On Tuesday 5th November 2024, the “Societās: Exploring the Value of Freedom of Association” project hosted an interdisciplinary workshop on the theme of “Exploring the Contours of Sociality: Perspectives from Law and Philosophy”. The workshop was hosted by UCC School of Law, it was organised by Dr Cinzia Ruggeri and Professor Maria Cahill, and supported by a Laureate grant from Reserach Ireland (Irish Research Council). It follows naturally from a very successful workshop on ‘The Importance of Sociality’ which was held on 20th and 21st of June 2024.
The event brought together experts on empathy, affectivity, social dynamics, social dimensions of the person, and social rights to share the richness of what philosophy has to offer in this space, and to consider how law can nuance the cutting edge of how it interacts with individuals by taking into account the social dimension of the human experience.
The workshop considered a range of themes and fields of law: concepts like ‘the commons’ and solidarity, and the ways in which they shape property law, immigration law, etc., and how sociality can be brought to bear on the ways in which we conceive of culpability in criminal law and how we design alternative dispute resolution procedures. Philosophical interventions revolved around issues in qualitative social ontology, the relevance of empathy for law, the primacy of social rights with respect to conventionally established human rights, and the notion of affective injustice and its relation to embodiment and the built environment.
A final roundtable provided an insightful and amicable space for a very profitable brainstorming session. In particular, legal academics and philosophers successfully reflected on issues raised during the workshop and concerted an effort to analyse how to increase law’s sensitivity to the social dimensions of human experience.
The hope of this workshop, along with its sister workshop held in June, was to ignite a conversation across the two disciplines that would take seriously what philosophy has to offer, the cutting edge of what law has to deal with, and the conversation between these two ancient, different, and uniquely valuable disciplines. This hope was beautifully fulfilled on the day, thanks to the openness, generosity and enthusiasm for cooperation that was palpable amongst our participants. Once again, we are grateful to Reserach Ireland (Irish Reserach Council) for supporting this project.
Cinzia Ruggeri and Maria Cahill (University College Cork)