The Ethical Demand in the Philosophies of Løgstrup, Kierkegaard and Levinas

The conference will offer a forum for the discussion of the ideas of Knud Ejler Løgstrup (1905-81). Highly prominent in the intellectual life of his native Demark, Løgstrup's ideas are becoming increasingly influential, having recently been discussed and to some extent championed by Alastair MacIntyre, Zygmunt Bauman, and others. This will be the first conference on his work in the UK, and will bring together scholars from Scandinavia and Britain. The focus of the conference will be on Løgstrup's central conception of the 'ethical demand' as a basic phenomenological feature of moral experience, which is both particularistic and radically open-ended. This idea has relations to the ideas of Kierkegaard on the one side, and Levinas on the other, while Løgstrup's outlook differs interestingly from them both.

Saturday 4 December

• 10:30 Conference registration
• 11:00-12:00 Hans Fink (Aarhus) - 'Løgstrup on the Difference between Ethical and Moral Demands'
• 12:15-13:30 Peter Dews (Essex) - 'How Can We Reject the Ethical Demand?'
• 13:30-14:30 Lunch
• 14:30-15:45 Kees van Kooten Niekerk (Aarhus) - 'Løgstrup's Conception of the Sovereign Expressions of Life'
• 15:45-16:00 Tea/coffee
• 16:00-17:15 Robert Stern (Sheffield) - '"Duty and Virtue are Moral Introversions": On Logstrup's Critique of Morality'

Sunday 5 December

• 10:00-11:15 Svein Aage Christoffersen (Oslo) - 'The Ethical Demand and its Ontological Presuppositions'
• 11:15-11:30 Tea/coffee
• 11:30-12:45 Wayne Martin (Essex) - 'Infinite Moral Demands and the Danger of Moral Despair'
• 12:45-13:45 Lunch
• 13:45-15:00 Pia Søltoft (Copenhagen) - 'The Relation Between Erotic Love and Ethics in Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Løgstrup'

Organizer: Colin Roth