CALL FOR PAPERS
NOTRE DAME CENTER FOR ETHICS & CULTURE
10th ANNUAL FALL CONFERENCE
The Summons of Freedom: Virtue, Sacrifice, and the Common Good
November 12-14, 2009
This past November 6-8, the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture hosted
its 9th annual fall flagship conference: The Family: Searching for Fairest
Love. Toward the end of that weekend we canvassed the opinions of the
conference audience regarding themes for the 2009 conference, and,
interestingly, a clear consensus emerged. After such a stimulating
conference focused on the various threats to the family here at the dawn of
the 21st century, many of the conference participants expressed a desire to
expand the discussion of family life outward to include the social,
political, and spiritual common goods in which the common good of the family
is nested. At the same time, there was a clear desire to focus on the
virtues as those moral and intellectual habits that allow us to achieve,
solidify, and defend the network of common goods in which we human beings
realize our happiness. After deliberating on this broad consensus with the
staff here at the Center, I concluded that our friends had advised us well.
Thus I am delighted to write to you today in order, first of all, to
announce the theme for the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture's 10th
annual fall conference: The Summons of Freedom: Virtue, Sacrifice, and the
Common Good. The conference will take place November 12-14, 2009, here at
the University of Notre Dame.
Final confirmation of the relevance of this conference theme came when we
reflected once again upon the remarks made on the South Lawn of the White
House by Pope Benedict XVI during his apostolic visit to the United States
last April. In those remarks the Holy Father said:
Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility.
Americans know this from experience-almost every town in this country has
its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of
freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the
cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good, and a
sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the
courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and
values to reasoned public debate.
Here the Holy Father makes clear certain connections that are of utmost
importance not only to us Americans, but also to anyone trying to sort
through the enormous moral and political complexities of our dizzyingly
globalized world. Pope Benedict underscores that freedom is both gift and
summons, a call toward a particular "cultivation" or cultural formation in
the virtues, virtues that always demand sacrifice-and sometimes even the
total sacrifice of one's life-for the sake of common goods higher than the
merely private goods of the self. Earlier in his remarks the Holy Father had
emphasized that "the great intellectual and moral resolve" that, in America,
ended slavery and brought into being the civil rights movement, took
religious belief as a "constant inspiration and driving force," thus
reminding us of Christianity's role as the true preserver and defender of
human freedom. In saying this, the pope invoked his revered predecessor,
John Paul II, who tirelessly preached that "in a world without truth,
freedom loses its foundation."
In taking up the theme, The Summons of Freedom: Virtue,
Sacrifice, and the Common Good, our 10th annual fall conference will reflect
upon political and legal questions having to do with the very nature of the
political common good, the particular conflicts that arise in trying to
achieve it, and the precarious situation of freedom in the democracies of
advanced modernity. But we will also welcome inquiries into social
structures other than political ones-such as the arts-in which the virtues
may flourish, or which are designed in such a way so as to choke off the
development of genuine virtue in favor of ersatz versions. Particular focus
will be placed on the analogous forms of virtuous self-discipline and
sacrifice required to sustain the human network of common goods.
It is entirely fitting, moreover, that in this tenth anniversary
edition of our annual fall conference we will be highlighting the theme of
virtue. When, ten years ago, we launched our initial triad of fall
conferences-A Culture of Death (2000), A Culture of Life (2001), Agendas for
Reform (2002)-we took inspiration in large part from the Center's senior
research fellow, Alasdair MacIntyre, and his hugely influential work in
recalling moral philosophy and theology to the tradition of the virtues. How
better to celebrate this anniversary edition of the conference than to
return to the fountain of Professor MacIntyre's work for fresh inspiration,
especially in the year of his eightieth birthday!
Our aim, as always, is to bring together a large number of respected
scholars representing all the main academic fields, from Catholic,
Christian, and secular institutions, to engage in a spirited discussion of
this theme from the perspectives of philosophy, theology and religious
studies, law, history, the social sciences, literature and the arts, as well
as other fields of intellectual inquiry and endeavor.
We welcome the submission of abstracts drawing on a wide range of moral and
religious perspectives and academic specialties. Special consideration will
be given to submissions of ideas for panel discussions that would bring
together several people to discuss a focused theme. Possible issues to be
explored are:
* the natural law and American democratic government
* analogous senses of the common good
* special demands on courage in contemporary culture
* the multiple threats of individualism
* philosophical and theological inquiries into the virtues
* the riches of Catholic social teaching
* the global economic crisis and the situation of late modern
capitalism
* the secularization of contemporary culture
* imagining the common good: what the arts contribute
* the fate of Europe
* stewardship over nature: what does it entail?
* Catholic approaches to the common good: Maritain, McInerny, and
MacIntyre
* "Whose common good?": the unborn, the barely born, the disabled, and
the elderly
* freedom and its relation to truth
* Pope Benedict on charity and hope
* the Christian Democratic movement in 20th Century politics
* Elizabeth Anscombe and the virtue revolution in ethics
* the sacrifices of family life
One-page abstracts for individual papers should include name, affiliation,
address, and e-mail address (if available). Session presentations will be
limited to twenty minutes for individuals, one hour for panels.
Deadline for submissions is Friday, July 17th. Notification of acceptance
will be mailed by Monday, August 4th. One-page abstracts, along with your
full contact information, should be emailed to <mailto:[email protected]>
[email protected] or mailed to:
Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture
10th Annual Fall Conference - The Summons of Freedom
1047 Flanner Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Prof. Paul Caron has the latest. MOJ is holding strong. Still, I can't help thinking we should be outdrawing the "Wills, Trusts, and Estates Blog" (no offense, but . . .).
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Sally Thomas has written a moving and sobering essay in the May issue of First Things, well worth tracking down even if you're not a subscriber. She writes about a former neighbor of hers, a Dutchman who kept in touch in the years after she moved away through occasional letters and homemade Christmas cards. Thomas recently received from him a slender, self-published book, called Life With and Without my Mother, sharing the news of his 96-year-old mother's death.
The book is sort of a journal, in which the son describes her, and his, journey toward her eventual decision to die by the voluntary euthanasia that is legal in Amsterdam. One of the journal entries is: "I feel the doctors need to give her the helping hand she deserves. Why let her suffer? Really, the fun is over for her." The journal goes on to describe the actual procedure, with relatives gathering by her bedside on a Saturday morning, and the doctor administering the "process implementation."
Thomas ends the essay with these thoughts:
Again I think of my own friend, of everything I have ever known about him: a kind neighbor, a loving father, a friend who keeps faith with people who move away. I think of the Christmas cards. I think of the tree in the yard. And I cannot square all that with this book which even now is propped beside me on my desk.
But of course, in truth, I can square this equation. I can square it by acknowledging that even the good are fallen and all of us carry death in our hearts. I can square it by acknowledging that the process of extrapolation works both ways: If I can extrapolate cultural suicide from one man in a café, then I can also extrapolate, from the fact of a culture of death, the easy transformation of any decent, law-abiding citizen into a murderer, into a murderer’s willing accomplice. If you build it, they will come, goes the hokey-mystical mantra in the movie Field of Dreams. Similarly, if you legalize it, it will happen.
Safe, legal, and rare. Isn’t that how the abortion chant goes? In reality, as a culture, Americans have allowed abortion to become the standard medical treatment for children prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. Ninety percent of such children are aborted: That’s how heroic our moral struggle has been. That’s how often a loving mother is persuaded that her only merciful option is to assent to the death of her child. It’s a tragic fact of the human mind that, once it begins to entertain a proposition, however outrageous, the proposition becomes not a mere proposition but a sane and rational course of action.
No, make that the sane and rational course of action. From might to may to must: zero to sixty in a cultural instant. In the slipstream, even now, doctors in Amsterdam are packing up their things, and families are filing out of darkened bedrooms into the barren light of a Saturday morning.
