Anyone interested in philosophical ideas, whether timely or timeless, is invited to the Guelph Lecture in Philosophy. Each year an accomplished philosopher presents original, provocative ideas in an accessible way.

March 13, 2014: Christine Korsgaard, “A reasonable structure for animal rights”

5:30–7:00 pm on the ground floor of McLaughlin Library

Free and open to the public

Professor Christine Korsgaard is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy in Harvard University’s Department of Philosophy. She works on moral philosophy and its history, practical reason, agency, personal identity, and human/animal relations. She is the author of four books. The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge 1996) examines the history of ideas about the foundations of obligation in modern moral philosophy and presents an account of her own. Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge 1996) is a collection of her essays on Kant's ethics. The Constitution of Agency (Oxford, 2008), is a collection of her recent papers on practical reason and moral psychology. And Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity, (Oxford, 2009) is about the foundation of morality in the nature of agency.

Abstract:  Do animals have moral standing? Why should we care about whether how we treat them is right or wrong? What are the costs of caring, or not caring, about animals? The lecture will discuss possible answers to these questions and invites the audience to engage the debate.

Audio of talk: MP3 format

March 21, 2013: Tim Scanlon, “What is morality?”

Professor T.M. Scanlon is the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity in Harvard University’s Department of Philosophy. He has written on general questions about the nature of morality, and on particular issues such as moral responsibility, promises, equality, tolerance, and freedom of expression. He is the author of ‘What We Owe to Each Other’ (Harvard University Press, 1998), ‘The Difficulty of Tolerance: Essays in Political Philosophy’ (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and ‘Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame’ (Harvard University Press, 2008). In 2009 Dr Scanlon gave the prestigious Locke Lectures at Oxford, entitled Being Realistic About Reasons.

Abstract: Why should we care about whether what we do is right or wrong? What are the costs of caring, or not caring, about this? The lecture will discuss possible answers to these questions, with reference to Herman Melville's story, ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’, seen as a story about the failure of moral communication.

March 23, 2011: Sandra Harding, “Objectivity and diversity”

UCLA Professor Sandra Harding is a prominent figure in philosophy of science and philosophical feminism.  She is the author of many books widely discussed within and outside academic philosophy, including Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives (1991) and Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies (1998).

Abstract: Must objective research be disinterested? When formerly excluded social groups begin to enter universities and research labs, all too often the research questions that interest them are seen as inappropriately biased and self-interested and, therefore, unsuitable topics for research. Yet often philosophers as well as the general public have tended to conflate the disinterestedness of researchers with the potential reliability of the results of their research. However, disinterest and reliability are not in fact linked in that way. For example, most of us are not at all disinterested in such prevailing and presumedly reliable research as that conducted on health and environmental issues. Can previously disvalued interests serve to increase the objectivity of research? This presentation will examine how feminist and postcolonial research in particular has attempted to sort out these issues.

audio of her talk

2010: Paul Franks, “German Idealism, anti-Semitism, and the significance of Jewish philosophy in multicultural modernity

Paul Franks is Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Educated at Oxford and Harvard, his research interests include Jewish philosophy, Kant, German idealism, post-Kantian approaches within analytic and continental philosophy, transcendental arguments, metaphysics and epistemology, and the foundations of the human sciences.  Professor Franks has recently published All or Nothing: Skepticism, Transcendental Arguments and Systematicity in German Idealism (2005).

audio of his talk

2009: Peter Singer, “Ethics and animals”

Professor Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's University Center for Human Values.  Author of numerous books and articles in the areas of ethics and social philosophy, his book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975) introduced the idea of "speciesism" and has been widely influential. His most recent book is The Life You Can Save: Acting Now To End World Poverty (2009)

audio of his talk