CFP: Levinas on Socio-political Responsibility and Beyond

French-Jewish-Lithuanian philosopher Emmanuel Levinas became a celebrated thinker for his sincere philosophical attention to the Other, which puts into question the primacy of metaphysics for its propensity to culminate in an egological and totalizing Being as the Self.  With his conviction of Ethics as First Philosophy, Levinas provoked the need for the Self to meet the Face of the Other and be ushered towards the ethical order where human responsibility eventually turns into social commitment and in what Levinas calls ‘substitution’.

As such, Levinas’ radical ethics opened a spectrum of concepts connected to generosity, the good and peace and social order, to name a few.  This makes him and his thoughts a clarion mouthpiece of the world’s most humanitarian concerns.  However, while Levinas formulated his philosophy as a reaction to the violence of wars in, (and ironically) the dehumanizing ontologies of twentieth century, the scenario and plights remain the same even up to this date.  Humanity and philosophy still continue to struggle against egocentrism and clamour for the defense of life, justice and peace. 

Inspired by the promising dimensions in the human responsibility and sociality discourse, the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Santo Tomas is delighted to announce the upcoming International Conference on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas with the theme “On Socio-Political Responsibility and Beyond”, to be held from the 13th to the 15th of July 2017 in Manila, at the Dr. George S.K. Ty Function Hall of the Buenventura Garcia Paredes, O.P., Building of the University of Santo Tomas. 

The main highlight of the conference are the three plenary lectures by Roger Burggraeve, Professor Emeritus from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, a renowned scholar on Levinas. 

Part of the three-day conference are parallel sessions, and so we would like to call for participants to present papers on topics in one of the following threads:

·         Critique of Western Philosophy and the Pre-eminence of Ethics

·         Levinas’ Language of Escape and the Path to the Other

·         Human Responsibility in the Economy of Being

·         Provocations for Social Justice and Peace

·         The Connection between the Good and the Beautiful (Levinas in/and the Arts)

·         Spirituality and the Other (philosophy of religion)

·         Levinas, the Feminine and Feminism

·         Levinas, Environmental Philosophy and Animal Ethics

·         Levinas, Globalization and Technology

·         Levinas and Judaeo-Christian Philosophy

·         Levinas vis-à-vis other philosophers and philosophies 

Papers from other disciplines that may engage with the conference theme are also welcome.  We also accept panel proposals that cover or propose a specific theme.

The Scientific Committee shall only screen abstracts of 200-300 words, prepared as follows:

I.                     Title

II.                   Author/Researcher

III.                 Institutional Affiliation

IV.                 Email Address

V.                   Contact Number

VI.                 Abstract

VII.               Keywords (3-5)

The template for the abstract may be downloaded in this link: https://goo.gl/4QnNKl

The document must be saved as a PDF file, with the filename: Levinas2017.pdf (example:  GARCIALevinas2017.pdf); then sent as an attachment to [email protected]. On the subject line, indicate : Abstract (example:  GARCIA: Abstract).

Helpful Links:

• UST Department of Philosophy: http://philosophy.ust.edu.ph
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/ustphilodept
• Mailing List (registration): https://goo.gl/forms/40YleH2JmBTtCeyv2
• Pre-Conference Workshop (registration): https://goo.gl/forms/2PKKNQbAWkf71KiM2

http://philosophy.ust.edu.ph/levinas-2017.html