Call for Papers
Ethics after Murdoch
A conference co-organized by the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value and the Iris Murdoch Society.
June 6 – 7, 2019
Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value, University of Pardubice
Invited speakers:
Hannah Marije Altorf
Ramond Gaita
Mark Hopwood
Tony Milligan
Other confirmed speakers include:
Ondřej Beran
Gillian Dooley
Niklas Forsberg
Nora Hämäläinen
Miles Leeson
Frances White
Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon
“I cannot pretend to give an account of Iris Murdoch’s contribution to moral philosophy, much less sum it up or give some verdict on it. Her contribution is much too rich, and we are much too close to it.” These are Charles Taylor’s opening words to his essay “Iris Murdoch and Moral Philosophy,” published in 1996 and based on talk from 1994. Today, a generation later, scholars have blazed several trails of research on her work: on the roles of love and imagination in ethics, the relationship between philosophy and literature, the fact/value dichotomy, the role of metaphysics in ethics, the significance of cultural philosophy in ethics and the place of religious faith, imagery and practices in secular modernity. Yet, as researchers concerned with and influenced by her work, we may still recognize and share Taylor’s experience of a philosophy, which addresses our moral situation in ways so rich that we do not quite see its full implications.
This conference brings together scholars and philosophers to reflect over Murdoch’s philosophical legacy and its potentials for addressing contemporary issues, in moral philosophy as well as in the complex moral present that we inhabit.
We welcome abstracts of 500 words, for papers of 25 minutes, on any topic related to Murdoch’s moral philosophical legacy, to be submitted to nora.hamalainen@upce.cz by February 28, 2019. The conference is part of the celebration of the centenary of Murdoch’s birth and is a collaboration between the Centre for Ethics as Human Value and the Iris Murdoch Society.
For further information, please contact niklas.forsberg@upce.cz or nora.hamalainen@upce.cz.