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Conference Announcement "Cosmopolitanism and Conflict" International Workshop Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University Leiden (Netherlands) 16-17 December 2010 __________________________________________________ The aim of the workshop will be to examine and discuss the relation between cosmopolitanism and conflict. For Kant, social antagonism (the human “unsocial sociability”) plays a clear and vital role in the historical progress of humankind towards a cosmopolitan world order, but its status and value in that order is less clear. If, as both Kant and Nietzsche believe, antagonism is indispensable for the realisation of human capacities and for human flourishing, then surely it should figure also in the conception of a cosmopolitan world order itself. Yet the constructive role of conflict remains under-theorised by Kant and his contemporary successors. What place should be given to antagonism in cosmopolitan theory, and to which forms of antagonism? ‘Cosmopolitanism’ will be taken broadly to include political, cultural, lifestyle and ethical cosmopolitanisms. ‘Conflict’ will also be taken broadly to include all forms of antagonism from wars of annihilation, constructive forms of political agonism to cultural contests of excellence. The aim is to develop a differentiated understanding of both concepts: of the diverse forms of cosmopolitanism and the diverse forms of conflict in order to come to better understanding of their interconnections. The key axis for this question is given by Kant and Nietzsche, the thinker of cosmopolitanism and the thinker of conflict par excellence. But there will also papers on other theorists contributing to a better understanding of conflict & cosmopolitanism. Organisers: Herman Siemens & Martine Prange Venue: Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University zaal 11, het Gravensteen For location see: http://portal.leiden.nl/locatie/gravensteen Programme Thursday 16 December 16:00 – 18:00: Zeno lecture Beatrix Himmelmann (Tromsø, Norway): Towards Perpetual Peace – Does this Idea Allow for Inevitable or even Desirable Conflict? 18:00: Drinks 19:00: Dinner Friday 17 December 9:00 – 10:30: Martine Prange (Maastricht) & Herman Siemens (Leiden): Conflict and Cosmopolitanism, Kant, Nietzsche and Beyond 10:30 – 11:00: Tea/Coffee 11:00 – 12:30: Pauline Kleingeld (Leiden/Groningen): Kant, Cosmopolitanism, Law and Conflict 12:30 – 14:00: Lunch 14:00 – 15:30: Miguel Vatter (UDP, Santiago Chile): The Political-Theological Foundations of Cosmopolitan Democracy 15:30 – 16:00: Tea/ Coffee 16:00 – 17:30: Chris Goto-Jones: Cosmopolitics and Contradictory Universes in Kyoto School Philosophy Stefan Rummens: Agonism and the Visibility of Global Politics 18:00 -19:00: Drinks All are welcome. Participation is free, but please ensure that you register with Ms. Lies Klumper: [email protected] Bios Chris Goto-Jones is Dean of Leiden University College and Professor of Comparative Philosophy and Political Theory at Leiden University. He is a world-expert in 20th C. Japanese philosophy and author of: Modern Japan: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2009); Warrior Ethics in Japan: Bushidô as Intellectual History (forthcoming CUP 2009); Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co-Prosperity, Routledge (Leiden Series in Modern East Asia 2005. Nominated for the Gladstone History Book Prize, 2006), as well as numerous articles in his fields of expertise. Beatrix Himmelmann is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tromsø (Norway). She has worked extensively on themes in Kant and Nietzsche; her systematic interests focus on issues of practical philosophy. She has held visiting positions at Zurich University, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Brown University. Her book publications include Kants Begriff des Glücks (2003); (ed.) Kant und Nietzsche im Widerstreit (2005); Nietzsche (2006). Since 2004, she has been President of the German Nietzsche Society. Pauline Kleingeld is Professor of Philosophy at Leiden University and Groningen University. She has published articles on Kant's and Kantian philosophy, moral theory, and political philosophy. She is also the author of Fortschritt und Vernunft: Zur Geschichtsphilosophie Kants (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1995), the editor of Immanuel Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Texts on Politics, Peace, and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), and the author of Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Martine Prange is Lecturer in Philosophy at Maastricht University. She received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Groningen in 2007 with the dissertation Nietzsche's Ideal Europe. Since then she has taught at the University of Amsterdam (2008-2010) and published extensively on Nietzsche's aesthetics and cosmopolitanism. In 2005, her Lof der Méditerranée: Nietzsche's vrolijke wetenschap tussen noord en zuid (Praise of the Mediterranean: Nietzsche's Gay Science in between North and South) was published by Klement (Kampen). Her current research focuses on the productivity of conflict in the cosmopolitan philosophies of Kant, Nietzsche and contemporary Kantian cosmopolitan philosophies. Stefan Rummens is Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the Radboud University Nijmegen. He obtained his PhD in philosophy at the University of Leuven (Belgium) in 2004 with a dissertation on Jürgen Habermas’s deliberative model of democracy. He studied as a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York and the Goethe University in Frankfurt-am-Main. His research concerns democratic theory generally with a particular interest in topics such as deliberative democracy, agonistic politics, populism, political extremism, postsecularism, representation and global democracy. Herman Siemens works as Assistant Professor in Modern Philosophy at the Leiden Institute for Philosophy. He has published extensively in his area of specialisation, Nietzsche and post-Nietzschean thought, including the book Nietzsche, Power and Politics (de Gruyter 2008). Since 1998 he has been working together with other Nietzsche scholars on the Nietzsche-Wörterbuch Project, based at the Radboud University Nijmegen and Leiden, volume I of which appeared in 2004. His own research has focused on Nietzsche’s ontology of conflict, his concept of the agon and its appropriations by contemporary democratic theorists, on which he is currently completing a monograph. He has been President of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society since 2008. Miguel Vatter is Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. His main areas of research are republicanism, biopolitics and political theology. He is the author of "Between Form and Event: Machiavelli's Theory of Political Freedom" (Kluwer, 2000) and "La constitución de la libertad. Ensayos de teoría democrática radical" (Santiago, 2010). He is the editor of "Crediting God. Sovereignty and Religion in the Age of Global Capitalism" (Fordham, 2010). Among his recent articles are: “In Odradek’s World: Bare Life and Historical Materialism in Agamben and Benjamin” Diacritics vol. 38, n.3, 2008, pp. 45- 70, and “The Idea of Public Reason and the Reason of State: Schmitt and Rawls on the Political” Political Theory vol.36, n.2, 2008, pp. 239-271. He is currently completing a book on Leo Strauss and political theology, and a collection of essays on biopolitics. __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
