New School For Social Research: 2026 Philosophy Graduate Student Conference

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New School For Social Research

2026 Philosophy Graduate Student Conference

March: 5-7, 2026

Where to Begin?

Any philosophical investigation can commence only after it has answered this most basic of questions - and yet, since thinking has always already begun, no question can be more difficult to locate or to answer.  If we seek to follow Lewis Carroll’s advice and “begin at the beginning”, we must confront a body of historical, methodological, and philosophical problems that are currently reshaping the canon - when did philosophy start? And where? And for whom?  Did it begin at all, in a linear or other structural sense?  If we wish to trace our own being to its origin, even more problems emerge - does my being start in language?  What can psychology and psychoanalysis reveal about my own formation?  How is my subjectivity determined by traditions, ideologies, worlds I have inherited?  And if we look beyond ourselves to the world itself, the problems only deepen -  what originary truths must we understand to make sense of the world at all?  What do we learn from creation?  In what sense were we creatures created at all?  The Book of John says the world began with logos, and Genesis suggests it started with formless void, while science continues to produce more finely-tuned accounts of the origins of the universe - can we reconcile the philosophical and scientific origins of the cosmos?  Philosophy might follow Aristotle in his search for a first cause, it might follow Descartes in his First Philosophy of doubt in search of certainty or Nagarjuna in total doubt of absolute certainty, or it might follow Heidegger who insisted upon “the need to prepare for an other beginning”.  It might flow back to the Upanishads of ancient India, the Dao of ancient China, or the pre-Socratics of the ancient Mediterranean - or it might emerge anew every day in our forms of life and our critical engagements with what we have been given.  Beginnings might be sociological, biological, epistemological, cosmological, ontological - and in any case, they might presuppose too much.

The 2026 Philosophy Graduate Conference at the New School of Social Research seeks answers to all these questions, and more.  In the spirit of Hannah Arendt, whose philosophy of natality emphasizes “that there be a beginning”, we are looking for work in any philosophical discipline or tradition that engages critically with a question of origin.