Podcast appearances and mentions of robert brandom

Anil Bawa-Cavia (AA Cavia) is one of our favorite writers and practitioners on the philosophy of computation. We discovered his work through Logiciel, on &&& (we

When reading Hegel, we find points of both complex logical reasoning and a mad production of language and concepts. This dynamism between points of strange speculation and orgiastic representations of culture as a whole, creates two Hegels that are often difficult to reconcile. The work of Robert Brandom attempts to remove the wild layer of idealization to produce a consistent theory of human rationality and the process by which that rationality forms consistent mores, laws, and structures of meaning. Ray Brassier uses this analysis to delineate the power of dialectics as a means to transcend classical philosophy, while Slavoj Zizek sees Brandom's work as reducing Hegel to a logical form that cannot recognize the radical power of negativity. Egon and Misha work through this series of texts on Hegel to understand how genealogy relates to Kant and Hegel's philosophical inventions, what differentiates classical philosophy from theory, how do dialectics model the way in which we develop norms and values, to define what Zizek believes is the radical character of negativity that makes Hegel central to all philosophy, as well as many other fascinating ideas.

Dr. Ingo Venzke, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Amsterdam, joins us to talk about semantics in international law, semantic authority, and struggle for meaning. Publications mentioned in the episode: Ingo Venzke, How Interpretation Makes International Law: On Semantic Change and Normative Twists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Hans Kelsen, General Theory of Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Joseph Raz, Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Joseph Raz, ‘The Problem of Authority: Revisiting the Service Conception', Minnesota Law Review 90 (2006): 1003–44. Rudolf von Jhering, The Struggle for Law (Chicago: Callaghan and Company, 1915). Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller (eds.), Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). Robert Brandom, Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986). Mohammed Bedjaoui, Towards a New International Economic Order (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979).

Professor Nehal Bhuta, University of Edinburgh and Dr Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi, University of Amsterdam, give a talk for the Public International Law seminar series. Philip Alston's deep worries about the institutionalization of the tactic of targeting killing, the ensuing extension of warfare and its corrosive consequences for any meaningful possibility of scrutinizing the legality of such strikes, proved far-sighted. The chapter focuses on the accompanying re-articulation of the right of self-defense by states active in the war on terror and demonstrate that it has fashioned a set of interconnected legal propositions that we call “revisionist.” This revisionist framework, we show, cumulatively engenders a highly permissive framework for the preventive, extraterritorial, use of lethal force against individuals and non-state groups, with a geographically and temporally expansive scope. We do not argue that this permissive version of self-defence is now lex lata or even de lege ferenda. We also distinguish ourselves from the view that the revisionist framework departs from “the ‘old days' when the law was allegedly certain” – that is, when the law required a high threshold of effective control by the territorial state over the non-state armed group. Instead, building on Robert Brandom's Hegelian account of the determinateness of legal concepts, we frame the revisionist framework as a historically-embedded process of determination of the new content of the concept of self-defense. The chapter shows that these conceptual revisions bring with them a reconfiguration of the structure of legal relationships presupposed by the jus ad bellum's concept of proportionality, and a new (in)determinacy which renders the concept more permissive than constraining. Professor Nehal Bhuta holds the Chair of Public International Law at University of Edinburgh and is Co-Director of the Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law. He previously held the Chair of Public International Law at the European University Institute in Florence, where was also Co-Director of the Institute's Academy of European Law. He is a member of the editorial boards of the European Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Criminal Justice, Constellations and a founding editor of the interdisciplinary journal Humanity. He is also a series editor of the Oxford University Press (OUP) series in The History and Theory of International Law. Prior to the EUI he was on the faculty at the New School for Social Research, and at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Before entering academia, he worked with Human Rights Watch and the International Center for Transitional Justice. Nehal's two most recent edited volumes are Freedom of Religion, Secularism and Human Rights (OUP) and Autonomous Weapons Systems - Law, Ethics, Policy (Cambridge University Press with Beck, Geiss, Liu and Kress). Nehal works on a wide range of doctrinal, historical and theoretical issues in international law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and human rights law. Dr Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Asser Institute (University of Amsterdam), a Teaching fellow at SciencesPo Paris and the Managing Editor of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law. She holds a PhD in Law from the EUI, entitled “Drone Programs: the Interaction Between Technology, War and the Law”. She currently supervises Master theses in criminal law and public international law at the University of Amsterdam. Her work reflects on how new technologies, together with the law, reshape security practices in the counterterrorism context.

The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel is a major focus of Robert Brandom's work. Brandom makes Hegel's thought accessible to analytic philosophy by developing a semantic interpretation of the "Phenomenology of Spirit". In his Munich lectures, Brandom is going to present new texts on the "Introduction" of Hegel's Phenomenology for the first time.

The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel is a major focus of Robert Brandom's work. Brandom makes Hegel's thought accessible to analytic philosophy by developing a semantic interpretation of the "Phenomenology of Spirit". In his Munich lectures, Brandom is going to present new texts on the "Introduction" of Hegel's Phenomenology for the first time.

The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel is a major focus of Robert Brandom's work. Brandom makes Hegel's thought accessible to analytic philosophy by developing a semantic interpretation of the "Phenomenology of Spirit". In his Munich lectures, Brandom is going to present new texts on the "Introduction" of Hegel's Phenomenology for the first time.

Reasons for action are considerations in the light of which we act. But just what is it that we attribute to a person when we credit her with a good reason? What sort of entity is on our minds when we deliberate about what we have reason to do? This book examines this question and evaluates a number of approaches to the philosophy of reasons, including normative realism, psychologism and Humeanism. The second half of the book contains the defense of a theory of reasons influenced by the writings of Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom. This theory is further developed in relation to a number of recent topics in action theory, including the Guise of the Good thesis, internalism and the normativity of reasons.

Professor Robert Brandom: From German Idealism to American Pragmatism, and Back Cambridge Pragmatism: a Research Workshop 31 May — 1 June, 2012 :: Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College, Cambridge