• Symposium 2012
  • Announcement
  • Outline of the Sections
  • Call for Papers
  • Deadlines
  • Instructions for Authors
  • Fees
  • Registration
  • Travel and living
• Symposium Reviews
  • Review of the 34th Wittgenstein Symposium 2011
  • Review of the 33rd Wittgenstein Symposium 2010
  • Review of the 32nd Wittgenstein Symposium 2009
  • Review of the 31st Wittgenstein Symposium 2008
  • Review of the 30th Wittgenstein Symposium 2007
  • IWS – A Survey of Topics 1976–2011
• Publications
  • Ontos Verlag
  • hpt
  • Others
• Press

Outline of the Sections

1. Wittgenstein

Like every year, contributions on all aspects of Wittgenstein’s work, life and philosophical heritage are invited.

2. Living – Healing – Dying

This section focuses on problems in biomedical ethics, in the context of recent technological developments and their implementation and use in liberal societies. For example, issues concerning the moral and legal status of early and late human life stages can be discussed here (e.g., when does life commence, what constitutes humane dying?), but also issues of distributive justice in the allocation of resources in health services.

3. Justice – Society – Economy

This section is concerned with the economic, ethical and socio-political debates on the rules of human coexistence that have been revived not least by the continuing economic crisis. In this context, ethical core concepts may be discussed, such as (individual or collective) responsibility and justice, but also issues of broader scope, such as the relation between communitarian and liberal approaches in ethics.

4. Power – Ethics – Politics

This section is dedicated to the genesis and function of ethical discourses and their institutional implementation (e.g., in ethics committees) within processes of social and political negotiation. Here, ethics may become a topic of meta-ethical inquiry, or it may be subject to investigation by the social and political sciences. Moreover, the role of the appeal to “ethical values” in socio-political disputes may be discussed in this section.

5. Humanity – Nature – Technology

In this section, classical issues in environmental ethics (climate change, sustainability, responsibility to future generations etc.) and animal ethics may be discussed, but also foundational questions about, for example, the normativity of the concept of nature or about an instrumentalist concept of reality, as they are being raised by novel technological developments (biotechnologies, nanotechnology, cyberspace etc.), alongside with specific questions in the ethics of science.

6. History – Concepts – Theories

This section shall comprise of contributions to the often-neglected issue of the genesis of ethical theories as well as of inquiries into the foundations of general theories in ethics (deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, feminist ethics etc.), such as their premises, principles and methods.

7. Knowledge – Truth – Science

This section will be concerned with problems in the ethics of science, broadly conceived. The range of possible topics may encompass from the criteria of ‘good’ science and their preconditions, that is, the principles and contexts that shape the production of valid and approved science, as well as the discussion of practical issues, such as scientific fraud and forgery.