Guest lecture by Nigel DeSouza (University of Ottawa) "Herder and Kant on the philosophy of life and the foundations of morality"

On Tuesday, 15 October, from 4:15–5:45 pm, Nigel DeSouza, Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, will give a guest lecture at the University of Tartu. The topic of the lecture is "Herder and Kant on the philosophy of life and the foundations of morality: two models of German enlightenment, with a modern perspective". The lecture will take place at Jakobi 2-114.

Everyone interested is welcome!

Herder and Kant on the philosophy of life and the foundations of morality: two models from the Aufklärung, with a contemporary perspective

How should we conceptualize life? What is the relationship between matter and life? Is there a fundamental connection between life and morality? This talk will aim both to unpack the divergent answers to these questions that can be found in the work of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and, in so doing, to outline two different models from the German Enlightenment for conceptualizing the human being and human society. Central to these conceptions are Herder and Kant’s respective theories of the soul-body relationship, where questions about the nature of the soul as principle of life or thinking spirit, about dualism, anti-dualism, and interaction, are paramount. In a final section, we will turn to a contemporary perspective on these questions: the cognitive scientific theory of enactivism, as articulated by Evan Thompson, and explore the interesting ways in which this theory was anticipated by both Herder and Kant.

Bio

Nigel DeSouza is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Ottawa. He works on the philosophy of Johann Gottfried Herder, early modern philosophy, and on contemporary ethics. He has published articles on Herder’s metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of history, and moral philosophy in the context of his dialogue with predecessors and contemporaries, such as Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Shaftesbury, Rousseau, Mendelssohn, and Kant. His articles have appeared in several edited volumes, The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Intellectual History Review, Herder Yearbook, the Herder Handbuch (2016), and in a volume he co-edited, Herder: philosophy and anthropology (2017, OUP). He is the general editor of the Cambridge Herder Translations (forthcoming 2025), comprising five volumes of Herder’s philosophical works in English translation, for which he is also translator of two volumes. In contemporary ethics, he has published articles on Charles Taylor and on the foundations of ethical agency (in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice). He is currently working on a monograph on Herder’s philosophy of life. 

The lecture is sponsored by the Estonian Research Council’s research grant PUT PRG942 “Self-Determination of Peoples in Historical Perspective”.