VIRTUAL EVENTS

Date: Friday, March 12, 2021

Time: 3:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Zoom - please contact kdyck@wlu.ca for the Zoom link

 

Where do I go from here, and how do I get there?

 

Join us via Zoom for a special panel with alumni from our Philosophy MA Program, Self, Agency, and Community. Several of our graduates will discuss the ways in which their experiences in the MA program contributed to their careers. They will also share their insights about how they successfully transitioned to PhD programs, jobs in the academy, health sciences, and law. Following a roundtable discussion, audience members will have an opportunity to ask questions.

Members of the panel:

Dr. Andria Bianchi is a Bioethicist and Clinician-Scientist at the University Health Network in Toronto. She is an Assistant Professor (status-only) at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health - University of Toronto and an Affiliate Scientist with KITE Research Institute-Toronto Rehab. Andria completed her PhD at the University of Waterloo in 2018. In addition to her work at UHN, Andria is a board member of the Canadian Association for Practicing Healthcare Ethicists, a board member of Advance Gerontological Education (AGE Inc.), and she is on the Stakeholder Advisory Council of the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority of Ontario.

Dr. Allauren Forbes is an assistant professor of philosophy at McMaster University, where she teaches courses in the Department of Philosophy and Gender Studies and Feminist Research Department. Allauren’s research focuses on the intersection of early modern European philosophy and feminist philosophy with particular focus on women philosophers omitted from traditional canons. Prior to joining McMaster, she completed her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, and before that, she completed her MA and BA at Laurier.

Aaron Roberts: is currently a PhD Candidate conducting research in applied ethics and policy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and a Graduate Research Assistant at McMaster's Institute on Ethics & Policy for Innovation (iepi.ca). Aaron serves on McMaster's Research Ethics Board (https://research.mcmaster.ca/ethics/mcmaster-research-ethics-board-mreb/) and as Treasurer on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Bioethics Society (https://www.bioethics.ca/about-cbs). At the core of his research interests are questions pertaining to ethical, social and cultural issues surrounding and arising from innovative technologies and methodologies. Currently his attention is focussed on ethics and policy issues pertaining to applications of synthetic gene drive biotechnologies in mosquitoes for malaria elimination. Aaron holds Hons. BA and MA degrees in philosophy from Wilfrid Laurier University and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ontario Lieutenant Governor's Community Volunteer Award, a Queen Elizabeth II Aiming for the Top Scholarship, several Ontario Graduate Scholarships, and most recently a federal SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) Doctoral Award.

Adrian Rosu: After earning an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy at Laurier, Adrian completed the Master of Arts program in Philosophy during the 2014-15 cycle. Adrian wrote his major research paper on moral responsibility under the supervision of Dr. Jill Rusin. After completing the M.A. program, Adrian went on to study law at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. Adrian now practices law locally in Waterloo, focusing his practice on commercial litigation, construction law, and real estate.

Mark E. Simon: Mark attended Wilfrid Laurier University from 2006 to 2014, obtaining a BA in philosophy, an MBA, and an MA in philosophy. In 2015, he went to the University of Windsor to study law, obtaining his JD in 2018. Mark articled and worked as an associate lawyer at a prestigious Waterloo law firm before transitioning to Millars Law in February of 2021. Mark practices in the areas of corporate law, real estate law, and wills and estates law.

 

Speaker Event with Dr. Gary Foster (Wilfrid Laurier University)

Date: Friday, March 19, 2021

Time: 3:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Please contact kdyck@wlu.ca for the Zoom link.

Desire, Love, and Identity

Love has had a long history of being characterized as a form of desire. But what kind of desire is it, if indeed it is a form of desire? In Plato’s Symposium, we hear Socrates recount what he has learned from Diotema. According to her, love is a desire for beauty. But it is ultimately not the concrete beauty that resides in people – beautiful bodies or beautiful souls – or the beauty that exists in things or activities – the laws or science – but it is Beauty itself, that universal quality towards which love aims. In Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre also characterizes love as a form of desire. But, as with Diotema’s account, this is not a straightforward desire for its immediate object. Love, according to Sartre, is a specific expression of the more general desire to be. The desire to be, on his view, is really a desire to be whole or complete.

In this paper I discuss Sartre’s account of love in Being and Nothingness as an account of the role of love in one’s identity. I will look at the problems that both Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir think arises for love when one conceives of the relation between love and identity in this way. Finally, I will speculate on a more positive view of this relation which emerges in both Sartre’s Notebooks for an Ethics and Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.