Wayne Martin (University of Essex) "Ubi Inletabilitas Ibi Virtus: Melancholy, Virtue and Self-Consciousness" February 11, 2010

Abstract: A seventeenth century print by Giovanni Castiglione bears a motto: Ubi Inletabilitas Ibi Virtus. Its meaning is far from clear. What is inletabilitas? What exactly is its relation to virtue? To what broader psychological theory and moral theory does the thought in the motto belong? I draw on a range of resources - from phenomenology, from art history, from the ontology of Renaissance psychiatry - to propose and explore an answer. Inletabilitas, I argue, is a distinctive form of melancholic self-consciousness. It is associated closely with grief and mourning, and with other forms of awareness in which one gains a perspective on hermeneutic totalities.



--- Wayne Martin studied philosophy both in the UK and in the USA and taught for twelve years at the University of California, San Diego, before coming to Essex in 2005. He is the author of Theories of Judgment: Psychology, Logic, Phenomenology (Cambridge UP, 2006) and Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichte's Jena Project (Stanford UP, 1997), as well as articles on Frege, Husserl, Lucas Cranach, Dutch Still Life painting, and deontic logic. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Irvine; visiting scholar at Ludwig MaximiliansUniversity (Munich); and research fellow at the Townsend Center for the Humanities (Berkeley). He serves as General Editor of Inquiry and as Series Editor for Modern European Philosophy (the monograph series at CUP).
Location:

6 E 16th St., Rm. 906/913, New Wolff Conference Room

Admission:
Free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served

Official Website: http://www.newschool.edu/NSSR/eventsList.aspx?id=43232&DeptFilter=NSSR+Philosophy