Spring 2009
April 10, 3-5 p.m. (Location: HUB Susquehanna Room)
Lanei Rodemeyer, Ph.D.
(Duquesne University)
“The Body and Time: A Phenomenological Analysis”
(Support for this presentation is also provided by IUP Women's Studies)
Synopsis
As a sensing, engaged being, the living body is infused with consciousness. If consciousness, however, is identified necessarily as a temporalizing consciousness (as is argued by several philosophers, and especially for our purposes, Edmund Husserl), then the body must be integrated in that temporalizing as well. But how does the body engage in temporalizing? For example, how might the body “protend”, i.e., extend itself into its future? Further, can the body anticipate what is not yet? This paper will carry out an analysis of the living body in order to identify, from a phenomenological standpoint, how the body itself participates in temporalizing, and especially futural, consciousness. In addition, if we acknowledge that this temporalizing body is already engaged in its surroundings, then we must admit that it cannot be gender-free. Thus, in analyzing the temporal body, we will address the question of gender. How does the body live as an intersection of time and gender?
Past Speakers
(California University of Pennsylvania)
January 23, 2009 (Location: HUB Susquehanna Room)
“Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Self-expression”
Synopsis
The purpose of this talk is twofold. First, it will provide something of an introduction to the philosophical ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Dr. Fox will not presuppose any familiarity with Wittgenstein’s work. Second, Dr. Fox will relate Wittgenstein's ideas on the notion of self-expression: what kinds of limitations are there on what we would call “self- expression” (be it of a spoken, written, or traditionally “artistic” type)? The results are perhaps not what we would naively expect, and they have implications for how we characterize our relationships to others.
