on behalf of Univ.-Prof. Angela Kallhoff and the Department of Philosophy, I cordially invite you to a guest lecture titled
"Humankind’s
Common Cultural Heritage, Justice and Territorial Rights"
by Cecile Fabre (All Souls College,
Oxford).
Thu Dec. 14th, 2023, 6:30 p.m. in HS 3D (NIG)
For questions, contact sophie.kroiss@univie.ac.at
Abstract:
The thought that there are cultural landmarks which have
universal value is a familiar one. It is at the heart of
UNESCO's and the World Heritage's mission, and is affirmed
in a number of international declarations, not least the
Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and
Natural Heritage. For all its appeal, UNESCO's ideals raise
some deep concerns. In particular, it is not easy to
articulate an account of universal value; and it is not easy
to show why we are under moral obligations in respect of
that heritage. Nevertheless, I attempt to defend those
ideals. I seek to show that the protection of humankind's
heritage, qua humankind's, not only is a moral imperative:
more strongly put, it is a duty of justice. I then address
one of the most important objections to it - namely that it
undermines states’ and their citizenries’ legitimate
interest in deciding what to do with landmarks which are
located on their territory.
Cecile Fabre a political philosopher, and currently
Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She
is also Professor of Political Philosophy at the
University of Oxford, and affiliated with the Faculty of
Philosophy, the Department of Politics and International
Relations, and Nuffield College, Oxford. Her research
interests are in theories of distributive justice; the
philosophy of democracy; just war theory; the ethics of
foreign policy, with particular focus on the ethics of
economic statecraft and the ethics of espionage.
She most recently published Spying Through a Glass Darkly:
The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence (Oxford
University Press 2022); Economic Statecraft: Human Rights,
Sanctions, and Conditionality (Harvard University Press,
2018), preceded by (among others) Cosmopolitan Peace
(Oxford University Press, 2016), The Morality of Defensive
War, co-edited with Seth Lazar (Oxford University Press,
2014), Cosmopolitan War (Oxford University Press, 2012).