Beauvoir’s Existentialist Ethics and Women’s Human Rights

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
Popper Room
Thursday, January 30, 2014 - 5:30pm
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Date: 
Thursday, January 30, 2014 - 5:30pm to 7:10pm

The Department of Gender Studies

2013-2014 Public Lecture Series

presents

Hülya Simga

Beauvoir’s Existentialist Ethics and Women’s Human Rights

 5:30 p.m., Thursday, 30 January 2014, Popper Room

 Although Simone de Beauvoir is neither a self-acclaimed human rights thinker nor widely known to be one; the way that she presents freedom—central to her existentialist ethics—is perfectly in accord with the particular kind of theoretical discourse providing the ethical foundation of human rights. The emphasize on ethics marks the special place of Beauvoir in existentialism in the sense that Beauvoir takes “freedom” beyond existentialist ontology and considers it in relation to “will” where it becomes the ground as well as the possibility of ethical action; the ethical action being the sine qua non for the actualization of human rights. From this also follows that Beauvoir’s feminism only makes sense in her broader concern for humanism and cannot be separated from it.

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 Assoc. Prof. Hülya Şimga got her B.A. degree in philosophy at Boğaziçi University (Turkey) and her M.A. degree and Ph.D. at Duquesne University (USA). She is currently the chair of Philosophy Department at Koç University (Turkey). She also holds the position of vice-director at Koç University Women’s Center (KOCKAM). Her main areas of research are gender studies, ethics and human rights.