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15 March 2022

The Dean of the Faculty of Law invites staff and interested individuals to attend the inaugural lecture of Prof Ulrike Kistner, Department of Public Law, titled The ‘person’ in question – legally, grammatically, philosophically.

Date: 17 March 2022
Time: 17:30
Venue: Equitas Auditorium

To attend the lecture, please RSVP to Refilwe Majola at MajolaRRM@ufs.ac.za

More about the speaker:

Prof Kistner has held teaching positions in Comparative Literature at Wits University, Modern European Languages at UNISA, and Philosophy at the University of Pretoria. She is currently working at intersections between political philosophy, social theory, jurisprudence, and psychoanalytic theory.

Abstract:

A major shift has been noted in constitutionalism and human rights frameworks – from human and civil rights to principles centred on ‘personhood’ and ‘dignity’. This shift calls for closer historical-critical investigation of the status of ‘person’. Roberto Esposito directs this inquiry to a philosophical grammar of the impersonal third person.

My contribution to this inquiry sets in with a probing of Esposito’s propositions, considering the post-apartheid elevation of ‘person’ in constitutionalism and philosophical elaborations of communitarianism. To the extent that the concept of ‘ubuntu’ is embedded in a linguistic ontology developed by Kinyarwanda, my argument will navigate between Rwanda and South Africa in the mid-1990s, and between juridical, moral-philosophical, linguistic, and Africanist notions of ‘ubuntu’ and corresponding claims on African philosophy.

The radical questioning of ethnolinguistic tenets on the part of some African philosophers brings me back to the philosophical grammar of the third person which, far from being confined to study old grammar books, opens alternatives to ethnophilosophical approaches to the ‘person’ in question. 

News Archive

No Student Hungry Programme presented with a generous donation
2015-05-18

From Left: Prof Jonathan Jansen, UFS Vice-Chancellor and Rector, Mrs Grace Jansen, Custodian of the NSH, Ms Lynsie Pelser, PSA Free State Social Responsibility Chairperson, Dr Vuyo Dyantyi, PSA President, and Mr Gerhard Koorts, PSA Provincial Manager.

The Public Servants Association of South Africa (PSA) presented a cheque for R55 500 to the No Student Hungry Programme on 7 May 2015 at the UFS Bloemfontein Campus. The PSA has been a proud supporter of NSH, and of initiatives such as the NSH 1000/33 Stride that saw four volunteers walk from Bloemfontein to Cape Town to raise funds for the programme from the send-off on 1 May 2014 to the welcoming on 3 June 2014 in Cape Town.

On receiving the cheque, Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS, expressed his gratitude on behalf of the university and all the students who stand to benefit from this initiative.

As a politically non-affiliated union, the PSA’s main focus is labour development and community support throughout the Free State and nationally. The NSH has received a total of R165 000, donated by the union since 2014, which supports more than 25 students.

The President of the PSA, Dr Vuyo Dyantyi, said “Our motto is to invest in human potential, and in programmes that will give the future generation a chance to prosper.”

The No Student Hungry Programme supports more than 130 students each year with daily meals, mentorship, and support on all three campuses.

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