*NB! Note the time change to 3 pm!
The next History of Philosophy Research Seminar will be held on December 5th at 3:00 p.m. where the speakers are Panu-Matti Pöykkö (UH) and Sami Pihlström (UH). The themes of optimism and pessimism in the history of philosophy will be discussed. See the titles and the abstracts below.
The place: the University of Helsinki main building, Fabianinkatu 33, 4th floor, faculty hall (F 4038).
Seasonal treats will also be served for the celebration of Pikkujoulu!
The seminar is open to all interested parties. Don't hesitate to contact Ritva Palmén (ritva.palmen@helsinki.fi) with any questions or suggestions for future gatherings.
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Panu-Matti Pöykkö: A Guide for the Hopeless: Maimonides on Moral Life
abstract: TBA
Sami Pihlström: On William James's Implicit Schopenhauerianism
While William James has often been taken to be critical of, or even hostile to, Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimism, it is important to recognize implicitly Schopenhauerian tendencies in James’s philosophy. This paper argues that the uneasiness associated with our metaphysical wonder at the radical contingency of the world – the fact that there is being instead of nothingness – is, for James, irreducibly ethical: the “problem of being”, discussed by James in, e.g., Some Problems of Philosophy (1911), is ultimately the problem of suffering. It is suggested that James’s rejection of naïve optimism and theodicist justifications of suffering (and thus of the world) are grounded in his taking seriously Schopenhauerian pessimism, even though he defended meliorism as the critical middle ground between optimism and pessimism. Interpretations and further developments of Jamesian pragmatism should thus take seriously the Schopenhauerian influences that can be perceived throughout James’s key writings from The Will to Believe essays (especially “The Sentiment of Rationality”) via Pragmatism to Some Problems of Philosophy.