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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

Kovsie alumni golf day
2004-11-05

The University of the Free State’s annual Alumni Golf Day will take place on Friday 19 November 2004 at the Bloemfontein Golf Club. This year’s golf day is in aid of the Shimla tour fund. The day’s competition is a Betterball Stableford and big prizes are up for grabs. The entry fee is R100 per person and includes refreshments on the field and dinner. Our new rag queen finalists will add some glamour to the day.

Book your place with Chantelle at the Golf Club (051) 447-0571 to ensure that you don’t miss out on this event. You are welcome to bring your spouse to the prize giving ceremony after the golf day. For any enquiries, contact Jeannette Jansen at (051) 401-3594.

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