DGPhil Day 1

So here's an overview of what I managed to attend yesterday:
I didn't go to the plenaries, or some of the late sections, because I had some other stuff to do.

I went to a colloquium on "first philosophy", and heard Jonathan Lowe (Durham) explain his four-category ontology, to which I was very sympathetic (I will probably do a separate post on this after the weekend). Johannes Hübner (Halle) responded, and I wasn't so impressed with the response, but I did get straightened out about some of the characteristics of hylomorphism.
Following that Christian Beyer (Göttingen) talked about Husserl and modern epistemology, and I was reminded why I don't read all too much continental philosophy - frankly, I didn't get his point.

In the afternoon sessions, I heard:

Elzbieta Stabryla speak on the moral impulse in literature, and I wasn't too happy with that either. She concluded that all narrative both is and is not moral impetus, which I disliked because of its ambiguity, and because I like the idea of a narrative self, so her theory not only applies to stories read and told, but also to communities and individual moral exemplars.

Julia Peters on McDowell and Loss and Eudaimonia. Julia I've known for a bit, and I knew I would disagree with her, but I must say she is one of the few people with whom I agree on very little but still like personally. There will be an expanded post on her paper later for sure, so I can think about the ideas.

Florian Franken comparing Aristotle and Kant on Eudaimonia. My mother told me that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I will just note that papers like this come from having a textbook culture of learning, because for such a comparison to be interesting, one must simply never have read Aristotle and Kant's original texts extensively (now, that's not to say that there couldn't have been a different, more interesting comparison...)


Today I'm only going to be able to make the plenary in the morning and a colloquium on ethics, because I have to work, so I might even post about today this evening.