Visiting Speakers - Spring 2008
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Jonathan Kvanvig
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University
Date: May 5, 2008
Time: 3:30pm -
Place: 1210 McClung Tower
Title: "Recent Attempts to Avoid the Problem of the Value of Knowledge"
Hugh LaFollette
Cole Chair in Ethics at the University of South Florida [St Petersburg]
Date: May 1, 2008
Time: 5:00pm
Place: 1210 McClung Tower
Title: "Licensing Parents Revisited"
Dr. Stephen Cohen
University New South Wales
Date: April 22, 2008
Time: 3:30pm
Place: 1210 McClung Tower
Title: "Promoting Ethical Judgement in an Organizational Context"
Professor Cohen is a candidate for the Philosophy Department Head position.
Dr. Carolyn Merchant
University of California, Berkeley
Date: April 21, 2008
Time: 4:00pm (refreshments at 3:30)
Place: McClung Museum Auditorium
Title: "Reinventing Eden: the Fate of Nature in Western Culture"
The mainstream narrative of Western culture is a story of the recovery of the garden of Eden. Since the seventeenth century, using science, technology, and capitalism, the New World wilderness has been transformed into a cultivated garden, reversing the precipitous fall from Eden and redeeming both nature and human beings. Fallen nature (Eve) was reinvented as a garden by male agency (fallen Adam). This modern, progressive story, however, is recast as a postmodern narrative by ecofeminists and environmentalists and as a chaotic narrative by postmodern science. Both challenges have implications for a new ethic of partnership between humanity and nature.
Perhaps best known for her work The Death of Nature (1980 and 1990), Carolyn Merchant is a professor of Environmental History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her works spans the fields of gender studies, history of science and ecology from the early modern period to the present. One of her recent works Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture shows how environmental degradation as we understand it now stems in large part from historical interpretation of the Garden of Eden and humankind’s control over nature.
Gilbert Meilaender
Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Professor of Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University.
While here, Meilaender will give two presentations:
- "What Does it Mean to be Human?"
Thursday February 28th @ 7pm in Lindsay Young Auditorium (1st floor Hodges Library)
A conversation between Meilaender and Dr. John Hardwig (Head of Philosophy Department and specialist in Bioethics)
- "Human Dignity: Exploring and Explicating the Council's Vision"
Friday February 29 @ 3.30pm in 1210-11 McClung Tower.
About Gilbert Meilaender
Before coming to Valparaiso in 1996 Gilbert Meilaender taught at the University of Virginia (1976-78) and at Oberlin College (1978-96). He has served on the Editorial Board and as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Religious Ethics. He has also served as an Associate Editor for Religious Studies Review, on the Editorial Board of the Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, and on the Editorial Advisory Board of First Things. His published work falls generally into the area of religious ethics. Most recently he has edited (together with William Werpehowski) The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics (2005). He has a special interest in bioethics, is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, and has been a member of the President's Council on Bioethics since its inception in January, 2002. Meilaender's book, Bioethics; A Primer for Christians, is currently in its 2nd edition.