What is the role of philosophy today in civic life—if it has a role at all? In her new book Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, renowned novelist and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein examines this eternal question with audacious originality, re-imagining a Plato in public dialogue in a host of contemporary settings, from the stage at the 92nd Street Y to the hot seat of a cable talk show. With insight and humor, Goldstein’s unique engagement with the work of the Greek thinker contests the nostrum that philosophy’s value has been superseded in the contemporary world and argues formidably in favor of the crucial contribution philosophy can make to topics from religion and science to the question of free will to morality. For this public program, Goldstein will appear in conversation with Mark Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia University.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is a novelist, philosopher, and scholar whose writing bridges the cultural divides between the humanities, the arts, and the sciences. Her award-winning books include The Mind-Body Problem (a novel); 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction; Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, and the newly published Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away (Pantheon). Goldstein was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1996, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.

Mark Lilla is an essayist, historian of ideas and professor of humanities at Columbia University in New York City, which he joined after holding professorships at NYU and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, and the New York Times, he is best known for his books The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics and The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. Lilla is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.

For additional information, contact nyih.info@nyu.edu or 212.998.2101.

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