Philosophy Club

Next meeting:

Friday 4 October 2013
2:00 – 4:00
Liberal Arts, Room 3215

Topic: TBA

Tuesday 8 October 2013
5:30–8:30
Stan McKenzie Commons

Philosophy Department Game Night
(for Philosophy Majors, Minors, and Faculty)

There will be board and card games, food catered by Moe’s Southwest Grill, and fellow students and faculty from the Philosophy Department.

Please RSVP! Get info from Kayla Emerson: kre1322@rit.edu

Thursday 10 October 2013
4:00 PM
Stan McKenzie Commons
(Liberal Arts, Room 1251, ground floor)

Bruce Landsman
(University of Utah)

“Equality”

The authors of the Declaration of Independence found it self-evident that all men are created equal. Equality has clearly played an important role in American and Western political thought. Equality, however, is a complex concept with different meanings. There is equality of rights, equal citizenship, equality under the law, equality of opportunity, economic equality, and more. What did the authors mean by equality? What do or should we mean by equality today? The aim of this talk is to explain the most basic idea of human equality and explore its implications for political policy and practice.

Sponsored by the Hale Chair in Applied Ethics

Thursday 14 November 2013
4:00 PM
Bamboo Room, Student Center, Room 2650

Margaret Watkins
(St. Vincent College)

“Of Friendship and Factions”

Unlike other early modern essayists, such as Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon, David Hume did not write a single essay dedicated to friendship. From the beginning, however, Hume’s essays show an interest in friendship as essential to the most pleasant and the most important aspects of human life. Hume judges institutions and practices in part by their tendencies to promote or damage friendships. And without naiveté about the darker side of human relationships, he devotes serious consideration to which activities and character traits promote friendship in its better manifestations. The results challenge us to reconsider our preconceptions about the place of friendship in modern life. I will examine what the Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary have to teach us about friendship, with special attention to friendship between the sexes and the influence of friendship on political factionalism.

Sponsored by the Hale Chair in Applied Ethics

Thursday 21 November 2013
4:00 PM
Imaging Science Auditorium (76-1125)

Jennifer Mensch
(Penn State)

“From Anthropology to Ethics in Kant”

Sponsored by the Hale Chair in Applied Ethics

Thursday 20 March 2014
Time: TBA
Room: TBA

Geoff Sayre-McCord
(University of North Carolina)

“Morality and Evolution”

Sponsored by the Hale Chair in Applied Ethics