The Natural and the Beautiful

The Natural and the Beautiful: Women Philosophers on Nature, Beauty and Art

An International Conference at the University of Sydney 

A collaboration between "Extending New Narratives" SSHRC (Canada) major award and “Women Philosophers on the Natural and the Human" ARC Future Fellowship (Dalia Nassar)

Organisers: Dalia Nassar and Campbell Rider

25th of November: 10:00 – 5:30 (Quadrangle, Kevin Lee Room)

26th of November: 10:00 – 4:30 (RD Watt Building, Room 203)

27th of November: 10:00 – 5:30 (RD Watt Building, Room 203)

In-person only at the University of Sydney

Overview:

This conference proposes that women philosophers made important and distinctive contributions to thinking about both the natural and the beautiful – and their relation – and aims to uncover these contributions and their continuing significance. 

Women were often identified with ‘nature’ and the ’natural’, and they had to negotiate their status as both natural and human. How did they do this? And in what ways and to what extent did their status as both ’natural’ and ‘human’ influence their thinking about nature and the place of the human within it? 

In turn, when women turned to writing philosophy, they often berated their male colleagues for failing to grapple with and locate philosophical questions in lived experience. In contrast, they sought to give philosophy a more concrete, more ‘lived’ character. They often did this through aesthetics, understood both in the general sense, as the study of perception, and in a more limited sense, as the study of the experiences of beauty. How did their interest in aesthetics support their aims of grounding philosophy in lived experience? And in what ways were their philosophies of art and beauty connected to their philosophies of the natural and the human? This conference invites speakers to consider some or any of these questions.

Speakers:

Emily Hulme — University of Sydney

Francesca Iannelli — Roma Tre University

Sam Kaldas — University of Notre Dame Australia

Dalia Nassar — University of Sydney

Rodney Parker — Carleton College

Andrew Poe — Australian Catholic University

Campbell Rider — University of Sydney

Rebecca Rozelle-Stone — University of North Dakota

Fedra Cabrera Solano — Harvard University

Scott Stephens — ABC Religion and Ethics

Catherine Wesselinoff — University of Notre Dame Australia

Schedule:
Wednesday - 25th of November (Quadrangle Building (A14), Kevin Lee Room H6.04)
9:30–10:00am Dalia Nassar: Welcome

10:00–11:30am Emily Hulme: Greek Philosophy on Beauty: The Case of Diotima

11:30–1:00pm Catherine Wesselinoff: A “Kallistic” Reading of Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias

2:00–3:30pm Sam Kaldas: Cockburn’s Naturalistic Ethics and Platonic Morality

4:00–5:30pm Francesca Iannelli: Reclaiming Beauty, Rediscovering Nature, Rethinking Philosophy: Contested Botanical Imaginaries and the Genres of Philosophy


Thursday - 26th of November (RD Watt Building (A04), Room 203)
9:30–11:00am Campbell Rider: Animal and Plant Worlds in Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Naturphilosophie

11:30–12:30pm Fedra Cabrera Solano: Nature as a Pathway for the Erotic in the Literary Phenomenology of Clarice Lispector

1:30–3:00pm Dalia Nassar: The Beautiful and the Good

3:15–4:45pm Andrew Poe: Without Domination: Weil’s Politics of Décréation


Friday - 27th of November (RD Watt Building (A04), Room 203)
10:00–11:30am Rodney Parker: Both Natural and Spiritual: Social Organisms, Higher Order Persons, and the Phenomenology of Social Communities in Gerda Walther

11:30–1:00pm Scott Stephens: ‘To Repent of Egoism’: Art and Asceticism in the Moral Philosophy of Iris Murdoch

2:00–3:30pm Rebecca Rozelle: Attending to the Dirt: The Beauty of Décréation

3:30–4:30pm Roundtable Discussion

Image: Wikiart.