Read more about the 12th International Conference on Persons under Uncategorized or on the conference website.
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Tuesday, August 6
1:00-3:00
Registration, Tea and Coffee
Room 227
3:00-3:30
Welcome and Conference Information
Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University (Sweden)
Gunnar Broberg, Lund University (Sweden)
Room 201
3:30-4:15
Opening Panel on the History and Purpose of the ICP
Thomas O. Buford, Furman University (USA)
Responses:
Randall E. Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)
Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University (Sweden)
Room 201
4:15-4:30
Break
4:30-5:30
Keynote Address
Keith Ward, Oxford University (UK)
Absolute and Personalist Idealism
Room 201
5:30-8:00
Welcome Reception
Room 227
Wednesday, August 7
9:00-10:20
Session A:
O. A. Oyowe, University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa)
Velleman and the Dis-guises of Self
Geraldine Ng, University of Reading (UK)
Persons, Agency, and the Operations of Blame
Commentator: Richard C. Prust
Room 202
Session B:
Anthony L. Cashio, Manchester University (USA)
Embracing a Personalist Approach to Environmental Philosophy
Jason M. Bell, University of New Brunswick and Mt. Allison University (Canada)
Toward a Methodology Against Genocide
Commentator: Federico Lauria
Room 109
10:20-10:40
Tea and Coffee
10:40-12:00
Session A:
Robert F. DeVall, Jr., West Chester University of Pennsylvania (USA)
Keeping the “I” in the “I-Thou” Relationship: Pringle-Pattison’s Rejection of an Impersonal Absolute
Douglas McDermid, Trent University (Canada)
Are Selves Sui Generis? McTaggart on Immortality and the Argument from Impermanence
Commentator: Jan Olof Bengtsson
Room 202
Session B1 (10:40-11:20):
Anne Runehov, Copenhagen University (Denmark)
The Process of Believing
Commentator: Eike-Henner W. Kluge
Session B2 (11:20-12:00):
Janne Kontala, Åbo Akademi (Finland)
Eastern Spirituality in Sweden: Identifying Emerging Worldview Patterns Amongst Practitioners
Commentator: Ferdinando Sardella
Room 109
12:00-2:00
Lunch
2:00-3:45
Plenary Panel on Hindu Personalism
Kenneth R. Valpey, Oxford University (UK)
Personhood as Multivalent Reality in Premodern Indian Theography
Ithamar Theodor, University of Haifa (Israel)
Resorting to Aesthetics: The Articulation of Divine Personhood in the Vaishnava Vedanta Tradition
Ferdinando Sardella, Uppsala University (Sweden)
Modern Hindu Personalism
Room 201
3:45-4:30
Tea and Coffee
4:30-5:50
Session A:
Lucian Delescu, Berkeley College (USA)
On Darwin’s Account of Consciousness and its Implications for a General Theory of Person
Victoria Höög, Lund University (Sweden)
Persona and Ethos in Contemporary Technoscientific Cultures
Commentator: Anthony L. Cashio
Room 202
Session B:
Soyoung Park, Independent Scholar, Vancouver, BC (Canada)
Suspended Subjectivity: Artistic Intention in Making Art
Jonnie Eriksson, Lund University and Halmstad University (Sweden)
Realist by Nature, by Nature Abstract: Personalist Aesthetics in Mounier and Henry
Commentator: James McLachlan
Room 109
5:50-6:00
Break
6:00-7:00
Plenary
Juan Manuel Burgos, CEU San Pablo University (Spain)
A New Personalist Proposal: Modern Ontological Personalism
Room 201
Thursday, August 8
9:00-10:20
Session A:
Bogumił Gacka, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University (Poland)
Personalism in Brazil
Andris Sevels, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland)
Personalistic Mariology of John Paul II
Room 202
Session B:
James Beauregard, Independent Scholar, Manchester, NH (USA)
Neuroethics: A Personalist Approach
Eike-Henner W. Kluge, University of Victoria (Canada)
Personhood, Brain Death and Resource Allocation: The Implications of Aquinas’ Conception of Human Persons
Commentator: Juan Manuel Burgos
Room 109
10:20-10:40
Tea and Coffee
10:40-11:40
Plenary
Fredrik Ullén, Karolinska Institutet (Sweden)
The Creative Person: Neuropsychological Perspectives
Room 201
AFTERNOON FREE
7:00
Conference Dinner
Friday, August 9
9:00-10:20
Session A:
Randall E. Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)
Scheler and the Existence of the Impersonal
James McLachlan, Western Carolina University (USA)
Levinas, the Person, and Eschatology
Commentator: Philip Cronce
Room 202
Session B:
Jerzy Król, State University of Higher Education in Chełm (Poland)
Upbringing and Education from the Personalist Perspective
Inger Enkvist, Lund University (Sweden)
Personalism: Identifying Two Opposite Views of the Teaching Profession
Commentator: Thomas O. Buford
Room 109
Session C:
Agnieszka Gąsior-Mazur, Independent Scholar, Lublin (Poland)
The Development of Person vs. Building the Value of a Company
Ewa Smołka, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland)
Openness to Others as a Way of Personal Development
Room 022
10:20-10:40
Tea and Coffee
10:40-12:00
Session A:
Richard C. Prust, St. Andrews University (USA)
The Ragged Edge of our Personal Past
Federico Lauria and Alain Pé-Curto, University of Geneva (Switzerland)
The Situationist Boomerang
Commentator: Michael Thompson
Room 202
Session B:
J. J. MacIntosh, University of Calgary (Canada)
Persons, Identity, and Irenaean Theodicies
Joseph Diekemper, Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland)
Temporality, Creation, and Divine Personhood
Commentator: Eoin O’Connell
Room 109
12:00-2:00
Lunch
2:00- 3:45
Plenary Panel on the Roots of the Philosophical Problem of the Person
Lorenzo Greco, Oxford University (UK)
Hume and the Narrative of the Self
Michael Thompson, University of North Texas (USA)
The Antinomy of Identity: Personal Identity and Time in Modern Philosophy
Daryl L. Hale, Western Carolina University (USA)
Persons as Supra Pretium: Kant’s Neglected Argument for Personalism?
Room 201
3:45-4:30
Tea and Coffee
4:30-5:50
Session A:
Argun Abrek Canbolat, Middle East Technical University (Turkey)
Personhood: From Physical to Social
Simon Smith, Independent Scholar, Haslemere, Surrey (UK)
A Convergence of Cosmologies: Personal Analogies in Modern Physics and Modern Metaphysics
Commentator: Daryl L. Hale
Room 202
Session B:
Ian Winchester, University of Calgary (Canada)
Collingwood’s Conception of Personhood and its Relation to Language Use
Giusy Gallo, University of Calabria (Italy)
Dialogue and Language: The Way to Be a Person
Commentator: Randall E. Auxier
Room 109
5:50-6:00
Break
6:00-7:00
Plenary
Claes G. Ryn, Catholic University of America (USA)
“Idealistic” Dreaming: The Imagination of Unbounded Egotism
Room 201
Saturday, August 10
9:00-10:20
Session A1 (9:00-9:40):
Erik Persson, Independent Scholar, Harlösa (Sweden)
The Catholic Critics of Personalism: Before and After Father Meinvielle
Commentator: Jerzy Król
Session A2 (9:40-10:20):
Philip Cronce, Chicago State University (USA)
Dewey, Rorty, and Honors Education after the Fall of the Academy
Room 202
Session B1 (9:00-9:40):
Susanna Åkerman-Hjern, Independent Scholar, Stockholm (Sweden)
Swedenborg and the Grand Human
Commentator: James McLachlan
Session B2 (9:40-10:20):
Kerstin Maria Pahl, Humboldt University (Germany)
Timing Life: Portraiture and Biography in 18th Century England
Commentator: Jonnie Eriksson
Room 109
Session C1 (9:00-9:40):
Guillermo Barron, Red Deer College (Canada)
Gender and Personhood
Commentator: Giusy Gallo
Room 022
10:20-10:40
Tea and Coffee
10:40-12:00
Session A:
Christina Conroy, Morehead State University (USA)
Branch-Relative Identity
Eoin O’Connell, Manhattan College (USA)
Inferences to Personhood
Commentator: Randall E. Auxier
Room 202
Session B:
Kenny Siu Sing Huen, Universiti Brunei Darussalam (Brunei)
The Crux of Living a Human Life: From Heidegger to Wittgenstein
Alastair Beattie, University of the Andes (Venezuela)
Person as Platonic Idea Form
Commentator: Douglas McDermid
Room 109
12:00-12:10
Break
12:10-12:40
Closing Panel: Conference Overview and the State of the Person
Randall E. Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)
Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University (Sweden)
Thomas O. Buford, Furman University (USA)
Room 201
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Read more about the 12th International Conference on Persons under Uncategorized or on the conference website.
After the one in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy written together with Thomas D. Williams, another encyclopedia article on personalism, this time by me alone, is now published in Springer’s new Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions.
The conference dinner will be held at Lund’s historic Grand Hotel on Thursday, August 8. The price for the three-course dinner, including pre-dinner drink, wine, and coffee, is 300 SEK (approx. 45 USD, 35 EUR, 30 GBP) for those who pay the full registration fee. Both fees are payable either in advance by direct bank transfer or upon arrival in Lund, in accordance with the instructions here.
See more posts about the 12th International Conference on Persons in Lund, Sweden, August 6-10 under Uncategorized, or visit the conference website.
What Humans Really Are
Lion Hudson, 2010 Amazon.com
Book Description:
“The question of what it is to be a human person is the biggest intellectual question of our day.” Keith Ward has taught philosophy and theology in British universities for the past 40 years, and he is now weighing in on a major intellectual battle: whether human persons are purely materialistic – nothing but matter – or whether there is another, deeply valuable part of us, which transcends our bodies in nature and moral worth: the soul. For centuries philosophers have debated the question, but the battle has taken the limelight through the works of the New Atheists. In this book Professor Ward guides the reader through a panoply of thinkers and traditions, arguing that there is more to humanity than bodies. In fact, he argues, there is more to the entire universe than the naked eye perceives. (And contrary to the New Atheist assertions, there are good philosophical arguments to back this up.)The conference fee is 400 SEK (currently approx. 60 USD, 45 EUR, 40 GBP), and payable
– in advance by direct bank transfer to the conference account in Handelsbanken; those who register and indicate that they wish to pay by this method will receive by email the requisite information;
or
– on August 6, the first day of the conference, at a Handelsbanken branch in Lund (just two blocks from Hotel Concordia) or at the conference venue. More information about this option will be added on the conference website shortly.
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See other posts about the 12th International Conference on Persons in Lund, Sweden, August 6-10 under Uncategorized, or visit the the conference website.
The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire
Transaction, 2003 Amazon.com
Front and Back Flaps:
Urged on by intellectuals and political activists, the president of the United States has committed America to a quest for empire. In his view, American values are universal and should guide a remaking of the world. The United States has a right to strike preemptively and unilaterally against any potential threat and should have sufficient military might to discourage any nation from challenging its will. Claes Ryn explains this drive for virtuous empire as the culmination of an ideological movement that has taken shape in the last several decades. Still virtually unknown to the American people, it represents a profound change relative to the worldview of America’s founders.
Ryn relates the ideology of empire to a crisis of American and Western civilization. The ideology both expresses and aggravates a general moral, cultural, and political decline, including an erosion of constitutionalism. The ideology is about far more than America’s role in the world: it encompasses a view of human nature and society and sets forth its own notion of virtue. It sees in America not a historically evolved and culturally distinctive nation but a regime based on universal principles that is uniquely called on and equipped to transform the world. Numerous prominent commentators, such as William Bennett, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Michael Novak, and Normal Podhoretz, argue passionately for having the United States bring “democracy”, “freedom”, and “capitalism” to the rest of the world.
America the Virtuous argues that a transformation of moral, cultural, and political beliefs is making America shed an older sense of the need for restraints on power. Checks provided by the U.S. Constitution are greatly weakened. Influential policymakers and intellectuals want American leaders to have virtually unrestricted power in the world. America the Virtuous explains the ideological underpinnings of the quest for empire, setting them in the larger context of the crisis of Western civilization and subjects them to in-depth analysis and criticism.
Back Cover:
Advance Comments
“Claes Ryn’s new book, America the Virtuous, is an important contribution for those interested in the intense post 9/11 debate on U.S. foreign policy. Ryn raises deep theoretical concerns about the U.S. global promotion of democracy and finds no classical U.S. foundations for the desirability of a new American Empire. Whether or not one fully agrees with his genealogy, diagnosis, or critique of neo-Jacobin democratic imperialism, his study is a significant addition to that controversy which has reached the national and international stage with the Iraq war and occupation.” David C. Jordan, professor, Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia and former United States ambassador to Peru
“Claes Ryn paints a truly alarming portrait of the new Jacobinism that now constitutes a powerful ideological force among our nation’s elites. Its utopianism and arrogance, spawned by its ahistorical foundations, threaten the constitutionalism bequeathed to us by the Founders, and lead its ambitioius adherents, seemingly blind to the past and the realities of the modern world, to pursue the dream of an ‘American empire’. Ryn’s splendid work is a warning of things to come if we fail to recognize the dangers inherent in this ideology that has already corroded the American mind.” George W. Carey, professor of government, Georgetown University
Reviews:
“Ryn (Catholic Univ.) does not like neoconservatives. He does not even like the term. Instead, he refers to the conservative intellectuals who have secured prominent positions in the media and in the Pentagon as the “new Jacobins.” Like the Jacobins of old, they possess a dangerous arrogance that will lead their nation to disaster… Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” R. A. Strong, Choice
“There is much wisdom in Ryn’s book, and the moral realism he calls for and explicates commands respect…Ryn is onto deep truths about the nature of politics.” David C. Henderickson, World Policy Journal
“America the Virtuous diagnosed our contemporary maladies in both foreign policy and domestic Life…We Americans pretend we’re a peace-loving people and that our wars have all been foisted upon us. But the United States, as Ryn explains, is an Enlightened or Ideological Republic that has slipped its constitutional moorings, and become a Fighting Faith.” Walter A. McDougall, Humanitas
JOB’s Comment:
Ryn’s most extensive critical analysis of neoconservatism and, more generally, “the new Jacobinism”. For those who want a clear understanding of these currents, the shorter book, The New Jacobinism, is an excellent introduction. This one is for those who wish to go deeper. Ryn’s criticism is almost certainly the deepest that has been produced in terms of philosophical analysis. This might lead the reader to go further still and explore the full expositions of Ryn’s philosophy in itself, both the distinctive philosophical defense of constitutionalism in Democracy and the Ethical Life, and the value-centered historicism on which it is based, as set forth in Will, Imagination and Reason.
In view of my recent comment on Irving Kristol’s collection of essays, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, it might be of interest for readers to compare Ryn’s explanation in this book (p. 29) that neoconservatism cannot simply be identified with the new Jacobinism:
“Like liberals of the ordinary type, neoconservatives can be more or less prone to a neo-Jacobin outlook. A number of them will be quoted and discussed…who express neo-Jacobin sentiments in a particularly clear-cut and illustrative way. This is not to say that neoconservatism equals neo-Jacobinism. Neoconservatism, as the term is ordinarily used, is too loose a constellation of individuals, is intellectually too diverse, and too much of a composite to make such a simple connection. In fact, the person who is often called the ‘god-father’ of American neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, is not only not a very typical neoconservative but is not among those with the most pronounced neo-Jacobin leanings. But Kristol’s son, William, clearly is…though, like many other neoconservatives, he attempts to combine that strong ideological disposition with ideas less inimical to traditional conservatism.”
Andra upplagan, med svar till Hans Larsson
Hiertas bokförlag, 1910
Baksida:
Pressuttalanden om Masskultur:
Stockholms Dagbl. 18/10 1910.
Prof. Vitalis Norströms djuptänkta och snillrika bok om “Masskultur”…Det länder till hälsosam upptuktelse, att alla dylika sanningar ordentligen betonas och inskärpas, på det att vi ej må förhäfva oss öfver våra ofantliga framsteg inom alla områden, utan tillbörligen besinnna hvad som är väsentligt eller ej i de mänskliga lifsvillkoren… Harald Hjärne
Prof. Höffding kaller i en fransk facktidskrift förf. “den mest framstående af de nuvarande svenska tänkarne”.
Aftonbladet skrifver:
“Här behandlas det moderna själslifvet med en fasthet i greppet och ett djup i perspektivet, hvilka torde vara det bästa, som svensk tankekraft hittills åstadkommit i den frågan.”
Svenska Dagbl. 17/10 1910.
Då prof. Norström icke blott är en tänkare utan äfven skriftställare af rang, är man redan på förhand öfvertygad om värdet och betydelsen af hans bok… Olof Rabenius
Stockholms Dagbl. 21 aug. 1910.
…I vissa delar når förf. en sådan tänkandets höjd och blir hans framställning klädd i en så medryckande form, att han osökt påminner om en af det gamla Israels profeter…Det är som om han till hela vårt folk ville på gammaltestamentligt språk rikta den allvarliga maningen: Se till, mitt folk, på hvilka vägar du vandrar! Stanna och se! Du är på dåliga vägar, som kunna leda dig till undergång, stanna i tid och uppsök de goda vägarna…Man känner sig i godt sällskap, när man läser ett arbete af Vitalis Norström. Man liksom andas renare och bättre luft än man brukar finna i nutidens böcker. Och endast detta gör att man bör vara honom tacksam.
Innehåll:
1 Masskultur
2 Kultur och frihet
3 Några sidor af den s.k. sociala frågan
4 Modernt själslif
5 Massmoral
6 Lidande och njutning
7 Hvad jag menar. Ett ord med anledning af Hans Larssons kritik
Vitalis Norström (1856-1916), professor i Göteborg från 1891, ledamot av Svenska Akademien från 1907, var en av de mest kända svenska filosoferna under det tidiga 1900-talet.
I min serie inlägg om svenska filosofer har jag ur första upplagan av Alf Ahlbergs Filosofiskt lexikon (1925) återgivit dels Ahlbergs egna artiklar om äldre sådana, dels Selbstdarstellungen av då ännu levande. I Norströms fall avstår jag dock från huvudframställningen, av Norstöms rent filosofiska utveckling efter brytningen med boströmianismen. Visserligen upptog han då, utöver nykantianismen i Windelbands och Rickerts form, i likhet med många idealistiska filosofer väsentliga moment av den vid denna tid mycket inflytelserika pragmatisk-fiktionalistiska riktningen, men han gjorde det på ett problematiskt sätt som lät den påverka hela hans tidigare idealistiska åskådning och därmed framtvinga den nämnda brytningen. Vi finner hos Norström inte distinktionen mellan den naturvetenskapliga begreppsbildningen å ena sidan och den filosofiska å den andra genomförd på samma sätt som hos den i detta avseende croceansk-hegelianska värdecentrerade historicismen, som jag diskuterar i en särskild kategori. Fastän Norström tar avstånd från pragmatismen som sådan i dess amerikanska form, som han uppfattar som utilistisk, innebär detta att vad han kallade sin “moderna ståndpunkt i filosofin” blev ohållbar och pekade i en problematisk riktning.
Norströms betydelse ligger därför huvudsakligen på ett annat område, nämligen hans kulturkritik. “Till någon systematisk avrundning har han knappast nått fram”, avslutar Ahlberg sin framställning, “men hans av ett glödande temperament burna skriftställarskap har verkat kraftigt stimulerande på svenskt tankeliv.” Men detta gällde till helt övervägande del kulturkritiken. Det var den som gjorde honom till en allmänt känd kulturpersonlighet med inflytande långt utöver den akademiska filosofin. Ahlbergs stycke om just detta kan återges:
“Jämsides med [hans] mera teoretiskt-vetenskapliga undersökningar går i N:s tänkande en kulturkritisk strömning, som får sitt uttryck i skrifter såsom Ellen Keys tredje rike (1902), Radikalismen ännu en gång (1903), och Masskultur (1910). I denna kritik är N. starkt påverkad av Nietzsche, som han även ägnat en särskild skrift. Men han betraktar Nietzsches filosofi såsom ett visserligen storslaget men misslyckat försök att bryta sig ut ur naturalismen; Nietzsche har strukit övervärlds- och evighetsperspektivet ur sin livsåskådning och brottas därför förgäves. Han har sett den moderna kulturens ihålighet, men har intet att sätta i stället. Den livssyn, som N. under namnet ‘radikalismen’ bekämpar, är den, som avskurit kontakten med denna övervärld. Sedlighet och plikt upplösa sig då i illusioner, livet förflackas och förytligas, och den lycka, efter vilken man rastlöst jagar, flyr ständigt undan. Det moderna livet rör sig kring de båda polerna lidande och njutning, medan den djupaste spänningen ligger mellan de båda motsättningarna förnuft och mening – oförnuft och meningslöshet i tillvaron.”
Norström var p.g.a. denna kulturkritik utan tvekan en av våra mer framstående konservativa tänkare. Trots den rent filosofiskt försvagade grunden för hans åskådning i jämförelse med de övriga svenska filosofer jag här försökt lyfta fram, kvarhåller han alltså inte bara “övervärlds- och evighetsperspektivet” (även i sin kunskapsteori ville han ge religionen eller tron en ny teoretisk roll, men på annat sätt, och som förstådda på annat sätt, än i den äldre idealismen), utan också flera av den svenska personlighetsfilosofins distinkta temata i på visst sätt varierad form. Ahlberg menar rentav att hans filosofi “kan karaktäriseras” – d.v.s. huvudsakligen karaktäriseras – “som ett försök att på grundval av en starkt personlig livssyn gjuta samman den svenska personlighetsidealismen med den tyska transcendentalismen (särskilt nykantianismens…)”. Det är något ensidigt, och den svenska personlighetsidealismen växte ju från början fram som just en variation och delvis självständig vidareutveckling av den tyska transcendentalismen (den ursprungliga kantianismen och dess idealistiska efterföljare), men det fäster ändå uppmärksamheten på ett viktigt moment i Norströms tänkande. Brytningen med boströmianismen – som ju trots dess dominans under andra hälften av 1800-talet bara representerade en gren i den svenska personlighetsidealismen – hindrade inte att Norström fortfarande tillhörde och ville tillhöra denna vidare svenska tradition.
Olle Bengtsson 