“Dialectical Intrepidity”

Genia Schönbaumsfeld (University of Southampton)

This groundbreaking event is designed to develop novel approaches to the human capacity for moral imagination. Drawing on Søren Kierkegaard’s claim that moral imagination is not just a human faculty but rather the faculty encompassing all others, we intend to show how moral imagination decisively shapes knowing, feeling, and willing. The development of the moral imagination, which allows us to know the experience of others, feel what matters to others, and choose possibilities that arise from outside our own horizons, is essential to healing divisions within our body politic and forming individuals of character. What are the moral issues that arise from the exercise of imagination? What virtues are required to pursue the imaginative life? How does imagination enter into education and formation? What are the connections between ethics and aesthetics?