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The 33rd Annual Roland Altherr Memorial Symposium In Philosophy

Public Lecture
"Structuralism and its Legacy: The New Lives of Signs"
Catherine Malabou, Professor of Philosophy, European Graduate School
Saturday, November 9
4:00 p.m.—6:00 p.m.
VCAM 201

Reception
Saturday, November 9
6:00 p.m.—7:00 p.m.
VCAM Lounge

Roland Altherr Memorial Symposium in Philosophy

2022 Philosophy Senior Majors (from left to right) Sam Aronson, Marina Kesicki and Oliver Bates with their selected 2021-2022 Roland Altherr Memorial Speaker, Prof. Dan Zahavi (University of Copenhagen)

Roland Altherr was a philosophy major of the class of 1981 who died of a brain hemorrhage in the fall of his senior year. In his memory, Roland's family and friends have created a generous fund that has allowed the Philosophy Department to acquire important volumes and series in philosophy for the library. The fund also supports the annual Roland Altherr Memorial Symposium in Philosophy. Each year, the senior philosophy majors choose a philosopher to invite to campus. In preparation for the symposium visit, the senior majors and philosophy department faculty read and discuss select works of the invited speaker prior to their arrival. Once on campus, the Altherr speaker delivers a public lecture and the next day meets with the philosophy seniors in an intimate seminar format. Each year the seminar allows senior majors a unique and rewarding opportunity to engage a prominent philosopher in depth on various philosophical issues.

  • Past Symposia
      • March 2, 2024
        Homi K. Bhabha
        Harvard University
        "Life-Death and Traumatic Racism"
      • November 12, 2022
        Robert J. Gooding-Williams
        Columbia University
        "Du Bois and the Idea of Beauty"
      • January 29, 2022
        Dan Zahavi
        University of Copenhagen, University of Oxford
        "We and I"
      • October 1, 2021
        Alva Noë
        University of California, Berkeley
        "Themes from Entanglement"
      • November 16, 2019
        Lewis Gordon
        Professor of Philosophy, University of Connecticut
        "Decolonizing Black Aesthetics"
      • February 23, 2019
        Gayatri Spivak
        University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University
        "Complicity"
      • December 2, 2017
        Seyla Benhabib
        Eugene Mayer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University
        "‘The Right to have Rights’: On the Contemporary Significance of Hannah Arendt’s Phrase"
      • November 12, 2016
        Louise Antony
        Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
        "From Causes to Reasons: How Perception Can Justify Belief"
      • November 14, 2015
        Galen Strawson
        Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin
        "The Primacy of Panpsychism"
      • November 8, 2014
        Paul Snowdon
        Professor of Philosophy, University College London
        "Wittgenstein on Rule Following"
      • November 2, 2013
        Charles Mills
        John Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, Northwestern University
        "Decolonizing Western Political Philosophy"
      • November 17, 2012
        Miranda Fricker
        Professor of Philosophy, The University of Sheffield, U.K.
        "Epistemic Justice as a Condition of Political Freedom?"
      • October 29, 2011
        Hubert Dreyfus
        Professor of Philosophy in the Graduate School at University of California, Berkeley
        "Rationality and Emodied Coping: McDowell"s Myth of the Pervasiveness of the Mental."
      • November 6, 2010
        Naomi Zack
        Professor of Philosophy, University of Oregon
        "The Ethics and Mores of Race: Equality after the History of Philosophy"
      • November 7, 2009
        Jay Bernstein
        University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research
        "Rape: Towards a Moral Ontology of the Body"
      • November 15, 2008
        John McDowell
        Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh
        "I Do What Happens"
      • November 3, 2007
        Julia Annas
        Regents Professor of Philosophy, University of Arizona
        "The Unity of Virtue"
      • February 3, 2007
        Linda Alcoff
        Laura J. and Douglas Meredith Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse, University of Syracuse
        Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self
      • November 12, 2005
        Myles Burnyeat
        Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Robinson College, Cambridge
        "Justice Writ Large and Small: Social and Personal Harmony in Republic IV"
      • November 13, 2004
        Roger Ames
        Humanities Professor, Peking University, China
        "Making This Life Significant: Taking Creativity Seriously"
      • October 23, 2003
        Robert B. Pippin
        Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago
        "Hegel"s Practical Realism: Rational Agency as Ethical Life"
      • November 7, 2002
        Arthur C. Danto
        Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
        "Beauty and the Definition of Art"
      • March 21, 2001
        Judith Butler
        Hannah Arendt Chair and Professor of Philosophy, The European Graduate School
        "Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?"
      • September 23, 2000
        Richard J. Bernstein
        Vera List Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research
        "Radical Evil: Arendt and Kant"
      • November 13, 1999
        Stanley Cavell
        Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University
        "Night and Day: Heidegger and Thoreau"
      • November 7, 1998
        Susan Wolf
        Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
        "Meaningful Lives in a Meaningless World"
      • November 8, 1997
        Alexander Nehamas
        Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University
        "A Reason for Socrates’ Face: Nietzsche on ‘The Problem of Socrates’"
      • November 9, 1996
        Martha C. Nussbaum
        Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago
        "Emotions as Judgments of Value"
      • April 21, 1996
        John Searle
        Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley
        "The Construction of Social Reality"
      • March 25, 1995
        Richard Rorty
        Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy, Stanford University
        "Religious Faith, Intellectual Responsibility and Romance"
      • April 16, 1994
        Sara Ruddick
        Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies, New School for Social Research
        "Injustice in Families: Assault and Domination"
      • March 27, 1993
        Amélie Rorty
        Bernard Williams, Ashok Gangadean, Lucius Outlaw
        "What Is Philosophy?"
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Photo by Roger Lin '25

Fall and Spring Receptions

Each semester the Philosophy department hosts a reception so students can socialize with faculty and current Philosophy majors and minors, learn more about the course offerings, and have refreshments.

Undergraduate Philosophy Consortium

Every year, Haverford’s Philosophy department holds the Undergraduate Philosophy Consortium, which celebrates students’ philosophical work from past years. A panel comprised of the two Department Representatives and a Philosophy department alum will select six papers from those submitted by students, hear presentations of those papers, and then select two winners: one from papers written for 100-level courses and one from those written for 200- & 300-level courses, both of whom will receive a cash prize!