The School of Culture and Communication invites you to a public lecture to
be given by Professor Terry Eagleton on Friday 7 December, 6.30-7.30pm.
GM15, Level 1, Law Building
Pelham Street, The University of Melbourne
Terry Eagletonšs lecture is presented as part of the Deanšs Lecture Series.
8.00pm Book launch by Andrew McGowan (Trinity College):
Terry Eagleton Presents Jesus Christ: The Gospels (Verso, Dec. 2007)
Trouble with Strangers:
Ethics, Politics and Psychoanalysis
The argument of the lecture turns upon what I believe is an original
insight: that almost every ethical theory from Aristotle to Zizek can be
regarded as exemplifying one or other of Jacques Lacanšs psychoanalytical
categories of the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real, or seen as some complex
combination of the three.
In a lecture which will touch briefly upon Aristotle, Spinoza, Hume,
Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Burke, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
Lacan, Levinas, Derrida and Badiou, I shall seek to demonstrate this thesis
while drawing out some of its political implications.
Each of the forms of ethical theory in question will be examined for its
merits and deficiencies, and each will be critically compared with the
ethics of socialism and Judaeo-Christianity, as well as with so-called
virtue ethics.
It will be argued that the paradigmatic case of the ethical is our treatment
of strangers (or even enemies), and some attention (involving Kant, Freud
and the New Testament) will be given to the notion of love of strangers,
along with the vital yet relatively unexamined concept of political love.
Terry Eagleton is John Edward Taylor Chair of English Literature at the
University of Manchester.
He is the author of some 35 full-length books,ranging from works of literary
criticism and cultural theory to original plays and a memoir, and has edited
and contributed introductions and essays to numerous other books.
He is a regular reviewer and commentator in journals such as The London
Review of Books and The TLS, and an internationally renowned lecturer on
philosophical, literary, political and ethical issues.
http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/public-lectures.html
This lecture is free of charge and open to all staff, students and members
of the public.
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