October 3-5, 2008

GOD AND MORALITY

BAPT’s executive committee is pleased to announce our twelfth biennial meeting and to extend an open call for conference papers.

Any topic of general interest to the BAPT membership may be proposed, but papers related to philosophical issues of morality, theological sources or problems related to morality, or other topics reflecting the interplay between philosophical reflection and theological sources are particularly encouraged. Suggestions for panel discussions are welcome. Please indicate a topic and the proposed panelists.

Papers should be limited to a reading time of 20 minutes. The deadline for submission is July 31, 2008. Submissions, with author identified only on a separate title page, should be sent by email attachment to roger_ward@georgetowncollege.edu. If email submission is not possible, ground mail may be directed to:

Roger Ward
Department of Philosophy
Georgetown College
400 East College Street
Georgetown, Kentucky 40324

Keynote Speaker:  John E. Hare
John E. Hare is Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School, and he is the author of God and Morality:  A Philosophical History. Robert Roberts praises God and Morality as “a splendid history of philosophical ethics, with special interest in God’s presence and importance in that perennial enterprise, by one of the leading philosophers of ethics writing today.”  Hare's best known book, The Moral Gap, develops an account of the need for God's assistance in meeting the moral demand of which God is the source. In God's Call he discusses the divine command theory of morality, analyzing texts in Duns Scotus, Kant and contemporary moral theory. In Why Bother Being Good? he gives a non-technical treatment of the questions, 'Can we be morally good?' and 'Why should we be morally good?'. He has also written a commentary on Plato's Euthyhphro in the Bryn Mawr series, and Ethics and International Affairs, with Carey B. Joynt. His interests extend to ancient philosophy, medieval Franciscan philosophy, Kant, Kierkegaard, contemporary ethical theory, the theory of the atonement, medical ethics and international relations (he has worked in a teaching hospital and for the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives) and aesthetics (he is a published composer of church music).

Further details about the conference, including recommended travel and hotel arrangements, will be forthcoming.