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Previous Events

Fri 11 Nov 2016 – Philosophy Beyond the Academy

Time: 1-6pm
Location: Seminar Room 1 of the Medical and Biological Sciences Building, University of St Andrews
Tickets: Free and open to the public. Please e-mail [email protected] to reserve a place.

Drs Tom Jones and James Harris will be running a workshop on the philosophical life, supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Looking at the question ‘How does one live philosophically within and beyond the modern university?‘ this workshop brings together participants whose philosophical work takes place in a variety of contexts: consultancy, counselling, prisons, civil society organisations, online and print media, and daily life itself. Presentations, discussion and a round table event to close the afternoon will ask how a (formal or informal) philosophical background shapes life, work and our most fundamental social relations.

1.00-1.15 – Welcome
1.15-1.45 – Ben Macpherson MSP
1.45-2.30 – Ben Young
2.30-2.45 – Break
2.45-3.30 – Catherine McCall
3.30-3.45 – Joe Slater
3.45-4.00 – Break
4.00-4.45 – Richard Marshall
4.45-5.15 – Donald MacEwan and James D. Aitken
5.15-6.00 – Round table


Friday 13 May 2016 – The Enlightenment Philosophical Life

Byre Studio Theatre, Abbey Street, St Andrews

How are the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the lives of the thinkers who produced it related? Philosophical ends were often pursued through careers in literature, politics, education, the church or through private and domestic life. These papers discuss a range of thinkers in order to explore the ways in which philosophy was practised as a form of living in the British and Irish Enlightenment.

9.30-10.00 – Tea/Coffee and welcome
10.00-12.00 – Tom Jones on George Berkeley, James Harris on David Hume
12.00-1.00 – Lunch
1.00-3.00 – Richard Bourke on Edmund Burke, Susan Manly on Maria Edgeworth
3.00-3.30 – Tea/Coffee
3.30-4.30 – Barbara Taylor on philosophical solitude
4.30-5.00 – General discussion