Saturday April 5

For a copy of Rick Benitez's talk please click HERE

Saturday April 19

To view a suite of Warren Goldfarb's talks on Wittgenstein, please click HERE

Saturday May 3

To view a precis of Paul Crittenden's talk on Aristotle, delivered May 3, please click HERE

Saturday May 17

Saturday May 31

Saturday June 14

Saturday June 28

Saturday July 12

To view Max Deutscher's talk on Sartre & de Beauvoir, please click HERE

1. PLATO (Greek: 428-327 BC) 
Associate Professor Rick Benitez (Sydney University)

The value of Plato’s philosophy is less in his doctrines than in his method of dialogue. The dialogues must be thought about critically and metaphors, similes and allegories appreciated – not as literal truth, but imaginative attempts to point in the direction of truth hard to articulate. The dialogues can thus be as rich as ever, and we can see why: “the whole of western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato.”

2. LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN (Austrian: 1889-1951)
Professor Warren Goldfarb (Harvard University)

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein claims that traditional philosophical problems arise “through a misinterpretation of our forms of language”. A proper understanding dissolves those problems, rather than seeks solutions to them.  Once reformed, “philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”  I will explore Wittgenstein’s method and legacy by looking at his treatment of central questions about the nature of mind and meaning.

3. ARISTOTLE (Macedonian: 384-322 BC)
Emeritus Professor Paul Crittenden (Sydney University)

Aristotle’s philosophy continues as a subject of lively debate, particularly his ethics and politics, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. An account of Aristotle’s legacy needs to include brief reference to some of his key themes and basic terminology (such as “matter and form”, “actuality and potentiality”). Apart from that, the discussion will be concerned mainly with the ethics and its contemporary prominence, and to a lesser extent with the related philosophy of mind.

4. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (German: 1844-1900)
Justine McGill, Lecturer (Sydney University)

Nietzsche said that after the death of God, his shadows would still be shown, and that these shadows, too, would need to be vanquished. What of Nietzsche? More than a century after his death, are the effects of his thought shadows we need to vanquish, or vital sources of illumination? In addressing this question, I will focus on Nietzsche’s famous concept of the Übermensch, or “Superman.”

5 JOHN LOCKE (English: 1632-1704)
Professor Stephen Gaukroger (Sydney University)

Locke is a key figure in the Enlightenment. To the extent that the Enlightenment is construed as the triumph of reason, Locke’s rejection of traditional sources of authority and his arguments for religious and political tolerance were crucial. But there is a competing stream of thought in the Enlightenment, sensibilism, for which Locke is equally crucial. This school argued that sensibility is ultimate, a view that is linked, for example, to the rise of the novel and to modern physiology as well as to philosophy.
 

6.DAVID HUME (Scottish: 1711-1776)
David Macarthur, Senior Lecturer (Sydney University)
 
David Hume has been read as a sceptical Empiricist, and as an anti-sceptical Naturalist. In this talk I want to suggest a third, contemporary, way to read him: as a philosopher who attempts to formulate and practise a new form of philosophy. Its aim is to engage in reflective criticism whilst avoiding the two notorious excesses of human reason: traditional (or dogmatic) metaphysics, and traditional forms of scepticism.


7. GEORGE WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (German: 1770-1831)
 
Professor Paul Redding (Sydney University)
 
Confusions about “absolute idealism” have hindered appreciation of the rich insights to be found in Hegel’s philosophy. I try to remove these confusions and will suggest that Hegel, rightly understood, offers interesting answers to a range of questions that still puzzle us. In particular, he offers an answer to the question of what it is about us (who are otherwise natural creatures) that confers on us mental powers. Hegel makes the fact that we “have minds” conditional on the fact that we treat each other as having minds. Despite contemporary philosophy’s general hostility to “idealism”, versions of this view can be found within important philosophers today.

8. JEAN- PAUL SARTRE (French: 1905-80) and SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR (French: 1908-86)

Emeritus Professor Max Deutscher (Macquarie University)
 
Sartre and de Beauvoir made a central theme of being aware of oneself as vulnerable to another’s regard. They reversed Descartes’ attention to what I regard, and his puzzle about its reality. The question becomes “Am I regarded, and how?” Their move disturbs the dualist picture of one’s experience as a “jewel in a casket hidden from another’s view”, and makes for an easier acceptance of one’s intimate, though fallible, awareness of another’s mentality. This theme is the core of de Beauvoir’s study of women as the “second sex”. I will develop further implications of their innovation, in contemporary terms.