Alfred Deakin Philosophy Seminar Series

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    With the support of the Alfred Deakin Research Institute, the Centre for Citizenship and

    Globalization and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, we are pleased to announce

    that Deakin University will be hosting a regular philosophy seminar series in 2012. The

    seminar series will feature invited presentations from Deakin staff and a mix of local,

    national and international scholars. It is open to all and, unless otherwise noted, will take

    place on Tuesdays, from 3.30-5.00pm, on the Burwood campus, room C2.05. A map of thecampus can be found here:http://www.deakin.edu.au/campuses/InteractiveMapBurwood.php.

    For any inquiries, please contact Sean Bowden at this address:[email protected]

    The program for Trimester 2 is as follows. Details can be found below:

    Date Speaker Title

    10 July Petra Brown Bonhoeffer: Kierkegaards single individual in a

    state of exception

    17 July Marguerite La Caze A taste of ashes: vengefulness and impossible

    reciprocity in Beauvoir

    24 July Alexander

    Naraniecki

    In Poppers Midrash: Is Karl Popper a Jewish

    philosopher?

    31 July Sean Bowden Expressive Agency in DeleuzesLogic of Sense

    7 August Erin Manning Artfulness

    14 August Tamas Pataki Divided minds, selves, egos and internal objects

    21 August George Duke Eclipse of Practical Reason

    28 August TBA

    4 Sept Justine McGill Messianic sovereignty: reading Nietzsche with

    Benjamin

    11 Sept Vanessa Lemm Nietzsches Politics of the Event18 Sept Paul Patton TBA

    25 Sept TBA

    2 Oct Andrew Inkpin Parody and Truth in Nietzsches Genealogy

    9 Oct Geoffrey Boucher Art as the Plenipotentiary of Impulse: A

    Reconstruction of Adornos Aesthetic Theory in Light

    of His Reading of Freud

    16 Oct Warwick Fox General Ethics and the Theory of Responsive Cohesion

    30 Oct Peter Harrison What was Philosophicalabout Natural Philosophy?

    10 July

    Petra Brown

    (Deakin)

    Bonhoeffer: Kierkegaards single individual in a state of

    exception.

    Throughout the 1930s, Bonhoeffer protested the influence of National

    Socialism on the German church. He also preached pacifism, and

    established an illegal seminary to train the leaders of the Confessing

    church to resist the authorities using the Sermon on the Mount. Yet,

    the same Bonhoeffer became involved in conspiracy only a couple of

    years after the closure of the seminary, thereby abandoning the

    pacifism he found in the Sermon on the Mount. He became a double

    agent in theAbwehrand was killed for this after the failure of the July20thplot, when papers were found implicating Bonhoeffer as a

    http://www.deakin.edu.au/campuses/InteractiveMapBurwood.phphttp://www.deakin.edu.au/campuses/InteractiveMapBurwood.phphttp://www.deakin.edu.au/campuses/InteractiveMapBurwood.phpmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.deakin.edu.au/campuses/InteractiveMapBurwood.php
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    conspirator. For many Bonhoeffer scholars and admirers,

    Bonhoeffers decision to turn away from pacifism to conspiracy

    remains intelligible in the context of Christs self-sacrifice and the

    suffering church-community.

    Im going to take as a given that Bonhoeffers Christology doesindeed provide the continuing thread between pacifism and

    conspiracy. Christ is the unifying figure in Bonhoeffers action, both

    as a pacifist and as a conspirator. However, I argue that Bonhoeffers

    involvement in conspiracy cannot be understood primarily in the

    context of self-sacrifice and the suffering Christian church-

    community. I will do this in three parts. First, I will argue that the

    relationship of Bonhoeffers Christ to the disciple is not mediated

    through community, but is more direct in a way that is closer to

    Kierkegaards Abraham inFear and Trembling. Second, through an

    analysis of Bonhoeffers concept of the extraordinary in his pacifist

    textDiscipleship, and the concept of the extraordinary situation inthe conspirator textEthics, I show that Christ as the unifying figure

    may lead to a deity who commands peace in the Sermon on the Mount

    but remains free to command killing in an extraordinary situation.

    Third, through a comparison with Karl Barths extreme case,

    Grenzsituation, and Schmitts state of exception,Ausnahmezustand,

    it will become clear that Bonhoeffers disciple in the extraordinary

    situation suspends the normal state of affairs, in a way that

    disturbingly mirrors Schmitts argument for dictatorship and the right

    of the sovereign to suspend the law in a state of exception. I suggest

    Bonhoeffers political involvement from pacifism to conspiracy may

    be seen as an example of the single individual that enacts a

    suspension of ethics in a Schmittian sense.

    Finally, I will draw attention to the intellectual source of Bonhoeffers

    extraordinary situation and Schmitt state of exception: the Danish

    philosopher Kierkegaard and his concept of the teleological

    suspension of the ethical in Fear and Trembling. Through the

    engagement with both Kierkegaard and Schmitt, I want to show

    Bonhoeffers involvement in conspiracy is problematic for anyone

    who wants to interpret his involvement in conspiracy as intelligible in

    the context of Christs self-sacrifice and the suffering church-community.

    Petra Brown is a PhD candidate at Deakin University.

    17 July

    Dr Marguerite La

    Caze (UQ)

    A taste of ashes: vengefulness and impossible reciprocity in

    Beauvoir

    Written just after the liberation of France and during the trials of

    collaborators, Beauvoirs little-discussed essay An Eye for an Eye

    (1946) describes the worst of crimes as those that reduce the human

    being to a thing. She suggests that we can only truly understandreactions of outrage to these crimes, such as vengefulness, in these

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    extreme situations when we feel them in their true concreteness. I

    argue that the essay works to undermine her own refusal to sign the

    petition for clemency for Robert Brasillach, an anti-Semitic writer

    tried, convicted and executed for treason. Beauvoir sets out to

    understand why what she sees as the need for revenge and a restored

    reciprocity in the light of these crimes usually cannot be satisfied.Both private revenge and state punishment fail to bring about the

    perpetrators recognition of what they have done, their own

    ambiguous existence or an acknowledgement of the perspective of the

    victim. Here Beauvoir parallels this impossible reciprocity with that of

    love. I show how her position shifts in The Second Sex (1949) and

    argue that we must distinguish these emotional reactions of outrage

    from reciprocal loving relations. Furthermore, I demonstrate that

    Beauvoirs support for capital punishment in this case is in tension

    with her developed existential account and her own account of

    vengefulness in the essay.

    Marguerite La Caze is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University

    of Queensland. Her research interests include European philosophy,

    feminist philosophy, moral psychology and aesthetics. She is the

    author of Wonder and Generosity: Their Role in Ethics and Politics,

    (forthcoming with SUNY), and The Analytic Imaginary(Cornell UP,

    2002). Marguerite is the current Chair of the Australasian Society for

    Continental Philosophy.

    24 July

    Dr Alexander

    Naraniecki

    (Deakin)

    In Poppers Midrash: Is Karl Popper a Jewish philosopher?

    This paper seeks to rewrite our understanding of Popper through an

    exploration of his thought in relation to twentieth century Jewish

    philosophers particularly Leibowtiz, Levinas and Wittgenstein. As

    most Popper scholars have written about Popper from an Anglo-

    analytic or philosophy of science perspective, this paper seeks to

    reposition Popper within, yet not limited to the continental tradition.

    This paper builds upon existing scholarship on Poppers formative

    Viennese environment and its Jewish context by Malachi Hacohen

    (2000), the Kantian basis for Poppers philosophy (Naraniecki 2010),

    as well as new perspectives by Michael Fagenblat on the on the way

    Kantianism has helped to reframe fundamental features of Jewishthought such as an opposition to idolatry and theodicy. This paper

    argues that the central Kantian and Midrashic aspects that Flagenblat

    associates with the thought of Levinas and Leibowitz can also help to

    explain key characteristics of Poppers philosophy.

    Alex Naraniecki is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for

    Citizenship and Globalisation. His current research project is entitled

    New Foundations for Multiculturalism and he is currently working

    on various publications and research projects focusing on the

    development of multiculturalism in Australia as well as the role of

    recognition and dialogue in promoting intercultural relations. Alex isalso involved in collaborative research projects within the Migration

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    and Intercultural Relations Research Cluster.

    31 July

    Dr Sean Bowden

    (Deakin)

    Expressive Agency in DeleuzesLogic of Sense

    It is common to differentiate between two kinds of events: actions and

    mere occurrences. Whereas the latter are events which are passivelyundergone, the former are things that are actively done. Actions, it is

    typically held, are the intentional doings of some agent. In The Logic

    of Sense, however, Deleuze appears to collapse the distinction

    between actions and mere occurrences, holding that events of both

    kinds are ultimately only ever impassive happenings. He asserts an

    ontological distinction between the corporeal realm of causes

    (including psychological causes) and the realm of events, holding that

    events exist only as the expressible of propositions. In relation to the

    category of action, this gives rise to the counter-intuitive thought that

    what I appear to actively do does not really depend on my prior

    willing or conscious intention to do it; it rather depends on the open-ended expression of the sense of what I do. And insofar as my

    apparent action does not coincide with my conscious intention or

    volition, it appears to me as something for which I am not ultimately

    responsible.

    At the same time, however, Deleuze does not jettison the idea of

    willing the event in The Logic Sense. Nor does he dismiss the ideas

    of agency and personal responsibility for what happens. Willing the

    event, however, does not consist in directly willing some particular

    action. It rather consists in expressively engaging with the pure sense-

    event in which all events are determined.

    In order to make sense of this position, this paper will offer an outline

    of a conception of expressive agency that Deleuze appears to be

    working with in The Logic of Sense. This account involves four

    claims. The first claim is that while the intentional agent can no longer

    be thought to be behind her actions in the traditional sense, she is

    certainly out there inher actions such as these are made sense of by

    others. The second claim is that while the actions of agents are

    multiply interpretable by others, these others are themselves out

    there in their multiply interpretable actions. The third claim is that anaction will count as the action of a particular agent insofar as both this

    agent and other agents are able to recognize him in that action. The

    final claim is that these multiple interpretations and recognitive

    processes take place in a shared expressive medium call it

    language which is not fixed but always being produced. Taking

    these four claims together, we will see that an action will come to

    count as mine, not because I directly will it and subsequently achieve

    what I intended to do; but because both I and others expressively

    produce the conditions in which we are able to recognize a particular

    action as expressing something about me as an agent.

    Dr Sean Bowden is an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at

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    Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of The Priority of

    Events: Deleuzes Logic of Sense(Edinburgh University Press, 2011),

    and the co-editor ofBadiou and Philosophy(EUP, 2012).

    7 August

    A/Prof. Erin

    Manning

    (Concordia)

    Artfulness

    Through a development of the concepts of the art of time and the art

    of participation, this paper explores the relationship of intuition and

    sympathy in Bergsons work to ask how a concept of artfulness might

    be conceived. Artfulness is here defined as the force of the event of

    art, a force that is more than human.

    Erin Manning holds a University Research Chair in Relational Art and

    Philosophy in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University

    (Montreal, Canada). She is also the director of the Sense Lab

    (www.senselab.ca), a laboratory that explores the intersections

    between art practice and philosophy through the matrix of the sensingbody in movement. In her art practice she works between painting,

    dance, fabric and sculpture (http://www.erinmovement.com). Current

    iterations of her artwork explore emergent collectivities through

    participatory textiles. Her project Stitching Time will be presented at

    the 2012 Sydney Biennale and The Knots of Time will open the new

    Flax Museum in Kortrijk, Belgium in 2014. Her writing addresses

    movement, art, experience and the political through the prism of

    process philosophy, with recent work developing a notion of autistic

    perception and the more-than human. Publications include

    Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT

    Press, 2009), Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty

    (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2007) andEphemeral

    Territories: Representing Nation, Home and Identity in Canada

    (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2003). Her forthcoming

    manuscript,Always More Than One: Individuations Dance will be

    published by Duke University Press in 2012 as will her forthcoming

    co-written manuscript (with Brian Massumi), Thought in the Act:

    Passages in the Ecology of Experience (Minnesota UP).

    14 August

    Dr Tamas Pataki

    (Melbourne)

    Divided minds, selves, egos and internal objects

    Partitive conceptions of mind have a long history in philosophy.

    Various types have been advanced to resolve certain troublesome

    aspects of self-experience and irrationality in belief and action. Some

    of these conceptions propose, radically (and roughly), that the mind

    (self, ego) splits into parts (sub-systems, component selves, subsidiary

    egos), that have perspectives and aims which are not shared with other

    parts, and function as independent centres of agency. Platos tripartite

    division of mind is of this kind, as is (I believe) Freuds structural

    theory. W. R. D. Fairbairns elegant account of the basic endopsychic

    situation involving a multiplicity of egos linked to specific internal

    objects is emphatically of this kind; indeed, Fairbairn allows thatinternal objects, though not ego structures, may also acquire a

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    dynamic independence, which seems to mean, at least, that they too

    are independent centres of agency.

    Many philosophers, and some psychoanalysts, reject these partitive

    conceptions, for a variety of reasons; amongst them: that they are

    incoherent; that they fail to provide identity conditions for subsidiaryparts or internal objects; that they are in conflict with the conception

    of a substantial unified self inherent in common-sense psychology and

    therefore sever the fundamental links between such psychology and

    psychoanalytic understanding; that they are unnecessary to answer to

    the clinical material. I will examine some of these objections against

    the backdrop of Fairbairns conception of endopsychic structure and

    attempt to develop a partitive conception of the self which is in many

    ways faithful to Fairbairns picture while preserving sufficient

    elements of a notion of the mind as a unity to answer some of the

    salient objections.

    Dr Pataki is honorary senior fellow at the University of Melbourne

    and honorary fellow of Deakin University. He studied philosophy at

    the University of Melbourne and psychoanalysis at University

    College, London University. He has been a lecturer in philosophy at

    RMIT, University of Tasmania and University of Melbourne. He co-

    edited, with Michael Levine,Racism in Mind(Cornell 2004) and is the

    author ofAgainst Religion(Scribe, 2007) as well as of several articles

    and book chapters on the philosophy of mind, and numerous popular

    pieces and reviews.

    21 August

    Dr George Duke

    (Deakin)

    Eclipse of Practical Reason

    Contemporary expressions of doubt about the possibility of a

    substantive employment of practical reason generally seek historical

    support from Hume. Defenders of substantive conceptions of practical

    rationality, by contrast, tend to draw inspiration from Aristotle,

    Aquinas or Kant. My focus in this paper is upon developments in the

    period between 1600 and 1650 for theories of practical rationality. My

    claim is that an examination of this period, which is perhaps

    associated most readily with the rise of a mechanistic philosophy of

    nature, is not only crucial for understanding the motivations forscepticism about practical reason later expressed with particular force

    by Hume, it also can also clarify the conditions that would need to be

    met for a successful defence of a substantive account. Such an

    analysis or at least so I argue also demonstrates that an approach to

    practical reason that adopts suitably modified Thomistic assumptions

    is better able to meet the relevant conditions than one deriving

    inspiration from Kant. The structure of the paper is as follows. In

    section one I sketch the distinction between substantive and

    procedural conceptions of practical rationality, using the Thomistic

    and Humean accounts as ideal-types of such theories. This provides

    the background for an analysis of developments in the first half of theseventeenth century, which is the central focus of section 2. Section 3

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    closes with some reflections on the lessons of the period between 1600

    and 1650 for contemporary debates on the possibility of developing a

    substantive account of practical reason.

    George Duke lectures in philosophy in the School of Humanities and

    Social Sciences at Deakin University. His research interests includethe philosophy of language, the history of analytical philosophy and

    political philosophy. He has published on Michael Dummetts theory

    of abstract objects, theories of abstract singular terms and the

    conceptual presuppositions of analytical philosophy.

    28 August TBA

    4 September

    Dr Justine McGill

    (La Trobe)

    Messianic sovereignty: reading Nietzsche with Benjamin

    Early in the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche

    introduces the figure of the sovereign individual, bearer of the right

    to make promises and the extraordinary privilege of responsibility.

    He then promises to reveal the history of human development which

    culminates in the emergence of a consciousness which is ripe for such

    responsibility. However, by the end of the essay the sovereign

    individual has disappeared. Instead, Nietzsche dramatically invokes a

    redeemingman of great love and contempt who must come one

    day, and then declares that at this point, he must fall silent.

    In seeking the origins of responsibility we are thus led to discover a

    messianic expectation or promise. What does this mean for

    Nietzsches approach to sovereignty and responsibility? Is the

    sovereign individual a moral figure, or is his sovereign practice of

    responsibility better understood in political or religious terms? This

    paper will draw upon Walter Benjamins deployment of a similar

    nesting of secular and religious thought to explore these questions. To

    read Nietzsche with Benjamin will lead to an interpretation of the

    sovereign individual as an allegorical figure of messianic politics,

    rather than an image of modern moral achievement or aspiration.

    Justine McGill is a lecturer in philosophy, currently teaching at La

    Trobe University. She is the co-editor, with sociologist Craig Brown,

    of an interdisciplinary collection on Violence in France and Australia:

    Disorder in the postcolonial welfare state(Sydney University Press,

    2010). She has research interests in Nietzsche studies, continental

    philosophy, early modern thought, film theory, feminist philosophy

    and Asian philosophy, particularly Buddhist thought. She is also

    interested in bringing analytic, continental and Asian philosophical

    perspectives into dialogue (for example, in exploring philosophy of

    mind and consciousness). She is currently working on a book about

    the concept of responsibility in modernity.

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    11 September

    Prof. Vanessa

    Lemm (UNSW)

    Nietzsches Politics of the Event

    This paper offers an analysis of Nietzsches politics of the event

    (Ereignis). In Nietzsches published works as well as in theNachlass,

    one can distinguish between several different uses of the term Ereignis

    (event). On my hypothesis, Nietzsches conception of the event isinseparable from his conception of the great human being. Therefore

    an analysis of the former must come hand in hand with an analysis of

    the latter. I argue that Nietzsche provides a politics of the event and

    that this politics denotes the task of cultivating great human beings.

    On my account, one can distinguish between two different politics of

    the event in Nietzsche. On the one hand, there is what Nietzsche refers

    to as small politics (kleine Politik) understood as a politics of the

    state or of moral and religious institutions which seek to produce

    conditions which favor the emergence of great human beings. At the

    heart of this politics stands the belief that the rise of great human

    beings is inherently contingent and hence requires the task oftransforming contingency into necessity, of turning the occurrence of

    great human beings into a necessity. We are here dealing with an

    active politics of liberation which seeks to change the course of

    history giving it a new direction and a new aim. On the other hand, we

    can distinguish in Nietzsche a great politics (grosse Politik) of the

    event which is not inscribed into the program of a particular political

    or moral institution. Rather it is a politics beyond politics and morality

    where the aim is not to change the course of time but rather to affirm

    the eternity of the moment. At the center of this politics stands

    Nietzsches conception of amor fati. We are here dealing with a

    passive-receptive politics situated beyond the historical course of time.

    From its perspective, the great human being is a reflection of the

    eternal value and worth of the whole of life beyond human measure.

    From the perspective of this politics, the challenge is not to turn the

    contingent into the necessary but rather to attain knowledge of

    necessity for only the latter can truly free up in the human being lifes

    potential for culture. Small politics is a human, perhaps all too human

    practice which inscribes the event in the historical becoming of

    humanity, whereas great politics is a politics of life which inscribes

    the event in the eternal return of the same. In what follows, I wish to

    show the different elements and entanglements of these two politics ofthe event in three recurrent figures in Nietzsches philosophy: the

    historical agent, the genius and the philosopher in both his early and

    late work.

    Professor Lemm is Head of the School of Humanities, UNSW. She is

    the author ofNietzsches Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics and the

    Animality of the Human Being(Fordham, 2009), and has edited books

    on Foucault and Hegel. Her research focuses on the philosophy of

    Friedrich Nietzsche, contemporary political thought, biopolitics, the

    question of theanimal, philosophy of culture and cultures of memory,

    and theories of justice and the gift.

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    18 September

    Prof. Paul Patton

    (UNSW)

    TBA

    Paul Patton is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South

    Wales and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He

    has published extensively on contemporary European philosophy and

    political philosophy. He is the author of, among other works,Deleuzian Concepts: Philosophy, Colinization, Politics(Stanford

    University Press, 2010) andDeleuze and the Political(Routledge,

    2000).

    25 September TBA

    2 October

    Dr Andrew Inkpin

    (Melbourne)

    Parody and Truth in Nietzsches Genealogy

    In view of its apparently scholarly form the Genealogy of Moralityis

    often viewed as a succinct, relatively systematic, and hence canonicalexposition of Nietzsches mature views on morality. However, the

    status of this works claims appears to be challenged by Nietzsches

    views on the nature and value of truth, particularly through the self-

    cancellation of the ascetic ideal with which the work dramatically

    closes. In this paper I reconstruct a framework for interpreting the

    Genealogys project and argue that Nietzsches overarching intention

    was to parody a scholarly work. I then explore whether the intention to

    parody undermines the works apparent historical, psychological and

    metaethical claims, and whether it results in incoherence (intentional

    or otherwise). I attempt to show how successful negotiation of these

    difficulties allows the Genealogyto be seen as exemplifying

    Nietzsches idea of Gay Science and in supposed contrast to

    Wagner blending cheerfulness and profundity.

    Andrew Inkpin has first degrees in theoretical physics from the

    University of York, and in philosophy, art history and psychology

    from the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. His graduate studies in

    philosophy were at University College London, where he completed

    an MPhil and PhD. His main research interests are in modern

    European philosophy, especially phenomenology (in particular

    Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty), Wittgenstein and Nietzsche.

    9 October

    Dr Geoffrey

    Boucher (Deakin)

    Art as the Plenipotentiary of Impulse: A Reconstruction of

    Adornos Aesthetic Theory in Light of His Reading of Freud

    Geoff Boucher is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychoanalytic Studies

    Programme and in Literary Studies at Deakin University. He is the

    author of several books on critical theory, including The Charmed

    Circle of Ideology(2008) andZizek and Politics(2010). His books on

    Understanding MarxismandAdorno Reframedare appearing in 2012.

    He works on contemporary culture from a perspective influenced by

    Lacanian psychoanalysis, publishing in the fields of continentalphilosophy and psychoanalytic studies.

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    16 October

    Prof. Warwick Fox

    (University of

    CentralLancashire)

    General Ethics and the Theory of Responsive Cohesion

    In this talk I will outline the nature of ethics and discuss its expansion

    from interhuman ethics to environmental ethics to what I have referred

    to as General Ethics. By General Ethics I mean the development of asingle, integrated approach to ethics that encompasses the realms of

    interhuman ethics, the ethics of the natural environment, and the ethics

    of the human-constructed, or built, environment. I will outline my own

    approach to General Ethics, which I refer to as the theory of

    responsive cohesion. This approach is both different from and more

    expansive than others on offer because it sees the basis of value as

    lying in a particular form of organizationor structurethat things can

    assume as opposed to particular kinds of higher-order powers or

    capacities that some things have, such as autobiographical self-

    awareness, rationality, sentience, being alive, or the capacity to

    maintain some kind of holistic integrity (all of which themselvesrepresent a subset of the total class of responsively cohesive

    structures). A range of significant ethical implications follows from

    this approach.

    Warwick Fox is Emeritus Professor at the University of Central

    Lancashire. He has published widely in environmental philosophy in

    particular and, more recently, on the extension of this work into what

    he has referred to as General Ethics. He is represented in leading

    anthologies and encyclopedias in the area, has served on the editorial

    advisory boards of some of the leading journals in the area (including

    Environmental Ethics, Organization and Environment, and

    Environmental Values), and his books include Toward a

    Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for

    Environmentalism(State University of New York Press, 1995, and

    Green Books, UK, 1995),Ethics and the Built Environment(ed.,

    Routledge, 2000), andA Theory of General Ethics: Human

    Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment(The MIT Press,

    2006).

    30 October

    Prof. Peter

    Harrison (UQ)

    What wasPhilosophicalabout Natural Philosophy?

    Historians are agreed upon that fact that science is a relatively recent

    conception and that natural philosophy was, roughly speaking, the

    pre-nineteenth century equivalent. However, there remains room for

    discussion about the exact identity of this early enterprise. In this

    paper I survey some common claims about the category natural

    philosophy, and propose that we understand this activity better if

    think less about disciplines, doctrines, and methods, and a more about

    the way in which particular intellectual activities shape the person,

    mould behaviour and mental habits, and render the mind susceptible to

    the reception of particular truths. Natural philosophy, I will suggest,

    can be regarded as a means of intellectual and moral formation, inother words, as contributing in important ways to the classical

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    philosophical goal of the good life.

    Professor Peter Harrison is Director of the Centre for the History of

    European Discourses at the University of Queensland. Prior to taking

    up this position, he was for a number of years the Idreos Professor of

    Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. At Oxford he was amember of the Faculties of Theology and History, a Fellow of Harris

    Manchester College, and Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre where he

    continues to hold a Senior Research Fellowship. He has been a

    Visiting Fellow at Oxford, Yale, and Princeton, is a founding member

    of the International Society for Science and Religion, and a Fellow of

    the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In 2011 he delivered the

    Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. His five books

    include, most recently, Wrestling with Nature: From Omens to

    Science (Chicago, 2011) and The Cambridge Companion to Science

    and Religion(Cambridge, 2010). He has published over 60 articles or

    book chapters. He is currently editing his Gifford Lectures under theworking title of Science, Religion and Modernity and is also

    working on a project concerned with conceptions of progress in

    history and the historical sciences.