Stanley Cavell at 100. An International Centennial Conference - Rome Conference

Department of Philosophy

Sapienza Università di Roma

 

Stanley Cavell at 100

An International Centennial Conference

Paris | Rome | Boston

- Rome Conference -

Ethics, Politics, Forms of Life

8-10 June 2026

Organized by Piergiorgio Donatelli

 

Venue

Villa Mirafiori

Via Carlo Fea 2, Rome

 

Program

8 JUNE

ROOM 5

09:00–9:30: Welcome and Opening remarks

Opening Lecture | Chair: Paola Marrati

9:30–10:30 Veena Das (Johns Hopkins): Opening lecture Objects Beyond Catalogues: Yet Another Take on the Outer and the Inner

10:30–10:45: Break

ROOM 5

Plenary Panel 1 | Chair: Jeroen Gerrits

10:45–11:25 Élise Domenach (École Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière, IUF): Projecting Cavell: skepticism and ecocinema

11:25–12:05 Nancy Yousef (Yale): Must we mean what we write? or, can ethics and aesthetics be one?

12:05–12:45 Michael Campbell (Kyoto University): The critical sensibility and the senses of criticism

12:45–14:15: Lunch break

ROOM 5

Keynote Lecture 1 | Chair: Juliet Floyd

14:15–15:05: Alice Crary (New School – ISJPS Paris 1): Pro-democratic defiance

15:05–15:20: Break

Parallel Sessions A

 

ROOM 5 | Chair: Alessio Vaccari

15:20–16:20

Rico Gutschmidt (Universität Konstanz): Cavell, skepticism, and the epistemic transformation of groundlessness

Chester Leung (University of Southampton): Self-knowledge, selfhood, and the truth of scepticism

Francesco Gandellini (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): The truth on the truth of scepticism

16:20–16:50 Discussion

ROOM 1 | Chair: Miranda Boldrini

15:20–16:20

Simon van der Weele (University of Humanistic Studies Utrecht): Moral status, profound intellectual disability, and skepticism: from moral status to acknowledgment

Uri Brun (Oxford): Beyond the implementation problem: a Cavellian perspective on conceptual engineering

Francesco Zucchini (Sapienza): Normativity without rules: Stanley Cavell on language and ethics

16:20–16:50 Discussion

ROOM 12 | Chair: Clara Han

15:20–16:20  

Reza Hosseini (Rosebank International, South Africa): Stanley Cavell on what used to be called the state of one’s soul

Amir Sotoudeh (Sapienza): From Private Sensation to Shared Intelligibility: The Moral Life of Reason and the Perfectionist Imagination in Pain

Lucilla Guidi (UniPegaso - Universität Potsdam): Cavell on soul-blindness: seeing and failing to see others

16:20–16:50 Discussion

16:50–17:05: Break

ROOM 5

Keynote Lecture 2 | Chair: Sandra Laugier

17:05–17:55: Roberto De Gaetano (Sapienza): The art of acknowledgement

9 JUNE

ROOM 5

Keynote Lecture 3 | Chair: Alice Crary

09:15–10:05: Victor Krebs (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú): Neither progress nor decline. Cavell’s pertinence to the anthropocene

10:05–10:20: Break

ROOM 5

Plenary Panel 2 | Chair: Daniele Lorenzini

10:20–11:00 Clara Han (Johns Hopkins): “From me it is born”: the singularity of a life and a politics of the ordinary

11:00–11:40 Alessio Vaccari (Sapienza): Reading Nietzsche’s ethical thought through Cavell’s moral perfectionism

11:40–12:20 Lotte Buch Segal Undoing a form of life: How knowledge of Palestine became pale

 

12:20–13:35: Lunch break

Parallel Sessions B

 

ROOM 5 | Chair: Piergiorgio Donatelli

13:35–14:35

Gustavo Gómez Pérez (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana): The tragic sense of responsibility: Cavell, affective injustice, and the acknowledgment of pain in Colombia’s conflict

Luigi Corrias (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam): Acknowledgement after dehumanization: Cavell and the politics of reconciliation

Arnaud Petit (Oxford): A perfectionist play of voices

14:35–15:05 Discussion

ROOM 12 | Chair: Lucilla Guidi

13:35–14:35

Camila Lobo (Universidade Nova de Lisboa): Cavell’s politics of means: moral perfectionism and prefigurative practice in times of crisis

Wade Roberts (Juniata College): Aversive thinking in dark times: confronting the contemporary crises of democracy

Miranda Boldrini (Nantes Université): Cavell, anthropology, and ordinary ethics

 14:35–15:05 Discussion

15:05–15:20: Break

 Parallel Sessions C

 

ROOM 5 | Chair: Victor Krebs 

15:20–16:20

Gilad Nir (Universität Potsdam): Modernism, skepticism and theatricality

Bojin Zhu (Universität Wien): Separateness and the limits of public language

Kristen De Man (University of Chicago): “All my words are someone else’s”: Stanley Cavell on the individual and the community

16:20–16:50 Discussion

ROOM 1 | Chair Luca Tenneriello

15:20–16:00

Jonas Friedli (New School): Overconfidence in convention: on passion, expression and irreducibility in Derrida’s and Cavell’s second encounter with Austin

Juliette Courtillé (Sorbonne University): Ways of doing philosophy: the Cavellian legacy of Hilary Putnam

Luca Antonio Donato (Sapienza): Acknowledgment after AI: Enabling Avoidance

16:00–16:30 Discussion

 

ROOM 12 | Chair: Élise Domenach

15:20–16:20

Moran Godess Riccitelli (Bar-Ilan University – Universität Potsdam): The aesthetic ground of Cavell’s moral perfectionism

Saliha Shah (Women’s College Srinagar): The Ontology of Onwardness: Thinking of Cavell and Iqbal

Luka Chilvers (University College London): Cavell and Midgley on games and (ordinary) life

16:20–16:50 Discussion

16:50–17:05: Break

 

ROOM 5

Keynote Lecture 4 | Chair: Paul Standish

17:05–17:55: Paola Marrati (Johns Hopkins): Cavell and Baldwin: knowledge of the self and knowledge of reality

10 JUNE

Parallel Sessions D

 

ROOM 5 | Chair: Nancy Yousef

9:30–10:30

Kevin Spencer (Wenzhou-Kean University): Debasing Emersonian perfectionism: l'acte gratuit as genre

Lèa Boman (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): From events to moments: the ethics of ordinary time in Cavell and Emerson

Luke Ciancarelli (Harvard) and Austin Wang (Johns Hopkins): On the source of the perfectionist demand “Be true to yourself”

10:30–11:00 Discussion

ROOM 1 | Chair: Michael Campbell

9:30–10:30

Anton Hug (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): Conflictual gender disagreements

Francesca Scapinello (Universidade de Lisboa): Cavell and anarchy

Luca Tenneriello (Sapienza): “Not a competing theory of the moral life”: Cavell vs Rawls

10.30-11.00: Discussion

 

ROOM 12 | Chair: Lotte Buch Segal

9:30–10:10

Edward Guetti (American University, Washington, DC): With and against abandonment: the Emersonian perfectionist and Homo Sacer

Justin Burdick (University of South Florida): Attuning to the Over-Soul: Emerson’s metaphysical posture and Cavellian moral perfectionism

10:10-10:40: Discussion

11:00–11:15: Break

ROOM 5

Keynote Lecture 5 | Chair: Naoko Saito

11:15–12:05: Paul Standish (University College London): In the craftsman’s garden

Conclusions

12:05–12:35: Piergiorgio Donatelli, Sandra Laugier, Juliet Floyd

ROOMS

Room 5 (Aula V): ground floor

Room 12 (Aula XII): outside

Room 1 (Aula I): outside