The Annual Yindyamarra Fireside Oration

We are pleased to announce the 2025 Yindyamarra Fireside Oration will be delivered by Scott Stephens

Date: Wednesday, 9 July

Time: 5:00 pm for a 5:15 pm start, and will run until 6:00 pm. A reception will be organised from 6 pm at the Chambers Pavilion.

Venue: Place of Meeting, Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, Charles Sturt University, Canberra campus

The event will be held outdoors. Dressing in layers to stay warm is recommended.

The event will also be live-streamed. When registering for the event, you can choose the live-stream ticket to access this option.

Scott Stephens
Scott Stephens is the ABC’s Religion & Ethics online editor and the co-host, with Waleed Aly, of The Minefield on ABC Radio National. He has published widely on moral philosophy, literature and democratic theory. He and Waleed Aly are the authors of Uncivil Wars: How Contempt is Corroding Democracy (Quarterly Essay 87) (2022). He is editor of Justice and Hope: Essays, Lectures and Other Writings by Raimond Gaita (2023), and the co-editor and translator of two volumes of the selected writings of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Interrogating the Real (2005) and The Universal Exception (2006).

On the beauty of decency
There can be little doubt that the times in which we live are becoming increasingly "indecent" — from the coarseness of our public debates, to the crassness and cruelty of our politics, to the crudeness of our language. Opportunities to humiliate others -- to treat them with contempt, or to take advantage of their precarious place within the social order — are often paraded as instances of being morally serious, whereas they function a lot more like moral vanity. When we use terms like "moral" or "ethical" in public life, such uses seem to serve the end of elevating one's standing, of burnishing one's reputation. Which is to say, this is moral posturing in the service of egotism.

This, of course, is the contrary of the understanding of "the moral" articulated by Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, Martin Buber and Albert Camus — an understanding that begins with the moral reality of the other, rather than subsuming others under the priority of either politics or (what Murdoch called) "the fat, relentless ego". With that in mind, I want to try to articulate the importance — the beauty, even — of decency. For many, "being decent" might seem like a kind of bare-minimum — the least we can do for others. But in fact, treating others with decency (showing kindness, refusing to humiliate or degrade them) makes them appear to others as worthy of consideration and concern. But because decency is not showy or ostentatious, the one showing that care or concern becomes invisible, even as others come to be seen as proper objects of love.

In this way, "decency" can become a moral commitment that trains our vision (developed with Murdoch called "eyes of grace"), chastens our speech (helping us recover what Camus called "the language of humanity"), and tempers our conduct.

Additional information:
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Please be advised this event will be recorded and published on Charles Sturt's YouTube Yindyamarra Nguluway playlist.

https://www.csu.edu.au/yindyamarra-nguluway