Please contact Johan Heemskerk for further information (j.heemskerk@warwick.ac.uk)

This session will feature a paper from PhD student Carline Klijnman, who will be interviewed by Benjamin Ferguson. The abstract for Carline’s paper is below. We look forward to seeing you there! 

Epistemic Injustice and Expertise

A fundamental characterization of modern societies is epistemic dependence. We rely on (expert-)testimony of others to inform ourselves on complex, politically relevant matters. Especially in the online epistemic environment, the increasing spread of misinformation and the disintermediation of traditional epistemic gatekeepers (a combination I call Epistemic Pollution) have made it harder for citizens to determine the credibility of different information sources.  

Take for example the vaccination debate. In anti-vaccination echo-chambers, the testimony of health-care experts is persistently undermined, whilst the anecdotal stories of concerned parents claiming their child’s disease was caused by vaccination are believed without evidence. These mechanisms of distrust seem to echo Miranda Fricker’s account of ‘testimonial injustice’, wherein the speaker “receives a credibility deficit owing to identity prejudice in the hearer”. However, unlike Fricker’s central cases of systematic testimonial injustice, prejudice against healthcare experts is not rooted in social injustice. Still, as I will argue, the severity of testimonial injustice shouldn’t be measured only by its impact on the individual speaker. Structural prejudice, even if not rooted in social injustice (e.g. against healthcare experts) can undermine epistemically fair conditions of public discourse (in this case re. vaccination debate). This is both epistemically and ethically problematic. 

Please contact Johan Heemskerk for further information (j.heemskerk@warwick.ac.uk)

This session will feature a paper from MPhil student Thaddee Chantry-Gellens, who will be interviewed by David Bather Woods. The abstract for Thaddee’s paper is below. We look forward to seeing you there!

Primitivist Violence? An alternative to Sarkissian’s argument on the darker side of Daoist Primitivism

Violence is a historical fact. It has permeated the development of human history for millennia, sometimes bringing it to the brink of the abyss, other times leading it to the highest peaks. Violence of the oppressor on the oppressed, violence of the oppressed on the oppressor, forcing one’s will on others through aggressive means is multi-faceted and should not be understood as a monolithic phenomenon. Violence can be liberating, and it can be repressive. China has known political violence throughout many of the periods and forms of its long existence. The moment in time this essay focuses on is a transitory one: the shift between the aptly-named Warring States period and the first unification of China under the Qin Dynasty. It will try to depict some of the arguments made in the Primitivist section of the Zhuangzi anthology. This will be done in the context of Hagop Sarkissian’s (2010) article on the “darker side” of Daoist primitivism.

Please contact Johan Heemskerk for further information (j.heemskerk@warwick.ac.uk)

This session marks the last WiP seminar of Term 2. We will be looking at a paper from PhD student Jonathan Clarke-West. The abstract for Jonathan’s paper is below. We look forward to seeing you there!

 Imagination in Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. 

 This paper introduces my thesis before staging the first chapter. It addresses the requirement to study the role of imagination in Recherche before drawing out examples of its operation from Recherche. It outlines three categories by which I understand imagination to operate within the novel: firstly, its operation as a faculty; secondly, its role in the context of artistic production; finally, its articulation in the presentation of society. It then moves to consider the presentation of imagination as a faculty in the novel – the imagination. It looks at the positions held by different commentators – who mostly centre upon the ampliative powers acquired once imagination and sense conspire. It elects to focus upon the operation of imagination articulated by the phenomena of Proustian sensation and involuntary memory. Deleuze’s reading of Kant’s Sublime grants a point of entry to this operation. The similarities enable the claim to be made that Proust articulates a literary analytic of the encounter in these phenomena.

Please contact Johan Heemskerk for further information (j.heemskerk@warwick.ac.uk)

Theme: 'Continental Philosophy and Its Histories'

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Stella Sandford (Kingston University)

Dr Mogens Laerke (CNRS)

Dr Francey Russell (Columbia University)

Continental Philosophy often focuses its efforts on studying, comparing, and criticising the thought of past philosophers. One would be hard-pressed to find a thinker in the Continental tradition who has not understood and presented their own thought in relation to an Ancient Greek, or a Modern philosopher. But these philosophers do not approach historical figures as ‘historians of ideas’ or as ‘experts’ on a historical period. Rather, the new philosophy is seen as standing in contrast to, or as a continuation of, the problems and questions of the past. As such, Continental Philosophy often places a strong emphasis on the construction of, and the engagement with, its histories, thereby understanding and differentiating itself on the basis of traditions, schools, and systems, rather than theories, disciplines, and problems.

One of the aims of this conference is to investigate different ways in which Continental Philosophy engages with the thinkers that belong to its history: what is it to ‘read’ Plato, Spinoza, Kant, or Nietzsche in Continental Philosophy? How important is the canon and what is its methodological and philosophical significance? Should we keep putting forward various creative (mis)readings of the past philosophers or, as Husserl has suggested early on, is it better to get rid of the past and proceed afresh with a new method?

History, however, is more than a ‘tool’ utilised by Continental Philosophy. From Hegel’s Philosophy of History and Marx’s materialisation of it, to Heidegger’s distinction between Historie and Geschichte, and Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment Continental Philosophy makes the phenomenon (in contrast to the discipline) of history the very object of its investigations. Hence, we wonder: what does it mean to write a ‘philosophy of history’ and what possible form can such an enquiry take today?

But it must not be forgotten that Continental Philosophy can itself be seen as a period in the longer history of philosophy. This makes the very concept of Continental Philosophy open to inquiry by philosophers, but also to historians, sociologists, political scientists, etc. What does it mean to address Continental philosophy as a historical period? Can methods, approaches, traditions, and theories from other disciplines illuminate and inform philosophical understandings of Continental Philosophy? Can such approaches be helpful to disciplines other than philosophy? This is another crucial topic that this conference aims to investigate.

This conference is made possible by generous funding provided by the University of Warwick Philosophy Department and British Society for the History of Philosophy. It is an annual event within The Centre for Research in Post-Kantian European Philosophy (University of Warwick).

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/research/activities/postkantian/events/wcpc

Two talks on memory by James Openshaw (Warwick) and Thomas Crowther (Warwick)