Sydney Seminar for the Arts and Philosophy

Sydney Seminar for the Arts and Philosophy banner 

The Sydney Seminar is an initiative that aims to bring the arts in conversation with philosophy. The series is supported by the University of Western Sydney but it seeks to involve individuals and institutions in the wider Sydney area. For more details, please visit the Seminar’s website. (opens in a new window)

Upcoming seminars 

Seminar 22 imageSeminar 22
Conversion and Martyrdom
Warren Montag

When: Tuesday 30 July 2013, 6.00 PM to 7.30 PM 

Where: Metcalfe Auditorium, Macquarie Building, State Library of New South Wales 
Booking essential (opens in a new window)

According to Spinoza, societies form through a mechanism of imitation. People involuntarily mimic the emotions of the others. This sharing of feelings means that the individual is always related to others. Much of Part IV of the Ethics concerns how the imitation of hatred produces self-hatred. This stages an encounter with two important forms of self-hatred: conversion and martyrdom.

Warren Montag is the Brown Family Professor of Literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He is the author of books on Spinoza and Althusser, the most recent of which is Althusser and His Contemporaries: Philosophy’s Perpetual War (Duke University Press). He is also the editor of Décalages: a Journal of Althusser Studies.

Programme

Chair Dimitris Vardoulakis

6.05 pm Welcome by Prof Anothny Uhlmann

(director of the Writing and Society Research Centre, University of Western

Sydney)

6.10 to 6.55 pm Warren Montag

Conversion and Martyrdom

6.55 to 7.30 pm Question and Answer 


Past seminars

Seminar 21: An Immanent Future: Music and Philosophy(opens in a new window) (6 June, 2013)
Seminar 20: Melancholia Non Grata: Lars von Trier and the Infinite Sadness(opens in a new window) (28 September, 2012)  
Seminar 19: Eternal Life after the Death of God(opens in a new window) (Tuesday, 7 August, 2012)
Seminar 18: Music and Philosophy after Modernism(opens in a new window) (Friday, 1 June 2012)
Seminar 17: Kafka and Philosophy(opens in a new window)(9 February, 2012)
Seminar 16: The Atheist God: Spinoza's Laws of Religion and Politics(opens in a new window)(17 May, 2011)