CFP: 11th Annual Duquesne Graduate Student Conference: On Forgiveness and War

Call for Abstracts:On Forgiveness and War

Submission Deadline EXTENDED: January 20th, 2016

Keynote: Adrian Switzer

Dates: March 17th and 18th

Contact: [email protected]

The Graduate Students in Philosophy of Duquesne University invite submissions to their 11th Annual conference “On Forgiveness and War”. this conference will take place over two days with participants arriving on a Friday evening to attend a workshop led by our invited speaker. The workshop will function as an introductory discussion to the topic led by the keynote, Dr. Adrian Switzer, concerning a selection chosen by Dr. Switzer and made available to all participants beforehand. The goal of this is to get everyone acclimated to each other, and the topic at large, before the formal conference takes place the next day. 

The topics of forgiveness and war each have deep roots in continental philosophy. Putting the two together, however, may allow for a special investigation into both the limits of forgiveness and the idea of war. Most interestingly, war seems to be an ethical situation for which forgiveness is never called: there are calls for reparations or punishments in post war periods. There have even been calls for forgiveness of certain acts within wars, but such calls usually focus on specific crimes that occur within war as opposed to war itself. This conference, then, seeks to investigate and discuss the natures of forgiveness and war in light of their relation to each other. Such continental thinkers as Derrida, Jankelevitch, Levinas, Nietzsche, Foucault, Husserl, Heidegger, Habermas, Patocka, Butler, and Carl Schmitt all have work which would inform such an investigation, although our conference is hardly limited to considering only these thinkers.

While we are particularly interested in the intersection of forgiveness and war, we will also consider papers on either forgiveness or war. Additionally, papers considering the relationship between forgiveness and violence more broadly construed, will also be considered.

If you are interested in applying to the conference, please submit an abstract of 500 words, along with a separate doc containing contact and institutional information. All submissions should be sent to [email protected].

Papers could explore such possible questions as:

§The different moments of possible forgiveness within war (before war begins, during war, during combat, after the cessation of hostilities, or years later).

§The roles each participant in war (civilian, soldier, leader, etc.) has within war and the possibility each participant has for both forgiving and being forgiven.

§The different types of forgiveness emerging from a conflict such as war: political, personal, unconditional.

§The ethical questions raised by calling for the forgiveness of war, acts of war, or war crimes.

§The relation between the state and the citizen and the possibility of waging war and forgiving possessed by each or the role played by each in both acts.