Are We Postsecular?

Lady Shri Ram College for Women

in association with

International Research Network on Religion and Democracy

presents an international conference

‘Are We Postsecular?’

Contesting Religion & Politics in Comparative Contexts

13–14 December 2012

Time: 9.30am–6.00pm

Venue: Auditorium, Lady Shri Ram College for Women,

Lajpat Nagar IV, New Delhi 110024 India

To REGISTER, please email at lsr.postsec@gmail.com

with your name, affiliation & email ID. Registration is free.

For the full programme, please visit www.arewepostsecular.blogspot.com

A Deleuzian Century?: Session V

We will consider a field of experience taken as a real world no longer in relation to a self but to a simple 'there is'. There is, at some moment, a calm and restful world. Suddenly a frightened face looms up that looks at something out of the field. the other person appears here as neither subject nor object but as something that is very different: a possible world, the possibility of a frightening world.

Next week, we engage with Chapter One: What Is a Concept from What is Philosophy [Deleuze & Guattari]

Date: 1 May 2012 (Tuesday)

Time: 2.30 pm

Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of delhi

A Deleuzian Century?: Session IV

A rhizome as a subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes.

This week we read the 'Introduction: Rhizome' from A Thousand Plateaus. 

Date: 24 April 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

A Deleuzian Century?: Session III

We meet tomorrow, for the third session of our readings. The text is Chapter IX: The Doctrine of Eternal Return from Tracy B. Strong's Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration. 

Date: 17 April 2012 (Tuesday)

Time: 2:30 pm

Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

A Deleuzian Century?: Session II

“What is an event?” is, of course, a quintessentially Deleuzian question. And Whitehead marks an important turning-point in the history of philosophy because he affirms that, in fact, everything is an event.

Next week we discuss Steven Shaviro's article titled Deleuze's Encounter With Whitehead. The article is available here.

Date: 10 April 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 2.30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi.

A Deleuzian Century?: Session I

To consider a pure event, it must first be given a metaphysical ba­sis. But we must be agreed that it cannot be the metaphysics of sub­stances, which can serve as a foundation for accidents; nor can it be a metaphysics of coherence, which situates these accidents in the en­tangled nexus of causes and effects. The event-a wound, a victory-defeat, death-is always an effect produced entirely by bodies colliding, mingling, or separating, but this effect is never of a corpo­real nature; it is the intangible, inaccessible battle that turns and re­peats itself a thousand times around Fabricius, above the wounded Prince Andrew. The weapons that tear into bodies form an endless incorporeal battle. Physics concerns causes, but events, which arise as its effects, no longer belong to it Let us imagine a stitched causal­ity: as bodies collide, mingle, and suffer, they create events on their surfaces, events that are without thickness, mixture, or passion; for this reason, they can no longer be causes. They form, among them­selves, another kind of succession whose links derive from a quasi-physics of incorporeals-in short, from metaphysics.

Michel Foucault, Theatrum Philosophicum

Tomorrow, we begin reading Deleuze. All are invited!

Date: 3 April 2012 (Tuesday)

Time: 2.30 pm

Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

A Deleuze April

The Philosophy Reading Group commences next week. And this time we read Deleuze! Here are the course details:

COURSE: A Deleuzian Century, was it?
[Every Tuesday (starting 3 April 2012), 2.30 pm]

Michel Foucault, in the Theatrum Philosophicum prophesized that ‘one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian’. Why might that be!

READINGS:

1. Michel Foucault, Theatrum Philosophicum
2. Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, ‘Introduction: Rhizome’, A Thousand Plateaus
3. Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, selections from, Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature
4. Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, selections from What is Philosophy?
5. Gilles Deleuze, selections from The Logic of Sense
6. Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, selections from Anti-Oedipus
7. Gilles Deleuze, ‘Introduction: Repetition and Difference’, Difference and Repetition

Those interested, please email me at silikamohapatra@gmail.com to confirm your participation.

© Gerard Uferas: Gilles Deleuze

Session VI - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

In the last session with Professor Jay Drydyk, the participants made presentations which was followed by discussion. The short papers will be available for reading at Journal of the Forum for Philosophical Studies (JFPS).

Session V - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

Further to our discussion last Tuesday, we now move to pages 69-95, from Martha Nussbaum’s 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice’.

Date: 14 February 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Reading/lecture questions: 

• What alternatives to social contract theory do Sen and Nussbaum propose?
• How would public reason support Nussbaum’s 10 capabilities?
• What logic leads from equal human dignity to preventing shortfalls in the 10 capabilities, for all?
• Does Nussbaum succeed in showing that the capability approach does not face the same roadblocks that social contract theory faces at the three frontiers of justice?

Discussion questions: This week Prof. Drydyk invites your questions. Ideally they should be questions that would be challenging for Martha Nussbaum to answer. Please email your questions to him at JayDrydyk@gmail.com, and he will select some to begin the discussion period.

Session IV - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

We now resume our sessions with Professor Jay Drydyk, and meet tomorrow to read Martha Nussbaum’s 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice’ (pages 9-35).

Date: 7 February 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

Reading/lecture questions:

• What challenges do Sen and Nussbaum pose for theories of justice?
• What is Nussbaum’s argument against social contract theories?
• What are the assumptions she attributes to the social contract tradition?
• What problems result from those assumptions at the ‘frontiers of justice’?

Discussion questions:

• Is it not sufficient to treat disabled people with benevolence rather than justice?
• Why can’t a just world simply be a world made up of just countries?
• As Sen noted, equality claims can by made for people because they deserve equal consideration. But if we gave fully equal consideration to all other species, we would not eat any of them, and we as a species would cease to exist. So does it make any sense to discuss justice for other species? Would it be self-defeating for humans to act justly in relation to other species?

Sessions IV to VI: Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

Over the next three sessions with Professor Jay Drydyk, we would be reading the first chapter from Martha Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice, titled 'Social Contracts and Three Unsolved Problems of Justice’.


The text has been divided into three parts to spread over the three sessions:
07 February 2012 : Pages 9-35
14 February 2012 : Pages 35 - 69
21 February 2012 : Pages 69-95

Session III - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

For Session III of the course On Justice, the reading is: ‘Introduction’ from Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice.

Date: 17 January 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm

Venue: Room 56, First Floor, Arts Faculty Building, University of Delhi

Reading/lecture questions

1. What is Sen’s idea of justice, anyway? What does reasoning have to do with it?
2. What is Sen’s feasibility argument, and is it sound?
3. What are Sen’s redundancy arguments, and are they sound?
4. Can a comparative approach escape these problem

Discussion questions

1. Is Sen’s assessment of the difference between niti and nyaya sound?
2. Is Sen’s assessment of the discussion between Arjuna and Krishna sound?
3. Does the social contract tradition have a future?

Session II - Challenging Theories of Justice: The Capability Approaches of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum

Many thanks for being there yesterday. It was great to see you all!


The reading for the next session is: 

Amartya Sen, 'Capability and Well-being', Chapter 2 of The Quality of Life edited by Sen and Nussbaum, 1993.



Date: 10 January 2012 (Tuesday)


Time: 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm


Venue: Room 56, First Floor, Arts Faculty Building, University of Delhi

Reading/lecture questions

1. What is meant by 'advantage'?

2. What does Sen mean by 'capabilities', 'capability', well-being freedom, well-being achievement, agency freedom, agency achievement?

3. Which goods constitute advantage?

4. Why is it capabilities that matter most for distributive justice?

Discussion questions

1. Who is to decide which capabilities are valuable? Experts? The people?

2. For Germans, eating well might involve rye bread, not rotis, while for Indians, eating well might involve rotis, but not rye bread. How can there be a single capability, if there is no single standard for its achievement?

3. Nussbaum's challenge: Don’t we need a single list of all essential capabilities?

4. Sen has discussed only individual capabilities. Aren’t group capabilities also important – for instance the capability of a tribal or ethnic group to maintain their culture?