THESP November 21 16:30 – 18:30 DZ7

Roger Teichmann
(Oxford)
‘The Importance of the Past’

Abstract
A bias against the past appears to be a feature of our Zeitgeist, having a number of manifestations. One of these is the dominant model of rational agency as geared towards producing effects, a model which cannot make sense of the cogency of backward-looking reasons for action. I discuss the nature of such reasons, and the way of perceiving and understanding the past which goes with them. This mode of understanding the past is one of the things that gives substance to the idea that the past has a reality lacked by the future, a reality which among other things makes the past a possible object of contemplation (as in the study of history). I take such contemplation to be a crucial component of eudaimonia, and argue that a society which undervalues it is liable to various travails.

THESP October 24th 16:30 – 18:30 DZ7

Ayesha Ahmad (UCL)
‘Conceptualising Ethics in an “Unexpected Cultural Encounter” in Disaster Medicine’

Ethics Research Group September 26th (Monday) 14:00 – 16:00 AZ211

Ruud Welten (Tilburg University)
‘Does Integrity have a chance in Commercial Hospitality?’

Ethics Research Group September 12th (Monday) 16:30 – 18:30 Dante Z7

Alan Thomas (Tilburg University)

‘Virtue Monism and the Individuation of Situations’

Abstract
The situationist critique of virtue ethics has been interpreted as problematising the idea of a global character trait. This paper approaches the same issue by asking two inter-connected questions: how do we individuate virtues? Can a virtue ethicist and a situationist critic of global traits agree on the nature of situations?

Towards a Contemporary Aesthetic Education – Full Program

Upcoming Event 24th November

Alan Thomas

‘Laws and Generalisations in Ethics’

Tilburg Institute for Logic and the Philosophy of Science, 16:45 – 18:30, location tbc.

Upcoming Event 7th – 8th October 2011

The Tilburg Hub for Ethics and Social Philosophy is one of the sponsors of ‘Towards A Contemporary Aesthetic Education’, a two day conference organised by Kathryn Brown at the Kleine Zaal, De NWE Vorst, Willem II straat 49, Tilburg.

Speakers at this conference are: Kathryn Brown (Tilburg), Alison Denham (Oxford and Tulane), Julian Dodd (Manchester), Berys Gaut (St. Andrews), Edward Harcourt (Oxford), Odile Heynders (Tilburg), Dominic McIver Lopes (University of British Columbia), Bence Nanay (Antwerp and Cambridge), Jonathan Neufeld (Charleston), Michael Newall (Kent), Kathleen Stock (Sussex) and Alan Thomas (Tilburg).

This conference asks whether the Enlightenment concept of an aesthetic education as propounded by writers such as Schiller, Winkelmann and Herder has become marginal to the making and reception of contemporary art or whether it still has a role to play in the shaping of art worlds and their audiences. With a particular focus on engagements with contemporary art, literature and musical performance, this conference asks whether our encounter with artworks teaches us primarily to comprehend other artworks or whether aesthetic engagement has a broader effect on individual character and choice? If the concept of an aesthetic education still has currency in today’s art world, this conference asks who is educated, by whom, how, and to what effect?

To register for this event, please contact the conference organiser, Kathryn Brown, at K.J.Brown(at)Tilburguniversity.edu, substituting the “@” sign for “(at)” in this e-mail address.

News and Events 2011/12

This blog will publicise news and events taking place at the Tilburg Hub for Ethics and Social Philosophy, a Center for Ethics based at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.