Fall 2009

Tired of your typical lunch fare?
Looking to spice up that soup-and-sandwich combo?
Searching for something just a little more substantive than cheese steak?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then you need to join us for Ethics for Lunch! Please bring your lunch with you and join us for some stimulating conversation. All members of the Villanova community are welcome to participate in these informal events. We’ll even provide the cookies!

Entrees

Rev. Kenneth Himes, O.F.M (Chair, Department of Theology, Boston College), Torture: Is It Always Wrong?
Tuesday, 9/29, Rosemont Room (Connelly Center), 1.00-2.15 pm
Torture is universally condemned despite its regular appearance throughout history. As a result of policy decisions in response to terrorism, the debate about torture has been revived. Recent arguments have taken up the questions of why it is wrong, and whether it is absolutely wrong, without exception. This lunch presentation will review answers to those questions as found in the writings of contemporary philosophers, theologians, lawyers, and other commentators.

Bill Werpehowski (Director, Center for Peace and Justice Education, Villanova University), Is President Obama a "Public Theologian," and What Is One, Anyway?
Friday, 11/6, Bryn Mawr Room (Connelly Center), 1.30-3.00 pm
Recently theological and political commentators have allied President Barack Obama with a seemingly long tradition of American “public theology” that includes the contributions of, among others, John Locke, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Baldwin. Wow. What is this American tradition, who is a part of it, and where does the president fit in?

Mette Lebech (Department of Philosophy, National University of Ireland, Maynooth)
Wednesday, 11/11, St. Augustine Center 300, 12.30-1.30 pm
Sometimes it is contended that human dignity, the basic principle of the human rights tradition and fundamental in much ethical thinking, has no clear meaning and in fact is an empty word. In this presentation it shall be argued that human dignity can be defined as the fundamental value of the human being and that this definition can be experientially substantiated by a phenomenological analysis, which we shall conduct in its broadest outline.

Recommended background reading: Introduction to Part III and chapter 12 of Mette Lebech, On the Problem of Human Dignity: A Hermeneutical and Phenomenological Investigation (Orbis Phaenomenologicus, Königshausen und Neumann, Würzburg, 2009).

Michael Moreland (Villanova School of Law), Freedom of Association
Wednesday, 12/2, St. Augustine Center 300, 12.30-1.30 pm
Freedom of association has been the subject of several important Supreme Court cases over the past 25 years and extensive academic commentary, but it still enjoys an uncertain constitutional and philosophical status. Earlier cases and some philosophers argue that freedom of association is merely derivative of individual freedoms. On this view, groups do not have associational rights except and insofar as the state’s interference with a group jeopardizes an exercise of individual liberty. More recent cases, however, seem to acknowledge group autonomy and the possibility of legal recognition of group rights, just as some philosophers argue that there can be genuinely "plural subjects" created by a "pool of wills." This Ethics for Lunch presentation will survey the recent case law and philosophical debate over freedom of association.