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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

Professor awarded by Cardiff University for exceptional teaching and research record
2015-10-20

Prof Pieter Duvenage
Cardiff University is one of the best research universities in the United Kingdom (UK) and the world. In 2014, Cardiff was ranked number 2 and 5 among UK universities in the Research Excellence Framework for impact and quality, respectively.

Annually, Cardiff selects and recruits the most outstanding teachers and researchers from across the globe. This year, this institution bestowed on Professor Pieter Duvenage the title of Honorary Professorship in Political Philosophy for his contribution and commitment to philosophical research in South Africa and internationally. Prof Duvenage is Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Prof Duvenage has authored and co-authored four books, publishing almost 40 accredited articles in journals and books. As a distinguished scholar, he displays immense dedication to the investigation of the political implications of intellectual traditions.

Since 1997, Prof Duvenage has been lecturing philosophy as an associate professor, full professor, or visiting professor at various South African and Australian universities. He was appointed as Head of the Department of Philosophy in 2011, where he continues to explore his interests in Phenomenology, Critical Theory, and South African Intellectual History.

His rich academic history had earned him the prestigious five-year Honorary Professorship at Cardiff’s Department of Politics.  In 2014, the same university invited Prof Duvenage to be a Professorial Fellow of the Collingwood and British Idealism Centre for an indefinite period.

Professor David Boucher, Director of the Collingwood and British Idealism Centre, has played a crucial role in initiating both processes. According to Prof Duvenage, “Professor Boucher is a respected British academic and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg.”

When Boucher announced the good news, Prof Duvenage was very surprised. “The appointment came as a total surprise. I never studied there [at Cardiff University], therefore it was purely through academic networks.”

Considering Cardiff’s reputation and Prof Duvenage’s exceptional skill sets and values, his relationship with the world-leading university in research is bound to blossom.

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