Dr. Simon Glendenning (LSE)
Director of the Forum for European Philosophy, LSE.
A wonderfully engaging speaker, and perhaps the best dressed philosopher in London (present company excepted), Dr. Glendenning makes his living straddling two equally rich traditions: the "analytic" and the "continental". Editor of the Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy, and author of the excellent In the Name of Phenomenology (Routledge 2007) - amongst many others - he has recently turned his attention to the european inheritance of phenomenology.
Always pushing for more metaphilosophy in the classroom, and in favour of as much straddling as possible, we're expecting a rather interesting talk.
Abstract
"The Oldest European Map of the World"
The aim of this paper is critically to explore attempts to define Europe with reference to its end (telos or terminus). While I will not wholeheartedly recommend it, I will counter such definitions with an attempt to define Europe in terms of its origins. As part of this genealogical approach I will examine what has been called 'one of the earliest maps of the world'. The map in question was found in a copy of a now lost early-seventh century manuscript by Isodore, Bishop of Seville (602-632) which is 'entirely in accordance' with the description provided by Saint Augustine some 200 years earlier (354-430). The names on this map are not, however, exclusively Christian – they are also Greek. Keeping my distance from a merely historical conception of the European genealogy, I will use this map to illustrate what might be meant by a philosophical investigation into the idea of Europe.
Here's a summary of his latest work:
Dr. Glendenning asks:
(1) To what extent is phenomenology a coherent school?
(2) If it shares some methods and problems with analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, what makes it philosophically distinctive?
(3) Should phenomenology be considered in the larger context of 'post-Kantian' philosophy?
Beginning with an exploration of what it might mean to 'do phenomenology', Glendinning explores the phenomenologies of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Derrida, considering important topics such as ontology, existentialism, perception and the other. He argues that we should consider phenomenologically informed philosophy apart from the history of the phenomenological movement itself, and argues that the main dividing line within philosophy now lies not between analytic and continental but scientific and conceptual.
Recent Books
2007: Author, In the Name of Phenomenology, London : Routledge
2006: Author, The Movement of Phenomenology, London: Routledge
2006: Author, The Idea of Continental Philosophy, Edinburgh: EUP
2001: Editor, Arguing with Derrida, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1-143. (Includes editor’s preface pp. 1-8 and contributing essay, pp. 9-35.)
1999: Editor, The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy, Edinburgh: EUP, pp. xiii + 683. (Includes editor’s introduction, pp. 3-20.)
1998: Author, On Being with Others: Heidegger-Derrida-Wittgenstein, London: Routledge, pp. x + 173.
Links
European Philosophy Forum (check out their talks!)
Example paper: Reading the Other Animal
A copy of his CV: here