On the Promise of Peace: Kant’s Wartime and the Tremulous Body of Philosophy

A talk by David L. Clark Professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University

Immanuel Kant’s last texts move from the labour of critique to more palpably social and political concerns.  But they do so in a time that is characterized by the intensification of militarism and armed conflict.  As Kant notes in his great anti-war text, Toward Perpetual Peace, Europe has brought itself to the very brink of something new and horrifying, namely “wars of extermination.”  In what ways do Kant’s late writings respond to this grim prospect, making war violence not only an explicit subject of philosophical consideration but also reconfiguring the shape of philosophical discourse as it attempts to take a measure of war’s consequences, and mourn its immeasurable losses?  How are the social and political works of the 1790s, and the Enlightenment project for which they stand, made to tremble at war’s awful reality?  Kant often affirms his faith in the power of an educated citizenry, but the advent of total war sorely tests that promise.  Susan Searls Giroux’s question is also Kant’s:  “Can the university stand for peace?”

For more information: http://facebook.com/rhetoricandethics
Poster

Thursday, January 24, 2013
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM
1811 Dunton Tower
Everyone welcome
Reception will follow
Space is limited; please RSVP to rhetoric@carleton.ca