Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies
Maimonides Centre
for Advanced Studies
for Advanced Studies
Maimonides Lecture on Scepticism
9 July 2019
Photo: UHH/SUB HH
We would like to invite you to a Maimonides Lecture on Scepticism on July 9, 2019, at 18:00. Nadja El Kassar (ETH Zürich) will talk about "How to Deal with Ignorance? Some Historical Suggestions."
How to Deal with Ignorance? Some Historical Suggestions
Abstract
Ever since its early days, philosophers have been fascinated by ignorance. In her talk, Nadja El Kassar will discuss historical answers to the question of how it should be dealt with. The question itself is seldom raised explicitly, but a number of philosophers have addressed the issue of dealing with ignorance. The lecture focusses in particular on Socrates’s, John Locke’s and Immanuel Kant’s suggestions on the subject. Socratic ignorance can be read as a suggestion that knowledge and wisdom are the best ways of dealing with ignorance. Locke suggests that four principles (the principle of indifference, the principle of evidence, the principle of appraisal, and the principle of proportionality) are the best ways of dealing with ignorance and also with error. Finally, Kant argues that orienting oneself is the key to dealing with ignorance. Nadja El Kassar will discuss and compare these three historical proposals and will conclude by examining their relevance to today’s question of how to deal with ignorance.
Nadja El Kassar is a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zürich/ Switzerland.
Venue
Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies
Schlüterstraße 51/5th floor
Seminar Room 5060
20146 Hamburg
Poster
[PDF]
