Tuesday, April 16
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 4 pm

The Idea of the Theological Virtues   
Daniel Watts, University of Essex

The doctrine of the theological virtues holds that faith, hope and love are virtues of a special kind. Being divine gifts, and directed towards our supernatural telos, these virtues differ in kind from those on the classical lists, not least the ones Aquinas called ‘cardinal’. This doctrine gives rise to a dilemma. Either the theological virtues are capable of being cultivated through human agency, in which case they do not in this respect differ in kind from those on the classical lists – or they are incapable of being cultivated through human agency, in which case they are not really human virtues. In this paper, I chart possible responses to this dilemma and advance what I call a non-theological solution to the problem it articulates. Developing Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of ‘virtues of acknowledged dependence’, I argue that there is a cogent way of thinking of faith, hope and love as virtues of a kind, without recourse to Aquinas’ views about human teleology or to any special theory of divine agency. On the approach I develop, faith, hope and love are virtues of a kind because of the way in which they express the distinctive stance involved in owning up to our human dependence and vulnerability. My overall aim is to show that ethicists still have much to learn from the idea of the theological virtues, even if they do not accept the Thomistic framework in which this idea is traditionally advanced.

Wednesday, April 17
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 10 am

Love’s Telos: Kierkegaard’s Critique of Preferential Love    
Daniel Watts, University of Essex

Kierkegaard’s Works of Love is often associated with a harshly dismissive stance toward ordinary human love, as measured against an ascetic ideal of pure, Christian, non-preferential love. Despite a number of recent attempts to give it a sympathetic hearing, the worry persists that this text denigrates most what we ordinarily call love in ways that are extreme and implausible. My own view is that, on a standard, moralizing reading of Works of Love, this sort of complaint cannot be adequately answered. However, I believe that the moralizing reading misconstrues the overall structure of Kierkegaard’s critique and misses its internal character. My main aim in this paper is therefore to clarify the structure of Kierkegaard’s argument and to develop an alternative interpretative framework. While I shall not try here to offer a full defense of the standpoint of Works of Love, I do hope to indicate why stock criticisms miss their target and how this text offers a cogent overall contribution to the philosophy of love.

Wednesday, April 17
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 2-5 pm

The Problem of Inherited Guilt in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or
Simon Thornton

Autonomy, Authenticity, and Alterity
Martijn Buijs

Thursday, April 18
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 9-12 pm

A Leftist Turns from Marxism to the Poem: On the Soul’s Relationship to Form
Saleem Al-Bahloly

The Lament in Songs and Narratives of Slavery in the Romantic Archive
Catherene Ngoh

Thursday, April 18
Robertson Gymnasium 1000A, 2-5 pm

Watchfulness as a Virtue: Christian and Secular Perspectives
Daniel Watts, University of Essex

March 22, 2019 at 10 a.m.

Robertson Gymnasium 1000A

In this seminar discussion of her paper “Regression, Ressentiment and the Crisis of Democracy,” Rahel Jaeggi responds to the question, “Are we facing a crisis of democracy?” Engaging a range of thinkers from Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Scheler through Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno to Wendy Brown, Jaeggi argues that the crisis of democracy today is a crisis of addressing and even experiencing crisis.

Max Scheler, Ressentiment (1915).

Rahel Jaeggi is Professor of Social and Political Philosophy and Director of the Center for Humanities and Social Change at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Jaeggi is a leading voice in Critical Theory and author of numerous important works including, in English, Alienation (Columbia University Press, 2014) and Critique of Forms of Life (Harvard University Press, 2019).

March 15, 2019 at 10 a.m.

Robertson Gymnasium 1000A

K.E. Løgstrup’s (1905-1981) signature theory of “expressions of life” represents the culmination of his ethical thought. According to this theory, some phenomena expressive of human interdependence – such as trust and compassion – are seen to be fundamental for our capacity to respond excellently to the needs of others. So construed, on Løgstrup’s view, the expressions of life provide phenomenological attestation of the possibility of agapic love.

In developing this theory, Løgstrup engaged with various philosophical and theological viewpoints, ranging from the analytic British moral philosophy of his day, through to stalwarts of the ‘continental’ tradition (such as Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre), as well as with strands of dialectical theology and Lutheran natural theology that were prominent in Denmark at the time Løgstrup was writing. Unfortunately, Løgstrup’s thinking in this area remained unfinished at the time of his death. Consequently, interpreting and assessing Løgstrup’s theory of expressions of life is doubly difficult: Firstly, it demands that readers become oriented to Løgstrup’s specific way of thinking, which not only resists easy categorization into either camp of the so-called analytic/continental divide, but also resists any sharp distinction between the religious and the secular. Secondly, given its unfinished and fragmented state, Løgstrup’s theory places further interpretive burdens on the reader to parse and elucidate the sometimes under-determined and sometimes even contradictory analyses that it comprises.

Nonetheless, Løgstrup’s ethical thought is currently enjoying a revival of interest, especially within Anglo-American moral philosophy. In this revivalist spirit, I will, in this seminar, canvass one plausible interpretation of Løgstrup’s theory of expressions of life. Specifically, I will suggest that Løgstrup’s theory of expressions of life can be fruitfully understood as representing a version of moral internalism, which is in many respects comparable to that contained in the thought of Iris Murdoch. I shall term the distinctive version of moral internalism promoted by Løgstrup as moral grace. Then, I will consider two objections to Løgstrup’s theory, so interpreted: (1) I defend Løgstrup’s position against a general falsifying objection that has been levelled against moral internalism; and (2) I defuse a worry that emerges in light of this defence – namely, that Løgstrup’s theory precludes the possibility of moral progress.

K.E. Løgstrup, “The Sovereign Expressions of Life” in Beyond the Ethical Demand (Notre Dame, 2007), 49-81.