Ninth Annual Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy

 Ninth Annual Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy at the New School For Social Research
"Articulations: A Conference in Philosophy & Art."

Dates: April 22-23, 2010
Paper Submission Deadline: October 16th, 2009

Conference Information - Updated 4/14/2010

Description:

In crafting the ideal city in the Republic, Socrates banishes the poets yet continues to recite myths in advancing his arguments, thus blurring any firm boundary he ostensibly proposed between the arts and philosophy. With this inaugural moment of the Western tradition, Plato intently draws our attention to the question of their relationship.
Philosophy and art have been continually entangled, their relationship in question, their necessity to each other dismissed and insisted upon in turn.

Philosophy has ever defended itself by dividing itself from something, foremost its own past - but it has always felt a particular threat from the realm of art. It would, of course, be too quick to say that philosophy's relation to art is one of mere competition and struggle. Philosophy has perpetually returned to the aesthetic in considering the relation between the sensible and the intelligible, in thinking about the ethical, in contemplating beauty, and even in consideration of its own grounding and form. Art therefore occupies a distinguished, if precarious, relation to philosophy.

Throughout an underlying question lingers: Is there something special about art, something it does that makes it in the end incommensurable with what philosophy does? It is precisely this relation that this conference aspires to explore.

P.J. Gorre
Graduate Conference Organizer
The New School for Social Research