Save the Date! Dayton Philosophy Colloquium, October 19-20, 2012

The University of Dayton will host a colloquium on “Feminist Pragmatism in Place.” The colloquium will be of interest to people working on feminist pragmatist approaches to place, broadly construed, including natural and built environments and spaces of exclusion and belonging in historical and contemporary contexts.

A formal call for papers will be issued in the fall.

Plenary Speakers:

Lisa Heldke, author of Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer and Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College, will speak on a feminist pragmatist approach to contemporary issues of food and community building. Louise W. Knight, author of Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy and Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, Visiting Scholar, Northwestern University Gender Studies Program and School of Communication, will speak on reading Addams’s rhetoric on social justice.

The colloquium organizers are Denise James ( Denise.James@notes.udayton.edu ) and Marilyn Fischer ( Fischer@udayton.edu ), of the Department of Philosophy, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio.

Dr. Patricia Johnson on "Practical Reasoning, Conversation, and Friendship"

Pat Johnson's article "Practical Reasoning, Conversation, and Friendship" has been published in Gadamer's Hermeneutics and the Art of Conversation, edited by Andrzej Wierenski. This is Volume 2 of International Studies in Hermeneutics and Phenomenology.

While Aristotle’s work is the impetus for much contemporary thought about practical reasoning, it cannot sufficiently encompass the practical reasoning that is needed for our times. Hans-Georg Gadamer frequently acknowledges that his reading of Aristotle’s ethical works, particularly in conjunction with Heidegger’s seminar on the Nicomachean Ethics, is fundamental to his work in philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer’s thought about practical reasoning is a major contribution to the work that needs to be done to help us collectively think about how we shall live in the twenty-first century. The paper shows how Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, and especially his reflections on conversation, can serve as the basis for a contemporary schema for practical reasoning, looks at what he has to say about the role of friendship for practical reasoning, and finally offers some suggestions as to how we should think about friendship in order to better think about practical reasoning.

New Phi Sigma Tau Members!

The members of Phi Sigma Tau invited Dr. Myrna Gabbe to speak at the organization's induction dinner in April this year. The following new members were inducted:

• Theodra E. Bane
• Ariel J. Giles
• Joseph S. Jeziorowski
• Justin R. Lovelace
• Stephen L. Mackell
• Christine J. Olding
• Matthew V. Puccetti

Dr. Danielle Poe's Communities of Peace: Confronting Injustice and Creating Justice

Dr. Danielle Poe's thought provoking volume of papers from the Baker Colloquium has now appeared, Communities of Peace: Confronting Injustice and Creating Justice. Included within is Dr. Denise James's "In Support of the Girls from 'Round Here: Black Feminist Reflections on the Utility of Rage for Building Communities of Support".
From Amazon

UD's CAS 2011 Service Award to . . . Dr. Danielle Poe!

Congratulations to Dr. Danielle Poe on receiving the 2011 University of Dayton College of Arts and Science's Service Award!!!!

PHL & CORE Awards 2011

PHI Student awards 2011

For Senior 1^st Philosophy Award

Co winners: Nicholas Haynes and Nicholas Kuzmick

For Senior 2^nd Philosophy Award

Co winners: Zachary Heck and Nicholas Toth

For Junior Philosophy Award

Stephen Mackell

For Baker Tutoring Award

Zachary Heck 

Dr. Alexus McLeod at Central APA

“Jia Yi and Lu Jia on Shame, Self-Cultivation, and Social Order”

Abstract:
Confucius’ claim in Analects 2.3 that guiding people with virtue (de 德) and ritual (li 禮) is better than guiding them with laws and punishments because it creates a sense of shame (chi 恥) and leads people to order themselves has been widely discussed by the later Confucian tradition, and by contemporary philosophers. The connection of self-cultivation to orderly government is a central theme in Confucianism in general. However, it is not altogether clear how a cultivation of shame in the people through de and li (by the ruler) and the resulting self-cultivation efforts are supposed to lead to order in the state, based on what we find in the Analects alone. Although Mencius and Xunzi both offer accounts of the connection of self-cultivation to order in the state, in the Han dynasty we see a different account of how the ruler initiates self-cultivation, and how this is effective in producing ethically positive behaviors leading to the orderly state. The early Western Han thinkers Jia Yi (200-168 BCE) and Lu Jia (d. 170 BCE) offer similar explanations of the efficacy of virtue and ritual, and that of shame. I examine here the views of these two as a way to explain how the shame in Analects 2.3 might operate (both how it is produced and how it is effective in bringing about social order). I consider whether this is a plausible way to ensure ethical behavior on a large scale and to keep political order. In specific, I argue that the accounts of Jia and Lu are based on a dual-aspect view of ethical cultivation that requires both selective punishment by rulers (only in certain segments of the society) and modeling on exemplars. I argue that this view may ultimately turn out to be more plausible than either the Mencian or Xunzian accounts of the link between self-cultivation and social order, as it combines features of the Mencian internalist and Xunzian externalist accounts of self-cultivation, more clearly specifies the ruler’s role in the process, and gives us a more detailed (and psychologically plausible) account of how shame produces social order, which relies in part on visible disparities between the ruler’s response to shameful behaviors of ministers and to those of the people in general (shu ren 庶人).