Method and the History of Philosophy
University of Pennsylvania, April 21-23, 2022
This conference is celebrating a forthcoming Routledge volume on Early Modern European Women philosophers as well as the start of the SSHRC Extending New Narratives (ENN) grant. It is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, by the Department of Philosophy, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the Vice-Provost for Research, all at the University of Pennsylvania, by the Anscombe Archives, and by the Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium. Find the full conference program and additional information here.
Followed by
Philosophy & Genre in the Early Modern Period
Duke University, April 25-26, 2022.
Organized by Sergio Gallegos Ordorica and Andrew Janiak and sponsored by Humanities Unbounded!, Duke Philosophy, and Extending New Narratives.
Find the full conference program here.
Find the full conference program here.
Opening Discussions
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Image: Young Women in a Theater Balcony (circa 1820s) Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III) (Japanese, 1786 – 1865)
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Friday 4 March 20227.00-9.00am: Christine de Pizan on the Moral and Epistemic Harms of Slander
Presenter: Simona Vucu (University of Toronto) Discussants: Geneviève Barrette (Collège Ahuntsic), and Michaela Manson (University of Toronto) This session focuses on Christine de Pizan’s discussion on how misogyny and slander harm not only women but also men. Christine recognizes that misogyny and slander cause different kinds of moral and epistemic harm and these harms are relevant for how men and women can be virtuous agents. The discussants will take up issues that appear in Christine de Pizan’s view and explore them in the works of Marguerite Porete and Mary Astell. 9.30-11.30am: Cavendish on the Natures of Mind and Matter With Karolina Hübner (Cornell University), Oberto Marrama, (University of Oulu, Finland) and Jani Sinokki (University of Oulu, Finland) This session will show how the philosophy of Margaret Cavendish was not only innovative within the 17th-century context, but can also be successfully related to debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. Her account of the mind is an attempt to reconcile three commitments: materialism, monism, and panpsychism. Karolina Hübner will give a talk with a twofold aim. First, to expound this fascinating theory. Second, to demonstrate that Cavendish’s model of panpsychism has an explanatory advantage over the dominant versions of panpsychism today. The presentation will be followed by short comments on Hübner’s paper and a discussion open to all attendees. 12.30-2.30pm: Two Korean Women Confucian Philosophers With Hwa Yeong Wang (Georgetown University), Robin R. Wang (Loyola Marymount University), and Hope Sample (Grand Valley State University) This presentation aims to introduce two Korean women Confucian philosophers: Im Yunjidang and Gang Jeongildang who lived in the latter period of the Joseon dynasty (Eighteenth and Nineteenth century), which is known as a dark age in the history of Korean women. The aim is to present a few of their ideas and show how their being woman enabled them to draw out new insights that are critical not only to the tradition but to contemporary ethics as well. I will discuss how Im Yunjidang shows that the style and tenor of what one does have ethical import, and how Gang Jeongildang shows that intimacy, shared work, and trust are critical for moral improvement. |
Saturday 5 March 20227.00-9.00am: Nature, Providence, and Social Order: Reflections on Claude Buffier’s Pro-Women Arguments
Presenter: Manuel Vasquez Villavicencio (University of Toronto) Discussants: Sandrine Roux (Université du Québec à Montréal) and Anik Waldow (University of Sydney) This session will be in English and French. Claude Buffier is an influential eighteenth-century Jesuit writer, philosopher, and educationist. According to him, women possess epistemic capabilities that put them in a particularly favorable situation for learning. He subsumed these capabilities under the expression “Delicacy of Temperament.” However, the very fabric of society seems to restrain the possibilities for them to put these capabilities into action, at least in a generalized way. Buffier attributes this to what he calls “Providence.” In this session, we critically evaluate the tension arising from Buffier’s tacit acknowledgement that providence justifies a social order that prevents female citizens from developing their intellectual capacities by looking at his pro-women arguments against the backdrop of the wider discourse on education during the Enlightenment. 9.30-11.30am: Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht and Enlightenment Thought in 18th-Century Sweden Presenter: Matilda Amundsen Bergström (The University of Gothenburg) Discussants: Cecilia Rosengren (The University of Gothenburg) and Maria Johansen (The University of Gothenburg) This panel will focus on Swedish poet and enlightenment thinker Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht (1718-1763) and her intellectual context. The main presentation will explore three of Nordenflycht’s longer philosophical poems and their shared underlying concern: how does enlightenment thought reconfigure the meaning of a good life? To contextualize Nordenflycht’s philosophical verse, the discussants will address 1) Nordenflycht’s engagement with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in relation to the Swedish reception of him; 2) women’s participation in the introduction and diffusion of enlightenment thought in Sweden in the 18th Century. 12.30-2.30pm: Transcending the Erasure of the Black Subject from the Discourse of Knowledge in 19th Century Race Theory: Toward an Epistemology of the Black Self in Africana Philosophy Presenter: Adebayo Oluwayomi (Dartmouth College) Discussants: Andrew Soto (Hartnell College) and Dalitso Ruwe (Queen’s University) This work offers a fresh perspective that examines the contributions of 19th century Black thinkers to the discourse of knowledge, history of social thought and knowledge-formation with a primary focus on the development of an epistemology of the Black self in Africana philosophy. To this end, this work is a novel epistemic project that centers Blackness as the basis for a Black epistemological inquiry and the historicization of ideas within Africana philosophy. |
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Scientific Committee
Marguerite Deslauriers, Chike Jeffers, Nastassja Pugliese, Martina Reuter, Anne-Lise Rey, Lisa Shapiro