Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 23 November
6:15 PM - 8:30 PM
‘Know thyself, know thy enemy’ – the oft-quoted rule of war isn’t so straightforward these days. The shape of war has changed.
Today, the idea of a nation-state declaring war against its neighbour seems almost quaint. Many major conflicts around the world now involve militias, terrorist organisations and insurgents, acting on sub-national and supra-national levels. Since 2001 we have engaged in a confusing, abstract ‘War on Terror’.
On 23 November, two great thinkers – philosopher Rai Gaita and historian Jay Winter – will present their individual perspectives on the theme of terror and war. What is the meaning of war in the 21st century? What, if any, are the rules of engagement? How can we understand the mindset of terrorist organisations? What are the prospects of resolution?
Each speaker will deliver a 40-minute presentation with a short break in between, and plenty of time for audience Q&A. Join us for some compelling insights on terror – the nightmare of our times.
Featuring
Raimond Gaita
Raimond Gaita has published widely to academic and non- academic audiences. In 2009, the University of Antwerp awarded Gaita the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa ‘for his exceptional contribution to contemporary moral philosophy and for his singular contribution to the role of the intellectual in today’s academic world’.
His books, which have been widely translated, include: Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, the award-winning Romulus, My Father, which was nominated by the New Statesman as one of the best books of 1999 and was made into a prize winning film starring Eric Bana, Frank Potente and Kodi Smit-McPhee; A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love and Truth and Justice, which was nominated by the Economist as one of best books of 2000; The Philosopher’s Dog, shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Award and the Age Book of the Year, Breach of Trust: Truth, Morality and Politics and, as editor and contributor, Gaza: Morality, Law and Politics; Muslims and Multiculturalism. His latest book is After Romulus.
Gaita is Professorial Fellow in the Melbourne Law School and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne and Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London.
Jay Winter
Jay Winter is Charles J. Stille Professor of history at Yale University. He came to Yale from the Cambridge where he took his doctorate, and taught history from 1979 to 2001 and was a Fellow of Pembroke College. He is the author of Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995); Remembering War (2006) and Dreams of Peace and Freedom (2006). He is currently the Distinguished Visiting Professor at Monash University.
In 1997, he received an Emmy award for the best documentary series of the year as co-producer and co-writer of The Great War and the shaping of the twentieth century, an eight-hour series broadcast on PBS and the BBC, and shown subsequently in 28 countries. He is one of the founders of the Historial de la grande guerre, the international museum of the Great War, in Péronne, Somme, France, and editor-in-chief of the three-volume Cambridge History of the First World War, published in 2014.
His biography of René Cassin, written with Antoine Prost, was published by Fayard in French in 2011, and in English by Cambridge University Press in 2013.