World Philosophy at Massey

Massey Visiting Scholar Aaron Wendland leads a conversation between Kumar Murty (Massey College) and Sitansu Sekhar Chakravarti (New College) on expanding and diversifying the philosophical canon to address perennial questions about the essence of justice, the origin of consciousness, and the nature of human flourishing.

This event will be broadcast online and is free and open to all – there is no login or registration required to tune in. Click here to watch the livestream.

What do we mean by World Philosophy? It is an attempt to consider philosophical problems of contemporary interest by drawing on the ideas of different traditions as the beginning of an original inquiry. In this conversation, we shall try to elucidate some of the important and contemporary problems that are sufficiently complex that we need to draw on the thinkers of the world that have preceded us, and that can engage the collective genius of the Massey community in discussing. We note that this discussion need not be confined to a disciplinary boundary as it must necessarily concern the scientists as much as the humanists, as well as everyone else! Q&A to follow.

Perhaps more importantly, the meeting is meant to serve as the basis for establishing a new ‘World Philosophy Group’ at Massey. Kumar Murty and Aaron Wendland would like to organize a seminar series in World Philosophy at Massey in 2021-2022. They also hope to turn this into a more formal Institute for World Philosophy in 2022-2023. And it would be great to get some feedback on these initiatives from the Massey community at our event on the evening March 16th.

Kumar Murty received his PhD from Harvard University in the field of mathematics. After postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai), and a faculty position at Concordia University, he moved to the University of Toronto in 1987. He has over 130 publications inmathematics and its applications to information technology, and has authored or edited 9 books. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (India). Besides mathematics, Kumar has a deep interest in philosophy and is currently working on a monograph entitled “Knowledge, Being and Behaviour“. This work is based on a course on Indian philosophy that he was invited to give by the Department of Philosophy in 2018 and 2019.

Sitansu Sekhar Chakravarti did his Ph.D. from Syracuse University, NY, concentrating on the Philosophy of Language. He was formerly a Visiting Professor in Logic and modern western Analytical Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur; in Comparative Religion at the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. He is currently Affiliated Scholar, New College, University of Toronto. Dr. Chakravarti has published in The Journal of Indian Philosophy and the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. He has authored the books: Hinduism – A Way of Life (1991), Modality, Reference and Sense – An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (2001) and Ethics in the Mahabharata – A Philosophical Inquiry for Today (2006). Being well-versed in the western as well as the Indian philosophical traditions, he has combined them in his various writings.

Aaron Wendland completed his Doctorate in Philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford. Aaron is the co-editor of Wittgenstein and Heidegger and Heidegger on Technology, and he is now editing The Cambridge Critical Guide to Being and Time. Aaron has written scholarly articles on Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Danto, and Kuhn, and he has published numerous pieces of popular philosophy in The New York Times, The New Statesman, Public Seminar, Daily Nous, and The Moscow Times. Aaron is the philosophy editor at The New Statesman, a guest producer at CBC Ideas, and a founding director at the Center for Philosophy and Visual Arts.