Beyond Childhood and Adulthood: A Multidisciplinary Conversation about Humanhood

The annual John F. Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture will be held at Villanova University on Friday, October 27. All are welcome to attend, and there is no cost to attend except for those seeking CLE credit.  Details about registering for CLE credit will be posted on the Villanova School of Law homepage as the date of the conference approaches.

The conference, "Beyond Childhood and Adulthood: A Multidisciplinary Conversation about Humanhood," will focus on the new (not-yet-published) book by philosopher James Bernard Murphy, professor of government at Dartmouth, Humanhood: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood.  Many readers of MOJ will be familiar with Professor Murphy's earlier The Philosophy of Customary Law (Oxford 2014) and The Philosophy of Positive Law: Foundations of Jurisprudence (Yale 2007).  Here is a taste from the preface to the new book on which the conference will focus:

 

The study of a human life is intrinsically multidisciplinary. Although this book is framed by basic philosophical questions and arguments, I have drawn illustrative material from biology, psychology, political science, sociology, linguistics, biblical exegesis, anthropology, and literary theory. I have attempted to refer to studies reflecting major currents of scholarship in those fields. The questions we shall consider about the shape of a human life are timeless ones, but the empirical illustrations are undoubtedly time-bound. This book is thus perched between the eternal and the temporal, which is the story of every human life.

 

The timorous may stay at home!  

 

Professor James Murphy will deliver the keynote address, and the other speakers will include:

 

Shelley Burtt, Executive Director of the Camphill Foundation

Phillip Reynolds, Aquinas Professor of Historical Theology, Candler School, Emory University

Marya Schetman, Professor of Philosophy and member of the Law of Integrated Neuroscience, University of Illinois at Chicago

Harry Brighouse, Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Madison

James Gordley, W. R. Irby Chair, Tulane University Law School