5th Colloquium on the Modalities of the Good

Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, in association with the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Charles University in Prague are pleased to announce that 5th Colloquium on the Modalities of the Good is to be held at Prague, 14th – 16th July.

The fifth Colloquium on the Modalities of the Good continues the effort began in 2009: to create space for conversation between thinkers of broadly speaking Platonic tradition in ethics, and to open it to the philosophical public. The tradition, with its commitment to absolute value and to the irreducibility of the central ethical concepts, is marked also by the belief that their recognition involves a complex cooperation between thought and emotions such as love, joy or remorse. Internal to these concerns, and thus to the tradition itself, is the problem of how to approach them: of the relation between the what and the how in philosophical, particularly ethical, thinking. Reflection about the give-and-take between the substance and the method goes back to Socrates' and Plato's exploration of the philosophical dialogue. It characterises not only thinkers who acknowledge their kinship to Plato, such as Kierkegaard or Simone Weil, but also some who do 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: a conversation about issues of shared interest, offered for discussion by the speakers, rather than a forum for presenting 'finished' results.

Speakers and invited participants:

Marina Barabas (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic): The Beginning of Action

David Cockburn (University of Wales, Lampeter): Personal, Impersonal and 1st -Personal

Christopher Cowley (University College Dublin)

Alice Crary (The New School): Seeing in the Margins: On the Ethics and Politics of Sight

Lars Hertzberg (Åbo Akademi University): Ethics as We Talk It

David Levy (University of Edinburgh): Goodness and the Good

Hallvard Lillehammer (Birkbeck College, University of London): What do I Owe? Moral Responsibility and Circumstantial Luck

Kamila Pacovská (University of Pardubice): Loving Contemplation: Wonder or Judgment?

Lynette Reid (Dalhousie University): TBA

Katrien Schaubroeck (University of Antwerp) & Hans Maes (University of Kent): They Can't Take that Away from Me: On Art, Love and (Moral) Reasons

Carolyn Wilde (University of Bristol)

Organisers: Marina Barabas, Christopher Cowley

Venue: Academic Conference Centre, Husova 4A, Praha 1.

For registration please e-mail Marina Barabas (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) as soon as possible since capacities are limited. Final date of registration is 31st June 2016.

Attendance is free of charge.

Colloquium language: English