Category: Personalism

This year the International Conference on Persons will take place in late May (24-29), instead of early August as has been the norm. The reason for this is that it will be held at the Università della Calabria, just outside Cosenza, and some of the non-Italian organizers thought southern Italy would be too hot in August.

The local organizer this year is Giusy Gallo, who first attended the ICP at the University of Nottingham in 2009 and also participated at Lund in 2013. She is a philosopher of language who came in contact with personalism through her work on the relation between linguistics and Michael Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowledge, and she is the editor of the Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio (rifl.unical.it).

The conference website is found at icp2017italy.it (there is something wrong with the links function here right now).

Some of the papers from the 13th International Conference on Persons in Boston in 2015 have now been published in the Vernon Press Series in Philosophy under the title In the Sphere of the Personal: New Perspectives in the Philosophy of Persons. The volume is edited by James Beauregard and Simon Smith, who both first joined the ICP at the 12th meeting at Lund in 2013, and, I am pleased to note, have now become leading forces in the institution that is the ICP. At least one volume of ICP papers have been published in the past, but it was a long time ago; the Lund papers should, as I understood it, have been published by two of the American participants, but this never happened. My friends and colleagues Jim and Simon deserve all credit for reviving ICP proceedings publication and bringing together this valuable volume. They also provide a long introduction, and there is a foreword by Thomas O. Buford, one of the ICP’s founders.

All conference papers are seldom included in volumes like this, which are almost always selections only. Yet it is somewhat surprising that the papers by Ralph Ellis, James McLachlan, and Phillip Ferreira are missing, as is Robert Cummings Neville’s introduction to the closing panel which, as far as I can remember, would have been quite possible to publish in this volume.

In this connection, I should perhaps explain why I declined to have my own paper – which was presented in a plenary session, together with Phillip Ferreira, on idealistic personalism – included. The reason is that I have discontinued all adademic publication after the decision last year of Prof. Thomas Kaiserfeld and Dr Monica Libell in the department of the history of ideas at Lund University that I can no longer teach there because of what they call my ideology, by which they mean my political views, and their public announcement of this in the biggest Swedish daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter.

It is not just that this decision left me without any academic institutional affiliation, so that I no longer know how to present myself in connection with publication. More important is the unacceptable reason given by them for this measure taken against me. Except for my writing in this very modest blog, I have in fact withdrawn from all publication, teaching and lecturing because of the appalling things that are suddenly being said or suggested about me by some people who do not approve of my political positions.

It could have been the case that Lund had found someone more competent to take my place, and if so, I would not have protested in any way. I never held a formal position in the university. Given the strange political control of the academy in Sweden, it always seemed to me impossible to obtain such a position, and I hardly even tried. I taught regularly for twelve years, but only as an adjunct, and very little. In that sense at least, my teaching was not of any importance whatsoever for the university. My protest concerns only the violation of the principle of academic freedom that Lund’s decision represents as explained by them with regard to its motive, and not least the public announcement of this motive.

As to what they meant by my ideology, no explanation was given, although it was clear from Dagens Nyheter’s article that they shared its view of what my ideology was, and I had also been privately informed that this was the case. The background of and the reason for Lund’s decision and statement was the attack on me and a few others by the Expo foundation in Sweden, published on the website of their magazine in February 2015, an attack which had been referred to and repeated several times by Dagens Nyheter elsewhere in the press. But Expo has since withdrawn their article (written by Jonathan Leman) under threat of legal action.

It is not only that Expo’s and Dagens Nyheter’s allegations are untrue, as is obvious to anyone who has actually read what I have written on politics. The university’s motive, and statement about this motive, i.e. about my political positions, are unacceptable quite regardless of this. There has, to my knowledge, never been any complaint from either students or colleagues about my limited teaching, my few publications, or any other of my minor contributions to the life and work of the university, and none of this has ever been considered to have been unduly influenced by my political views.

Libell’s public statement to Dagens Nyheter – about Kaiserfeld’s decision and motive – means that what we have to do with here is an indefensible, explicitly political act on their part. I wish to draw attention to this fact, and to insist that this kind of measures from professors, department heads and university administrators must not be accepted or tolerated, even in such insignificant cases as mine. Their ideology should be rejected, they should not, in their academic capacities, embrace the ideology that is the basis of their action against me, they should be dismissed from the university.

I wish to thank those of my colleagues in the academic community as represented in other countries who have shown support in this new situation, and to thank them also for the kind interest in and great appreciation of my work that they have shown in the past. I may continue to attend the ICP because of my organizational responsibilities there, and perhaps also other conferences, but I don’t plan to present papers.

Whether or not my paper would have added anything of value to the present volume, it seems clear that the papers of the others mentioned above would. But even without them, there are several important ones, not least those contributed by Juan Manuel Burgos who also joined the ICP at Lund, and the ICP veteran Richard Prust. One of the papers on which I was the commentator in Boston is indeed so important that I should devote a separate post to it. Among arguments related to a misleading title, we find Rolf Ahlers discussing recent German scholarship on Jacobi – one of the central figures in my book The Worldview of Personalism – that confirms my own argument about the relation between him and German idealism, and is of considerable importance not only for personalism but for idealism studies.

This is the abstract of my paper, ‘Further Considerations on Personalism and Idealism’, at the 13th International Conference on Persons in Boston earlier this month:

Boston personalism was originally, and has to some extent remained, an idealistic philosophy. Borden Parker Bowne’s work represents, as does that of his British contemporary, Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, not least a further, independent development of central themes in German Spätidealismus in the 19th century. In this respect it differs considerably from the – often converging – main forms of European personalism, which are related to distinctly non-idealist currents such as phenomenology, existentialism, and neo-Thomism. In this paper I reexamine some aspects of the question of the relationship between personalism and idealism in the light of recent idealism scholarship and of a partial assessment of what can be considered to be of lasting value and relevance in idealism. Taking into account the European background of idealistic personalism, it is necessary to raise anew the fundamental issue of the definition of idealism, and to distinguish between some of its main versions, including a brief recapitulation of its transformations in the 20th century. My conclusion is that, whether or not personalism, as Bowne argued, is intrinsically and necessarily idealistic, the insights and resources of idealism remain not just valid but important and badly needed precisely for personalism.

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Min gamle filosofiske vän och interlokutör, absolute idealisten Phillip Ferreira, i ännu en gemensam session med mig på 13:e ICP i Boston i förra veckan.

13th International Conference on Persons

MONDAY, August 3

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OPENING KEYNOTE ADDRESSES,  7:00 PM (CAS B12)

Knowledge and the Person

Wecome and Conference Information:

Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

Chair and Introductions:

James Beauregard, Rivier University (Nashua, NH, USA)

“Apprehending the Person: Two Approaches”

Grzgorz Hołub, Pontifical University of John Paul II (Krakow, Poland)

“The Comprehensive Experience (Experiencia Integral): A New Proposal on the Beginning of Knowledge”

Juan Manuel Burgos, Universidad CEU San Pablo (Madrid, Spain)

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TUESDAY, August 4

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SESSION 1, 9:00-10:30

1A (Room B23): The Concept of the Person

Chair, Richard C. Prust, St. Andrews Presbyterian College

“Love, Identification and Equality: Rational Problems in Harry Frankfurt’s Concept of Person”

Jorge Martin Montoya, University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain)

“Persons, Animals, and Clinical Normality”

William Jaworski, Fordham University (New York, NY, USA)

Commentator: Eleanor Wittrup, University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)

1B (Room B24): Person, Mind, Brain

Chair, Grzgorz Hołub, Pontifical University of John Paul II

“Neuroethics and Impersonalism: Value Revelation in Subjective Disclosure”

Denis Larrivee, International Association of Catholic Bioethicists (Ottawa, ON, Canada)

“Why Cognitivist Accounts of Personhood Fall Short”

Nils-Frederic Wagner, University of Ottawa (ON, Canada)

Commentator: Ralph Ellis, Clark Atlanta University (Atlanta, GA, USA)

1C (Room STH325): Moral Personhood

Chair, Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

“Moral Personhood”

Sari Kisilevsky, City University of New York, Queens College (USA)

“The Linguistic Bounds of Personhood”

Ray E. Jennings, Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC, Canada), David McIntyre, Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC, Canada)

Commentator: Genevieve Wallace, Sacramento State University (CA, USA)

SESSION 2, 10:40-12:10

2A (Room B23): Personal Identity

Chair, Richard C. Prust, St. Andrews Presbyterian College

“Agency, Personhood, and Personal Identity”

Benjamin Yelle, Mt. Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA, USA)

“Pratical Concerns and Numerical Identity”

Maxwell Suffis, Rice University (Houston, TX, USA)

Commentator: Ben Abelson, City University of New York, Graduate Center (USA)

2B (Room B24): Ontological Dignity and Virtuous Knowing

Chair, Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

“Wang Yangming on Personal Awareness as World-Awareness”

Joshua Hall, Emory University (Atlanta, GA, USA)

“A Process Ontology of Dignity”

John W. August III, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

Commentator: Robert C. Neville, Boston University (USA)

2C (Room STH325): The Self and the “I”

Chair, James McLachlan, Western Carolina University

“Imagining the Self: Lacan and Levinas on the Formation of the ‘I’”

Christopher Lucibella, University of Memphis (TN, USA)

“The Socio-historical Ordeal of Personhood:  Remarks on Later Nietzsche and Freud”

Jeffrey M. Jackson, University of Houston, Dowtown (TX, USA)

Commentator: James McLachlan, Western Carolina University (Cullowhee, NC, USA)

PLENARY SESSION, 2:00-3:10 (CAS B12)

Chair: Richard C. Prust, St. Andrews Presbyterian College (Laurinberg, NC, USA)

“Teleology and Consciousness Theory”

Ralph D. Ellis, Clark Atlanta University (Atlanta, GA, USA)

3:10-3:40 Break

SESSION 3, 3:40-5:10

3A (Room B23): Psychological/Physical Continuity and Personhood

Chair, Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University

“Personal Identity in Alzheimer’s Disease: What Supports the Self When Memory Fails?”

Marie-Christine Nizzi, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA)

Commentator: Michelle Maiese, Emmanuel College (Boston, MA, USA)

3B (Room B24): Higher Education, Race, and Societal Change

Chair, James Beauregard, Rivier University

“Dialectical Adherence to the Beloved Community: John G. Fee and the Founding of Berea College”

Eli Orner Kramer, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

“Pedagogical Personalism at Morehouse College from Benjamin E. Mays and Howard Thurman to Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Kipton Jensen, Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA, USA)

Commentator: Thomas O. Buford, Furman University (Greenville, SC, USA)

3C (Room STH325): Early 20^th Century Personalism

Chair, Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

“Phenomenological Resistance to Tyranny”

Jason M. Bell, Assumption College (Worcester, MA, USA)

“The Personalism of John MacMurray”

Fr. Bogumił Gacka, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University (Warsaw, Poland)

Commentator: John Hofbauer, Mount St. Mary’s College (Newburgh, NY, USA)

PLENARY SESSION, 5:30-7:15 (CAS B12)

Chair, Ralph D. Ellis, Clark Atlanta University (Atlanta, GA, USA)

“‘We Are Not Disposable’: People with Psycho-social Disorders and Social Justice”

Carol Moeller, Moravian College (Bethlehem, PA, USA)

“Dissociative Identity Disorder, Personhood, and Responsibility”

Michelle Maiese, Emmanuel College (Boston, MA, USA)

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WEDNESDAY, August 5

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SPECIAL SESSION, 9:00-11:30

4A (Room STH325): The Life and Work of Thomas O. Buford

Chair, Christopher Williams, University of Nevada

“Buford, Kohák, and a Renewed Understanding of the Personal Nature of Time”

John Scott Gray, Ferris State University (Big Rapids, MI, USA)

“Christianity and Intellectual Seriousness”

Mason Marshall, Pepperdine University (Malibu, CA, USA)

“Personalism and Global Bioethics”

James Beauregard, Rivier University (Nashua, NH, USA)

Commentator: Thomas O. Buford, Furman University (Greenville, SC, USA)

SPECIAL SESSIONS, 9:00-10:30

4B (Room B23): The Next Generation, Session Alpha

Chair, Fr. Bogumił Gacka, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University

“Eudaimonia, Catholicism, Sex, and the Person”

Madison Forbes, Bridgewater State University (Bridgewater, MA, USA)

“The Consolation of Philosophers: Recovering Dignity and the Self After Sexual Assault ”

Mackenzie Lefoster, Belmont University (Nashville, TN, USA)

Commentator: Grzgorz Hołub, Pontifical University of John Paul II (Krakow, Poland)

4C (Room B24): The Next Generation, Session Beta

Chair, William Jaworski, Fordham University

“Freedoms Undone: Domination by Agents and Structures in Pettit’s Republicanism”

Mariela Libedinsky, University of Toronto, St. George-Woodsworth College (ON, Canada)

“The Emergence of Personhood and its Importance in the Experience of the Sublime”

Leslie Micheal Murray, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

Commentator: Sofia Inês Albornoz Stein, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (São Leopoldo, Brazil)

SESSION 5, 10:40-11:30

5A (Room B23): Howard Thurman’s Personalism

Chair, Thurman Todd Willison, Union Theological Seminary

“Reading Thurman as a Philosophical Personalist”

Kipton Jensen, Morehouse College

Commentator: Myron M. Jackson, Grand Valley State University (Allendale, MI, USA)

5B (Room B24): Is the Universe the Work of a Person?

Chair, Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University

“Persons, Theology, and Cosmology”

Gilbert Fulmer, Texas State University (San Marcos, TX, USA)

Commentator: Wesley J. Wildman, Boston University (USA)

SESSION 6, 11:40-12:30

6A (Room B23): Person and Emotion

Chair and Commentator, Ralph D. Ellis, Clark Atlanta University

“Emotion Makes the Person”

Eleanor Wittrup, University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)

6B (Room B24): Climate Change

Chair, Wesley J. Wildman, Boston University

“Personalism and Climate Change”

Thurman Todd Willison, Union Theological Seminary (New York, NY, USA)

Commentator: John W. August, III, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

6C (Room STH325): Personalism and Monotheism

Chair, Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

“Personal Identity with and without Monotheism”

Richard C. Prust, St. Andrews Presbyterian College (Laurinberg, NC, USA)

Commentator: Kipton Jensen, Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA, USA)

AFTERNOON FREE

Optional group trip to Concord, MA (home of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne’s Old Manse, Walden Pond, etc., site of the Battle of Concord).

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THURSDAY, August 6

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SESSION 7, 9:00-10:30

7A (Room B23): Self, Person, and Process

Chair, Richard C. Prust, St. Andrews Presbyterian College

“On the Mistaken Lexical Liberty of Conflating ‘Self’ and ‘Person’ in Philosophy”

Megan Roehll, University at Buffalo (NY, USA)

“Self and Person: Distinctions in Bergson”

Robert G. Fiedler, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

Commentator: Gilbert Fulmer, Texas State University (San Marcos, TX, USA)

7B (Room B24): Descartes and Locke

Chair, Ralph Ellis, Clark Atlanta University

“Persons and Passions: The Late Cartesian Account”

Mark C.R. Smith, Queens University (Kingston, ON, Canada)

“Mixed Modes and the Non-Existence of Lockean Persons”

Sam N. Johnson, University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR, USA)

Commentator: Laura J. Mueller, Luther College (Decorah, IA, USA)

7C (Room STH325): Hegel and Personhood

Chair, Phillip Ferreira, Kutztown University

“A Limit to the Market: Hegel and Personhood”

Victoria I. Burke, University of Guelph (ON, Canada)

“Holy Robot: Early German Idealism on Persons”

Rolf Ahlers, The Sage Colleges (Albany, NY, USA)

Commentator: Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University, Sweden

SESSION 8, 10:40-12:10

8A (Room B23): The Concept of Person

Chair, Jorge Martin Montoya, University of Navarra

“Salvaging a Concept of a ‘Person’”

Ben Abelson, City University of New York Graduate Center (USA)

“Looking into Objects, Dispositions and the Lockean Person-Making Properties”

Mihretu Guta, Durham University (Durham, England)

Commentator: Benjamin Yelle, Mt. Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA, USA)

8Bi (10:40-11:30) (Room B24): Law and Culture

Chair, Lawrence Nelson, Santa Clara University

“Roma-Integration: The Existential Tension Between Public Policy and the Person”

Philippe-Edner Marius, Legislative Fellow, Sate of New York (Albany, NY, USA)

Commentator: Jonas Norgaard Mortensen, think tank Cura

8Bii (11.30-12.10) (Room B24):

Chair, James Beauregard, Rivier University

“On Buford on Trust”

Nathan Riley, Independent Scholar (St. John’s, FL, USA)

Commentator: Thomas O. Buford, Furman University

8C (Room STH325): Schelling and Boehme

Chair, Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

“Personhood in the Board Room: A Schellingian Account of Corporate Agency”

Myron M. Jackson, Grand Valley State University (Allendale, MI, USA)

“The Person and the Demon: Personality and the Possibility of Demonic Evil in Jacob Boehme”

James McLachlan, Western Carolina University (Cullowhee, NC, USA)

Commentator: Rolf Ahlers, The Sage Colleges (Albany, NY, USA)

PLENARY SESSION, 2:00-3:30 (CAS B12)

Chair: James McLachlan, Western Carolina University (Cullowhee, NC, USA)

“Further Considerations on Personalism and Idealism”

Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University (Sweden)

“Who Are the Real Impersonalists?”

Phillip Ferreira, Kutztown University (PA, USA)

SESSION 9, 3:40-5:10

9A (Room B23): The Metaphysics of Person

Chair, Ralph Ellis, Clark Atlanta University

“Personal Identity and the gumnos kókkos”

Thom Atkinson, University of Liverpool (England)

“Person and Incarnation”

Randall Johnson, Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL, USA)

Commentator: Matthew Donnelly, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

9B (Room B24): Law and Punishment

Chair, Joseph Harry, Slippery Rock University

“Returning to Redemption as a Theory for Justifying Punishment”

Brian J. Buckley, Santa Clara University (Santa Clara, CA, USA)

“An Ethical Perspective on Legal Personhood, Prenatal Humans, and Feticide Laws”

Lawrence Nelson, Santa Clara University (Santa Clara, CA, USA)

Commentator: Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

9C (Room STH325): British Idealism

Chair, Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University

“No Free Lunch: Pringle-Pattison’s Ideas on Personhood, the Soul, and Personal Immortality”

Robert Devall, West Chester University (West Chester, PA, USA)

“Expression and Self-Knowledge”

Christopher Williams, University of Nevada (Reno, NV, USA)

Commentator: Phillip Ferreira, Kutztown University, PA, USA

CONFERENCE DINNER, 7:00 PM

Filippo’s Italian Ristorante, Boston’s North End 

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FRIDAY, August 7

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SESSION 10, 9:00-10:30

10A (Room B23): Intention and the Person

Chair, John W. August III, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

“The Indexing Ego”

Matthew Z. Donnelly, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

Commentator: Mihretu Guta, Durham University (England)

10B (Room B24): Kant

Chair, Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

“Imagination, Unfettered: Breaking the Sensuous Chains in Kant’s Critical Philosophy”

Laura J. Mueller, Luther College (Decorah, IA, USA), Randall E. Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

“Freedom and Value in Kant’s Practical Philosophy: the Core of Personhood”

Adriano Naves de Brito, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (São Leopoldo, Brazil), Sofia Inês Albornoz Stein, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (São Leopoldo, Brazil)

Commentator: Eli Orner Kramer, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

10C (Room STH 325): The Sign of the Person

Chair, Robert C. Neville, Boston University

“Quotational Characters: Subjectivity, Journalists, and the Persons Portrayed in News Journalism”

Joseph Harry, Slippery Rock University (Slippery Rock, PA, USA)

“Peirce on Person: Peirce’s Theory of Determination and Personality”

Cheongho Lee, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

Commentator: Christopher Williams, University of Nevada (Reno, NV, USA)

CLOSING PLENARY SESSION, 10:40-12:10 (CAS B12)

Chair: Jan Olof Bengtsson, Lund University (Sweden)

The Future of Persons and Personalism?

Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (USA)

Robert C. Neville, Boston University (MA, USA)

13th International Conference on Persons

Michelle Maiese is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Emmanuel College in Boston. Her research focuses on issues in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychiatry, and the emotions. In recent work, she has examined enactivism, the integration of emotion and cognition, and the nature of psychopathology. She is the author of Embodied Minds in Action (co-written with Robert Hanna, 2009) and Embodiment, Emotion, and Cognition (2011).

13th International Conference on Persons

Juan Manuel Burgos is a leading personalist philosopher in the Spanish-speaking world with a growing influence in Europe and America. He is Profesor Titular at the University San Pablo CEU in Madrid and has been a guest professor and delivered conferences in Britain, USA, Poland, Mexico, Sweden, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and many other countries. He is also the founder and president of the Spanish Association of Personalism and of the Asociación Iberoamericana de Personalismo, and founder and editor of Quién. Revista de Filosofía personalista. Burgos specializes in anthropology and personalism; among his books are Antropología: una guía para la existencia, Repensar la naturaleza humana, and Introducción al personalismo. Some of them have been published in Polish and Portuguese translations, and the last mentioned is currently being translated into English. Studies of Burgos’s philosophy have been published by Beauregard, Bermeo, Seifert and others.

13th International Conference on Persons

Jan Olof Bengtsson teaches the history of ideas at Lund University in Sweden. He is best known for his book The Worldview of Personalism: Origins and Early Development, to which a special issue of the journal The Pluralist was devoted in 2008. He has published articles and book chapters on personalism, idealism, and so-called value-centered historicism, the most recent being a chapter on the origins and meaning of the German concept of “late idealism” (Spätidealismus). He is the author of the entries on personalism in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (with Thomas D. Williams) and Springer’s Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions. He has also published a Swedish introduction to and translation of Eric Voegelin’s Wissenschaft, Politik und Gnosis. He regularly attends conferences on personalism and idealism in Europe and America, and, in 2013, organized the 12th International Conference on Persons at Lund.

13th International Conference on Persons

Phillip Ferreira is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Kutztown University. His work focuses on 19th century idealism and its relation to contemporary thought. He is author of Bradley and the Structure of Knowledge (1999) and many articles on philosophical idealism.

13th International Conference on Persons

Randall E. Auxier is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he specializes in process philosophy, American idealism, and the philosophy of culture. He is author of Time, Will, and Purpose: Living Ideas from the Philosophy of Josiah Royce (2013) and co-author (with Gary Herstein) of The Quantum of Explanation: Whitehead’s Radical Empiricism (forthcoming). He has edited seven volumes of the Library of Living Philosophers and was for 15 years the editor of The Personalist Forum and its successor, The Pluralist. He writes popularly for books, magazines, newspapers and blogs, along with the usual scholarly journals.

13th International Conference on Persons