Philosophy Department Events

For a full, detailed list of all upcoming events, see our Philosophy Gateway page. For lists of events that are filtered by type (lecture, workshop, etc.), see below.

Lectures

The philosophy department sponsors regular lecture series that bring in eminent philosophers from the NYC area and beyond. Recent lecturers include Judith Butler, Philip Kitcher, and Christine Korsgaard.

See our "All Lectures" page for a full list of upcoming lectures. For lecture lists filtered by lecture series, follow the links below:

Workshops, Reading Groups, and Conferences

The political Husserl: Idealist politics and communal spirit

By Dan Zahavi and Sophie Loidolt

October 10, 2023 | 5 - 6:30 p.m.
Flom Auditorium
Rose Hill Campus,

Abstract

The founder of phenomenology is neither known as a political philosopher nor as an intellectual who publicly expressed his political views. However, this should not lead us to think that Husserl himself or his thought were completely “unpolitical”. In this talk, our main claim is that two things are distinctive of Husserl’s approach to politics: First, it is of utmost importance for him that politics should be guided by “ideas”, which means that it should not just engage in realpolitik, but be regulated by an idealistic, maybe even utopian picture of how the state and the community should be organized. Second, Husserl grounds “the political”, i.e., the existential basis for organized politics, in a phenomenology of communities.

In the final part of the talk, we will distinguish different strands in the reception of Husserl’s political philosophy: one group that creatively expands on Husserl’s ideas on the state, community, and home- and alienworld; one that expresses reservations about whether Husserlian phenomenology, for methodological reasons, at all allows for genuine political thought; and one that uses analyses or methods that Husserl developed in a non-political context and employs them in a politicizing and critical manner.