Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

Heather Widdows is the John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research and Knowledge Exchange) at the University of Birmingham. She is Deputy Chair of the Philosophy sub-panel for REF 2021 and was a member of the 2014 sub-panel. Her most recent book, Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal (2018), was described by Vogue as “ground-breaking” and listed by The Atlantic as one of the best books of 2018. She is author of The Connected Self: The Ethics and Governance of the Genetic Individual (2103), Global Ethics: An Introduction (2011), and The Moral Vision of Iris Murdoch (2005). She has co-edited, with Darrel Moellendorf, The Routledge Handbook of Global Ethics (2014). She co-runs the Beauty Demands Network and Blog and the #everydaylookism project. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Widdows' talk - 'No Duty To Resist: Why individual resistance is an ineffective response to dominant beauty ideals' - at the Aristotelian Society on 18 October 2021. This recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

As the first talk for the 2021-22 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, this year’s Presidential Address marks the official inauguration of Professor Robert Stern (University of Sheffield) as the 114th President of the Aristotelian Society. The Society’s President is elected on the basis of lifelong, exemplary work in philosophy. The 114th Presidential Address was chaired by Bill Brewer (KCL), the 113th President of the Aristotelian Society. Robert Stern is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, where he has been since 1989. Prior to that he did his BA and PhD at Cambridge, and held a research fellowship at St John’s College Cambridge. His main research interests are in the history of philosophy – particularly Kant and Hegel, and also Kierkegaard, and more recently K. E. Løgstrup, Iris Murdoch, Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Luther. He connects these historical inquires with more systematic questions in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, particularly topics such as realism vs idealism, the use of transcendental arguments, and the nature of moral obligation. His books include three works on Hegel; a collection of papers on Kant; a discussion of transcendental arguments; an investigation into Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard on obligation; and a study of Løgstrup. He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 2019, and has served on the Executive Committee of the Aristotelian Society and as President of the British Philosophical Association, and is currently chair of the Philosophy sub-panel for REF2021. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Stern's address - 'The Objectivity of Perception' - at the Aristotelian Society on 5 October 2020. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Julia Borcherding is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Before moving to Cambridge, she was a Bersoff Faculty Fellow at New York University. Julia specializes in early modern philosophy, focusing on moral, epistemological and metaphysical themes and their intriguing interconnections. She has published on the philosophy of Leibniz, Conway, Cavendish, Arnauld and Spinoza. Her current book project The Metaphysics of Emotion investigates the underappreciated metaphysical dimensions of early modern accounts of love. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr. Borcherding's talk - '“I wish my Speech were like a Loadstone”: Cavendish on Love and Self-Love' - at the Aristotelian Society on 28 June 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Michael Beaney (毕明安) is Regius Professor of Logic at the University of Aberdeen, Professor of the History of Analytic Philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Recent books include The Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy (edited, OUP, 2013) and Analytic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2017). While the main focus of his work has been on the history of analytic philosophy (especially the writings of Frege, Wittgenstein, Stebbing, and Collingwood), his research interests include philosophical methodology (with particular reference to analysis and creativity throughout the history of philosophy), historiography, philosophical translation (he has just completed a new translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus for OUP), and Chinese philosophy (on which he has increasingly been working, especially ancient Chinese philosophy of language and logic). He was editor of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy from 2011 to 2020, and is general editor of a book series on the history of analytic philosophy (published by Palgrave Macmillan), and co-editor of a series entitled ‘BSHP New Texts in the History of Philosophy’ (published by OUP). This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Beaney's talk - 'Swimming Happily in Chinese Logic' - at the Aristotelian Society on 21 June 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Corine Besson is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. She did her undergraduate degree in Philosophy and French Literature at the University of Geneva. She went to Oxford for her postgraduate studies, to first do a B.Phil, and then write a D.Phil. on the relation of second-order logic to the theory of meaning. Her research interests are in the philosophy of logic, epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the history of analytic philosophy. Her current work focuses mostly on how logic relates to reasoning — from foundational, normative and epistemological perspectives. She has just finished writing a book for Oxford University Press on the relevance of Lewis Carroll’s regress argument (in his Mind 1895 paper ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’) to key debates in the philosophy of logic and reasoning. Its (working) title is: Logic, Reasoning and Regresses: A Defence of Logical Cognitivism. Corine also runs the Centre for Logic and Language (CeLL) at the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, London, and, together with Anandi Hattiangadi (Stockholm), she holds a three year grant from the Bank of Sweden on The Foundations of Epistemic Normativity. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr Besson's talk - 'Knowing How to Reason Logically' - at the Aristotelian Society on 7 June 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Kenny Easwaran is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. He did his PhD in the Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science at UC Berkeley, and then worked at the Australian National University and the University of Southern California before moving to Texas A&M. He has done work on the foundations of probability and decision theory, as well as on the social epistemology of axioms and proofs in mathematical reasoning. His current work focuses on analogies between different possible futures in decisions under uncertainty, the different individuals in social choices, and the different stages of the self in reasoning across time. This podcast is an audio recording of Dr Easwaran's talk - 'A New Method for Value Aggregation' - at the Aristotelian Society on 24 May 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Joseph Chan is Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at The University of Hong Kong. He is Global Scholar and Visiting Professor at the University Center for Human Values of Princeton University in 2019-2021 spring semesters. His recent research interests span Confucian political philosophy, comparative political theory, democratic theory, social and political equality, and popular sovereignty. He is the author of Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, 2014) and co-edited with Melissa Williams and Doh Shin East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy: Bridging the Empirical-Normative Divide (Cambridge, 2016). He has been published in numerous journals such as Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, History of Political Thought, the Journal of Democracy, Philosophy East and West, and China Quarterly. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Chan's talk - 'Equality, Friendship, and Politics' - at the Aristotelian Society on 10 May 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Ralf M. Bader is a professor of philosophy at the Université de Fribourg in Switzerland, where he holds the chair for ethics and political philosophy. His research focuses on ethics, meta-ethics, metaphysics, Kant, political philosophy and decision theory. He is also interested in neo-Kantian and early analytic philosophy, as well as the history of political thought. Previously, he was a Fellow of Merton College and an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Oxford, as well as a Bersoff Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow in the Philosophy Department at New York University. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Bader's talk - 'Coincidence and Supervenience' - at the Aristotelian Society on 24 April 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Helga Varden is Professor of Philosophy and Gender and Women Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has held visiting positions at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of St. Andrews, and she is an executive editor of the Journal of Canadian Philosophy. Her main research interests are Kant’s practical philosophy, legal-political philosophy and its history, feminist philosophy, and the philosophy of sex and love. In addition to her Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Theory (Oxford University Press, 2020), Varden has published many articles on a range of classical philosophical issues including Kant’s answer to the murderer at the door, private property, care relations, political obligations, and political legitimacy, as well as on applied issues such as privacy, poverty, non-human animals, and terrorism. The talk delivered here—“Kant and Arendt on Barbaric and Totalitarian Evil”—on how theorize political evil, points both backward to a theme running through Sex, Love, and Gender and forward to a central theme in her new book project on Kant’s transformation of the social contract tradition. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Varden's talk - 'Kant and Arendt on Barbaric and Totalitarian Evil' - at the Aristotelian Society on 22 March 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Nicolas Cornell is Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He works in normative ethics, contract law, and private law theory. His writing has appeared both in philosophy journals — including “The Possibility of Preemptive Forgiving” (Philosophical Review, 2017) and “Wrongs, Rights, and Third Parties” (Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2015) — and in law reviews — including “Competition Wrongs” (Yale Law Journal, 2020), and “A Complainant-Oriented Approach to Unconscionability and Contract Law” (University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 2016). He is currently working on a book manuscript on the relationship between rights and wronging, under contract with Harvard University Press. Prior to joining the faculty at Michigan, he was an assistant professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Cornell's talk - 'Gambling on Others and Relying on Others' - at the Aristotelian Society on 8 March 2021. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.