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About this event: An essential task of social critique is to render particular forms of suffering and injustice visible as universal human suffering and injustice. In this conversation with Christoph Schuringa, Karen Ng argues that humanist social critique operates through grasping the necessary relations between the particular and the universal, and the psychological and the social/political, providing both a cogent and compelling account of the normative background of social critique, as well as how particular, socially situated struggles against dehumanization give shape to the demand for universal human emancipation.
Despite a variety of both long-standing and more recent attempts to reject humanist discourse, Ng feels that it remains one of the most powerful paradigms for social critique, playing a central role in both critical theory and practice.
Karen Ng is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, specializing in nineteenth-century European philosophy and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Her book, Hegel’s Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic (2020), won the 2021 Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize.
Website: karen-ng.com
Twitter: / karen_kyng
You can download a copy of Karen Ng’s essay, “Humanism: A Defense” here: www.academia.edu/49324535/Hum...
Christoph Schuringa is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Northeastern University London. His chief interests are in the history of philosophy (especially Kant, Hegel, and Marx), the traditions of Marxism and critical theory, and social and political thought more widely. His large-scale current project is a monograph on Marx.
Website: christophschuringa.com
Twitter: / chrisschuringa