Deborah East Eley Memorial Lecture Series: Dr. Paul Livingston

Members of the department and friends gathered for Dr. Paul Livingston's (Professor of Philosophy, University of New Mexico) lecture on October 24th at 4pm, at the French House Sternberg Salon.The abstract appears below:

Wittgenstein and Nāgārjuna on the Emptiness of Form: Logical analysis and the pacification of metaphysics

At Tracatas Logico-Philosophicus 4.0312, Wittgenstein articulates his "fundamental thought": that there can be no representatives of the logic of facts, and thus that the familiar "logical constants" and operators do not represent anything either in, or outside, the world. With this claim, Wittgenstein significantly echoes a central project of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy beginning with Nagarjuna: that of demonstrating the thoroughgoing emptiness (sunyata) of all objects, relations, and forms. I conclude by considering some possible critical implications of this kind of analysis for recent projects of positive and speculative metaphysic, especially those committed to what Manuel Delanda has called, following Deleuze, an overall "flat" ontology.