To obtain further information, please contact: Mrs Heather Jones

Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature
Department of Philosophy
University of Warwick
Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK