Mark Sainsbury (right) attending Dom Lopes’ (left) Mark Sainsbury Annual Lecture
In case you missed the fantastic reviews of the recent Dom Lopes’ Mark Sainsbury lecture, here is a round up of what was said, by whom, with links to the original post.
Join us for the AnnualPeace Lecture – online link to follow.
Tuesday 11 May 2021, 17:00-19:00
Cécile Fabre:
Snatching Something From Death:
Value, Justice, and Humankind’s Common Heritage
When Notre-Dame Cathedral was engulfed by fire on April 15, 2019, the world (it seemed) watched in horror. On Twitter, Facebook, in newspapers and on TV cables ranging as far afield from Paris as South Africa, China and Chile, people expressed their sorrow at the partial destruction of the church, and retrospective anguish at the thought of what might very well have happened – the complete loss of a jewel of Gothic architecture whose value somehow transcends time and space. My aim in this lecture is to offer a philosophical account and defence of the view that there is such a thing as humankind’s common heritage, and that this heritage makes stringent moral demands on us. I first offer an account of the universal value of (some) heritage goods, and then offer a conception of justice at the bar of which we owe it to one another, but also to our ancestors and successors, to preserve that heritage.
Professor Cécile Fabre is a Fellow of the British Academy, Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, and Professor of Political Philosophy at Oxford University.
The lecture will be chaired by Professor MM McCabe, FBA, Chair of the British Academy Philosophy Section and Professor of Ancient Philosophy Emerita, King’s College London.
The Peace Lectures are due to Alan Lacey, a life-long pacifist who taught philosophy at King’s College London for some fifteen years, and who left a generous bequest to fund a lecture series promoting peace.
According to Lopes, justice is goodness in a relatively large-scale social arrangement. Injustice is thereby badness in such a social arrangement. Aesthetic injustice becomes an issue when cultures encounter one another. The motivating example of the talk was the Canadian government’s use of Haida aesthetic culture (the Spirit of Haida Gwaii sculpture) on the $20 bill. There seemed to be something not quite right about the use of this First Nation art on the national currency. Lopes’s explanation for this is that the use of aesthetic culture subverted the process through which the Haida people fix their own aesthetic profile, contrary to the interest in social autonomy.
The account of aesthetic injustice maps on quite nicely to the familiar notion of political injustice. This is because there is an appeal to the large-scale structural features of society that frame how individuals come into contact with one another. This mirrors the typical approach in political philosophy of seeing justice as a matter of the fundamental political and economic institutions of society.
I will note two points. First, Lopes’s view assumes a perfectionist orientated approach to justice. Perfectionists appeal to an account of a good human life in their accounts of justice. (But what exactly is a good human life?) It is a great contribution, however, to conceive of aesthetic interests as being relevant to justice. The perfectionist approach can be contrasted with approaches of justice such as “realism” which aim to secure conditions for the non-violent coexistence of cultural communities.
Second, Lopes argues that aesthetic injustice can undermine individuals’ capacities to realise the interests of the value of diverse schemes of aesthetic value as well as communities’ interest in social autonomy. These interests can be viewed as part of an account of a good human life, where the former states that it is good, for instance, that there are different ways of doing rock music, and the latter refers to the good of being able to shape one’s life and have an impact on surrounding social practices. Lopes suggested that justice with respect to these interests can be seen as an aspiration to the maximum, and injustice can be seen as the falling below some threshold, where individuals’ capacities to realise these interests are set back to a sufficient degree. But where, we may ask, is this threshold? And what are the particularly aesthetic interests (if any) that are set back by aesthetic injustice? I look forward to hearing more about Lopes’s excellent work on this fascinating area.
Join us for the AnnualPeace Lecture – online link to follow.
Tuesday 11 May 2021, 17:00-19:00
Cécile Fabre:
Snatching Something From Death:
Value, Justice, and Humankind’s Common Heritage
When Notre-Dame Cathedral was engulfed by fire on April 15, 2019, the world (it seemed) watched in horror. On Twitter, Facebook, in newspapers and on TV cables ranging as far afield from Paris as South Africa, China and Chile, people expressed their sorrow at the partial destruction of the church, and retrospective anguish at the thought of what might very well have happened – the complete loss of a jewel of Gothic architecture whose value somehow transcends time and space. My aim in this lecture is to offer a philosophical account and defence of the view that there is such a thing as humankind’s common heritage, and that this heritage makes stringent moral demands on us. I first offer an account of the universal value of (some) heritage goods, and then offer a conception of justice at the bar of which we owe it to one another, but also to our ancestors and successors, to preserve that heritage.
Professor Cécile Fabre is a Fellow of the British Academy, Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, and Professor of Political Philosophy at Oxford University.
The lecture will be chaired by Professor MM McCabe, FBA, Chair of the British Academy Philosophy Section and Professor of Ancient Philosophy Emerita, King’s College London.
The Peace Lectures are due to Alan Lacey, a life-long pacifist who taught philosophy at King’s College London for some fifteen years, and who left a generous bequest to fund a lecture series promoting peace.
Topic: Simon Critchely ‘Pandemic Mysticism’Time: Apr 8, 2021 07:00 PM London to join the Zoom Meeting please email your details to mathilde.prietzel_nielsen@kcl.ac.uk
Simone Weil
Seminar outline.
In the wake of COVID-19, many of us have grown used to being hermits, socially distanced and masked against a contaminated and untrustworthy reality defined by pestilence, suffering and death. In a world of contagion – possibly being contagious ourselves – we have followed a practice that the ancients called anachoreisis, a withdrawal into solitude, a retreat from the world. Whether we liked it or not, we all became anchorites or anchoresses. There is a strange asceticism to the world of lockdown and disease which opened us up to extreme experiences of doubt, dereliction, dreams, hypochondria, hallucination, and a desperate desire for love or a connection with something or someone outside or larger than the self. These experiences and emotion have profound historical and religious echoes with the logic, poetics and practices of mysticism. It is as if something elemental and primeval has been revived in the pandemic. Perhaps it is worth looking into. It seems to me, then, that this might be an opportune moment to study some mystical texts together and think about the nature of mystical experience. Such is the simple purpose of this seminar. In its attempts to articulate religious experience in thought, mysticism both borrows heavily from philosophy and undermines its standard procedures. What often results is a strange philosophy of contradictions, confessions, and enigmas. While not being blind to the many mystical traditions, we will focus on Christian mysticism, especially medieval texts, and especially those written by women. Authors that may be included are: Dionysius the Areopagite, Hadewych of Antwerp, Meister Eckhart, Marguerite Porete, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Angela of Foligno, and others. The seminar will also include selections from more recent authors inspired this tradition, for example William James, Bataille, Lacan, Michel de Certeau, Simone Weil, R.D. Laing, Caroline Bynum and Amy Hollywood. We will pay attention to the political dimension of these traditions that are focused around the odd phenomenon of mystical anarchism. And we will also pay attention to the relation of mystical experience to popular music in various forms.
This seminar has been organised by Mathilde Prietzel Nielsen, 1st year Philosophy student. Please email mathilde.prietzel_nielsen@kcl.ac.uk for the zoom conference login details.
REMINDER — Department of Philosophy, King’s College London
Join us for the Annual Mark Sainsbury Lecture
Tuesday 16 March 18:00-20:00
Dominic Lopes:
Aesthetic injustice
Abstract
People with different cultures come into contact with each other, and the contacts can go well or they can go badly. Indeed, if justice is goodness in the arrangement of social life, then arrangements of social life that shape cultural contact can be just or unjust. This lecture introduces a framework for thinking about what is special in contact between aesthetic cultures, in particular, and it proposes two interests that should be built into a theory of aesthetic justice. In proof of concept, the framework is briefly applied to cultural appropriation.
Dominic Lopes is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He has worked on pictorial representation; the aesthetic and epistemic value of pictures, including scientific images; theories of art and its value; the ontology of art; computer art and new art forms; and aesthetic value, wherever it may be found.
Join us at the Career Panel: A Philosophy Alumni Supporting you to think about your next steps
Wednesday, 24th of March 3:00-4:30pm (look out for a zoom link which will be sent by email)
Are you thinking about your next steps after graduating? Now is a good time to begin reflecting on what you might want to do next, whether this is further study or applying for jobs. The Philosophy Department, in collaboration with the KCL Alumni Association (KCLA), has organised a panel Q&A with three recent graduates to talk about their different career experiences and to give you some tips and support when you’re thinking through your next steps. The panel consists of:
Hannah Bondi – Public Affairs Coordinator at the International Justice Mission, a non-governmental anti-slavery organisation.
Kristina Pakhomchik – Strategy Officer at the World Ethical Data Forum, a non-profit organisation focused on the ethical development of technology.
Esther Ezegbe – Digital Relationship Manager at ikigai, a start up app which combines wealth management and everyday banking. Founder of Root2philosophy, which aims to improve access to study philosophy for Black and minority ethnic people.
The session will be introduced and compered by Benjamin Hunt, previous President of the King’s students’ union 2016-17, who now works in education policy at the regulator for higher education, the Office for Students.
Distinguished University Scholar and Professor Dominic Lopes
The Department of Philosophy, King’s College London is delighted to welcome
Dominic Lopes
on Tuesday 16 March 18:00-20:00
for the Annual Sainsbury Lecture on the topic of
Aesthetic injustice
Dominic Lopes is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He has worked on pictorial representation; the aesthetic and epistemic value of pictures, including scientific images; theories of art and its value; the ontology of art; computer art and new art forms; and aesthetic value, wherever it may be found.
Dominic Lopes is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. A member of the UBC aesthetics group, he has worked on pictorial representation; the aesthetic and epistemic value of pictures, including scientific images; theories of art and its value; the ontology of art; computer art and new art forms; and aesthetic value, wherever it may be found.
His most recent books are a collection of his essays on methodological themes, Aesthetics on the Edge: Where Philosophy Meets the Human Sciences, a book on Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value, and Les Arts et les images: Dialogues avec Dominic McIver Lopes. Many of his books have been or are being translated into Chinese, Farsi, French, Japanese, and Korean. Lopes is now at work on a book on Aesthetic Injustice: A Cosmopolitan Theory. He is also co-authoring Aesthetic Life and Why It Matters with Bence Nanay and Nick Riggle and The Geography of Taste with Samantha Matherne, Mohan Matthen, and Bence Nanay. Both books will be published by OUP.
The Peter Sowerby Chair leads the Philosophy & Medicine Project, launched in 2015 with the generous support of the Peter Sowerby Foundation. The Project is a joint venture between King’s Department of Philosophy, the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, and The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery.
The Project seeks to foster interdisciplinary links between philosophy and medicine, by teaching philosophy as part of the medical curriculum, and by hosting a range of public lectures, events and activities.
The Project’s 2020 Annual Lecture, ‘What Does it Mean to Be Healthy?’, will be delivered by Robyn Bluhm (MSU), online, on December 16. For more information and to register, click here.
Professor Elselijn Kingma is the newly-appointed Peter Sowerby Chair in Philosophy and Medicine
The Peter Sowerby Chair leads the Philosophy & Medicine Project at King’s, launched in 2015 with the generous support of the Peter Sowerby Foundation. The Project is a joint venture between King’s Department of Philosophy, the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, and The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery.
The Project works to foster interdisciplinary links between philosophy and medicine, by teaching philosophy as part of the curriculum that trains clinicians, and by hosting a range of public lectures, events and activities, aiming to encourage dialogue and collaborative research across these fields.
Professor Kingma’s main research focuses on:
The philosophy of medicine: especially concepts of health and disease; the epistemology of evidence-based medicine; and the role of values in medical evidence and clinical decision-making.
The philosophy of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood: especially the rights and obligations of pregnant and birthing women, as well as those of their health care providers; the nature of pregnancy; and applications such as artificial gestation and contract pregnancy.
She said about her new appointment: “I look forward to consolidating the Project’s international profile as a centre of excellence in teaching and research in Philosophy and Medicine, and to advancing and disseminating Peter Sowerby’s vision for embedding philosophy in clinical teaching and training”.
Professor Kingma was previously Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Southampton. Between 2011 and 2019 she was Socrates Professor in Philosophy & Technology in the Humanist Tradition at the Technical University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Elselijn Kingma obtained undergraduate degrees in Medicine (2004) and Psychology (2004) at Leiden University, and MPhil (2005) and PhD (2008) in History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She received post-doctoral training in the Department for Clinical Bioethics, National Institutes of Health (USA). Before working in Southampton she taught at King’s College London and the University of Cambridge.
Professor Kingma is lead-investigator on a five-year, 1.2 million Euro ERC Research Grant ‘Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (BUMP): a project at the intersection of philosophy of biology and metaphysics that investigates the metaphysical relationship between the fetus and the maternal organism. In November 2019, Kingma was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize to examine the metaphysical, ethical, epistemological and existential puzzles birth and pregnancy present.
The Project’s 2020 Annual Lecture will be held online on December 16. For more information and to register, click here
