The importance of Martin Heidegger’s work for 20th century philosophy can hardly be overstated. Sartre’s existentialism, Derrida’s deconstruction, Levinas’ ethics, and the political thought of Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Herbert Marcuse – Heidegger exercised a formative influence on all of them. All the same, Heidegger’s engagement with Nazism in the early 1930s casts
TagPhilosophy
Out of the cave – right into the world of philosophy
My first semester at Bard College Berlin just ended and I would like to write about the past few months and draw on my first insight into a liberal arts education. At first, many people advised me not to study at a liberal arts university. In Germany you usually choose a field of study that
The Faculty Podcast: Michael Weinman
The Die Bärliner inaugurates today a series of discussions with members of the faculty. Listen to our professors talking about their areas of interest, current research, teaching at ECLA of Bard and life outside class. Our first guest, Prof. Dr. Michael Weinman, joined the permanent faculty of ECLA of Bard in September 2012, after originally
Finding my Genius
The trip to Weimar was literally one of the ‘Aha’ moments in my life. This is how Weimar happened; a day before we actually had to leave, I spent the whole day reading Galileo for a class. With my head drowned in my books I wondered to myself if I would ever get to spend
The Right of Necessity
Students of the Property Core Course had the good fortune to have Professor Andreas Blank conduct a seminar about Samuel Pufendorf’s theory of necessity on May 30th. Professor Blank is a teacher of early modern philosophy in the University of Hamburg and his expertise was most helpful in comparing Pufendorf’s notions of ownership and necessity with
The Truth About Lying
On Tuesday the 29th May, Thomas Schmidt visited ECLA to give a lecture entitled “Why Lying is Wrong (When it is Wrong)”. Schmidt, who teaches at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin’s Department of Practical Philosophy and Normative Ethics, is regarded as one of Germany’s most important writers in his field. Thomas Schmidt began by defining exactly what
Babette Babich: “The Aesthetics of the Between: On Beauty and the Museum”
On May 21st, ECLA students had the honor of having Professor Babette Babich for a guest lecture titled “The Aesthetics of the Between: On Beauty and the Museum”. Babette Babich is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University in New York and her works have covered studies of Nietzsche and Heidegger, as well as theories in philosophies of
Frank Ruda on Hegel and Marx – From Abstraction to Alienation to Universalism
The BA2 Core Course for the spring term, on the topic of ‘Property’, co-taught by faculty members Catherine Toal and Michael Weinman, commenced on the 16th of April with two guest seminars from Frank Ruda, Visiting Lecturer at the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Centre in Ljubljana, Research Associate in Philosophy at the Free University