Spring 2025 Conference
3 May 2025, 11-3 ET
Each year, Simpliciter hosts a conference to celebrate the forthcoming issue of its journal. Outstanding undergraduate authors are invited to present their work, receive live feedback from Simpliciter editors, and answer questions about their work from the audience. This is part and parcel of Simpliciter's mission of raising the upper bound of undergraduate engagement with philosophy within our wide, international community. We hope that you will join us!
This year, we are honored to be hosting one of the leading Kant scholars in the world, Professor Jens Timmermann of the University of St. Andrews, as our keynote speaker. His presentation "Kant’s Two Supposed Rights" will discuss Immanuel Kant’s responses to what his opponents claim to be the right to lie and the right to take the life of another. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions directly to Professor Timmermann, including questions relating to the pursuit of a career in academic philosophy at the end of the conference.
A Zoom link will be sent to all registered attendees in advance of the conference. Please use the following form to register:
In 1797, Kant argues against two ‘supposed rights’, i.e. against claims that his opponents – in his mind erroneously – regard as rights. The more prominent one of the two is the supposed right to lie, which he discusses in response to Benjamin Constant’s provocation in On Political Reactions. A householder is not permitted to lie to a would-be murderer who enquires whether his victim is hiding in his house. If he cannot dodge the question, he has to give a truthful reply and thereby disclose the victim’s presumed location. The less prominent case is the supposed right to “take the life of another who has done nothing to harm me, when I am in danger of losing my own life” (MM VI 235.15–17) as discussed in the Doctrine of Right. The two arguments have much in common, beyond the fact that Kant presented them to the reading public in the same year. In both cases, he is defending exceptionless prohibitions; in both cases, he is arguing against representatives of the Natural Law tradition; and in both cases, his argument is exceptionally obscure. In this lecture, I will do my best to shed light on both pseudo-rights.