Stuck with Virtue Conference

Thursday, November 4 and Friday, November 5 Berry will host the first of a three-part conference series entitled “Stuck with Virtue.” This initial conference will include 7 distinct presentations, featuring over two dozen of the country’s leading experts in the fields of philosophy, political science, biology, genetics, sociology, and theology.

ALL 7 PRESENTATIONS ARE CE CREDIT APPROVED!!

Working from the premise that human beings are by nature stuck with virtue, the conference series broadly seeks to identify the scholarly, educational, and civic framework in which an intellectually serious and humanly satisfying new science of virtue could reasonably hope to unfold and develop. To a great degree, our contemporary ideas about the grounds and substance of human virtue can be traced back to the thought of three modern thinkers: Rene Descartes, John Locke, and Charles Darwin. The conference series thus incorporates each of their contributions in light of the contemporary body of knowledge we have gained from recent work in the sciences, philosophy, and theology, with presentations from the experts leading the work and discussions today. Accordingly, the Stuck with Virtue Conference Series, integrating the best thought of the past and the present, directly responds to one of the enduring challenges of the virtuous life itself, namely, the need to understand the relation between who we are, what we have been given, and the concrete circumstances in which we presently find ourselves.

Visit www.stuckwithvirtue.com for more information.

Conference Schedule:

Thursday, November 4, 2010
11:00 Lecture (Evans Auditorium): On Descartes
(Dr. Papazian will be a respondent!)
2:00 Panel (Evans Auditorium): Walker Percy on Science and the Soul
4:00 Lecture (Evans Auditorium): On Darwin
**7:00 Lecture (Ford Dining Hall): On Locke (with dinner)

Friday, November 5, 2010
9:00 Panel (Evans Auditorium): Being More Cartesian than Descartes
10:30 Panel (Evans Auditorium): Tom Wolfe, Technology, and Greatness
**12:30 Lecture (Krannert Ballroom): On Science, Virtue, and the Birth of Modernity (with lunch)

**Please contact me directly for information about obtaining an invitation to either or both of these lectures! It would be great if you all can come to all of these events, but if you haven't signed up with Dr. Lawler for the two lectures with food yet, let me know so that I can tell him to add you!!

Another Productive Collegiate Network Conference

This past weekend, Tricia Steele and I traveled to Charlotte, NC to take part in yet another Collegiate Network conference. This is the organization that has given the journal a generous printing grant. At this particular event, students from all over the South met to share their experiences concerning the production of independent college publications. The weekend conference consisted of several workshops ranging from "Business Management" to "Ethics." Many tutorials not only offered indispensable advice, but outlined practical ways in which to accomplish the professional goal of publishing independently. To help students visualize this and the potential long-term success that might come about in the discipline of letters, several notable journalistic professionals were enlisted to speak to the student body.

One notable impression was made by Anne Carson Daly who is the Vice President for Academic Affairs from Belmont Abbey College and was a former Director of Policy Communications for Pfizer. Her speech, "What Does it Mean? Why Words Matter," particularly resonated with the philosophically-inclined students in the audience--those who are always eager to engage in discussions regarding the nature of language.

The underlying sentiment of her talk revolved around the activity of language, the concrete meaning that words hold, and the responsibility bestowed upon those who take on the role of distributing knowledge and information. Daly holds that those who choose to do so have a duty to be as transparent as possible as well as being responsible for the ignition of intellectual curiosity.

Working from the Platonic model of the Forms, Daly called her young audience to action: words have meaning behind them that ought to be acknowledged and protected. For her, language is not arbitrary, but vital and rich with meaning. Words point to the best of things and it is with this understanding that we create substance out of this world. As conductors of language we should embrace this role and view our duty as something sacred.

The future of Arete rests upon such philosophical vigor. It is our intention to express the temporal through a philosophical lens. We want people to understand the philosophical workings and implications of all things, no matter how minute they may originally appear. Such a lens gives individuals the tools to work past the immediate trappings of circumstance toward the greater things in life that hold ultimate value. Those are the things that we desire to express and protect. We hope that our ideas are infectious, controversial, and compelling. This aim, coincidentally, could not be possible without the basic understanding of how one word's meaning holds the potential to shape an idea, a movement, a mind, or a soul.

Politics of Science and Science of Politics

Berry's 11th Annual Conference on Politics, Religion, Culture and Community begins this Wednesday March 26 and continues to the next day. Details are available here.

Of particular interest, the Wednesday session at 3:30 in the Science Auditorium features Berry philosophy and honors students speaking on science, technology, and the modern world.

Later that evening at 6:00pm also in the Science Auditorium, Professor Patrick Deneen of Georgetown will speak on Virtue, Technology, and Wendell Berry.

All sessions are cultural events.