February 8, 2023 @ 4:10 PM - 5:00 PM UC Berkeley Jefferson Memorial Lecture with Michael W. McConnell on “Constructing a Republican Executive” Bancroft Hotel 2680 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA, United States Join the Director of the Constitutional Law Center, Michael W. McConnell for a Jefferson Memorial Lecture on the topic of “Constructing a Republican Executive”. This lecture will show how the delegates, and especially the Committee of Detail, went about constructing such an executive, and what it means for separation-of-powers law today. As the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia in 1789, there was no experience, anywhere in the world, of a successful republican executive over an extensive nation — one with sufficient authority and independence to make things work on a national scale, but without the risk of becoming a monarch. Please be advised that this event is only being offered in person at The Bancroft Hotel — 2680 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. A recording of the lecture will be made available after the event. For updates about this lecture and upcoming lecture series events, please visit the Berkeley Graduate Lectures website.
March 14, 2023 @ 4:10 PM - 6:00 PM Barbara Weinstock Lecture: Kevin Bales on Slavery in the Economy of the Anthropocene Alumni House, Toll Room Berkeley, United States Join Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery and Research Director of the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham for a Barbara Weinstock Lecture on Slavery in the Economy of the Anthropocene. This two-day event features a lecture on Tuesday, March 14 at 4:10 p.m., followed by a panel discussion on Wednesday, March 15 at 4:10 p.m. Please be advised that both events are in person at the Toll Room, Alumni House, on the UC Berkeley Campus. A recording of the lecture will be made available after the event.
March 15, 2023 @ 4:10 PM - 6:00 PM Barbara Weinstock Lecture Panel Discussion: Kevin Bales on Slavery in the Economy of the Anthropocene Alumni House, Toll Room Berkeley, United States Join Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery and Research Director of the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham for a Barbara Weinstock Lecture and Panel Discussion on Slavery in the Economy of the Anthropocene. This two-day event features a lecture on Tuesday, March 14 at 4:10 p.m., followed by a panel discussion on Wednesday, March 15 at 4:10 p.m. Please be advised that both events are in person at the Toll Room, Alumni House, on the UC Berkeley Campus. A recording of the lecture will be made available after the event.
April 19, 2023 @ 4:10 PM - 6:15 PM UC Berkeley Tanner Lecture: Philippe Descola on Cosmopolities: Before, Behind and Beyond the State Alumni House, Toll Room Berkeley, United States Join Philippe Descola, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology Collège de France, Paris for an Obert C. Tanner Lecture series on Cosmopolities: Before, Behind and Beyond the State. This three-day lecture series will cover the topics of: Lecture I: Cosmopolities 1 – A Political Anthropology Beyond the Human Wednesday, April 19, 2023 The rooting of the descriptive tools of the social sciences in Enlightenment philosophy has blinded us to the fact that what are loosely called ‘societies’ are in fact, for extra-moderns, assemblages that, unlike ours, contain and associate much more than just humans. We could call these assemblages cosmopolities in that they bring under the same regime of cosmic sociability a vast set of components that the ontology of the Moderns has tended to dissociate. Lecture II: Cosmopolities 2 – Forms Forms of Assemblage Thursday, April 20, 2023 Drawing comparatively on ethnographic and historical materials, this lecture will seek to define certain characteristics of the assemblages that extra-modern cosmopolities produce. Seminar and Discussion with the Commentators Friday, April 21 2023 Please be advised that these events are only being offered in person at the Toll Room, Alumni House, on the UC Berkeley Campus. These events will follow evolving public health guidelines. All three events will also be recorded and posted on the Tanner Lectures website for later viewing. For more information about this lecture, please visit the Tanner Lectures website.
April 20, 2023 @ 4:10 PM - 6:15 PM UC Berkeley Tanner Lecture: Philippe Descola on Cosmopolities: Before, Behind and Beyond the State Alumni House, Toll Room Berkeley, United States Join Philippe Descola, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology Collège de France, Paris for an Obert C. Tanner Lecture series on Cosmopolities: Before, Behind and Beyond the State. This three-day lecture series will cover the topics of: Lecture I: Cosmopolities 1 – A Political Anthropology Beyond the Human Wednesday, April 19, 2023 The rooting of the descriptive tools of the social sciences in Enlightenment philosophy has blinded us to the fact that what are loosely called ‘societies’ are in fact, for extra-moderns, assemblages that, unlike ours, contain and associate much more than just humans. We could call these assemblages cosmopolities in that they bring under the same regime of cosmic sociability a vast set of components that the ontology of the Moderns has tended to dissociate. Lecture II: Cosmopolities 2 – Forms Forms of Assemblage Thursday, April 20, 2023 Drawing comparatively on ethnographic and historical materials, this lecture will seek to define certain characteristics of the assemblages that extra-modern cosmopolities produce. Seminar and Discussion with the Commentators Friday, April 21 2023 Please be advised that these events are only being offered in person at the Toll Room, Alumni House, on the UC Berkeley Campus. These events will follow evolving public health guidelines. All three events will also be recorded and posted on the Tanner Lectures website for later viewing. For more information about this lecture, please visit the Tanner Lectures website.
April 21, 2023 @ 4:10 PM - 6:15 PM UC Berkeley Tanner Lecture: Philippe Descola on Cosmopolities: Before, Behind and Beyond the State Alumni House, Toll Room Berkeley, United States Join Philippe Descola, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology Collège de France, Paris for an Obert C. Tanner Lecture series on Cosmopolities: Before, Behind and Beyond the State. This three-day lecture series will cover the topics of: Lecture I: Cosmopolities 1 – A Political Anthropology Beyond the Human Wednesday, April 19, 2023 The rooting of the descriptive tools of the social sciences in Enlightenment philosophy has blinded us to the fact that what are loosely called ‘societies’ are in fact, for extra-moderns, assemblages that, unlike ours, contain and associate much more than just humans. We could call these assemblages cosmopolities in that they bring under the same regime of cosmic sociability a vast set of components that the ontology of the Moderns has tended to dissociate. Lecture II: Cosmopolities 2 – Forms Forms of Assemblage Thursday, April 20, 2023 Drawing comparatively on ethnographic and historical materials, this lecture will seek to define certain characteristics of the assemblages that extra-modern cosmopolities produce. Seminar and Discussion with the Commentators Friday, April 21 2023 Please be advised that these events are only being offered in person at the Toll Room, Alumni House, on the UC Berkeley Campus. These events will follow evolving public health guidelines. All three events will also be recorded and posted on the Tanner Lectures website for later viewing. For more information about this lecture, please visit the Tanner Lectures website.
November 8, 2023 @ 4:10 PM - 6:15 PM Howison Lecture – Béatrice Longuenesse on Self-Consciousness and ‘I’ – Anscombe and Sartre in Dialogue Alumni House, Toll Room Berkeley, United States In this lecture, Béatrice Longuenesse examines Elizabeth Anscombe’s analysis of our use of the first-person pronoun ‘I’ and its relation to self-consciousness. Longuenesse argues that Anscombe’s account receives unexpected support from a philosophical approach which is very different from hers: Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological description of consciousness, self-consciousness, and their expression in our use of ‘I.’ Anscombe’s characterization of self-consciousness as the non-observational, non-inferential, “unmediated conception of actions, happenings and states” is close to Sartre’s characterization of what he calls “non-thetic” or “non-positional” self-consciousness.
December 6, 2023 @ 4:10 PM - 5:10 PM Jefferson Lecture with Daniel Ziblatt on American Democracy and the Crisis of Majority Rule Bancroft Hotel 2680 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA, United States Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University and director of the Transformations of Democracy group at Berlin’s WZB Social Science Center. He is the author of four books, including How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), co-authored with Steve Levitsky, a New York Times best-seller. The lecture will discuss America’s contemporary democratic predicament is rooted in its historically incomplete democratization. Born in a pre-democratic era, the constitution’s balancing of majority rule and minority rights created still unresolved dilemmas. Placing the U.S. in comparative perspective, this lecture offers new perspectives on what should be “beyond the reach of majorities”– and what should not– making the case for a fuller democracy as antidote to the perils of our age.
March 20 @ 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM UC Berkeley Jefferson Memorial Lecture: Robin D. G. Kelley on American Thanatocracy vs Abolition Democracy: On Cops, Capitalism, and the War on Black Life Alumni House, Toll Room Berkeley, United States Join Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor in U.S. History at University of California, Los Angeles for a Jefferson Memorial Lecture on American Thanatocracy vs Abolition Democracy
April 24 @ 4:10 PM - 6:15 PM UC Berkeley Tanner Lecture: Rachel Barney on The Craft of Virtue and the Virtues of Craft Toll Room Alumni House, Berkeley, CA, United States Join Rachel Barney, Professor and Acting Associate Chair from University of Toronto for an Obert C. Tanner Lecture on The Craft of Virtue and the Virtues of Craft. Rachel Barney is Professor of both Classics and Philosophy. Her research has ranged from the early sophists to the late Neoplatonic commentator Simplicius, but focuses on Plato. This is a three-part lecture spanning three days. Lecture I – The City of All Sciences This first lecture will be primarily oriented to (i) a basic articulation of the questions and puzzles in the abstract; (ii) explication of the complex norms surrounding technê in sophistic thought, Plato’s early dialogues, and Republic I-II; (iii) some puzzles and problems about the normativity of craft so understood; and (iv) a preliminary sketch of some proposals about the relation of craft to deontological norms and its significance for role ethics.
April 25 @ 4:10 PM - 6:15 PM UC Berkeley Tanner Lecture: Rachel Barney on The Craft of Virtue and the Virtues of Craft Toll Room Alumni House, Berkeley, CA, United States Join Rachel Barney, Professor and Acting Associate Chair from University of Toronto for an Obert C. Tanner Lecture on The Craft of Virtue and the Virtues of Craft. Rachel Barney is Professor of both Classics and Philosophy. Her research has ranged from the early sophists to the late Neoplatonic commentator Simplicius, but focuses on Plato. This is a three-part lecture spanning three days. Lecture II – Dreaming of Jiro The second lecture will work through the ethical and political proposals articulated at the end of the first lecture with reference to the usually under articulated values we attach in everyday life to various crafts today, ranging from sushi and craft beer to athletic excellence, tech expertise, and Japanese kogei.
April 26 @ 4:10 PM - 6:15 PM UC Berkeley Tanner Lecture: Rachel Barney on The Craft of Virtue and the Virtues of Craft Toll Room Alumni House, Berkeley, CA, United States Join Rachel Barney, Professor and Acting Associate Chair from University of Toronto for an Obert C. Tanner Lecture on The Craft of Virtue and the Virtues of Craft. Rachel Barney is Professor of both Classics and Philosophy. Her research has ranged from the early sophists to the late Neoplatonic commentator Simplicius, but focuses on Plato. This is a three-part lecture spanning three days. The Third Day: Seminar and Discussion with the Commentators With commentary by Adam Gopnik, Rachana Kamtekar, Christine Korsgaard and Alexander Nehamas.
October 1 @ 4:10 PM - 6:10 PM Bill McKibben on The Deadly Trade in Oil and Gas MLK Jr. Student Union, Pauley Ballroom MLK Jr. Student Union, Berkeley, United States Join Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Professor at Middlebury College for a Barbara Weinstock Lectures on The Deadly Trade in Oil and Gas. This lecture will examine how the export of hydrocarbons, in particular, has become an enormous threat to efforts to rein in greenhouse gasses, and the role that America–the world’s biggest exporter of gas–plays in this ongoing catastrophe. It will also explore the role that non-tradable commodities–sunshine and wind–might play in easing this crisis.
October 9 @ 4:10 PM - 6:10 PM Susan Wolf on Character and Agency Alumni House, Toll Room Berkeley, United States Join Susan Wolf, Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a Howison Lecture on Character and Agency. This lecture rejects a philosophically prominent account that identifies a person’s character with the set of dispositions and traits that reflect and express the individual’s values as being both too narrow and too vague. One’s character may well include features of oneself that one does not endorse or even know about. And endorsing a value and acting to express it may be too shallow to constitute an aspect of one’s character if it is not reflective of or responsive to the exercise of an active intelligence. Changing the way we understand character to incorporate these proposals will also lead to the recognition of an important sense of agency that has less to do with actions and intentions than we are accustomed to think.
October 23 @ 4:10 PM - 6:10 PM Sudipta Kaviraj on The Search for Paradise Alumni House, Toll Room Berkeley, United States Join us for a Howison Lecture with Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Indian Politics and Intellectual History, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University. Kaviraj lecture will explore The Search for Paradise, focusing on the colonial history and social science that habituated Indians intellectuals to two questionable certitudes. The first was the radical dissimilarity between modern social theory and pre-modern philosophical traditions of other, colonized societies. A second prejudice was the radical inferiority of pre-modern traditions in thinking of solutions to modern human life. In this lecture, Kaviraj will try to contest both these prejudices by using an analysis of two great traditions of Indian aesthetic-social philosophy: the Upanishads, and Vaisnava theology and poetry.