The Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy (MSCP) is an institution dedicated to scholarly, extensive and engaged readings of key figures and texts in the history of modern European thought and contemporary discourse. [1] The School was founded in 2003 and formalised its status as an independent, not-for-profit organisation in 2004. It is based in Melbourne, Australia and is housed by The University of Melbourne.
In January 2002, Cameron Shingleton, Jon Roffe, Matt Sharpe and David Rathbone ran a summer school with four courses (on Nietzsche, on Deleuze, on Zizek and on Hegel, respectively) in the 1888 Building at the University of Melbourne. Sharpe had just finished his PhD on Zizek with Marion Tapper and John Rundell at Melbourne; Rathbone had returned to Melbourne from studies with Agnes Heller and Reiner Schurmann at the New School for Social Research in New York; Shingleton had completed his honours degree on Nietzsche in the German department; and Roffe his, in French. All four were of the opinion that the formalities of institutional academia alone were not sufficient to undertaking philosophical and critical thought. They thus formed the MSCP in the spirit of a guild of philosophers with the intention of preserving and fostering genuine intellectual engagement with continental philosophy. In 2003, they were joined by Sean Ryan, Craig Barrie, and Ashley Woodward, and later, Esther Anatolitis, Felicity Joseph, Jack Reynolds, Kate Noble, Alex Murray, Atliana Safich, Mark Tomlinson, Marc Hiatt, James Garrett, Bryan Cooke, Paul Daniels, Andrea Leon-Martino, and Sherah Bloor, all of whom have all been involved in various ways during the five years 2004–2009, running annual Summer and Winter Schools, as well as several conferences and research days.
The MSCP runs Summer and Winter Schools at the University of Melbourne during the university vacation breaks. Courses in the Schools consist of five two-hour lectures over a week and do not involve assessment or require any demonstrated prior knowledge of the topic in question. As the MSCP is a not-for-profit organisation, registration costs are minimal.
MSCP courses seek a detailed and scholarly encounter with philosophical thinkers and themes. In particular, the courses attempt to promote constructive ways of engaging with philosophy which are not widely represented in contemporary academic discourse. The courses aim to locate philosophy in the context of its historical and cultural milieu, encouraging lively, academic debate, emphasising the interdisciplinary aspects of philosophy. Classes are informal but strive to be rigorous and faithful to the philosophers and texts being studied.
Past courses have covered philosophers such as Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze and Badiou. A series of courses has run over several Summer and Winter Schools entitled 'MSCP History of Philosophy Series' which assessed philosophy from the pre-Socratics to modern empiricism. Similar courses, treating a theme rather than a particular philosopher or text, have included 'Three Centuries of Aphorism' and 'Democracy, Elites and Violence'. [2]
The MSCP has run conferences including:
The MSCP has initiated a series of research days where philosophers in a particular field converge on a specific topic and workshop their papers together. So far, "Spinoza and the Infinite", convened by Jon Roffe was held in December 2005 and was attended by Justin Clemens, Simon Duffy, Minna Koivuniemi and Jon Roffe. [6]
Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy is an international journal of Critical Philosophy affiliated with MSCP. It is edited by four MSCP members: Alex Murray, Matthew Sharpe, Jon Roffe and Ashley Woodward. [7] [8] It was launched in 2006 and has included articles by Alain Badiou [9] [10] and Jacques Rancière. [11]
During 2004, the founding Convenor, Jon Roffe, negotiated an informal relationship between the MSCP and the Philosophy Department with Chris Cordner (then Head of the Philosophy Department). [12] This allowed the MSCP to undertake its activities using an office in the Department and University of Melbourne resources and teaching spaces. Late 2004, the MSCP invited Dr Marion Tapper of the University of Melbourne Philosophy Department to become a member. This merely formalised her involvement as she had always been supportive of the MSCP both philosophically and on account of knowing all of its members personally from teaching and supervision. [13]
One way in which the MSCP attempts to transcend its university boundaries is by seeking new ways to teach and engage with philosophy. In particular, MSCP events strive to be both informal and rigorous. With their courses offering no credit or assessment, students who attend are usually there for the joy of philosophy and seek to further their own intellects outside of a formal classroom setting. Being a not-for-profit organisation, the MSCP charges a minimum for its courses; again, this is aimed at transcending the current economic climate of university funding.
New members are typically recommended by current members and, largely because the organisation was founded by postgraduate students, they are usually honours year or postgraduate students themselves.
Gilles Louis René Deleuze was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), both co-written with psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. His metaphysical treatise Difference and Repetition (1968) is considered by many scholars to be his magnum opus.
In the 19th century, the philosophers of the 18th-century Enlightenment began to have a dramatic effect on subsequent developments in philosophy. In particular, the works of Immanuel Kant gave rise to a new generation of German philosophers and began to see wider recognition internationally. Also, in a reaction to the Enlightenment, a movement called Romanticism began to develop towards the end of the 18th century. Key ideas that sparked changes in philosophy were the fast progress of science, including evolution, most notably postulated by Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and theories regarding what is today called emergent order, such as the free market of Adam Smith within nation states, or the Marxist approach concerning class warfare between the ruling class and the working class developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Pressures for egalitarianism, and more rapid change culminated in a period of revolution and turbulence that would see philosophy change as well.
Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Prior to the twentieth century, the term "continental" was used broadly to refer to philosophy from continental Europe. A different use of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and traditions outside the analytic movement. Continental philosophy includes German idealism, phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, French feminism, psychoanalytic theory, and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School as well as branches of Freudian, Hegelian and Western Marxist views.
Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic study of a written or oral discourse. Although critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgment, it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt. The contemporary sense of critique has been largely influenced by the Enlightenment critique of prejudice and authority, which championed the emancipation and autonomy from religious and political authorities.
Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard. Badiou has written about the concepts of being, truth, event and the subject in a way that, he claims, is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity. Badiou has been involved in a number of political organisations, and regularly comments on political events. Badiou argues for a return of communism as a political force.
Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis is a public university in Paris, France. Once part of the historic University of Paris, it is now an autonomous public institution.
A History of Western Philosophy is a 1946 book by British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). A survey of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century, each major division of the book is prefaced by an account of the historical background necessary to understand the currents of thought it describes. When Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, A History of Western Philosophy was cited as one of the books that won him the award. Its success provided Russell with financial security for the last part of his life. The book was criticised, however, for over-generalizations and omissions, particularly from the post-Cartesian period, but nevertheless became a popular and commercial success, and has remained in print from its first publication.
Alenka Zupančič is a Slovenian philosopher whose work focuses on psychoanalysis and continental philosophy. She is a Slovenian psychoanalytic theorist and philosopher who along with Mladen Dolar and Slavoj Žižek have in large measure been responsible for the popularity in North America of a politically infused Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Quentin Meillassoux is a French philosopher. He teaches at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
20th-century French philosophy is a strand of contemporary philosophy generally associated with post-World War II French thinkers, although it is directly influenced by previous philosophical movements.
Raymond Brassier is a British philosopher. He is member of the philosophy faculty at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, known for his work in philosophical realism. He was formerly Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University, London, England.
Jason Barker is a British theorist of contemporary French philosophy, film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is a professor of cultural studies at Kyung Hee University in the Graduate School of British and American Language and Culture, and visiting professor at the European Graduate School, where he teaches in the Faculty of Media and Communication alongside Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, Avital Ronell, Slavoj Žižek, and others.
Bruno Bosteels is a professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He served until 2010 as the General Editor of diacritics. Bosteels is best known to the English-speaking world for his work on Latin American literature and culture and his translations of the work of Alain Badiou. Theory of the Subject appeared in 2009, Bosteels' translation of Badiou's Théorie du sujet.
Sam Gillespie was a philosopher with a particular interest in the work of Alain Badiou, a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) who wrote about being, truth and the subject in a way that, he claims, is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity. Gillespie was described by Joan Copjec as "one of the most gifted and promising philosophers of his generation". He was a co-founder of the academic journal Umbr(a). Gillespie's book The Mathematics of Novelty was published posthumously in 2008. Peter Hallward wrote that "This tremendously valuable book is a landmark in the critical reception of Badiou’s work."
Ivan Soll is an American philosopher who is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States. He taught at UW from 1965 until his retirement in May 2011. His teaching and research focused on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosophy in general, existentialism, aesthetics, and various figures of continental philosophy.
Alberto Toscano is an Italian cultural critic, social theorist, philosopher, and translator. He has translated the work of Alain Badiou, including Badiou's The Century and Logics of Worlds. He served as both editor and translator of Badiou's Theoretical Writings and On Beckett.
Justin Clemens is an Australian academic known for his work on Alain Badiou, psychoanalysis, European philosophy, and contemporary Australian art and literature. He is also a published poet.
Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy is an international open-access journal of Critical Philosophy affiliated with Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy. It is edited by four MSCP members: Alex Murray, Matthew Sharpe, Jon Roffe and Ashley Woodward. It was launched in 2006 and has included articles by Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière.
Frank Ruda is a German philosopher. He is professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Dundee. He is also a visiting professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Centre in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Professor at the European Graduate School (EGS). He received his PhD in 2008 from University of Potsdam under the supervision of Manfred Schneider and Christoph Menke with a work on Hegel's Philosophy of Right and his venia legendi (Habilitation) in 2017 from the Free University Berlin.
Nina Power is an English writer and philosopher. She is a senior editor of and columnist for the online magazine Compact.
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