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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

Simposia on Sentencing - 14 March 2008
2008-03-07

The Centre for Juridical Excellence of the Faculty of Law, University of the Free State (UFS) is hosting a simposia on 14 March 2008 on sentencing in South African criminal courts in the Senate Hall, CR Swart Building on the Main Campus in Bloemfontein.

Two guest speakers from the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute, University of South Florida, USA will speak on sentencing issues pertaining to speciality courts as well as diversion programmes. The Hon Judge of Appeal Brand and the Hon Judge Yekiso will also address the audience on sentencing issues.

The simposia is open to the public free of charge and bookings can be made at (051) 401 2698 or 401 9181 (office hours) or 051 444 5013 (fax no). Translation services will be available.

Contact: Prof Elizabeth Snyman-Van Deventer (051 401 2268).
 


Please confirm your attendance by Thursday, 13 March 2008.
 

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