On 8-10 March 2019, the Philosophy Department in Lausanne will host the 2019 spring conference of the Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy ISSP Sioux Falls, (the former Center for the Study of Scottish Philosophy CSSP, Princeton).
1. Conference programme
Friday 8 March
1pm: Room 126 Reception and registration1.40-2.00pm: Room 126 Opening remarks2-3.30pm: Room 126 Plenary 1 - Broadie 3.30-4pm: Room 221 Break
4-5.30pm: Room 126 Parallel session 1 - Santori & Bee 4-5.30pm: Room 118.1 Parallel session 2 - Roulin & Carroll 5.30: End
Saturday 9 March
9.30-11am: Room 126 Plenary 2 J. - Taylor
11-11.30am: Room 221 Break
11.30-1pm: Room 126 Parallel session 3 - Buttle & Etchegaray 11.30-1pm: Room 118.1 Parallel session 4 - McHugh & Shrock
1-2-30pm: Lunch
2.30-4pm: Room 126 Plenary 3 - Carey
4-4.30: Room 221 Break
4.30-5.15pm: Room 126 Parallel session 5 - Heydt 4.30-5.15pm: Room 118.1 Parallel session 6 - Boeker 5.15-6pm: Room 126 G. Graham Prize talk - Galvagni 6pm: End
8pm: Dinner
Sunday 10 March
9.30-11am: Room 126 Parallel session 7 - Agnesina & Lemmens 9.30-11am: Room 118.1 Parallel session 8 - Edwards & Bergont 11-11.30am: Room 221 Break
11.30-1pm: Room 126 Plenary 4 - Graham
1pm: Room 126 Concluding remarks
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2. Papers (in order of presentation)Plenaries
Alexander Broadie University of Glasgow
The Declaration of Arbroath in the Shadow of Scotus
The talk will contain a substantial historical element contextualising the Declaration of Arbroath. It will then present the message of the Declaration and will demonstrate that the Declaration is a Scotistic document.The talk will also suggest that other leading Scottish thinkers up to the Reformation were committed to that same Scotistic political doctrine that is found in the Declaration.
Jacqueline Taylor, University of San Francisco
Hume and Smith on Resentment, Sympathy, and the Complexity of Human Sociability
Both David Hume and Adam Smith regard resentment as an emotion important for both self- esteem and justice. We expect resentment from someone whose legitimate expectations (particularly rights) have been disregarded or violated. Moreover, our capacity for empathy with another’s resentment plays a crucial role in the development of justice: for Hume, extending the scope of those entitled to the liberties that justice protects, and for Smith, contributing to the grounds for punishment of wrongdoing. I defend Smith and Hume on the importance of resentment, placing my analysis in the context of a larger recent debate prompted by Martha Nussbaum’s argument against an appropriate role for anger in furthering justice or combating injustice.
Daniel Carey NUI (Galway)
The complex question of religious toleration bedevilled Irish politics in Hutcheson’s era. In 1719, after much argument and dispute, a toleration bill was passed by the Irish parliament (without including Catholics in its compass), bringing measures for protestant dissenters in line with English legal arrangements. But the Act did not remove the Sacramental Test clause that excluded dissenters from political office. The work and career of Francis Hutcheson pivoted in a number of ways on issues of toleration. This paper investigates his relationship to an Irish tradition of thinking on the topic, associated with dissenters and with members of the established church, notably Edward Synge II, Archbishop of Tuam, and his son Edward Synge III (1691–1762), prebendary of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1725 (and later Bishop of Elphin). The latter Synge was Hutcheson’s friend and supporter.
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Francis Hutcheson and the Question of Religious Toleration
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Hutcheson himself had come to Dublin to lead a dissenting academy in the wake of the 1719 Act. The philosophy set out in An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue(1725) can be considered as a plea for recognition of a common moral humanity which downplayed religious difference, making toleration a sound policy. The idiom of gratitude sounded throughout the work signals Presbyterian reasonableness. The position of Catholics in this scenario remained in doubt. For Edward Synge II, for example, the authority claimed by the pope and the prospect of disturbance from Catholics justified ‘the restraint of strict laws’. Synge’s son was slightly softer. He agreed that a religion posing a civil threat was not tolerable (a point underlined by the ongoing Jacobite danger), but he proposed to distinguish between Catholics who supported the unjust authority to depose princes claimed by the pope and those who repudiated it. Synge’s strategy was evidently to expose those Catholics who remained politically problematic by agreeing an oath of abjuration that would expose the troublemakers and consolidate those worthy of inclusion in the state. Hutcheson’s philosophy, viewed in this context, required careful expression on the issue of toleration. Overextending the case for toleration would have alienated the establishment support needed to advance the condition of dissenters. Only those in the confident position of Edward Synge III could risk a rapprochement, and even he received a stinging answer from the Vicar of Naas, Stephen Radcliffe, who replied with amazement that he could preach a sermon proposing Catholic toleration on the anniversary of the Irish Rebellion.
Hutcheson touched on the issue of toleration in his Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions (1728) and he subscribed in 1728 to a collection of eleven sermons by Gaspar Caillard, a Huguenot minister in Dublin, two of which addressed the theme of toleration. Hutcheson’s emphasis in the Essay and in the Inquiry on what he termed ‘calm publick Desires’ and ‘calm universal Benevolence’, while resonating with his Stoic sensibilities, also suggested a distancing from any indications of enthusiasm, making his position reassuring in a Dublin context. Moreover, Hutcheson sounded a subtle anti-Catholic note, congenial in this setting, in the second edition of the Inquiry (1726), when paralleling American Indian atrocities with the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris, the Irish rebellion, and the Inquisition, all ‘flowing from a like Perversion of Humanity by Superstition’.
Gordon Graham
Princeton Theological Seminary
Democracy, Authority and God
In his defence of toleration, Locke famously excludes atheists and Catholics on the grounds that they reject the basis of the ultimate authority of the State. This exclusion fits rather ill with the political liberalism that eventually emerged from Locke’s own Second Treatise on Government, and has thus been regarded as an unhappy limitation. Yet, an important question arises as to what the source of the State’s ultimate authority is for liberal democracy. This talk explores this issue, and advances the case for thinking that Locke’s exclusions are not so easily dismissed as contemporary political philosophy generally supposes.
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Parallel sessions
Paolo Santori
University Roma LUMSA
Theodicy and Economics: Echoes of Bayle in Hume’s and Smith’s economic theories.
This research aims at comparing two modern traditions of economic thought, Classical Political and Civil Economy. The former, rooted in the Scottish Enlightenment, is represented by Adam Smith (1723-1790). The latter, developed within the Italian Enlightenment, flourished in Naples and had as its main exponent Antonio Genovesi (1713-1769). The comparison is based on the theological backgrounds of the works of Smith and Genovesi. More precisely, we interpret their economic views as two different answers to the problem of ‘Theodicy’, i.e. the coexistence between an almighty God and worldly evils. This paper also tries to re-open the Adam Smith Problem, stressing the discontinuity between TheTheory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776) from a theological, thus economic, perspective.
Michele Bee University of Lausanne
Adam Smith’s Fanaticism: The Economic Origins of Disagreeable Morals
Fanaticism in The Wealth of Nations is usually connected to competition among religious sects. Yet, Smith suggests also a relationship, often overlooked, between religious fanaticism and the economic conditions of life. The present article explores this connection throughout the link between variations in moral judgement on the expression of emotions and variations in general economic conditions, which is exposed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The aim of the article is to show how, according to Smith, economic depression and the rise of fanaticism in society can be related.
Justine Roulin University of Lausanne
Family, sociability, and authority: the evolution of social relationships in John Millar’s account of society
My aim is ot analyse John Millar’s notion of sociability through the prism of the family. Millar’s account of society combines two different schemes that encompass the evolution of society: the four stages theory (hunting, pasturage, agriculture and commerce), and a three stages model of political authority (the father, the chief, and the sovereign). The two schemes do not exactly overlap, the transition of political authority from chief to sovereign taking place in the course of the third, agricultural economic stage. Analysing Millar’s interpretation of social progress from the angle of the family allows to identify his particular notion of sociability and to underline the evolution of each particular social relationship (between husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant).