Background

Despite the official founding of the human rights regime in 1948, people continue to suffer human rights abuses in violent and cruel ways. This seminar brings together philosophical debates about agency and personhood with empirically informed work on victims and survivors.

Scholars who are experts on issues relating to violence, subjectivity and agency will address underlying questions that frame these debates.

The claim that passivity is a necessary complement to activity and agency has been one response to the ongoing denigration of victims in debates about those who suffer harm. But does the notion of passivity best capture agents reactions to harm, or would it be more appropriate to introduce the terms of interactivity and capacitation?

Traumatic experiences like torture can deeply alter a person’s sense of self and their experiential relationship to the world. Does philosophical reflection on these experiences expose the importance of the role of disunity and challenge the normative value of unity for the thinking and acting person?

Speakers

Diana Tietjens Meyers, professor emerita, Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut

Gry Ardal Printzlau, postdoc, Center for Subjectivity Research and DIGNITY

Robin May Schott, senior researcher, DIIS

Programme

Læs videre på http://www.diis.dk/node/6759