Apologies for cross-postings!

SINCERITY IN ETHICS, POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Workshop organised by Sorin Baiasu (Keele) and Sylvie Loriaux (Nijmegen, 
Radboud) with the support of the Kantian Standing Group of the European 
Consortium for Political Research and the UK Kant Society. The workshop will 
take place at the ECPR Joint Sessions (12-17 April 2011, University of St 
Gallen, Switzerland).

Workshops at the ECPR Joint Sessions have between 16 and 18 scholars, who 
meet during the five days of the event to present and discuss papers on a 
particular topic. Papers are circulated in advance and the time allocated 
for the discussion of each paper is quite generous.

We invite applications for participation to the workshop: please send a 
2-page detailed outline of the paper by 1 December 2010 (either to Sorin 
Baiasu - [log in to unmask] or to Sylvie Loriaux - 
[log in to unmask]). Papers (around 6,500-7,000 words) will then have 
to be circulated to all participants to the workshop at the beginning of 
March 2011. There is no conference fee for members of ECPR institutions. 
Grants for participation are available for graduates, young academics and 
retired members of the profession. For more information, go to: 
www.ecprnet.eu/funding_and_awards/documents/ECPR_joint_sessions_grant.pdf


Workshop Outline (Full Outline: 
www.ecprnet.eu/joint_sessions/st_gallen/documents/outlines/21.pdf)
Recent controversial events illustrate fully the relevance, significance and 
complexity of a requirement of sincerity or truthfulness in politics. 
Consider, for instance, the context preceding and following the war in Iraq: 
it seems clear that the condition of sincerity has been functioning on 
various levels, as an unquestioned assumption, ever since the conflict 
started. Sincerity has played the role of a personal value, which can be 
invoked in justification of particular decisions, it has played a 
legitimising function as a norm in political relations among the members of 
a nation or state, or between nations or states at the international level.
Given the relevance of the question of sincerity, it is not surprising that 
it occupies such an important place in contemporary philosophical debates, 
where the existence of the important philosophical legacy, in particular the 
Kantian one, is easily noticeable. Against the background of the Kantian 
legacy, the proposed workshop aims to approach the question of sincerity in 
a distinctive way, more exactly, from the perspective of the following two 
sets of questions: first, we are interested in whether and in what ways a 
principle of sincerity is politically relevant and can be justified in 
concrete political contexts; secondly, we are interested in the particular 
factors which, in those concrete political contexts, limit (in part or 
completely) the validity of a principle of sincerity (or related principles 
or values, such as standards of truthfulness, of prohibition of lying or 
deception).


Best wishes,
Sorin

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Dr Sorin Baiasu
Lecturer in Philosophy

Philosophy Programme Director
Secretary of the UK Kant Society
Co-convenor of the ECPR Kantian Standing Group

Philosophy Programme
SPIRE
University of Keele
Staffordshire ST5 5BG, UK
Tel: +44(0)1782-583364 (w)
       +44(0)7960-892201 (c)
Fax: +44(0)1782-583592
Web: keele.ac.uk/depts/spire/staff/baiasu

If you have any problems in replying to the above address, please send your 
message to: [log in to unmask]

UK Kant Society: keele.ac.uk/UKKS
ECPR Kantian Group: keele.ac.uk/ecprkant
Forum for Philosophical Research: keele.ac.uk/philosophyforum
Philosophy @ Keele Weblog: philosophyk.wordpress.com
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