Organised by the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies
17:00 - 18:30
Lectures, talks and seminars
Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, Department of
Debbie Stewart dstewart@essex.ac.uk
Join us at our Winter Freud Memorial Lecture 2025 where Dr David Black will speak on "What sustains ethical conviction?"
This paper discusses the question of what sustains ethical values in a society in the long term, ethical values meaning such values as justice, kindness to members of out-groups, and respect for promises and for the attempt to tell the truth.
If these values are to be sustained in the long term, two things may be needed: firstly, unforeseeable moments in which the power of these values is emotionally recognised by individuals, and secondly, institutions and a vocabulary in which these values can be remembered, discussed, and affirmed in emotionally and imaginatively persuasive ways. The second, educational function has traditionally been the province of religion, but wit the decline of religion among education people, and with the increasing politicisation of religious belief as a market of large group identities, the question of what underlies sound ethical values required to be addressed directly.
This paper discusses some of these questions with reference to both psychoanalysis and philosophy. Supported by The British Psychoanalytical Society.