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Andrew Cutrofello – Revolutionary Actions and Events

January 29th, 2015 |  Published in Events, News

Andrew Cutrofello will present a talk “Revolutionary Actions and Events” on Jan. 30 at the American Heritage Room (Morris Library 3rd Floor) at 3:30pm.  He is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, and is the author of “All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity” (2014), “Continental Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction” (2005), “Imagining Otherwise: Metapsychology and the Analytic A Posteriori” (1997), “The Owl at Dawn: A Sequel to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit” (1995), and “Discipline and Critique: Kant, Post-Structuralism, and the Problem of Resistance” (1994).

Reception to follow at the Phenomenology Research Center.

Lecturer’s Introduction to Presentation: In analytic philosophy, events are ubiquitous. Whether identified with causes and effects (Davidson),  property exemplifications (Kim),  or repeatable states of affairs (Chisholm, for a time),  events pervade worlds. In continental philosophy, events are comparatively rare. Instead of pervading worlds, they occasionally disclose (Heidegger),  transform (Foucault),  or reconfigure (Badiou)  worlds. Analytic events are ordinary or normal, continental events extraordinary or revolutionary. Likewise with actions. In analytic philosophy, an action is a normal event with the right sort of intentional structure. In continental philosophy, an action is a revolutionary event with a correspondingly more demanding intentional structure. Analytic actions are ordinary or normal, continental actions extraordinary or revolutionary. In my presentation, I will discuss the nature of revolutionary actions and events. I will do so on the basis of McTaggart’s distinction between A series and B series representations of time, a theoretical framework more commonly used to think about normal actions and events.

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