Judgment, Pluralism, and Democracy
On the Desirability of Speaking with Others
Free and Open to the Public!
**See Full Program below**
Keynote by Linda Zerilli (The University of Chicago):
"Arendt and the Problem of Democratic Persuasion"
Organized by Nicholas Dunn (Bard College) and Nirvana Tanoukhi (Dartmouth College)
One of the latest features of the crisis of democratic culture is the problematization of free speech. The dysfunction of public discourse in democratic societies has sparked skepticism about the validity of the principle itself and concerns about its evident impracticability. This line of interrogation has targeted the grounds and scope of this putatively desirable freedom. For example, does Louis Brandeis’s idea that with “more speech…the truth will out” have any actual empirical validity? Or does the weaponizability of free speech in the age of the internet not call for modifying or restricting its legal protection?
We will launch the conversation by foregrounding the contributions of two figures who have explicitly and substantively defended the necessity of speaking to others who differ from and with us: Immanuel Kant, who first elaborated philosophical grounds for the idea, and Hannah Arendt, who critically revived the Kantian framework in the middle of the 20th century—at a historical juncture where she considered the defense of pluralism to be at risk. In his Critique of Judgment (1790), Kant famously puts forward the maxim to “think in the position of everybody else,” and characterizes judgments of taste as requiring that one “reflect on [their] own judgment from a universal standpoint” which entails “putting [one]self into the standpoint of others.” In fact, Kant further warns in his Anthropology (1798) of the dangers of “isolating ourselves with our own understanding and judging publicly with our private representations.” In her well-known Kant Lectures (Fall 1970), Arendt draws out the implications of Kant’s claim that to “restrain our understanding by the understanding of others” is, in fact, a “subjectively necessary touchstone of the correctness of our judgments generally.” Building on this, Arendt puts forward the related notions of ‘representative thinking’ and ‘enlarged mentality,’ which involve not only the idea that it is good to think from the standpoint of others and take their thoughts into account, but that “thinking...depends on others to be possible at all.” Whatever her differences with Kant, Arendt is to be credited for highlighting the radical force of Kant’s “belie[f] that the very faculty of thinking depends on its public use” because it was “not made ‘to isolate itself but to get into community with others’.”
The aim of this conference is to curate an interdisciplinary conversation between scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are interested in critically exploring historical or theoretical accounts of the practice of talking to others in philosophy, political science, cultural studies, history, linguistics, or any related humanistic discipline.
Registration and Format
All participants and attendees must register, which includes uploading proof of covid vaccination. The event will take place in-person and will be free and open to the public.
We anticipate that this event will eventually lead to an edited volume on the conference theme. Speakers will have the opportunity to submit their full papers for consideration.
Please direct any questions to Nicholas Dunn ([email protected])
Full Program
Thursday, March 2nd
1:00 – 4:30 PM: Roundtable sessions - Bertelsmann Campus Center, Room 214
Session 1 (1:00 – 1:45 PM)
“On the Power of Words”
Jonathan Weid (Northwestern University, Philosophy)
“Learning from Others: From the Interpersonal to the Institutional”
Colin Marshall (University of Washington, Philosophy)
“Respect and the Ethics of Persuasion”
Session 2 (1:45 – 2:30 PM)
“Getting the World in View: Instrumentality and Humility in Dialogue with Political Others”
Yasemin Sari (University of Northern Iowa, Philosophy)
“Arendt and Deliberative Democracy: Arendtian Deliberation as Transformative Politics”
Maria Robaszkiewicz (Paderborn University, Philosophy) & Michael Weinman (Bard College Berlin, Philosophy)
Book presentation: Hannah Arendt and Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2022)
Session 3 (3:00 – 3:45 PM)
“The Crisis of Facticity: Factual Truth, Modern Authority, and Public Judgment in the work of Hannah Arendt”
Daniel Friedman (Stanford University, Philosophy)
“Reasoning Together”
Pinchas Huberman (Yale University, Law)
“A Relational Theory of the Constitutional Concept of Free Speech”
Session 4 (3:45 PM – 4:30 PM)
“Hannah Arendt and Mihail Sebastian: On the Power of Oases in Dark Times”
Nevena Krups (University of New South Wales, Philosophy)
“Friendship: Preserving Humanness”
Schuyler Playford (University of Toronto, Political Science)
“Thinking and Plurality: Arendt’s Socrates as Thinker, Lover, Friend”
Evening session (5:15 – 7:00 PM) – Reem-Kayden Center, Laszlo S. Bito ‘60 Auditorium [Room 103]
Nirvana Tanoukhi (Dartmouth College, English)
Keynote Lecture
“Arendt and the Problem of Democratic Persuasion”
Friday, March 3rd
9:00 AM – 5:30 PM: Paper sessions – Olin Humanities Building, Room 102
Session 1 (9:00 - 10:15 AM)
“‘To Listen to Both Sides Equally’: Just Judgment in the Athenian Courts”
Olof Pettersson (Uppsala University, Philosophy)
“The Mirror of Society: Private and Public Dialogue in Plato’s Alcibiades I”
Session 2 (10:30 - 11:45 AM)
“Actual versus Imagined Others?: Iris Marion Young and the Phenomenology of Communicating with Others”
Atticus Carnell (Princeton University, Politics)
“On the Value of Heeding”
Session 3 (1:15 - 2:30 PM)
“The Hope of Agreement: Cavell on Aesthetic Judgment”
Natasha Hay (University of Toronto, Comparative Literature)
“The Political Imaginary of Plurality: Sympathy and Separation in Hannah Arendt and Stanley Cavell”
Session 4 (2:45 – 4:00 PM)
“The Others Speak to the Others: Speech and Speechless under the Conditions of Unfamiliarity”
Sam McChesney (Northwestern University, Political Science)
“Discovering the Other’s Voice: Courage and World-Travelling”
Session 5 (4:15 – 5:30 PM)
Kenny Walden (Dartmouth College, Philosophy)
“Reason, Respect, and Love”
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or visit https://hac.bard.edu/events/pluralism