Questions revolving around the concept of life and its limitations, what it means to lead a good life and what the status of death is are today as relevant as they have been in philosophy’s first beginnings. But these issues and the perspectives on them underwent several changes, and an especially notable one in the early modern period. Fundamental shifts in science and technological advances led to a new awareness of the presence of life in the smallest parts of matter, to the question of what distinguishes life from death, and even to readdressing the general question of what ‘life’ amounts to. The European Society for Early Modern Philosophy (ESEMP) dedicated its triennial conference, which will take place this year in London, April 14 to 16 2016, to these and related questions.

The opening plenary talk by Michael Moriarty (University of Cambridge) will be hosted at King’s College London, followed by two days of talks at Birkbeck College.

The conference is organized and sponsored by the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy and the British Society for the History of Philosophy in association with the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, King’s College London and the Wellcome Trust.

The conference’s webpage, including registration form, can be found here:

https://lifeanddeathinearlymodernphilosophy.wordpress.com/