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Public Lecture Series

Reason, Reflection & Responsibility

Thinkers in Philosophy & Public Policy

Our precarious times call for a rethinking and renewal of the shared underpinnings of an open, diverse, and inclusive democratic society. To support this process, the Institute of Philosophy is offering a lecture series with leading thinkers who are confronting the challenges and chances that we are facing in all dimensions of life. The idea of this series is to develop a culture of reason, reflection, and responsibility by bringing fundamental global debates to the heart of the campus. The series is about connecting philosophical enquiry to pragmatic action.

Ab dem Sommersemester 2017 können sich Studierende 1 Punkt für den fachspezifischen Wahlbereich für den regelmäßigen Besuch der Ringvorlesung des Philosophischen Seminars anrechnen lassen

Bitte beachten: Im WiSe 18/19 findet die Ringvorlesung in Hörsaal B des Hauptgebäudes der Universität Hamburg in der Edmund- Siemers-Allee 1 statt.

Programm WiSe 2018/19

Date	Speaker	Topic
24.10.18	Cécile Laborde (University of Oxford)	On Rightful Sovereignty
	About the Lecture In this lecture, I reflect about recent conflicts pitting religious authority against state law. I reject both the doctrine of religious institutionalism, which denies state sovereignty, and the liberal egalitarian doctrine that denies the special nature of religious authority. I steer a middle course which argues that robust protection for freedom of association, including religious association, is essential to the rightful exercise of state sovereignty. In the process, I introduce my theory of the disaggregation of religion, developed in my recent book Liberalism's Religion (Harvard University Press, 2017). About the Speaker Cécile Laborde holds the Nuffield Chair of Political Theory at the University of Oxford. Prior to that she was Professor of Political Theory at University College London, and a Lecturer at King's College London and the University of Exeter. She holds a DPhil in Politics from Oxford. Prof. Laborde was the founding director of UCL's Religion and Political Theory Centre. She has held visiting positions in Paris and Princeton, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. Professor Laborde has published extensively in the areas of republicanism, liberalism and religion, theories of law and the state, and global justice. Her most recent book is Liberalism's Religion (Harvard University Press, 2017).
07.11.18	Miriam Ronzoni (University of Manchester)	Future of European Democracy
	About the Lecture Should the EU should be conceived as a demoicracy, namely a “Union of peoples who govern together, but not as one”. The demoi of Europe recognise that they affect one another’s democratic health, and hence establish a union to guarantee their freedom qua demoi – which most demoicrats cash out as non-domination. This is more than intergovernmentalism, because the demoi govern together on these matters. However, if the union aims at protecting the freedom of the different European demoi, it cannot do so by replacing them with a “superdemos”, as federalists want. This talk will discuss the idea of the EU as a demoicracy. In particular we will look at the institutional choice between intergovernmentalism and federalism. About the Speaker Dr Miriam Ronzoni is Reader in Political Theory at the University of Manchester, which she joined in 2013. She works in contemporary normative theory, with a focus on global and international issues. Prior to moving to Manchester, Dr Ronzoni held research positions at the TU Darmstadt (where she held a Humboldt Foundation Kovalevskaja Award), the European University Institute in Florence, and at the Goethe University of Frankfurt.
05.12.18	Stefan Gosepath (Freie Universität Berlin)	What, If Anything, Is Wrong with a Bequest?
	About the Lecture What should happen to private property after the death of the person owning it? Should the owner, while alive, be entitled to transfer their property holdings for the time after their death, to a person of their choosing? Is such a right to pass one’s property on posthumously a part of the right to private property? This talk is thus concerned with the bundle of questions of whether it is just that people bequeath and inherit property. In dealing with these questions the talk will explore the claim, that the common social practice of bequest and inheritance (embodied in law and institutions) is in fact pro tanto unjust. About the Speaker Stefan Gosepath is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the Free University Berlin. He is also co-director of the Centre for Advanced Studies “Justitia Amplificata: Rethinking Justice: Applied and Global”. He is also Principal Investigator of the new cluster of excellence “The Contestation of the Liberal Script”. Before coming to Berlin he was professor of International Political Theory and Philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt in the Cluster of Excellence, “The Formation of Normative Orders”. Previously he has been a professor at the universities of Bremen, Giessen, Potsdam, Vienna and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and Columbia University. Gosepath has published extensively in the areas of practical reason and normativity, justice and equality, human rights and global justice, and on morality.
18.12.18 (Tues.)	Onora O'Neill (University of Cambridge)	Rethinking the Ethics of Communication (2. PEP Weihnachtsvorlesung)
	About the Lecture Ethical and epistemic standards for communication have been discussed since antiquity. And since antiquity they have periodically been disrupted by technological innovations, then revised and restored by cultural as well as by legal and regulatory changes. However, the disruptions to standards of communication produced by the mushrooming growth of online technologies in the late C20 may prove particularly difficult to deal with. One source of difficulty can be traced to widespread preoccupation with "freedom of expression" across the past half century, sometimes at the expense of adequate consideration of the ethical and epistemic standards that are essential for those on the receiving end of others' speech acts, on which adequate communication relies. I shall suggest that legal and regulatory remedies to these problems may prove difficult and controversial. About the Speaker Onora O’Neill is emeritus Professor at the University of Cambridge. She is one of the world’s most distinguished moral philosophers, having published widely on political philosophy and ethics, international justice, bioethics and Kant. In 2016 she was awarded the Knight Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz) and in 2017 two of the most prestigious international prizes in the huma- nities: the Holberg and Berggruen prizes. Professor O’Neill is a life-peer and cross-bench member of the UK House of Lords. She is currently President of the Society for Applied Philosophy. Please note: Lecture takes place in Hörsaal A !
23.01.19	Luciano Floridi (University of Oxford)	Soft Ethics, Hard Ethics, and the Governance of the Digital*
	About the Lecture In this talk I shall discuss the governance of the digital as the new challenge posed by technological innovation. I shall introduce a new distinction between soft ethics, which applies after legal compliance with legislation, such as the General Data Protection regulation in the European Union, and hard ethics, which precedes and contrib- utes to shape legislation. I shall conclude by developing an analysis of the role of digital ethics with respect to digital regulation and digital governance. About the Speaker Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information and Director of the Digital Ethics Lab at the University of Oxford. He is a worldwide leading thinker in the philosophy of information. His recent books include, The Fourth Revolution – How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality (OUP, 2014); The Ethics of Information (OUP, 2013); The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011); and The Logic of Information (OUP, forthcoming). * In cooperation with the Public Lecture Series »TAMING the machines« of the research group Ethics in Information technology (EIT).
30.01.19	Axel Gosseries (UC Louvain)	Sustainability and Intergenerational Justice
	About the Lecture In this lecture, I will present several theories of intergenerational justice and I will explore the degree to which sustainability is sufficient or necessary to meet the demands of intergenerational justice. In other words, we will ask ourselves whether what we transfer to the next birth cohort can sustainable without being fair, and conversely. About the Speaker Axel Gosseries is Maitre de recherches FNRS and Professeur extraordinaire at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium). He is the Head of the Hoover Chair in Economic and Social Ethics. He has been writing extensively in the field of theories of justice and more specifically on intergenerational issues. He is the author of more than 50 articles in philosophy, law and economics, the author of a book on Intergenerational Justice (Aubier, 2004) and the co-editor of 4 books, the latest one being Institutions for Future Generations (with Inigo Gonzalez-Ricoy, OUP, 2016)

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Every semester the Institute of Philosophy organizes a public lecture series with local and external speakers.

The public lecture series takes place on Wednesday at 6pm c.t. in Lecture Hall D (Philosophers Tower Von-Melle-Park 6).

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