How did ’the world’ go from being a place to live in to a place to master and control?

About the Talk:
In his lecture, Akeel Bilgrami will explore how the concept of nature was transformed into the concept of natural resources and what the implications of that transformation are for politics, culture and political economy.

About the Speaker:
Akeel Bilgrami got a B. A. in English Literature from Elphinstone College, Bombay University and went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. He has held the Johnsonian Professorship of Philosophy and holds the Sidney Morgenbesser Chair of Philosophy at Columbia University, where he is also a Professor on the Committee on Global Thought. He has been the Director of the Heyman Centre for the Humanities from 2003-2011 as well as the Director of the South Asian Institute at Columbia from 2013-2016. He has held the Radhakrishnan Chair in India, and visiting positions at Yale University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Australian National University, and Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is the Executive Editor and President of the Board of Trustees of The Journal of Philosophy. His publications include the books Belief and Meaning (Blackwell, 1992), Self-Knowledge and Resentment (Harvard University Press, 2006), Secularism, Identity and Enchantment (Harvard University Press 2014, Permanent Black Press 2014), and Culture, Capital and the Commons (Juxta Press 2022 and Permanent Black Press 2022). He is due to publish two new books in 2024 and 2025:Gandhi, The Philosopher (Columbia University Press) and What is a Muslim? (Princeton University Press). His long-term future work is on the relations between political agency, value, and practical reason.