“Nature in Kant and Hegel” – A Joint Conference of the Hegel Society of Great Britain and the UK Kant Society

September 2023 at St Edmund Hall, Oxford

Conference Programme

Wednesday, 6 September:

4.30: Conference registration

5.30-7.00:  Karen Ng (Vanderbilt University): “Self-Consciousness as Species-Consciousness”.

Chair: Jessica Leech, Pontigny Room

7.30: Dinner

Thursday, 7 September:

9.30-11.00: Parallel sessions.

Session 1: Chair: Christoph Schuringa, Old Dining Hall

Jensen Suther (Harvard University): “The Concept of Rational Life in Hegel and Marx”.

Kobe Keymeulen / Iben Bollaert (Ghent University): “The Supreme and Ultimate Purpose of Science. On the Teleology and Immanency of Hegel’s Logic”.

                        Session 2: Chair: John Callanan, Pontigny Room

Stephen Howard (KU Leuven): “Kant on the regulative use of the cosmological ideas for the investigation of nature”.

Mathis Koschel (University of Southern California): “The Essential Open-Endedness of Nature”.

Coffee break

11.30-1.00: Joe Saunders (University of Durham): “Freedom in Kant: A Practical Critique”.

Chair: Jonathan Head, Pontigny Room

1.00 Lunch

2.00-3.30: Parallel sessions. 

Session 3: Chair: Richard Bell, Old Dining Hall 

Lorenzo Sala (Universität Trier): “In what sense does Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature proceed entirely a priori?” 

George Webster (University of Oxford): “Hegel and Quantum Gravity”. 

                        Session 4: Chair: Martin Sticker, Pontigny Room

Matthew King (University of Bristol): “Kant and Crimes against Nature”.

Michael Walschots (Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg): “Kant on Moral Impossibility”.

Coffee break

4.00-5.30: Julia Peters (Universität Heidelberg): “Hegel and Kant on human natural drives and inclinations”. Chair: Eliza Starbuck Little, Pontigny Room

6.00-7.00: HSGB AGM, Old Dining Hall / UKKS AGM, Pontigny Room

7.30: Dinner

Friday, 8 September:

9.30-11.00: Parallel sessions.

Session 5: Chair: Andrew Jones, Old Dining Hall

John Callanan (King’s College London): “Thinking of Things in Themselves”.

Ahilleas Rokni (University of Warwick): “The Contingency of Nature: A Refutation”.

                        Session 6: Chair: Susanne Herrmann-Sinai, Pontigny Room

Simone Nota (Trinity College Dublin): “Kant the Naturalist?”

Connie Wang (Columbia University): “Seele as Nature Which Has Sublated Itself: Hegel’s Conception of the Soul in Light of the Transition Between Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature and Anthropology”.

Coffee break

11.30-1.00: Parallel sessions.

Session 7: Chair: Sebastian Stein, Old Dining Hall

Lorenzo Spagnesi (Universität Trier): “Natures and Essentialism in Kant”.

Achim Wamssler (Freie Universität Berlin): “Hegel on the Problem of Nature’s Diversity”.

                        Session 8: Chair: Jan Derry, Pontigny Room

Martin Sticker (University of Bristol): “Kant on Being a Useful Member of the World and Universal Basic Income”.

Tatiana Llaguno Nieves (University of Groningen): “Environmental Exhaustion as Bad Infinity: A Hegelian Approach to Sustainability and Freedom”.

 1.00 Lunch

2.00-3.30: Peter Dews (University of Essex): “Nature, Potentiality and Freedom in Hegel and Schelling”. Chair: Stephen Houlgate, Pontigny Room

3.30 Conference ends

This conference is generously supported by the British Society for the History of Philosophy and the Aristotelian Society.