Call for Papers

Life, Death, and Liberation
 A conference of comparative philosophy
9th Annual Philosophy Student Conference at the University of New Mexico
Keynote speaker: Professor Stephen Phillips (Philosophy, Asian Studies, U. of Texas at Austin)
Date: April 15-16, 2011
 
Submission deadline: January 10, 2011
 (Notifications will be received by January 31)

Paper submissions: We welcome topics from the broadest range of philosophical and interdisciplinary traditions. Preference will be given to essays addressing the subtle and often problematic relations among living, dying, and liberation, as these have been explored in the last two-and-a-half centuries of Western philosophy—especially German Idealism, phenomenology, Marxism, and psychoanalytic philosophy—and in both ancient and contemporary Eastern philosophy. Treatments of points of contention within and across schools, traditions, and cultures, in theory and/or in practice, are of interest. We encourage critical perspectives, including those involving the attempt to define and distinguish concepts: “liberation,” “transformation,” “freedom,” “bondage,” “repression,” “knowledge,” “subject,” etc. We are also seeking original and creative applications of Asian, Indian, European, and American transformative philosophy. Submissions from both graduate and undergraduate students will be considered.

Format: Please prepare papers for blind review. Email complete papers (no longer than 3,500 words), preceded by an abstract, to UNMphilconf2011@gmail.com in Word or PDF format; include in the body of your email 1) title of paper, 2) author’s name, 3) university or institutional affiliation, 4) word count, and 5) contact details. Please refrain from providing any self-identifying information in either the paper or the abstract.

Possible themes:

• Ways to Liberation: “Spiritual” vs. “material”?
• Ego and Anātman: The liberative aims, methods, and effects of śila prajñā and psychoanalysis
• From Hegel and Nietzsche to Žižek: Western critiques of Eastern traditions
• Groundlessness, Śūnyatā, and Ethics: The notion of responsibility in existentialism and Buddhism
• Karma, Causality, and Rebirth: The mechanics of enlightenment
• Spectrality and Death in Derrida
• Knowing Liberation: śruti, sṃṛti, reason, and experience
• Yoga, Unity, Unions?: The (ir)reconcilability of individual and social transformation
• Non-dualism East and West: Spinoza, Hegel, Deleuze, Advaita, Madhyamaka, Yogācāra
• Phenomenology as Transformative Philosophy: Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger 
• Liberation from Life or Liberation in Life?: The problem of escapism Eastern Philosophies in the West, Western Philosophies in the East Philosophy and Soteriology: Truth vs. liberation?