Please circulate widely - Apologies for cross-posting
Dear Colleagues,
After the success of last year's section on 'Politics and Metaphysics in
Kant', organised with the support of the UK Kant Society at the 4th ECPR
Conference in Pisa, we are planning to put forward, again with the
support of the UK Kant Society, a section proposal on the same theme for
the 5th ECPR Conference in Potsdam 10-12 September 2009.
We would like to know whether anyone would like to express at this stage
an interest in suggesting a panel title, chairing a panel or giving a
paper. The section proposal has to be submitted by the 15th of April
2008, and the more details we can give on the number and content of
potential panels, the better our chances might be to be awarded a high
number of panel slots for the conference. The previous section outline
is copied below to give you some more information about the problems and
questions which this section hopes to address, although at this stage we
are also open to further suggestions.
Please email Kerstin at [log in to unmask] if you think you might be
interested to chair a panel, suggest a panel title or present a paper.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Howard Williams and Kerstin Budde
Section outline 2007 'Politics and Metaphysics in Kant':
The past three decades have witnessed the emergence, at the forefront of
political thought, of several Kantian theories. Both the critical
reaction to consequentialism inspired by Rawlsian constructivism and the
universalism of more recent theories informed by Habermasian discourse
ethics trace their main sources of inspiration back to Kant's writings.
Yet, much of what is Kantian in contemporary theory is formulated with
more or less strict caveats concerning Kant's metaphysics. These range
from radical claims that theories of justice must be political, not
metaphysical, to more cautious calls for replacing Kant's metaphysics
with a more modest ontology, for instance, one informed by the
relatively recent linguistic turn in philosophy.
Given the current "legitimation crisis" of modern liberal democracies,
the purpose of this section is to explore the relationship between
politics and metaphysics in Kant and Kantian political philosophy, in
order to revisit the question concerning the role of metaphysics in
political theory.
We welcome papers on these and related issues, whether their primary
focus is on Kant's philosophy or on the relevance of Kant's philosophy
for contemporary political philosophy and theories of justice.
Professor Terrell Carver
Department of Politics
University of Bristol
10 Priory Road
Bristol
BS8 1TU
United Kingdom
+44 (0)117 928 8826
www.bristol.ac.uk/politics
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