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2010
2nd Colloquium on the Modalities of the Good 4th – 6th August 2010 Prague, Czech Republic The second Colloquium on the Modalities of the Good continues the effort began last year: to create space for conversation and discussion between thinkers of broadly speaking Platonic tradition in ethics, and to open it to the general philosophical public. The Platonic orientation is marked by a general interest in what could be called ‘absolute’ value, centrally issues of goodness and evil; and in the role of thought and ‘emotions’ such as love, joy or remorse in their recognition. Non-accidentally connected with these concerns, and thus of equal importance to the tradition, is the question of how to approach them: of the relation between the what and the how in philosophical thinking. Reflection about the mutual give-and-take between the substance and the method goes as far back as Socrates’ and Plato’s varied and at time troubled emphasis on the importance and complexity of philosophical dialogue, and characterises not only thinkers who acknowledge their kinship to Plato, such as Kierkegaard or Simone Weil, but also those who would not, such as Wittgenstein. Contemporary ‘Platonic’ tradition, associated in English-speaking philosophy with the names of Roy Holland, Iris Murdoch, Peter Winch, Rai Gaita or Cora Diamond, is marked by this dual concern, and the Colloquium thematises to an equal extent the problem(s) of ethics, of thinking about ethics and of ethical thinking. For those same reasons, the Colloquium is emphatically a col-loquium: not a forum for presenting ‘finished’ results, but conversation about issues of shared interest, offered for discussion by the contributions of the speakers. Speakers and respondents: Marina Barabas (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic): Goodness and the Ethical Michael Campbell (King’s College London): Justice and the „Indefinable Influence” of the Human David Cockburn (University of Wales, Lampeter): Trust in Conversation Christopher Cordner (University of Melbourne): Goodness & Love in Philosophical Thought
Christopher Cowley (University College Dublin) Lars Hertzberg (Åbo Akademi University): Gaita on Recognizing the Human Jakub Jirsa (Charles University in Prague): The Tragedy of Plurality
David Levy (University of Edinburgh): Dignity and Being Good Kamila Pacovská (Charles University in Prague): Remorse and the Voluntary 2009Barabášová, Marina - Pacovská, Kamila Colloquium on the Modalities of the Good. ‘Good’, used as a substantive, signifies value as such, and so ranges all the way from objects of want—from merest whim to deepest personal desire— to the impersonal object which calls or claims one. To explore the varieties of good means thus to explore its modalities, since what we value is bound up with how we value. While ethics originated in the conception of the good as impersonal call of the transcendental, most of its history consists in opposition to that conception. Starting with Aristotle and his definition of ‘good’ as final cause—as end of action—naturalist ethics centres on good as object of want and on action as its realisation. Ethics thus becomes a sub-branch of the practical understood in terms of agency, or pursuit of (in principle) attainable projects. Characteristic of this conception of the practical is the view of desire as origin of action, of perception as gathering of information, and of thinking as deliberation; the ethical enters partly through the ‘good’ sought—from one’s own virtue or perfection to some desirable state of affairs—, partly through the underlying ideals of freedom, activity and self-creation. By contrast, the so-called ‘Platonic’ tradition points to that good which is ‘known’ not by desire but by responsiveness to a call and which appears not as an end of action but as that in the light of which we act and feel, perceive and think. Good so understood is not something to attain but something to do justice to. And since we do, or fail to do, justice in perception and thought no less than in emotion and action, this conception emphasizes the organic and historical individual and concern with the soul, rather than the agent defined by specific wants and the success of their realisation. The central role of lucid and just perception and thought shifts emphasis from informed deliberation to attention, from desire to love, from will as decision to will as consent, and from action as ‘first cause’ to action as response. The underlying view of reality as a claim challenges the distinction between the theoretical and practical as well as the clarity of the distinction between the active and the passive. For emphasis on attentive and just response questions the ideals of freedom and action embodied in autonomous and virtuous agent with those of purity and fidelity manifested in goodness. This ‘practical’ character of reality raises also the question of the role of beauty in our lives and with it of the world as object of love and source of joy.
In organizing the first Colloquium on the Modalities of the Good we seek to open a new space for this ‘Platonic’ discourse with the help of the contributions made to it by modern thinkers such as Simone Weil, Roy Holland, Iris Murdoch, Rai Gaita and Cora Diamond. We hope that the discussion began this year in Prague will also raise issues for future meetings.
Kuneš, Jan 2008 Kuneš, Jan Glombíček, Petr - Hill, James 2007 Vrabec, Martin - Kuneš, Jan Místo fenomenologie ducha v současném myšlení. K dvoustému výročí Hegelovy Fenomenologie ducha. [The Place of the Phenomenology of Spirit in contemporary thought: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 200 Years on.] [Praha, 28.05.2007-30.05.2007, (K-CST 26/0)]
2006 Glombíček, Petr - Hill, James 2005 Karásek, Jindřich - Kuneš, Jan 2004 - Conference John Locke: His Life and Work; Prague, 9. 9. - Symposium „Hegels Einleitung in die Phänomenologie des Geistes“; Prague, 29. 9. – 1. 10. 2003 - A Conference Descartes‘s Cogito 2002 - Czech-German seminar on Hegel‘s Theory of State - Victor Gourevitch: A Lecture - Symposium Externalism-Internalism Dispute and the Theory of Interpretation 2001 - Symposium Transcendentale Deduktion der Kategorien in Kants „Kritik der reinen Vernunft“ 2000 - Reinhardt Brandt: Lectures - Michael Wolff: Lectures 1999 - Symposium „Metaphysik und Kritik“ |
