News Archive

In his most recent contribution to Public Seminar, "Aristotle on Charlottesville," faculty member Michael Weinman uses Aristotle's analysis of "mixed actions" to discuss the rally in Charlottesville and the violent reactions to it on August 11-12, 2017. In Aristotle's view, "mixed actions" defy the classification voluntary / involuntary since they are chosen in extreme circumstances as the "least bad course of action." While such acts would be normally considered blameworthy, Aristotle considers that they should be met with pity or pardon. Weinman argues that "is the most helpful lens through which to view and debate the moral and the political judgment in which we engage as citizens when we view the refusal to engage in only acts of non-violence of some of the counter protestors, and especially those who are residents and citizens of Charlottesville itself." Read full post

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

On September 27, 2017 Bard College Berlin has the pleasure to welcome Justin E. H. Smith (Université Paris-Diderot) for the guest lecture "Populations and Generations: Two Visions of Race in Modern Thought." Until the late 17th century, 'race' generally designated a lineage, extended in time across generations, and united, as G. W. Leibniz described it, like the links of a chain. In 1684 the French materialist philosopher François Bernier published his 'New Division of the Earth', which purported to classify the basic subtypes of the human species along biogeographical lines, ignoring altogether the question of lineage. Over the course of the 18th century, there were two competing visions of race: one that anchored it in physiology, anchoring physiology in turn in climate and region, and one that preserved the earlier account of race as ancestry. What were the deeper reasons for this divergence? And what, in particular, does it have to do with the history of racism? In this talk we will seek to get closer to an understanding of these two questions. Justin E. H. Smith is professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7. He is the author of Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2015), as well as of The Philosopher: A History in Six Types (Princeton, 2016), and Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life (Princeton, 2011). Time: Wednesday, September 27, 2017 from 7:00pm Venue: Bard College Berlin, Lecture Hall Platanenstrasse 98a, 13156 Berlin (map) Admission free

Meta: Type(s): Event | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Faculty Ewa Atanassow recently published a piece titled "Illiberal Democracy and Conceptual Clarity: Report from a Debate" on the Global Policy blog. In her piece, Atanassow discusses two different understandings of the concept of "illiberal democracy": one put forth by Princeton Professor Jan-Werner Müller during his keynote speech at the launch of the 2017 Governance Report of the Hertie School of Governance, and the other published in response on Public Seminar by Indiana University Professor Jeffrey C. Isaac. In Müller's view, "illiberal democracy" is a problematic notion that ends up legitimizing autocratic regimes. His call for conceptual clarity implies that the term "democracy" be used only in relation to political regimes committed to the rule of law and to liberal values. For Isaac, as Atanassow argues, the concept of "illiberal democracy" is crucial in understanding the history of modern democracy, and clarity can only be achieved by acknowledging the tensions, vulnerabilities, and political disagreements at the heart of democracy. Atanassow concludes that "insofar as democracy is defined by contestation, questioning democracy's meaning is also a democratic good." Read the full piece

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

In his latest piece for Public Seminar, Finding Value in Schoolhouses as Public Things: A Reply to Johann Neem, faculty Michael Weinman argues that public education, and its value, are not reducible to the spaces we commit to found, fund, manage and oversee together. It is very much impossible without this, but it is not circumscribed by this; at least not in a nation of immigrants. For, in such a nation — as Arendt stressed nearly 65 years ago in a piece that reflects on another era's — the inherent public interest in education derives not only from the bivalent relation between the material investment (of time, energy, money) in public education and the normative value citizens ascribe to it.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Faculty Michael Weinman recently published a post titled "Why Engage Public Anger" on Public Seminar. In this post, Weinman offers a response to the Introduction of Sonali Chakravarti's excellent book, Sing the Rage, arguing that in order for "Chakravarti's central demand" that "we practice listening to whatever impassioned fellow citizens and non-citizens have to say, especially those who advance claims against the state, instead of demanding that they make their harms visible so that we can judge their anger to be justified and/or righteous" to work, it must be the case that democratic societies "can engage in this practice even (indeed especially) when we don't like what we hear and more particularly when we don't believe it is grounded in righteousness or justification at all." Which seems ever more impossible, given the fundamentally broken character of politics today. Read the full post

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |