Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) 2016 Graduate Conference, Kingston University London.

1920th May 2016

Keynote Speakers
* Lewis Gordon (Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies, University of Connecticut)
* Stella Sandford (Professor Of Modern European Philosophy, CRMEP, Kingston University)

Deadline for Abstracts: 1 February 2016

The 2016 CRMEP Graduate Student Conference will focus on Kant’s anthropological works and their legacy. The mainstream marginalization of Kant’s anthropological writings, in part due to their racist content, arguably makes philosophy illequipped to think some of today’s most pressing concerns, notably with regard to ableism, racism, classism and sexism in philosophical discourse. As Robert Bernasconi has observed, ignoring the Kant of the Anthropology is ‘to diminish philosophy as an activity more generally.’

Foucault demonstrates, in his use of Anthropology From a Pragmatic point of View as a starting point for his foundational work The Order of Things, how Kant’s anthropological works have a central role in the history of knowledge production and ‘truth discourse.’ Furthermore, there are philosophical convictions embedded in the anthropology that are not developed elsewhere in Kant’s work, such as an oscillation between the priority of the empirical and transcendental subject (beginning in his writings on the sublime Kant’s anthropological work suggests that the transcendental subject relies on an empirical one).

While it is clear how Kant’s canonical works in philosophy inform his anthropological work, it is not clear how his anthropology informs his philosophy and to what extent his anthropology is integral to the rest of his thought. The 2016 CRMEP Graduate Conference aims at reconsidering these questions and opening a critical discussion on the anthropological legacy of Kant in contemporary thought.

We invite papers from philosophy and other disciplines reacting to the
following topics:
* Critical ‘race’ theory and the Critical Philosophy of ‘race’
* The place of anthropology in Kant’s critical project
* Anthropology, psychology and Foucault
* The troubled legacy of Enlightenment philosophy with respect to its
racial, colonial and gendered biases
* Kant and Human Rights Discourse
* Ontology contra anthropology
* The empirical subject vs. the transcendental subject
* Ideology and History in Kant
* The idea of the ‘canon’ in Modern European Philosophy
* Antihumanism
and/or Posthumanism.
* Existential anthropology and/or relational humanism.
* The philosophical elucidation of the struggle against everyday;
ableism, racism, classism and sexism.

Please submit 300word abstracts via our abstract submission form by the 1st February 2016. https://goo.gl/z4UhEO

Selections shall be made anonymously and shall be responded to by the 1st March.

Reading Group

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The graduate conference shall be preceded by a reading group in London focusing on Kant’s anthropological writings and contemporary responses thereof. Dec 2015 May 2016. Please contact crmepagc@gmail.com for more information.

Public lectures

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A short series of public lectures on the theme shall take place in the run up to the conference. (TBA)

Further Information

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website: http://www.kanthropology.com [1]
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kanthropology[2]
email: crmepagc@gmail.com