New York University

New York University

The Office of Public Affairs

Tuesday, Sep 29, 2009

N-50, 2009-10

Philosopher Jürgen Habermas and Princeton University Professor Cornel West will participate in a discussion, “Rethinking Secularism: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere,” on Thursday, October 22, 3:00-7:30 p.m., at Cooper Union’s Great Hall (7 East 7th Street at Bowery). Map. Subways: 6 (Astor Place); R, W (8th Street).

The event is co-sponsored by New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge, the Social Science Research Council, and Stony Brook University. To RSVP, please click here. For more information, contact Samuel Carter, assistant director of the Institute for Public Knowledge, at 212.992.6561.

Other participants include: Judith Butler, a professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, who has authored Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? and co-authored the forthcoming Is Critique Secular?; and Charles Taylor, a professor emeritus of philosophy at McGill University and winner of both the Kyoto and Templeton prizes, who most recently published A Secular Age.

The event will be structured as a pair of two-hour moderated panels—the first with Habermas and Taylor (3-5 p.m.); the second with West and Butler (5:30-7:30 p.m.).

Habermas, considered one of the most important living German philosophers and one of Europe’s top public intellectuals, has authored The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and, most recently, The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, an account of conversations between Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI).

West, a leading philosopher, theologian, and cultural analyst and theorist of race, is University Professor of Religion at Princeton and author of The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism and Race Matters.

Reporters wishing to attend must RSVP to James Devitt, NYU’s Office of Public Affairs, at 212.998.6808 or james.devitt@nyu.edu.