The Good Society and its Limits: Contemporary Challenges to Ethico-Political Legitimation and Grounding.

Contemporary political developments point to a state of polarization between those who embrace the notion of a normative ethical foundation for a good society (“normativists”) and those who regard such ethical normativism as problematic (“realists”). This international one-day conference invites abstracts for papers in social/political philosophy that will approach this issue in ways that go beyond established frameworks of political understanding. Submissions should aim to address the new and emerging challenges to traditional conceptions of how normative forms of political legitimation are arrived at. They should preferably do so in ways that speak directly to contemporary concerns about the social, political, economic and technological conditions on which such forms of political legitimation are thought to depend for their ethical validation.