10th Annual Duquesne Philosophy Graduate Student Conference: Reason and its Limits

10th Annual GSIP Conference: Reason and its Limits

The Duquesne Graduate Students in Philosophy (GSIP) will be holding our 10th annual Graduate Student Conference on the 18th and 19th of March 2016. Our topic will be 'Reason and its Limits'.

For our 10th annual conference we have decided to try something new: rather than simply having a keynote speaker give a closing presentation, Dr. Rachel Zuckert (Northwestern University) will be giving a seminar on the 18th that focuses on the theme of ‘Reason and its Limits’ in Kant’s work. This seminar will allow presenters a chance to more fully interact with the keynote and we are certain that excellent discussions will follow. The conference presentations will be held on the 19th.

Philosophy often proclaims the usefulness of reason yet it does not always provide a complete answer to the question ‘What is reason?’. One might argue that philosophy's confidence in reason has perhaps been little more than a prejudice that an increasing number of thinkers have been all too ready to expose. Given this trend, the more salient question might be: why is philosophical reason so often blind to its limits? It could even be argued that the question of reason and its limitations inevitably haunts all philosophical endeavors. Are we even more conscious of this today when philosophy, the one time 'queen of the sciences,' has been dethroned and exists now as one discipline among many, a citizen among its former subjects? Or has philosophy always worked to set the boundaries for reason? Therefore, this conference will work to cultivate discussion about the definition and boundaries of what we call ‘reason’. We invite submissions that engage both contemporary philosophical discourse as well as those philosophical discourses that are primarily informed by perspectives grounded in the history of philosophy (or some combination of the two).

To help facilitate this discussion, possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Spinoza and the passions

• Kafka and the limits of rationality in the form of bureaucracy

• The relation between ‘reason’ and ‘subjectivity’ in Descartes

• Rationality/Irrationality in Psychoanalysis

• Kant and the Sublime

• Reason in Hegel’s Phenomenology

• Is rational discourse superior to myth, poetry, rhetoric, or other forms of literature?

• Schizoanalysis in Deleuze & Guattari as arational/irrational

• Medieval mysticism and irrationality

• Joyce and the evaporation of reason

• Jacques-Alain Miller and the Suture (does reason require irrationality?)

• Reason in action / reasons for action

• Hume and the absence of reason in cause and effect relations

• Perspectives of feminist epistemologies

• Use of subversive artistic tools like irony and their relation to rationality/irrationality

Submissions: Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words for blind review together with cover sheets [email protected] by January 18th, 2016. Cover sheets should include name, submission title, email address, and institutional affiliation. We will notify submitters as to whether or not their work has been accepted by no later than February 1st.