MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — A North Carolina State University professor explores revolution and the possibilities of another world at the Applied Philosophy Lyceum hosted by Middle Tennessee State University’s Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.

The last Lyceum of the 2023-24 academic school year will be at 5 p.m. Friday, April 19, in Room 164 of the College of Education Building, 1756 Middle Tennessee Blvd. It is free and open to the public.

Guest lecturer Stephen Ferguson, professor of philosophy at NCSU, will present on the topic “Another World is Possible: A Marxist Philosophy of Revolution,” which examines the “conceptual and methodological limitations of contemporary political philosophy as it has developed in the aftermath of John Rawls.”

Rawls, who died in 2002, was an Ivy League professor and American philosopher who “is widely considered the most important political philosopher of the 20th century … for his defense of egalitarian liberalism in his major work, ‘A Theory of Justice,’” according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

An expert in the Philosophy of African American Studies, Ferguson believes that one of the conceptual limitations of contemporary political philosophy is “the absence of a substantive discussion of revolution.”

Ferguson will argue that “revolutions are a historical process driven by class antagonism, in which one ruling class is displaced by another and which produces a social transformation in the ‘productive capacities’ and ‘social progressive potentialities’ of society at large.”

“Dr. Ferguson’s work synthesizes the history of African American philosophy with critical social and political analysis, and the results are essential and timely,” said Gregory Slack, professor and coordinator of the upcoming Lyceum.

Lyceums are organized by faculty in the Philosophy Program to encourage dialogue on topics that impact how we think about life from an academic perspective.

“In an age of widening calls for racial and economic justice, Ferguson’s philosophical work is almost unique in getting us to rethink old paradigms when addressing what answering these calls for justice would really entail,” Slack said.

Philosophy provides tools and methods for critical reflection on all areas of human knowledge and practice. The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies offers Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Philosophy and Religious Studies. 

A searchable campus parking map is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap.

For more information, email Heather Gibbs at Heather.Gibbs@mtsu.edu or call 615-898-2907.

— Johari Hamilton (Johari.HamiltonGA@mtsu.edu)