Christopher Fynsk. On Maurice Blanchot's "Dans la nuit surveillée". 2015

source: European Graduate School    2016年3月16日
http://www.egs.edu Christopher Fynsk, Maurice Blanchot Chair, Professor of Philosophy, and Dean of the Division of Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought. Public open lecture on Maurice Blanchot's "Dans la nuit surveillée" for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS. Saas-Fee Switzerland. 2015.

Christopher Fynsk’s (b. 1952) academic profile includes extensive administrative experience (he has served as chair, head of school, dean and trustee) and high academic achievement through articles, translations, and books treating topics in modern Continental philosophy and literature. He has held academic positions in North America, France, and the UK (Scotland), and has fifteen years of experience at The European Graduate School / EGS. He is best known for his writings on Martin Heidegger and Maurice Blanchot, but has also made significant contributions in the area of philosophy of language and to questions relating to the politics of philosophy (and its institutions). He is also actively involved in the philosophy of education and currently writes on the topic of rhythm.

Christopher Fynsk received his doctorate from the Department of Romance Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1981, following a Diplôme d’Etudes Avancées in Philosophy from the University of Strasbourg. He also received an MA in English from the University of California, Irvine, in 1976, and an MA in French at Johns Hopkins University in 1979. He taught at the University of Strasbourg from 1985 to 1987, and from 1981 to 2004 he worked as professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy, co-director of the Philosophy, Literature and the Theory of Criticism Program and as chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at State University of New York at Binghamton. From 1995–1997, Chris Fynsk was the chair of the Modern Language Association, Division of Philosophical Approaches to Literature. In 2004, he moved to the University of Aberdeen to join the faculty of the School of Language and Literature, and formed the Centre for Modern Thought.

In his critical writings, which breach the barriers separating philosophy, literary theory, and art criticism, Christopher Fynsk is deeply engaged with the question of the possibility of language and how the human relation to Being is sketched out through literary and philosophical texts and art works. In Infant Figures, he follows a path to the realm of this question through a dialogical meditation on two texts, one by Maurice Blanchot and one by Jacques Lacan, which confront the limits of language in saying the death of a child. In the text, which is partitioned into three suggestively aligned parts in the manner similar to a Francis Bacon triptych, Christopher Fynsk follows an inquiry of the material limits of symbolic representation. The inquiry is called by 'the exigency of the figure', a primal exposure of the human being antecedent to speech and memory which opens it to the possibility of language. In order to risk the entry into this problematic, he finds it necessary to adopt an unconventional method which navigates 'between discursive orders' in a way which is theoretically akin to the methods of psychoanalysis.

Rally of the Impossible Professions: Jacques-Alain Miller (part 1)

source: LacanLondon   2008年10月27日
Concluding comments by Jacques-Alain Miller part 1.
We stand in a moment of ever-increasing commodification and marketisation of public services, which has seen problems arising in the mode of reform in the NHS; excessive testing and league tables in education; a push to make changes in the relationship between the police and the citizen that erode officer discretion; and in the field of mental health, the impending regulation of the psychological therapies threatens to impose a crushing standardisation of the talking therapies including psychoanalysis in various forms. This is to name just a few of the domains of civil life that are affected by these drives.

Against this background, the London Society of the New Lacanian School in association with the Federation of European Schools of Psychoanalysis is calling A Rally of the Impossible Professions. Sigmund Freud named three: to educate, to govern and to psychoanalyse. Today, we find that the concept of profession is itself under siege by impossible promises; promises of protection, of safety, of security.

On Saturday, 20th September 2008, with guest speaker Jacques-Alain Miller, we were pleased to welcome Richard Gombrich, Keith Hayward, Mark Neocleous, Michael Power, Robert Snell and an audience of participants bringing a wealth of experience from diverse fields of practice. In this gathering of voices, we opened a conversation; one that listens for something Beyond the False Promises of Security.
For more details go to: http://www.londonsociety-nls.org.uk/R...

Ancient Philosophy: Cicero by Gregory B. Sadler

# automatic playing for the 5 videos (click the up-left corner for the list)

source: Gregory B. Sadler  2013年2月22日/上次更新日期：2014年4月10日
In this lecture/discussion from my Spring 2013 Introduction to Philosophy class at Marist College, we start our study of Cicero's classic work, On The Nature of the Gods -- a debate between Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic philosophers narrated by Cicero. We cover the general structure of the dialogue, the characters, some basic information about the three main schools. Then we examine the Epicurean criticisms of other positions, the presentation of the Epicurean position, an argument for god's existence, and arguments for why the gods ought to have human-like forms. We also consider the Academic criticisms of these arguments.
Course lecture/discussion videos on the great Roman philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Cicero played a major role in bringing Greek philosophy -- which he studied at Athens and Rhodes (with some of the best representatives of the existing philosophical schools) -- into a Roman setting and idiom. A considerable portion of his work consists of philosophical dialogues, in which member of different philosophical schools square off against each other.
Handouts developed for these texts can be found here: http://www.academia.edu/4612495/Ciceros_On_the_Nature_of_... ; http://www.academia.edu/4811036/Ciceros_On_Friendship_Han...

Intro to Philosophy: Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, book 1 1:02:42
Intro to Philosophy: Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods book 2 58:32
Intro to Philosophy: Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, book 3 1:06:07
Intro to Philosophy: Cicero, On Friendship (part 1) 1:08:38
Intro to Philosophy: Cicero, On Friendship (part 2) 1:01;22

Alenka Zupančič. Death Drive and Repetition. 2011

source: European Graduate School Video Lectures    2013年2月25日
http://www.egs.edu/ Alenka Zupancic, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, discusses Friedrich Nietzsche, the eternal return, nihilism, The Gay Science, repetition, Sigmund Freud, death drive, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, Don Juan, and the dead. This is the eleventh lecture of Zupančič's 2011 summer course at the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe 2011 Alenka Zupancic.

Alenka Zupančič, Ph.D., is a Lacanian philosopher and social theorist, based as a full-time researcher in the philosophy department of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She was born in 1966 in Slovenia. Alenka received her Ph.D. from the University of Ljubljana in 1990 and currently is a member of the Ljubljana School for Psychoanalysis. At the European Graduate School, she holds a position as a lecturer where she teaches an intensive summer seminar on Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

RSA Replay: Building a Teacher-Powered Education System

source: The RSA     2016年1月25日
Distinguished educationalist Professor Andy Hargreaves asks what it would take to put teachers at the steering wheel of education reform worldwide?
The creativity of an education system cannot surpass the creativity of its teachers.
The current dominant paradigm of education reform tries to change behaviour through top-down accountability measures, pay-related incentives and high stakes testing and appraisal. These efforts appear to be having diminishing returns, and increasing existing inequities. It risks creating a technocratic teacher identity, which reduces the teacher role to that of compliant technician, whose job is largely to implement protocols and carry out instructions.
The RSA’s work on teacher quality has championed the role of teacher as designer of learning experiences. Our new report for the World Innovation Summit in Education (WISE) argues that education systems should create deliberate platforms for innovation that are long-term-focused, equity-centred, humanising and – crucially - teacher-powered.
But what would it really take to flip the system so that teachers are at the steering wheel of education reform worldwide? And how do we achieve a shift of focus from individual teacher quality to collaborative professionalism?
Distinguished educationalist Professor Andy Hargreaves visits the RSA to consider how the teacher community could come together to create such a movement for change.

Alenka Zupančič. The Real as Impossible. 2011

source: European Graduate School Video Lectures    2012年10月19日
http://www.egs.edu/ Alenka Zupancic, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, talking discusses Jacques Lacan, psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Clément Clement Rosset, the real, negation, the impossible, Blade Runner, Oedipus prophecy and complex, repetition, and Jean Laplanche. This is the first lecture of Zupančič's 2011 summer course at the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe 2011 Alenka Zupancic.

Alenka Zupančič, Ph.D., is a Lacanian philosopher and social theorist, based as a full-time researcher in the philosophy department of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She was born in 1966 in Slovenia. Alenka received her Ph.D. from the University of Ljubljana in 1990 and currently is a member of the Ljubljana School for Psychoanalysis. At the European Graduate School, she holds a position as a lecturer where she teaches an intensive summer seminar on Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

Professor Thom Brooks - 'Why Hegel Matters.'

source: DurhamUniversity    2015年2月17日
Prof Thom Brooks, Professor of Law and Government at Durham University’s Law School, delivered his Inaugural Lecture at Durham University on 16 October 2014.

Judith Butler: Who Owns Kafka?

source: London Review of Books (LRB)    2015年2月16日
Judith Butler's lecture looks at the conflicting claims of ownership of Kafka's original writings, and considers the way states appropriate the works of writers for nationalistic purposes. Read the full lecture here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/judith-b...
The legal battle between the state of Israel and the German literary archive over the question of who owns Kafka’s work has prompted Israeli lawyers to argue that Kafka is an ‘asset of the Jewish people’ and hence, of Israel. At stake is Kafka’s own complex cultural formation as a Prague Jew writing in German who alternately praised and disavowed Zionism. Equally troubling is the assumption that Israel represents the Jewish people and that Kafka might be conceived as an ‘asset.’ Judith Butler proposes a reading of Kafka’s parables that quarrels with both sides of the legal case, seeking recourse to stories and fiction as a way of illuminating the limits of law and the diasporic (and messianic) alternative to Jewish nationalism.
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
The lecture was delivered in the BP Lecture Theatre at the British Museum in January 2011 as part of the London Review of Books Winter Lectures series.

ABOUT THE LRB
Since 1979, the London Review of Books has stood up for the tradition of the literary and intellectual essay in English. Each issue contains up to 15 long reviews and essays by academics, writers and journalists. There are also shorter art and film reviews, as well as poems and a lively letters page.
A typical issue moves through political commentary to science or ancient history by way of literary criticism and social anthropology. So, for example, an issue can open with a piece on the rhetoric of war, move on to reassessing the reputation of Pythagoras, follow that with articles on the situation in Iraq, the 19th-century super-rich, Nabokov’s unpublished novel, how saints got to be saints, the life and work of William Empson, and an assessment of the poetry of Alice Oswald.

THE 2012 KYOTO PRIZE COMMEMORATIVE LECTURE --Gayatri C. Spivak

source: InamoriFoundation English    2012年12月24日
The 2012 Kyoto Prize Commemorative Lecture
Lecture of the Laureate in Arts and Philosophy Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Nov.11th, 2012 Kyoto International Conference Center