Santa Fe Events

Lectures
Fall 2010 Lectures

Dean’s Lecture and Concert Series

Please join us for the beginning of the Fall 2010 Dean’s Lecture and Concert Series. Following is a description of the first lecture, traditionally given by the Dean. Lectures are free and open to the public; evening lectures are held in the Great Hall at 8 p.m.

Acquiring a Liberal Arts Education
Friday, August 27, 8 p.m.
Great Hall
Peterson Student Center
Victoria Mora, Dean, St. John’s College

In exploring what it takes to acquire a liberal arts education, Dean Mora will look at the character Meno, from Plato’s dialogue of the same, as someone whose ineducability may be instructive.

Reading a Virus: Or, on Bees, Dead Fish, and Other Viruses
Friday, September 3, 8 p.m.
Great Hall
Peterson Student Center
Llyd Wells, Tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe

What is the relevance of philosophy and, in particular, rhetoric, to modern science? If this is a focus around which the lecture will elliptically orbit, the actual, zodiacal trajectory will include an examination of the necessity and implications of rhetorical ambiguity in a scientific paper about an RNA virus (“An extracellular Darwinian experiment with a self-duplicating nucleic acid molecule,” by Mills, Peterson, and Spiegelman, published in 1967), considered in conjunction with similar ambiguities in Darwin’s Origin of Species and Plato’s Meno. What are the stakes underlying this ambiguity? Or — more provocatively — how is the recent invention of a so-called
synthetic cell linked to the death of Socrates?

Honor, Glory, and Friendship in Homer’s Iliad and Aristotle’s Ethics
Friday, September 10, 8 p.m.
Worrell Lecture
Great Hall
Peterson Student Center
Michael Dink, Tutor, St. John’s College, Annapolis

The lecture explores various modes in which warrior excellence was thought to be fulfilled by recognition from others in the Iliad, explores a dialectic arising within this desire for recognition, and then looks to Aristotle’s
account of friendship to see if it can resolve this dialectic.

Promise Keeping after the Death of God: McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men
Friday, September 17, 8 p.m.
Worrell Lecture
Great Hall, Peterson Student Center
Eric Petrie, Associate Professor, James Madison College, Michigan State University

The lecturer has been teaching Cormac McCarthy’s recent novel, No Country for Old Men, and finds that it sheds light on, and in turn is illuminated by, elements of the moral philosophy of Kant and Nietzsche. He will consider the ways in which McCarthy’s novel explores what it means to make promises and keep one’s word in a world where, as Nietzsche puts it, God is dead.

An Introduction to the Reading of Kierkegaard
Friday, September 24, 8 p.m.
Great Hall, Peterson Student Center
Richard McCombs, Tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe

The idea of spiritual heroism is arguably the central theme of Kierkegaard’s writings. In his lecture Mr. McCombs explicates the idea of spiritual heroism and provides general advice for the daunting task of reading the difficult books of Kierkegaard.

Benito Cereno (Amaso Delano) and the Power of Things Unsaid
Friday, October 1, 8 p.m.
Worrell Lecture
Great Hall, Peterson Student Center
Gregory Schneider, Tutor, St. John’s College, Santa Fe

First printed in Putnam’s Monthly in 1855, Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno tells the tale of a slave rebellion on a Spanish merchant ship. Since its release, it has puzzled many of its readers. Some find it uncomfortably racist; others see it as beautifully anti-racist. This lecture will examine the construction of
Melville’s story and how a tale of miscommunication between two captains, the Spaniard Benito Cereno and the American Amaso Delano, purposely opens up a variety of interpretations in its readers. In ways both said and unsaid, Melville places a number of things on trial: ship captains and rebel slaves, Spanish imperialism and American naiveté, slaveholders and abolitionists. Ultimately, he raises questions about the power of communication
and the stories we tell ourselves.

The Ten Commandments
Friday, October 8, 8 p.m.
Great Hall, Peterson Student Center
Leon R. Kass, Addie Clark Harding Professor, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago

The Ten Commandments embody the core principles of the way of life of Ancient Israel and of the Judeo-Christian ethic. Yet, despite its notoriety, the Decalogue is only superficially known, in part because its very familiarity interferes with a deeper understanding of its teachings and its moralpolitical significance. This lecture, a fresh interpretation of the biblical text in Exodus 20, aspires to such an understanding. It is informed by the belief that, if rightly understood, the Decalogue would command universal applause, and not only for its opposition to murder, adultery, and theft.

Descartes, Newton, and the Mathematical Character of Natural Philosophy
Friday, October 22, 8 p.m.
Great Hall, Peterson Student Center
Mary Domski, Department of Philosophy, University of New Mexico

On standard readings of seventeenth century natural philosophy, Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton are situated at the poles of a transition from “rationalism” to “empiricism.” This lecture offers a fresh look at this portrait by taking seriously Descartes’ and Newton’s attempts to bring mathematics to bear on nature. It will specifically examine how they put their mathematical practice and their natural philosophical practice into conversation, and thereby reveal some of the nuances and complications that characterize their respective attempts to formulate a method proper to the investigation of nature. Ultimately, this lecture will bring needed light to the complicated interplay of “rationalism” and “empiricism: in the Cartesian and the Newtonian programs of natural philosophy.

The Yoga Sutras, Lost and Found
Friday, October 29, 8 p.m.
Worrell Lecture
Great Hall, Peterson Student Center
David White, Religious Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara

Henry Thomas Colebrooke, a founding member of the Asiatic Society (of Calcutta), was the author of a comprehensive overview of the six Indian darshanas, which was published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society (of Britain and Ireland) between 1823 and 1827. His clear and concise account of Indian philosophy remained an essential reference throughout the nineteenth century. It is noteworthy that his account of yoga philosophy is extremely brief, and dismissive if not overtly hostile. In this lecture, David White will argue that Colebrooke’s apparent disdain stemmed from a number of factors, not the least of which was the troubling presence on the Indian subcontinent of millions of “yogis,” who were a thorn in the side of the British East India Company.

Afternoon Lecture

Hearing the Irrational: Music and the Development of the Modern Concept of Number
Wednesday, October 20, 3:15 p.m.
Junior Common Room, Peterson Student Center
Peter Pesic, Musician in Residence, St. John’s College, Santa Fe

Our current concept of number (comprising integers along with rational and irrational quantities) only emerged fully during the sixteenth century, when mathematics did not yet exist as a separate discipline; as parts of the quadrivium of liberal arts, arithmetic and geometry were deeply involved with music and astronomy. The musical interests of Michael Stifel, Girolamo Cardano, and Nicola Vicentino influenced their respective treatments of “irrational numbers.” Practical as well as theoretical music both invited and opened the way for the recognition of a radically new concept of number even in the teeth of paradox.

View an archive of past lectures here.