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The Simone Weil Lectures on Human Value - 2008
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
School of Philosophy
Uprootedness, Narratives and National Conflict by Professor Jonathon Glover
Melbourne: Tuesday 5 August 2008
Sydney: Wednesday 6 August 2008
Lecture Abstract
This lecture will try to apply Simone Weils idea of the need for roots to conflicts between nations or groups, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict. The rival narratives, in which each group interprets the history in terms of stereotypes of the other, make peacemaking harder. The Israeli and Palestinian narratives derive an emotional charge from the response of both groups to uprootedness and Diaspora. The hope is to use Simone Weils understanding of the human losses caused by uprootedness as part of the project of weakening the grip of the rival partisan narratives.
About the speaker
Jonathan Glover is one of the worlds most distinguished moral philosophers, and currently professor in the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics at Kings College London. He has written several influential and best-selling books on ethics, including Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, Causing Death and Saving Lives and, with Martha Craven Nussbaum, Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities. Professor Glover chaired a European Commission Working Party on Assisted Reproduction and is also a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is currently interested in a number of issues in global ethics, in questions raised by the Human Genome Project and in ethical issues in psychiatry.
