About
Recent years have seen a new interest in exploring philosophers in Kant’s context, both for their significance to Kant and in their own right. This conference explores the legal and political philosophy of those who in the 1790s sought to develop a Kantian legal and political philosophy. These “Kantians” include, but are not limited to, Johann Benjamin Erhard, Salomon Maimon, Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, Johann Adam Bergk, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk, Johann Anselm Feuerbach, Ludwig Heinrich Jakob, Elise Reimarus, Theodor Schmalz, Friedrich Schlegel, and the early Johann Gottlieb Fichte. The conference explores their views of what we today call democracy, but which at the time was often called republicanism, i.e. the legal and political principles for a constitution establishing equality, freedom, political rights, popular sovereignty, and the rule of law. The conference will include papers on these philosophers as well as papers on their relation to Kant.
The conference is the first international conference of the project KanDem -- Kantian Foundations of Democracy, please find more information here.
Program
Friday, 5. August
09:45-10:00 Coffee
10:00-10:30 Reidar Maliks (University of Oslo) Opening and introductions
First session: Schlegel
Chair: Feroz Mehmood Shah (University of Oslo)
10:30-11:05 Michael Gregory (The University of Groeningen): ”Kant and Schlegel on Majority Rule”
11:05-11:40 Fiorella Tomassini (The University of Groeningen): ”Dictatorship and insurrection in Schlegel’s republicanism”
11:40-12:15 Günther Zöller (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich): “Si vis pacem para pactum. Republicanism, Federalism and Democratism in the Peace Writings of Kant and Fr. Schlegel” (zoom)
12:15-13:30 Lunch
13:30-14:40 Keynote
Christian Rostbøll (University of Copenhagen): "Kant and the Non-Instrumental Value of Democracy"
Comments: Kjartan Koch Mikalsen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
14:40-15:10 Coffee
Second session: Tieftrunk and Erhard
Chair: Toshiro Osawa (University of Oslo)
15:10-15:45 Valentin Braekman (Université de Lausanne), "Tieftrunk on the best way to prevent and heal revolutions"
15:45-16:20 Elisabeth Widmer (University of Oslo): “Proto-Socialist Tendencies in Johann Benjamin Erhard’s Justification of Reform and Revolution”
16:20-16:55 James Clarke (University of York): "J. B. Erhard's Revolutionary Natural Law Theory"
19:00 Dinner
Saturday, 6. August
First Session: Kant, Bergk, and Reinhold
Chair: Christel Fricke (University of Oslo)
10:00-10:35 Luigi Caranti (Università di Catania): "Kant's Criticism of Democracy and its Contemporary Legacy"
10:35-11:10 Takuya Saito (Hokkaido University): "Kant and Johann Adam Bergk on Patriotism"
11:10-11:45 Nese Aksoy (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University): “Kant, Reinhold and Rousseau: Democracy and Moral Autonomy”
11:45-13:00 Lunch
Second session: Citizenship and pluralism
Chair: Reidar Maliks
13:00-13:35 Andrey Zilber (Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University): “Moral Nature of Democratic Citizens: Kantians, Jacobins and Conservatives” (zoom)
13:35-14:10 Wojciech Kozyra (University of Warsaw): ”Saul Ascher’s Misgivings About Kant’s Political Project” (zoom)
14:10-14:40 Coffee
Third session: Fichte
Chair: Michael Kryluk (University of Oslo)
14:40-15:15 Colin Bradley (Princeton University): ”Abstract Right and the Other”
15:15-15:50 Michael Nance (University of Maryland): "Fichte’s Early Anarchism"
15:50-16:25 Theo Christov (The George Washington University): ”The ‘Self’ in Fichte’s Self-Determination”
16:25-16:35 Closing
19:00 Dinner
Practical information
The conference will be a physical event, apart from three presentations, which will be on zoom. If you would like to come to Oslo to take part in the conference, write to reidar.maliks@ifikk.uio.no before June 24.