Jason Robert Kicks off Lincoln Applied Ethics Series

For Jason Robert, conviviality “really means living well together,” a notion he’ll explore in the first Lincoln Applied Ethics Series lecture of the 2019 season, “Conviviality for the 21st Century” at 12:30 p.m. Monday, July 1 in the Hall of Philosophy.

“It’s what we at the Lincoln Center of Applied Ethics take to be as the heart, the ethical project that comprises our task on this earth as human beings,” Robert said.

Robert holds the Lincoln Chair in Ethics and is director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University. He is also Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the Life Sciences at ASU.

“I’ll be elaborating a bit on what I mean by (conviviality) and I think it is reflective in the spirit of the Chautauqua Institution,” Robert said. “It is, in part, one of the things that we need to remind ourselves at all times — that living well together really is the goal and something that we are striving for wherever and whenever we can.”

According to its website, the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics “advances teaching, research and community engagement efforts that explore how best to live together as a human community, so that we all may achieve purposeful, productive and prosperous lives.”

For Chautauquans who would like to dive deeper into the subject, Robert will also be teaching master classes through Special Studies. In these classes he is able to elaborate on his lecture and get into more detail. The classes are held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, July 2, Wednesday, July 3 and Thursday, July 4 in the Literary Arts Center Alumni Hall Ballroom.

“The master classes are an opportunity in a much smaller, seminar-based format for Chatauquans to dive a little bit more deeply into the subject matter,” Robert said. “What I do typically is a short version of Monday’s lecture and then spend time going into a little bit more detail on Tuesday and Wednesday at the master class, and it gives us an opportunity to really explore the issues that get raised at a deeper level.”

Robert said he wants people to understand the relevant principles that exist in what may come off as a simple concept.

“I think that the key takeaways are that there are deep biological roots and deep philosophical principles that can come together to shed light on what might seem like a very simple concept, but that has an absolutely critical role to play,” Robert said.