Kindnesses: The 2025 Walter C. Murray Lecture

Date: Friday, Oct. 24
Time: 7–8:30 pm
Location: Neatby-Timlin Theatre, Arts Building Room 241, 9 Campus Dr., Saskatoon

Free and open to the public

A complimentary reception will follow the lecture

About this event

Kindnesses

A talk by Dr. Cheshire Calhoun (PhD), Arizona State University

Hosted by the University of Saskatchewan Department of Philosophy

In today's popular culture, there's a lot of talk about the importance of being kind to others. But what exactly makes something a kindness, and why do kindnesses morally matter? Everyday understandings of kindness spring from multiple sources. The result is that talk about kindness is shaped by three different conceptions of kindness: kindness as general, benevolently motivated beneficence, kindness as a set of social practices of micro benevolence/beneficence, and kindness as expression of kinship. Each conception gives us a different answer to the question “What is kindness?” What feature(s) of actions and persons does “kind” pick out and is being encouraged in injunctions to be kind? And each gives a different answer to the question “Where does kindness fit into the moral landscape?”

Cheshire Calhoun is a professor of philosophy at Arizona State University. She works in the philosophical subdisciplines of normative ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of emotion, feminist philosophy, and gay and lesbian philosophy. Her most recent books are a collection of previously published essays titled Moral Aims: Essays on the Importance of Getting it Right and Practicing Morality with Others (OUP), and a newer set of essays titled Doing Valuable Time: The Present, the Future, and Meaningful Living (OUP). She is also the author of Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet (OUP), the editor of Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Philosophers (OUP), and the co-editor with Robert C. Solomon of What is an Emotion: Classic Readings in Philosophical Psychology (OUP). She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Science in 2020.

Her published essays include articles on responsibilities, appreciation, forgiveness, integrity, shame, common decency, commitment, and civility in journals including Ethics, Hypatia, Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Political Philosophy and Philosophy and Public Affairs. She is series editor for Oxford University Press’s Studies in Feminist Philosophy. In addition to teaching at Arizona State University, she has taught at the College of Charleston, Colby College, University of Louisville, and Princeton University.

Info: philosophy.department@usask.ca

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