CFP: The Philosophy of Conflict

Call for Papers

The Conceptual Foundations of Conflict Project at the University of Southern California is issuing a call for papers in all areas of philosophy touching on issues concerning interpersonal conflict, for an online-only conference to be held June 16-17, 2022. The mission of the Conceptual Foundations of Conflict Project is to encourage and promote philosophical work on the nature, sources, structure, and dynamics of interpersonal conflict at all scales, and submissions will be welcome from all areas of philosophy.

Scope

Possible topics for papers may include, but at not limited to, philosophical insight into:

• mechanisms of interpersonal misunderstanding that may drive conflict

• ways that disagreements in politics or personal life can become personal

• difficulties arising for people trying to find common ground in good faith

• mechanisms by which bad faith actors can hijack or manipulate others

• the language of conflict - dehumanization, derogation, insult

• the conditions of conflict - war, politics, family

• the emotions of conflict - anger, jealousy, resentment, fear, humiliation

• the aesthetics of conflict - narrative and otherwise

• the consequences of conflict - relationships, regret, war

• asymmetries in conflict - gender, race, class, sex, sexuality

• institutions for moderating or remedying conflict - political legitimacy, democracy, law

• remedies for conflict - mediation, reconciliation

• and not to exclude topics like abuse, silencing, ideology, propaganda, and prejudice, even where these do not fall cleanly under one of the above topics.

Format

The conference will be held online-only on Thursday and Friday June 16 and 17, 2022, in order to ensure the widest possible participation and attendance. All talks will be live-streamed, and all talks (minus question periods) will be recorded and archived through the CFCP’s YouTube channel and on the CFCP website at www.philosophy.academy. We hope to bring together the widest and most productively intersective range of papers among those submitted for a discussion that will bring out emerging themes even among work from very different areas of philosophy and are hopeful for presenters who are excited to find connections and applications for their work.

Instructions

Papers for submission should be prepares for blind review, saved as a .PDF file, and submitted to CFCP director Mark Schroeder at [email protected]. We will consider submissions of any length, but we expect that papers will be presented in 30, 45, or 60-minute timeslots, and that authors will, if selected, bear the responsibility for converting their written paper into a format that can be presented in the allotted time. Submitted papers do not have to explicitly address conflict per se, as we are not asking anyone to write or revise a paper specifically for our conference, but please include a paragraph or two at the beginning of your blinded submission addressing how you believe that your work speaks to the theme of conflict, and we will ask that, if selected, you try to make this connection explicit in your presentation. Papers submitted before the deadline of March 10, 2022 will be assured of full consideration.