2009 Sydney Ideas Key Thinkers series
The University of Sydney is pleased to announce a series of free evening
lectures on the key thinkers who have shaped our society's institutions and
beliefs. University of Sydney academics, from a range of disciplines, will
share their specialised knowledge in a 45-minute lecture on an exceptional
thinker who has informed their research and teaching.
All are welcome to attend this free lecture series-no booking or registration
is required.
Venue: Lecture Theatre 101, New Law School
Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus, University of Sydney
Time: 6.30pm to 8.00 (includes Q & A)
Dates: Wednesdays, from 5 August to 21 October, 2009
Program*
5 August
John Maynard Keynes and the Preservation of Liberal Capitalism
Professor Tony Aspromourgos, Discipline of Economics, Faculty of Economics and
Business
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was the most distinguished British economist
and an extraordinarily energetic public intellectual of his time. His enduring
contribution to economic theory was focused on the level of economic activity
as a whole, thereby providing a new approach to explaining aggregate employment
and unemployment. Keynes' demand-side economics theory became the basis for his
policy dealing with the Great Depression. This lecture will provide an account
of Keynes' life and activities, his theory of economic activity, and his views
on economic policy. The current global financial crisis and associated
contractions of the global economy naturally have revived interest in Keynes'
thought.
12 August
Karl Marx
Professor John Buchanan, Director, Australian Workplace Research Centre,
Faculty of Economics and Business
Whether you agree with him or not, Karl Marx has had an enduring impact on
modern intellectual and political life. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the
collapse of Wall Street today, contemporary thinkers continue to draw on Marx's
writings for ideas and insights. This lecture will provide an overview and
assessment of the core features of his analytical legacy. Particular attention
will be devoted to his social philosophy, theory of history and political
economy. Professor Buchanan will argue that while there are some limits in
aspects of Marx's analysis, these are not so fundamental as to compromise his
relevance today. Moreover, most of the limitations in his intellectual schema
have been overcome by subsequent researchers who have built on his core
categories and used his underlying method of inquiry. The relevance of Marx's
insights will be explored with references to recent research into the changing
nature of work in contemporary Australia.
19 August
Galileo on Free Fall
Dr Ofer Gal, Director, Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, Faculty of
Science
Exactly 400 years ago, in the fall of 1609, an aging university professor in
Padova, Galileo Galilei, took a little optical toy he had improved and turned
it to the sky. What he saw literally changed the world: the planets, it turned
out, were just like the earth, while the fixed stars were very much further.
There were many more stars than we thought, and other planets had moons, just
like us. Galileo's discoveries, published in the vernacular with spectacular
drawings for all to read and observe, were embraced and heralded, until the
excitement got out of hand and Galileo was called to account. What were
Galileo's intellectual motives and drives? What was the excitement about? And
what went wrong?
26 August
Beethoven and the Modern
Associate Professor Peter McCallum, Musicology and Deputy Chair Academic Board
The music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) became an evolving symbol of the
modern, from its invocation by Wagner in sketching a Zukunfstmusik - a music of
the future - to the particular prestige it enjoyed among the creators of
various twentieth century modernisms: in literature, TS Eliot, and Thomas Mann;
in the visual arts Klinger, Klimpt and Bourdelle; in philosophy in the writings
of Adorno, and of course in the dominant streams of musical modernity from
Schoenberg to Boulez. This lecture looks at how these aspects of Beethoven's
music encouraged this identification with progressive modernity. Using examples
from his works, it examines key themes that have been linked with the modern -
liberation and heroic defiance, spiritual alienation and transcendence,
inscrutable autonomy and self-sufficiency and a new conception of musical time
that, as one of his first critics, ETA Hoffmann noted, projects the listener
forward into an apprehension of the infinite.
2 September
Mao Zedong
Professor David Goodman, Professor of Chinese Politics, and Director, Institute
of Social Sciences
Mao Zedong (1893-1976) is best known as the founder of the People's Republic of
China. He led the Chinese Communist Party from 1935 until his death, and
brought it to political power in 1949. Mao is well known as a revolutionary, a
guerrilla leader, a political and military strategist and icon for post-modern
art. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that started in the
mid-1960s he attacked the establishment of the new party-state in China for
"succumbing to the sugar coated bullets of the bourgeoisie", though his motives
have always been a matter of controversy inside as well as outside the People's
Republic of China. Mao himself was always anxious to be seen as an ideologist,
as well as an active revolutionary. This lecture will introduce the different
and often competing strands in his ideology, which remain an important legacy
for China today.
9 September
Konrad Lorenz and the rise of Sociobiology
Professor Paul Griffiths, Professorial Research Fellow, Sydney Centre for the
Foundations of Science
The Nobel prize-winning Austrian biologist Konrad Lorenz initiated the modern,
Darwinian science of animal behaviour. In the 1960s Lorenz's popular writings
on Darwinism and human affairs, and particularly his 1966 book, On Aggression,
had the same high public profile that Richard Dawkins' books have today. Modern
sociobiology, behavioural ecology and evolutionary psychology are all
descended, both intellectually and often sociologically, from Lorenz and his
collaborators. This lecture will explain why Lorenz's work, and that of his
Dutch collaborator Niko Tinbergen, represented a radical break with earlier
Darwinian accounts of the mind, examine the young Lorenz's involvement with
Nazism and explain his hostility to the emergence of sociobiology in the 1970s.
23 September
John Rawls on Social Justice
Professor Duncan Ivison, Professor of Political Philosophy and Head of the
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI)
John Rawls (1921-2002) has been hailed as one of the most important liberal
political philosophers of our times. He is best known for his hugely
influential book, A Theory of Justice (1971), which defended a vision of social
justice in which individual rights and social equality were seemingly
reconciled-something many consider to be impossible. For Rawls, justice was the
"first virtue" of social and political institutions and should structure the
way fundamental rights and opportunities (as well as burdens) are distributed
in a society. His conception of "justice as fairness" attempted to reconcile
the often competing ideals of liberty and equality by setting out principles of
justice that individuals, conceived of as rational and "free and equal", would
be willing to accept. Technically innovative, often dizzyingly abstract and yet
deeply informed by the history of philosophy, Rawls's work has shaped
philosophical thinking about justice-for better or worse-ever since.
30 September
Kurt Gödel and the Limits of Mathematics
Professor Mark Colyvan, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Sydney
Centre for the Foundations of Science
Kurt Gödel was one of the foremost mathematicians and logicians of the 20th
century. He proved a number of extremely surprising results about the
limitations of mathematics. Perhaps the most significant of these is his
celebrated incompleteness theorem, which tells us that there are mathematical
"blind spots": parts of mathematics that traditional methods of proof cannot
access. These results are thought by many to have far-reaching consequences for
computing and for our understanding of the nature of the human mind. Gödel's
results have thus been the subject of a great deal of popular attention.
Indeed, few other results in the history of mathematics have had such an impact
outside of mathematics. For those of us who have never heard of Gödel, this
lecture will give an accessible outline of his work and achievements.
7 October
Pierre Bourdieu and Feminism
Dr Kate Huppatz, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Education and Social
Work
Pierre Bourdieu was the preeminent French intellectual in the late 20th
century. His social theory, particularly his cultural approach to class and
unique understanding of social practice, has been highly influential in the
disciplines of sociology, anthropology and philosophy. His best known work,
Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste (1984), uses
ethnographic evidence to link consumption practices to social class. This
presentation outlines Bourdieu's research interests and key conceptual tools.
Moreover, it looks at how Bourdieu has recently been appropriated by
significant feminist scholars despite being widely critiqued for his limited
engagement with women's issues and gender.
14 October
Mary Wollstonecraft and the Enlightenment
Professor Helen Irving, Faculty of Law
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the first theorist systematically to give
voice to what we now call feminism. Her Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792) was a radical account of the impact of limited education and
subordination on women's lives, built on Enlightenment theories of reason and
human progress. Wollstonecraft was not an armchair radical, but lived a life of
extraordinary daring and independence, dying tragically young after giving
birth to her daughter (the writer, Mary Shelley). In this talk, Helen Irving
explores Wollstonecraft's life and her place in the English Enlightenment, and
traces the enduring legacy of her ideas. Wollstonecraft, she argues, was right
to insist not only that reason is vital to progress, but that progress rests on
sexual equality. In this 250th anniversary year of her birth, she concludes,
Wollstonecraft deserves to be better known and the Enlightenment better
honoured.
21 October
Confucius and the First Emperor
Professor Jeffrey Riegel, Professor and Head of School of Languages and
Cultures, Faculty of Arts
Confucius (traditional dates 551-479 BCE) lived during the waning years of the
Zhou dynasty. He was deeply troubled by the disorder of his age and took it
upon himself to teach others about Zhou virtues as well as to instruct them on
how to cultivate such virtue in themselves. Confucius's efforts mark the
beginning of the traditional Chinese emphasis on education and the crucial role
of self-improvement and self-cultivation in any ethical system. Some of his
followers refined his teachings on the importance of education while
philosophers from competing schools of thought rejected Confucian ideas as
outmoded and ineffective.
First Emperor of Qin (239-210 BCE) assumed the throne as king at a young age
and was aided and tutored by a brilliant minister named Lü Buwei. The young
king eventually outgrew his minister and aggressively took over the reins of
government himself. He conquered his enemies and created an empire in 221 BCE.
The First Emperor appointed as his chief minister an accomplished legalist
thinker named Li Si. Together they created a philosophy for empire based on the
primacy of law, the high (and almost god-like) status of the emperor, and a
system of universal standards that embraced everything from thought to weights
and measures. These features of his rule continue as hallmarks of Chinese
governance to this day.
* Program is subject to change. Please check website for updates
Meredith Hall
Program Manager, Sydney Ideas
External Relations Portfolio
Room 602, Jane Foss Russell Building (G02)
The University of Sydney NSW 2006
P 02 8627 8823 | F 02 8627 8819| M 0403 367 842
E [email protected]
W www.usyd.edu.au/sydney_ideas
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