Active Participation in GRAQAM Seminars

1) Consequently, we became active in participating in GREQAM seminars from the beginning. The first seminar was held on April 2, 2014 in which Dr. Luc Foisneau presented his idea of the Limits to contractualism paying attention to social inequality and ecological justice as well. Thus we shared good dialogue. Later, he sent us two of his recent papers written in English and it is our intention to stay in touch with him after we get back to Seoul and Beijing

2) On April 3, 2014, Professor Hori Ryo from Japan presented the outcome of his research at the campus of Marseille.

3) On April 16, 2014, Professor Claude Gamel presented an interesting paper entitled “An Essay on Economics of ‘Liberal Egalitarianism : A Selective Combination of Rawls’, Sen’s and Kolm’s Works.” Though presentation was done largely in French, we were able to grasp the basic logic he used to combine Rawls, Sen and Kolm. Thus, we were able to join the discussion and learned insightful ideas. This experience motivated us to attempt to pay attention to Habermas’ theory of justice with respect to its economic consequences.

4) As will be stated soon, we were invited to come to Lyon to join a series of academic discourses from April 28 to 30, 2014. Thus, we were able to reassume the GREQAM Seminar from May 14 when Dr. Malgorzata Dereniowska from Poland made a presentation on the topic “What Value does Nature have? Environmental Ethics and Public Decision-Making.” This was the first and only seminar done in English during our stay at Aix-en-Provence. Thus we joined the discussion paying attention to the relationship between environmental ethics and policy making.

5) We went to Lausanne to join the ESHET 18th Congress from May 28 to June 1, 2014. Thus, we were able to participate in GREQAM Seminar only on June 4, when Dr. Avishag Zafrani presented her interpretation of the idea of responsibility in the case of Hans Jonas. Though her presentation was occasionally translated into English by Jean-Sebastian, it was not so easy to follow her argument because it relied heavily on abstract terminologies as epistemology, ontology and metaphysics. Thus, we asked about the basic substance of responsibility as the key concept of presentation.