Fourth International Conference
Metaphysics and Things: New Forms of Speculative Thought
Date: December 2-4, 2010
Location: Claremont, California
In keeping with its mission to analyze the relevance of Whitehead's thought in dialogue with contemporary philosophies, the Whitehead Research Project (WRP) is sponsoring a conference to explore some of the congruences and tensions between various recent attempts to return to speculative thought and to reorient the concept of the thing (or object). The conference will provide the opportunity to identify and work through shared elements and problems, which have been developed by those working in the philosophies of Whitehead and Deleuze, Actor-Network-Theory, and Speculative Realism. » READ MORE
2nd International Deleuze Studies Conference
The conference aims at building transdisciplinary assemblages the involve Deleuze in a wider range of thought, i.e., at constructing, from different 'modules of thought,' innovative conceptual arrangements that integrate Deleuzian philosophy into the larger field of contemporary knowledge production and practices of living.
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WRP Session at the 2009 Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Conference:“Whitehead and Radical Empiricism”
Whitehead is often read as a Platonist, and a Platonist in the mould of A.E Taylor. There is a fair amount in Whitehead to support this particularly, for example, the resemblance of his concepts of eternal objects, the ‘primordial nature of God’, extensive continuum, etc, to Plato’s own notions. Yet Whitehead is also deeply critical of Plato and particularly over the role that static abstractions play in establishing a non-processual reality in his thought. The papers in this session explore the idea that, rather than any Platonism, both the critical and creative aspects of Whitehead’s metaphysics are informed by a model of ‘radical empiricism’ derived from William James and others.
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