SPAIS Lunchtime Talks are a chance to hear SPAIS lecturers and researchers offer their take on some of the big issues of the day.

Talks will draw on their research and expertise, inviting us to think critically about events and ideas shaping popular discourse on politics and international relations today. Talks will last approximately 25 minutes, followed by a Q&A session.

In this talk, Dr. Leonidas Tsilipakos introduces us to a work in progress. Science used to be inseparable from philosophy, our egalitarian morality for the weak morphed out of an aristocratic morality of the strong and the notion of human beings having a sexuality developed out of the scientific application of new classificatory rubrics on what was before perhaps predominantly a matter of lack or excess.

These are only some of the insights put forth by genealogies, studies that historicize and trace the unexpected paths of emergence of phenomena that are central to our lives. Sociologists, political theorists, and philosophers have sought to employ the critical leverage that genealogical studies offer in order to denaturalize and critically engage with present practices. But how does genealogical reasoning work, really? What does it have to do with Michel de Montaigne’s essay On Smells? And is it only concerned with the past, or could it tell us something about a future shaped by AI?

Leonidas is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in SPAIS. His research focuses on logical, methodological and ethical problems in the social sciences.