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Inaugural Lecture by Professor Peter Baehr
“The Stakes of Social Theory: Perspectives on Moral Conflict”
Inaugural Lecture
by
Professor Peter Baehr
Chair Professor of Social Theory, Lingnan University
by
Professor Peter Baehr
Chair Professor of Social Theory, Lingnan University
Date: 8 October 2009, Thursday, 5:00 pm
Venue: Lee Ying Lam Lecture Theatre (MBG07), Main Building, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun
Venue: Lee Ying Lam Lecture Theatre (MBG07), Main Building, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun
Free shuttle bus departs 4:00 pm from MTR Kowloon Tong Station
(near Yew Chung International Primary School, Somerset Road)
Return trip from campus to Kowloon Tong at 6:15 pm
Synopsis
Human beings yearn not only to be secure and prosperous. They call out to be recognized and respected. And in these demands they are guided by what they deem to be right and wrong, good and bad, proper and inappropriate, just and illegitimate. Social theory is centrally concerned with the contexts and dynamics of this moral sense. Unlike economics, it understands humans to be people with emotions that frequently collide with and shape rational interests. Unlike moral philosophy, social theory seeks no prescriptive account of the true meaning of justice or the good. Instead, it delineates the ways in which people themselves conceive of right and wrong, how moral claims influence, and are influenced by, social relations. Although social theory owes a particular debt to sociology – especially to the pioneering work of Emile Durkheim and Erving Goffman – it is by no means the monopoly of one discipline. Some of the very best social theorists are not even academics.
Human beings yearn not only to be secure and prosperous. They call out to be recognized and respected. And in these demands they are guided by what they deem to be right and wrong, good and bad, proper and inappropriate, just and illegitimate. Social theory is centrally concerned with the contexts and dynamics of this moral sense. Unlike economics, it understands humans to be people with emotions that frequently collide with and shape rational interests. Unlike moral philosophy, social theory seeks no prescriptive account of the true meaning of justice or the good. Instead, it delineates the ways in which people themselves conceive of right and wrong, how moral claims influence, and are influenced by, social relations. Although social theory owes a particular debt to sociology – especially to the pioneering work of Emile Durkheim and Erving Goffman – it is by no means the monopoly of one discipline. Some of the very best social theorists are not even academics.
The lecture will examine the nature of social theory, offering a number of examples from the areas of crime, disaster, attitudes to smoking and food, terrorism and international relations to illustrate the social theorist’s field of enquiry. The lecture is concerned essentially with the social location of moral appraisal: the situations that inspire us, infuriate us, make us feel indignant or self-righteous. To the extent that we are passionate beings as much as calculative ones, the lecture’s theme is universal.
About Professor Peter Baehr
Professor Peter Baehr is the Chair Professor of Social Theory at Lingnan University from 2007 and a Fellow of the Centre of Asia Pacific Studies. Before joining Lingnan University, Professor Baehr taught in Canada and Britain. Professor Baehr’s publications include books on Caesar and the fading of the Roman world; the nature of the sociological “classics”; Max Weber’s writings on the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917; and the idea of fate. His latest work is a two-volume, single-authored study for Stanford University Press, entitled Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences: Critical Encounters.
Registration and Enquiries
E-mail: prinfo@LN.edu.hk / Tel: 2616 8963 (Public Affairs Office, Lingnan University)
E-mail: prinfo@LN.edu.hk / Tel: 2616 8963 (Public Affairs Office, Lingnan University)