The Jubilee Centre held its 5th annual conference at Oriel College, Oxford, January 5-7, 2017. The theme of the conference was Character, Wisdom and Virtue. With five keynote speeches, over fifty seminar and poster presentations and 120 delegates, the conference was highly successful and widely praised by the attendees for its content and organisation. The key note speeches by Professors Howard Curzer, Candace Vogler, Lenn Goodman, Monika Ardelt and Howard Nusbaum were particularly well received.
The key note speakers explored Aristotelian, Thomistic, Arabic, Jewish and social scientific conceptions of wisdom and phronesis. With many of the most distinguished authorities in the field of wisdom research attending, seminar presenters asked searching questions about the domain-specificity of wisdom, its theoretical versus experiential underpinnings, its cultivation, and whether a wisdom-guided life is more like a symphony orchestra with a discrete conductor or a self-co-ordinating jazz band - to name but a few of the themes that emerged from the parallel sessions. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest interdisciplinary conference ever held devoted to the topic of wisdom and its surrounding virtues.
The full text of the key note speeches and seminar presentations continues to be accessible online here.
This year’s conference also saw a celebratory launch of five books published by Jubilee Centre academics. The book launch took place on the evening of 5th January and showcased the breadth of publications, influence and impact that the Jubilee Centre has achieved over the past four years.
The photographs above show the five books launched and the display showcasing the Jubilee Centre's work.