Affections and Ethics

About

This network was funded from November 2013 to December 2015.

 

The Affections and Ethics Network was an interdisciplinary initiative drawing together expertise from across the University of Oxford to explore the significance of affections and emotions in ethics. The Network facilitated and generated world-leading research by providing a new meeting-point for people who research the role of affections in human life. Research was conducted through a series of seminars and conferences during 2014. 

 

Contacts:

Lorenzo Greco, Faculty of Philosophy

Erasmus Mayr 

People

Convenors:

Lorenzo Greco

Erasmus Mayr

Events
Past Events

Affections and Ethics

 

Affections and Ethics (November 2013 - June 2014)

A series of 13 interdisciplinary seminars were held.
The Affections and Ethics group was an initiative sponsored by TORCH drawing together expertise from across the University to explore the significance of affections and emotions in ethics. Members were drawn from Philosophy, Theology and Religion, Medical Sciences, Social Sciences and other disciplines.

Welcome for the series of short papers and discussions on the theme of "Conscience" (November 2013)
Dr Joshua Hordern, Dr Erasmus Mayr
 

The Self as Embodied Affect: Merleau-Ponty, Michel Henry, and the redemption of the body (June 2014)
Jyoti Raghu, DPhil student, Faculty of Theology and Religion, Wolfson College
 

Loyalty and obligation in Christian and Islamic political thought (January 2014)
Dr Joshua Hordern, University Lecturer in Christian Ethics

 

Text Session - Selections from Bernard and Melanchthon (January 2014)
Lorenzo Greco, Erasmus Mayr, Joshua Hordern.

 
Papers (January 2014)
TTBA
Regina Rini (Jesus College, JRF, Oxford Centre for Neutoethics)
'Embodied Religious Experience: The Role of Feeling in Schleiermacher and Damasio'
Tobias Tan (Ertegun Scholar, MPhil Modern Theology)
 

“Democracy and Openness: Rethinking the Affective Infrastructure of Democracy” (February 2014)
Alessandro Ferrara, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”.

 
The History and the Mystery: enthusiasm and experience in the English Revolution (February 2014)
Dr Sarah Apetrei, Departmental Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History

 
Thomas Merton and Mystical Writing (February 2014)
Mr Philip Seal (Balliol)

 
Reactive attitudes and criminal punishment: The case of unsuccessful attempts (March 2014)
Dr Erasmus Mayr, Junior Research Fellow, Philosophy

Fear and Sanctification (March 2014)
Professor Graham Ward (Christ Church)
 
'Loneliness, Shame and the Making of Global Race Women 1928-1939' (May 2014)
Imaobong Umoren, a second-year DPhil candidate in the faculty of history.
 

'Wonder and Value' (May 2014)
Kevin Tobia, BPhil candidate, Faculty of Philosophy, St. Hilda's College
 

"Religious Affections and Reasonable Liberalism: A Reconciliation" (June 2014)
Prof Sebastiano Maffettone,  University Professor and Dean of Political Science at Luiss ‘G. Carli’ University of Rome
 
Philosophy of Action Work-In-Progress Seminar (December 2013 – June 2014)
A series of 7 bi-weekly seminars at The Queen's College, a forum for faculty members (from Oxford and abroad) and graduate students to present and discuss their current work in progress in philosophy of action. 
Rowland Stout (Dublin)
Mario de Caro (Rome)
Ken Ehrenberg (University of Alabama)
Giuseppina d’Oro (Keele)
Christos Douskos (Patras)
Ursula Coope (University of Oxford) Aristotle on Skill
Hong Yu Wong  (Universität Tübingen)
 
The Moral and Political legacy of Bernard Williams (April 2014)
Two-day conference.
Day 1
Miranda Fricker: “The Humanistic Discipline”
Timothy Chappell: "Encounters with Values"
Nakul Krishna: “Alternatives to Moral Theory”
Elianna Fetterolf: “Remorse beyond the Morality System”
Adrian Moore: “Replies to Nakul Krishna and Elianna Fetterolf
Day 2
Simon Blackburn: “Bernard Williams, Adam Smith, and the Peculiar Piacular”
Roger Crisp: “D’où Venons-Nous ... Que Sommes-Nous ... Où Allons-Nous? Williams on Moral Luck”
Alan P. Thomas: “Williams's Political Psychology: Between Realism and Moralism?”
Edward Harcourt: “Consequentialism and Moral Emotion’”
Paul Russell: “Hume, Williams, and ‘the Morality System’”
 

Conscience and Moral Consciousness (June 2014)
A conference which brought together philosophers, theologians, and scholars working in literature, history and political theory as well as other disciplines to examine the role of conscience for our moral self-understanding. 
Programme:
Welcome and Terry Irwin (Oxford): "Lying and Killing: conscience in principles, rules, and cases" (Lecture Room)
Panel 1: 'Historical approaches to Conscience I'
Lorenzo Greco (Oxford) 'Hume on Conscience'
Carl Hildebrand (Oxford) 'Moral Worth, Emotion, and Practical Wisdom: Kant’s Aristotelian Dispositions'
Panel 2: 'Conscience and Theology'
Joshua Hordern (Oxford) 'Conscience and politics in Islam and Christianity'
Joshua Broggi (Edinburgh) 'Kant and Herder on the Genesis of Moral Consciousness'
Panel discussions
Panel 3: 'Historical Approaches to Conscience II'
Franz Knappik (Berlin) / Erasmus Mayr (Oxford) 'Kant and the Infallibility of Conscience'
Emre Kazim (London) 'The Cultivation of Conscience as Self-Improvement in Kant'
Panel 4: 'Conscience and Society'
Hila Keren (LA) 'Law, Conscience, and Anticipated Guilt'
Liesbet Vanhaute (Antwerp) 'I won't but my colleague will'
Julia Driver (St. Louis): "Conscience and Meta-Cognition:  an Updated Humean Account"
Correct and Incorrect Emotions (May 2015)
Correct and Incorrect Emotions: Love and Hate in Brentano's Moral Psychology
Federico Boccaccini, Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research / University of Liege 
Brentanian scholars have mostly focused on the epistemological and metaphysical aspects of intentionality.  Boccaccini offered a different account: emotions are bearers of moral objective properties; we can fix the content of our moral concepts analysing the normative structure of mental phenomena such as love and hate. He argued that Brentano’s ethical theory is at heart moral psychology, and suggested a compatibilist stance between intuitionism and empiricism.

Shame and Guilt (June 2014)
A one-day workshop with speakers:
Carla Bagnoli (University of Modena) and Reggio Emilia (University of Oslo): Shame and Vulnerability
Edward Harcourt (University of Oxford): Moral Emotions, Autonomy, and the ‘Extended Mind’
Adam Leite (Indiana University):  Self-Hatred, Self-Acceptance, and Self-Love

 

Feeling for Another: The Role of Empathy in Moral Theory and Moral Psychology (November 2015)
A two-day conference which investigated the philosophical basis and historical evolvement of the notion of empathy and examined what role empathy could play in moral theory and moral psychology, as well as in theories of evaluation, and of understanding others in general.
Keynote speakers included:
Day 1
Keynote Talk Paul Russell (Gothenburg / UBC): Sympathy, Impartiality, and the Morality System
Parallel Sessions:
Thomas Null (Edinburgh): Shelleyan Empathy and the Poetics of Sympathy; David Rowthorn (Warwick): Two Nietzschean Arguments Against Compassionate Morality
Max Hayward (Columbia): Grounding Self-regarding Practical Reason in Empathy; Alejandro Rosas Lopez (UNAL): Empathy: Can It Ground Moral Judgment?
Parallel Sessions
Mara Bollard (Michigan): Empathy and Moral Agency: Lessons from Psychopathy and Autism; Lilian O'Brien (Cork): Understanding Alien Psychologies
Simone Pollo (Rome): Animal Ethics and Sympathy; Jonas Vandieken (UCL): Reasonable Partiality and what We Owe to Each Other
Keynote Talk Winfried Menninghaus (Frankfurt): Being Moved, Empathy, and Aesthetic Appreciation
Day 2
Keynote Talk Dan Zahavi (Copenhagen): Wittgenstein’s Child: Phenomenology, Empathy and Mindreading
Parallel Sessions
Adam Tuszynski (Warsaw): On the Applicability of the Mirror Neurons Theory to the Study of Shared Agency. Exploring the Roots of Empathy
Kyle Furlane (Cincinnati): Moral Responsibility for Epistemic Bias
Parallel Sessions
Elodie Boublil (Paris): Vicarious Traumatization
Petra Gelhaus (Münster): Empathy, Compassion, Care
Keynote Talk Louise Braddock (Cambridge / Oxford): Why Everyone Should Be Wary of Empathy and Why Psychoanalysts Shouldn’t Do it at All
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