Dr James Fowler from the Department of French and Dr Marine Ganofsky (University of St Andrews) are organising a Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (KIASH)-funded conference at Reid Hall, University of Kent at Paris, to be held 23 to 24 May 2014.
The conference title is ‘Virtue and Enlightenment’. Well over two centuries after Kant offered his own answer to the question ‘what is Enlightenment?’, research into the question is flourishing. Within this broad field, recent research includes a renewed focus on virtue ethics, moral philosophy and religious belief. Such work allows for the detailed, contextualized and interdisciplinary study of all aspects of the problem of virtue, from Aristotle to Wesley and beyond. However, no study has yet fully probed the French Enlightenment’s role in crafting modern definitions of the complex notion of ‘virtue’, from Diderot to Sade, from Rousseau to Greuze.
The conference aims to contribute to this field by offering a double focus on the Age of Enlightenment and its discourses on virtue. We aim to reveal the extent to which the notion of virtue preoccupied thinkers, writers and artists in the long eighteenth century. What is exceptional about the eighteenth century’s treatment of virtue? What did the Enlightenment bring to the established reflections on virtue?
Papers are invited to cover a broad range of perspectives from various disciplines including literature, philosophy, theology, intellectual and socio-cultural history, visual arts, theory and history of reception, and print culture. Following a keynote lecture by Professor Daniel Brewer of the University of Minnesota, communications may explore, but are not restricted to, the following topics:
- Transnational perspectives
- Relations between virtue, goodness and merit
- Virtue in the Encyclopédie
- Virtue and sentiment
- (Un)Virtuous behaviours and characters
- Women on ‘virtue’ (salonnières, painters, bluestockings, romans de filles)
- Prudes and prostitutes
- Virtue and libertinism
- From sacred to profane subjects: Virtue in painting
- Revolutionary virtues.
It is expected that the proceedings will be published. The conference languages are both French and English.
Please submit your proposals (250 words) to virtue.enlightenment@gmail.com. The deadline is 15 January 2014.
To keep up-to-date with this conference, please visit the conference webpage:
blogs.kent.ac.uk/virtue-and-enlightenment/