Commitment, Individual and Collective

Commitment, Individual and Collective

Workshop at Tampere University, Finland

17th and 18th September, 2026

Invited Speakers:

Cheshire Calhoun, Arizona State University

Sarah Stroud, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Call for Papers

Commitment is central to both individual and collective agency. Given its central place, it is unsurprising that it features in diverse philosophical discussions, such as in discussions of trust, group membership, shared and co-operative activity, partiality, identification, and meaningfulness in life. And yet, in much philosophical literature commitment is relegated to the background of discussion. We invite abstracts that foreground and directly address any aspect of committing and commitment. Among questions that might be addressed are the following:

-       What is it to commit?

-       What are commitments?

-       What kinds of thing can one be committed to?

-       What is the value of commitment?

-       Under what conditions should one remain committed or abandon a commitment?

-       What are collective commitments?

We will select 4-5 abstracts for presentation at the workshop. Abstracts should be no more than 1,000 words excluding bibliography. They should be anonymized and sent to: [email protected] by June 20th. Decisions will be made by June 30th.

Please send questions to [email protected] or [email protected].

This workshop is part of the research project: Commitment and Self-Evaluation: Individual and Collective, funded by the Research Council of Finland 2024-2028.