Download Call - Evgenia Mylonaki

Call for Papers
Philosophy Department
University of Patras, Greece, 4&5 of June 2015
Ethical and Political Intentionality; the Individual and the Collective,
From Plato to Hobbes and onwards.1
Conditions of practical crisis, like the current socio-political crisis in Greece, are
conditions in which the means of sustaining (most or all of) the hitherto entrenched social
practices which constitute a way of life have been wiped out, even though the
circumstances that call for these practices have not. In other words, conditions in which
the hitherto active individuals are no longer capable of doing what (from their perspective
used to be what) we good parents, good friends, good people, etc. do, even though they
still find themselves subject to moral requirements; to do the right or good or dutiful
thing in general. In these conditions, the surviving individual is forced into the following
dilemma: a) she can entirely give up on the idea of trying to do what (from her
perspective used to be what) we good friends, good parents, good people, etc. do, of
trying, that is, to live up to the social practices that had previously constituted her way of
life, and to this extent commit moral suicide, in order to inhabit a new way of life with
new social practices, or b) she can do something to enable others and thus also herself do
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what we good parents, good friends, etc. do, and thus re-enforce the social practices that
answer the moral requirements she is subject to. But if we think that moral suicide
cannot be what morality requires, and we also think that doing ψ involves understanding
what one is doing as what we good ψ-doers do, then it would seem that in conditions of
practical crisis, the individual would be morally required to do what only we can do. For
the individual would in effect be required to do that in which doing is rendered possible;
i.e. she would be required to do a thing we do. And for this to be possible at all, the
individual would have to be able to intend that we do something.
But now this requirement appears paradoxical given the commonsensical
principle that one may intend/do (and thus also be required to intend/do) only what is up
to one. For it seems that as far as I am concerned, what we do always essentially involves
what others do. And so it may seem that when an individual is required that we do
something, she is required to intend, even if only in part, what others do; and so it may
seem that she is thus required to intend what is not up to her. But this is a problem.
In this conference we invite papers that touch on any of the questions, raised by
the above line of thinking:

What sense can we make of moral requirements as thin as the ones that the
individual in conditions of practical crisis faces?

How should we understand the connection between individual intentional action
and social practices?

How is it possible for an individual to intend to make it be the case that we do
something? How are intentions of the form “I intend that we do A” possible?

What is the relation between these intentions and individual collective intentions
of the form “We intend that we do A”?

Is it always the case that what others do is not up to one? - If not, if what others
do may be up to one, then might intentions of the form “I intend that we do A”
constitute a different form of individual intentionality?

What is the role of political thinking and reasoning in conditions of practical
crisis? - Does it make sense to speak of a political as opposed to an ethical form
of individual intentionality?
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
How can we make sense of the idea of a political form of intentionality in the
context of the history of political philosophy from Plato to Hobbes and/or
onwards?
For further information please contact Evgenia Mylonaki ([email protected])
and Thodoris Dimitrakos ([email protected])
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