Miranda Fricker – “A Humanistic Discipline: Williams’ Naturalistic Philosophy” (The YTL Centre Annual Lecture)

Date: 5 March 2020

Time: 6.00pm – 8.00pm

Venue: Great Hall, Ground Floor, King’s Building, King’s College London, Strand Campus

A drinks reception will follow the lecture.

Abstract: Interpreting Bernard Williams’ ethical philosophy is not easy for a number of reasons. One of them is that whereas tracing the developments that integrate a philosopher’s oeuvre usually entails explaining how and why they modified their views over time, Williams did not change his mind about anything. A natural approach to Williams’ work is to picture it as a web of inter-related commitments where no single commitment has unique priority. Against this natural thought, however, I will venture that the contours of his philosophy become clearest if one considers that there is a core organizing conviction that shapes the whole.

Biography: Professor Miranda Fricker, Presidential Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, City University of New York. Professor Fricker’s main areas of interest are in ethics, social epistemology, and feminist philosophy, with occasional forays into political philosophy. She completed her doctoral work at the University of Oxford (DPhil, 1996), then moved to the University of London for a Jacobsen Research Fellowship, which was followed by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. From 2000 to 2012, she taught in the Philosophy Department at Birkbeck, University of London; she served as Head of Department from 2011 to 2012, leaving to take up a Chair at the University of Sheffield.

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This event is open to the public and everybody is welcome to attend, though everyone must register.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-ytl-centre-annual-lecture-in-politics-philosophy-and-law-a-humanistic-discipline-williams-tickets-89987624407