UPenn professor Susan Meyer gives philosophy seminar "Aristotelian Motivation" Sept. 18

Date: Sep. 18, 2008
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Location: North Court, Room 202

Dr. Susan Sauvé Meyer, professor and chair of the philosophy department at the University of Pennsylvania, will kick off the Department of Philosophy’s Speaker Series. Responding to recent work by Gabriel Richardson Lear and Richard Kraut, and drawing on Aristotle’s conception of the “for the sake of relation” in non-ethical contexts (which does not require that the telos be consciously intended) and on the premiere example he offers in his ethical works of a life organized around a single telos (the life expressing the ethical virtues), Susan will provide answers to the following questions: Just what is involved in being so motivated is a matter of controversy among modern interpreters of Aristotle.  Does it imply an irreducibly egoistic motivation?  Does it imply that the agent always has his own happiness “in mind” in acting?  Does it mean that everything one does is a means to one’s happiness?

Susan specializes in Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, and has published widely on the natural and ethical philosophy of the period. She received her bachelor’s degree in philosophy and Greek at the University of Toronto, and her Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University. After serving on the faculty of Harvard University as assistant and then associate professor of philosophy and the Classics she joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania.

Posted September 4, 2008