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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

Music builds bridges - Diva Mimi Coertse
2004-09-21

Music is not bounded by colour, religion, politics or time. It builds bridges. It reaches out to people’s hearts and feelings. Everyone understands the language of music. These were the words of the opera and chamber music diva, Mimi Coertse, who delivered the 34th C.R. Swart Memorial Lecture of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Free State. The theme of her lecture was Music as international language. Ms. Coertse said there are no boundaries to music. Different from the spoken word in drama, music can be understood by everyone. There are no boundaries in classical music – and specifically in opera. Developed nations adopted the Eurocentric art form as part of their culture. Examples are China, Korea and Japan where classical music became part of these counties’ national culture, she said. “Unfortunately, however, classical music is seen in many instances – and even in our country – as Eurocentric, but that is not the case. When you start analysing it, you will notice that our black choirs specifically sing opera in choir competitions. These choir competitions became a major industry. These choirs prefer to sing opera.” Ms. Coertse said music brings joy, pleasure, relaxations and healing. It moves into the inner chambers of people’s hearts. You cannot swear at someone in music of curse the. Music is sensual, emotional and very spiritual. God is the writer, man just the player.

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