Political Integrity in the Cave

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The CEU Summer University Religion and Realism in Political Thought course cordially invites you to a PUBLIC LECTURE on Political Integrity in the Cave by Mark Philp, University of Oxford, UK Date and time: 4:30-6:00 pm, Tuesday, July 23 Location: Nador street 13, #001 In Plato’s allegory of the cave, politics is depicted as a world of shadows and illusion, that can be re- deemed only by philosophical truth brought from outside its own domain. This lecture makes a case for recognising a more substantive ethical role to politics, while acknowledging its uncertainties, indetermi- nacies and self-deceptions. Although it acknowledges the difficulties of developing such an account it also points to the challenges the account raises for more ideal expectations of political agency and the political order. Dr. Philp has been Fellow and Tutor in Politics of Oriel College and a Lecturer in Politics in the University since 1983. From 2000- 2005 he was Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University. His research interests include work in political theory and political sociology, most recently on political corruption and issues relating to standards in public life, as well as in the history of political thought and British history at the time of the French Revolution. He is currently working on issues relating to political conduct and corruption, the re-imaging of democracy at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, the Godwin Diaries, political realism and political ethics, and the history of political thought. From 2007-2010 he ran a three year digitization project on the Diary of William Godwin, 1788-1836, funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Grant. The edited edition of the diary can be found at: http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/.

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