A constellation of internationally prominent theorists–philosophers, theologians and psychoanalysts–will gather to discuss the question of whether the concept of love can be redescribed as a political concept. Is love necessarily a private matter or does it also have a public meaning? Can love become part of a political project? In addition to an ethics or religion of love, can there be a politics of love?

Jessica Benjamin
New York University

Hent de Vries
Johns Hopkins University

Michael Hardt
Duke University

Amy Hollywood
Harvard University

Jean-Luc Marion
University of Paris–Sorbonne & University of Chicago

Ebrahim Moosa
Duke University

Merold Westphal
Fordham University

Slavoj Zizek
Birkbeck College, University of London

The topic of the conference was inspired by the following passage:
"People today seem unable to understand love as a political concept...The modern concept of love is almost exclusively limited to the bourgeois couple and the claustrophobic confines of the nuclear family. Love has become a strictly private affair. We need a more generous and more unrestrained conception of love. We need to recuperate the public and political conception of love common to premodern traditions. Christianity and Judaism, for example, both conceive love as a political act that constructs the multitude...There is really nothing necessarily metaphysical about the Christian and Judaic love of God: both God's love of humanity and humanity's love of God are expressed and incarnated in the commmon material political project of the multitude. We need to recover today this material and political sense of love, a love as strong as death. This does not mean you cannot love your spouse, your mother, and your child. It only means that your love does not end there, that love serves as the basis for our political projects in common and the construction of a new society. Without this love, we are nothing."
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), pp. 351-52.

Attention:
Indiana University Press is pleased to announce the recent publication of:

St. Paul among the Philosophers
Edited by John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff

"This is an exceptional work of scholarship with contributors who are distinguished in their fields, and who bring insight and excitement to the study of a set of classical texts." —David Odell-Scott, Kent State University

In this insightful work, eminent New Testament scholars, historians, and philosophers debate whether Paul's promise of the universality of truth can be fulfilled. This scholarly dialogue ushers in a new generation of Pauline studies.

Syracuse University
April 16-18, 2009

Coordinators
Linda Martín Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy

John D. Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities

Registration Fee $125, Students: $60
Preregistration is recommended.

Made Possible by Grants from the Ray Smith Symposium and the College of Art and Sciences, Syracuse University.

Accommodations and all sessions at The Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel and Conference Center.

Contact
Elizabeth Kad, Department of Religion
Hall of Languages, 501
Syracuse University
Syracuse, New York 13244-1170

Telephone:
(315) 443-3862

Fax:
(315) 443-3958

Email: pcrconf@syr.edu