Philosophy Graduate Conference: Afterlives of the Transcendental – Critiques and Actuality

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Time: 9.00am - 5.00pm
Venue: Room TBC, Penrhyn Road campus, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE
Price: free
To attend: booking will be available soon, please check back

This conference will be delivered dual mode. Socially distanced in person for CRMEP students and online for others.

Click here to join the meeting on MS Teams

After its initial formulation in the Critique of Pure Reason, the concept of the transcendental transmigrates, like some sort of soul, into the tradition of European philosophy, whose modern chapter it can be understood to inaugurate. Criticisms of Kant's signature concept were, it seems, hotter off the press than the Critique itself (J.G. Hamman's first review commences two months prior) and they have continued, almost unabated, ever since.

Despite or perhaps because of its ceaselessly critical reception, the idea of the transcendental has continued to act as a centre of gravity for the various traditions which fall within the discipline of 'Modern European Philosophy'. Nevertheless, it has been recently suggested that European philosophy's perennially tense, and increasingly subterranean, relationship with the transcendental may finally be at an end. Such claims occasion a critical re-examination of this concept, its contexts, and their horizons. In light of its vaunted demise, this 2021 iteration of the CRMEP graduate conference asks: to what end?

Keynote Speakers: Antonia Birnbaum (University of Applied Arts, Vienna/University of Paris-8) and Howard Caygill (CRMEP)

Conference Programme

10 am - 11 am
Keynote: Howard Caygill (CRMEP, Kingston University)
The Disjunctive Transcendental: From Scotus to Viveiros de Castro

11 am - 11.05 am Break

11.05 am - 12.35 am
Panel I. Kant's Transcendental: Before, During, and After
Dino Jakuši? (University of Warwick) - Metaphysics, Ontology, Criticism: Dogmatist Baggage in Kant's Notion of the Transcendental

Rachit Anand (State University of New York) - Loss and the Object of Transcendental Thought: Reading Kant through Benjamin

Rob Scott (University of Cambridge) - ‘The Letter Kills, but the Spirit Gives Life': From Dialectical to Speculative Thinking

12.35 pm - 1.20 pm Lunch break

1.20 pm - 2.50 pm
Panel II. Phenomenological Reconceptualisations
Alina Mierlus (Autonomous University of Barcelona): - Embracing Quasi-Transcendentalism: From Authenticity to the Written Object

Ida Djursaa (CRMEP, Kingston University) - Husserl's Vicious Circle and the Transformation of the Transcendental

Firat Haciahmetoglu (Husserl Archives, KU Leuven) - Blumenberg on Husserl: The Concept of the Lifeworld and Globalisation

2.50 pm - 3.20 pm Tea/Coffee break

3.20 pm - 4.50 pm
Panel III. Materialist-transcendental Critiques
Manuel Disegni (University of Turin) - Materialist Critique of Knowledge or Transcendental Theory of Society? Alfred Sohn-Rethel on Kant and Marx

Frida Sandström (University of Copenhagen) - A Social Critique of Need

Kyle Baasch (University of Minnesota) - Intuitive Understanding and the Physiognomic Gaze

4.50 pm - 5 pm Break

5 pm - 6 pm
Keynote:
Antonia Birnbaum (University of Applied Arts, Vienna/University of Paris-8)
Adorno Beside Himsel

For further information about this event:

Contact: Peter Osborne
Email: P.Osborne@kingston.ac.uk