Survival Kits for Apocalypses: Georgi Gospodinov at ECLA

On the 6th of June, the ECLA community welcomed Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov. The evening entitled Survival Kits for Apocalypses included readings from Gospodinov’s play The Apocalypse Comes at 6 pm (in which two ECLA students were also involved in the reading), from his poetry, and from the latest novel The Physics of Sorrow. Georgi Gospodinov also presented some of his

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The Right of Necessity

Students of the Property Core Course had the good fortune to have Professor Andreas Blank conduct a seminar about Samuel Pufendorf’s theory of necessity on May 30th. Professor Blank is a teacher of early modern philosophy in the University of Hamburg and his expertise was most helpful in comparing Pufendorf’s notions of ownership and necessity with

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The Truth About Lying

On Tuesday the 29th May, Thomas Schmidt visited ECLA to give a lecture entitled “Why Lying is Wrong (When it is Wrong)”. Schmidt, who teaches at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin’s Department of Practical Philosophy and Normative Ethics, is regarded as one of Germany’s most important writers in his field. Thomas Schmidt began by defining exactly what

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Krytyka’s Look at Ukrainian Politics

In 1997 Professor Grabowicz founded Krytyka, a Ukrainian-language journal that discusses politics, history and cultural studies, amongst other things, and serves as, “the highest standard of intellectual debate” available in Ukraine. Though this would of course be considered a respectable project in any circumstances, it became clear to us that this is a particularly important provision

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Democracy and Political Compromise

On Thursday 10th May, Richard Bellamy, Director of the European Institute at University College London, gave a lecture entitled “Democracy, Compromise and the Representation Paradox” at Berlin’s Hertie School of Governance. Richard Bellamy’s lecture dealt with the very real and relevant topic of compromise in coalition governments. Indeed, Professor Bellamy began by offering a reminder

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