Monday 27th September

Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering

Mara van der Lugt with Alexander Douglas

In this conversation with Alexander Douglas, historian and philosopher Mara van der Lugt will show how the competing philosophical traditions of optimism and pessimism arose from early modern debates about the problem of evil, making a compelling case for the rediscovery of pessimism as a source for compassion, consolation, and perhaps even hope.

Monday 18th October

Audre Lorde & the Case for Rage

Myisha Cherry with Moya Mapps

In this conversation with Moya Mapps, moral and political philosopher Myisha Cherry will argue that anger does not deserve its bad reputation. There is a form of anger that in fact is crucial in the anti-racist struggle today: it aims for change, motivates productive action, builds resistance, and is informed by an inclusive and liberating perspective.

Monday 1st November

Mind, Body, and World in Psychiatry

Sanneke de Haan with Joel Krueger

In this conversation with Joel Krueger, philosopher of psychiatry Sanneke de Haan will draw on insights from “enactivism”, a theory of embodied cognition with close links to phenomenology, to develop a philosophically-based non-reductive account of mind, body, and world in psychiatry.

Monday 15th November

Freedom at the End of History

Lea Ypi with Martin Hägglund

In this conversation with Martin Hägglund, philosopher and political theorist Lea Ypi will discuss her extraordinary memoir of coming of age amid political upheaval, tracing the limits of progress and the burden of the past, illuminating the spaces between ideals and reality, and the hopes and fears of people pulled up by the sweep of history.

Monday 6th December

Making Space for Justice

Michele Moody-Adams with Vafa Ghazavi

In this event, Michele Moody-Adams will discusses some of the key ideas from her forthcoming book "Making Space for Justice". These include: the ways in which social movements have expanded conceptual and perceptual space for justice by helping us better understand the nature of citizenship; the nature and sources of democracy; the political implications of moral inquiry and argument; and the possibilities of political hope.

Tuesday 14th December

Reparations and Climate Justice

Olúfemi O. Táíwò with William Paris

Reparations for slavery have become a reinvigorated topic for public debate over the last decade, with most theorizing about reparations treating it as a social justice project – either rooted in reconciliatory justice focused on making amends in the present or focus on the past, emphasizing restitution for historical wrongs. In this conversation with William Paris, political philosopher Olúfemi O. Táíwò will argue that reparations should be rooted in a hopeful future that tackles the issue of climate change head on, with distributive justice at its core.

Monday 4th October

W.E.B. Du Bois and Intersectionality

Reiland Rabaka with Elvira Basevich

In this conversation with Elvira Basevich, Reiland Rabaka will explore Du Bois’ multidimensional legacy, introducing his main contributions in areas ranging from American sociology and critical race studies to black feminism and black Marxism. Rabaka will also argue that Du Bois’ corpus can be persuasively interpreted as both an undeniable and unprecedented contribution to the origins and evolution of one of our most important contemporary critical concepts: intersectionality.

Monday 25th October

The Two Greatest Ideas

Linda Zagzebski with Anthony Morgan

In this conversation with Anthony Morgan, renowned philosopher Linda Zagzebski will explore what she takes to be the two greatest ideas in human history. The first is the idea that the human mind can grasp the universe. The second is the idea that the human mind can grasp itself.

Tuesday 2nd November

What's Wrong with Work?

Amelia Horgan with Jana Bacevic

In this conversation with Jana Bacevic, philosopher Amelia Horgan will pose three big questions: What is work? How does it harm us? And what can we do about it? While abolishing work altogether is not the answer, Horgan will show that when we are able to take control of our workplaces, we become less miserable, and can work towards the transformative goal of experimenting with “work” as we know it.

Monday 22nd November

Stop Building Bad AI

Annette Zimmermann with Matt Lord

In this conversation with Matt Lord, political philosopher Annette Zimmerman will argue against the view that we should always try to build and optimize AI tools: making things better isn’t always good enough. Rather, Zimmerman will highlight specific cases in which there are overriding ethical and political reasons why we ought not to continue to build, deploy, and optimize specific AI tools.

Tuesday 7th December

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Post-Racialism

Paul C. Taylor with Adam Ferner

In this conversation with Adam Ferner, distinguished philosopher Paul C. Taylor will consider some of the key questions in philosophy of race: What is race-thinking? Don’t we know better than to talk about race now? Are there any races? What is it like to have a racial identity? And how important, ethically, is colour blindness?

Monday 11th October

Moral Progress

Philip Kitcher with Julia Hermann

In this conversation with Julia Hermann, distinguished professor of philosophy Philip Kitcher will discuss three historical examples of moral progress – the abolition of chattel slavery, the expansion of opportunities for women, and the increasing acceptance of same-sex love – to propose new methods for moral inquiry.

Sunday 31st October

An Anthology of Philosophical Horrors

Adam Ferner

Join Adam Ferner for an evening of existential horror as he reads extracts from A.M. Moskovitz’s collection Notes from the Crawl Room. Discovered after Moskovitz’s disappearance from academia, these short stories focus on the psychic dimensions of discursive and institutional violence, and the corrupting influence of analytic philosophy. [Warning: some attendees may find the content of the reading disturbing].

Monday 8th November

Iris Marion Young and Structural Injustice

Maeve McKeown with Alasia Nuti

In this conversation with Alasia Nuti, political theorist Maeve McKeown will use the influential work of Iris Marion Young to explore what structural injustice is, how we are to understand responsibility for structural injustice, and the process of seeking reparations for historical injustices.

Monday 29th November

Derrick Bell and Racial Realism

Timothy Golden with Darren Chetty

In this conversation with Darren Chetty, philosopher and legal scholar Timothy Golden will discuss the thesis of racial realism in an historical and philosophical context, as well as the legacy of Derrick Bell at a time when the field of Critical Race Studies is coming under increasingly hostile social and political attention with the U.S.

Monday 13th December

The Critique of Ecological Reason

Pierre Charbonnier with Simona Capisani

In this conversation with Simona Capisani, philosopher Pierre Charbonnier will open up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment.