08/12/2025
CFP - INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE- THE THEATRE OF REASONS. Conjecture, Criticism, and Morality in the Age of Enlightenment
The Early Modern Philosophy research group InterLegere at the University of Pisa is thrilled to announce the opening of the call for papers for our upcoming conference “The Theatre of Reasons: Conjecture, Critique, and Morality in the Age of Enlightenment”, to be held in Pisa on 29–30 April 2026
Call for papers details below 👇 :
THE THEATRE OF REASONS
Conjecture, Criticism, and Morality in the Age of Enlightenment
International Conference - CALL FOR PAPERS - Pisa 29-30 April 2026
The InterLegere research group on the history of modern philosophy at the University of Pisa is pleased to announce the conference “The Theatre of Reasons: Conjecture, Criticism, and Morality in the Age of Enlightenment”, which will take place in Pisa on April 29 and 30, 2026.
We encourage the submission of contributions that investigate the forms of eighteenth-century rationality, with particular attention to the intersection between literary genres, scientific method, and moral and epistemological reflection. Submissions will undergo blind review by the Conference Scientific Committee. Below are the essential operational details for submitting applications:
• Abstract submission deadline: February 22, 2026
• Notification of acceptance: Early March 2026
• Accepted languages: Italian, English, French
• Paper title: Please indicate the provisional title
• Abstract length: Max 500 words
• Author profile: Short biographical note with research interests (max. 100 words)
• Proposal submission: Via the form on the official website
• Website for info and submissions: https://sites.google.com/view/thetheatreofreasons
Keynote Speakers: The conference will feature the participation of:
• Elio Franzini (University of Milan)
• Christophe Martin (Sorbonne University)
• Peter Kail (University of Oxford)
• Laura Nicolì (University of Cagliari)
• Franck Salaün (University of Montpellier)
Conference Description and Themes of Interest
Taking as a starting point—without thereby limiting the perspectives of the conference—David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, we aim to investigate the plural nature of eighteenth-century thought and argumentative forms. The intent is to observe how the protagonists of the Enlightenment redefine traditional cognitive paradigms by deploying peculiar devices such as conjecture, analogy, thought experiments, and the fictional multiplication of points of view (through dialogue, the philosophical tale, or the apologue). In this framework, the conference seeks to investigate these forms—including their potential aporetic dimensions—not as simple rhetorical strategies, but as expressions of a knowledge that is constitutively uncertain and exploratory: essential conditions through which knowing became possible in the eighteenth century.
By virtue of their literary form, the Dialogues exemplarily display this process of multiplying points of view, of experimenting with argumentative modes and forms of writing (from dialogue to novel, from fragment to essay), as well as of confronting plural forms of rationality, which characterizes the eighteenth century. Reproducing the theatrical play of light and shadow, they stage diverse modes of argumentation: the conjectural, but also the experimental, analogical, and fictional modes, as well as the use of thought experiments. These latter strategies may be read as catalysts for the epistemological tensions of the century: their increasing use in philosophical texts, as well as in empirical-scientific ones, invites reflection on the status of such strategies as regulated operations of the imagination, capable of redefining the relationship between knowledge and certainty.
Through conjecture and other philosophical devices, the eighteenth century thus stages the search for new foundations of knowledge and the rejection of commonly accepted interpretive categories, transforming the collapse of theoretical paradigms that had characterized the previous century into an occasion for the re-articulation of human knowledge. Within this framework, we propose to reflect on the problems exemplarily posed by Hume’s text, using it as a litmus test for the issues traversing the eighteenth century and the philosophical strategies devised to address them.
We therefore suggest articulating proposals—relating to any author or text of the eighteenth century—along these four main lines of research:
1. Relationship between literary forms and modes of philosophical argumentation: Which cognitive and argumentative operations are made possible exclusively by non-systematic forms such as the dialogue, the fragment, or the novel? How does the plurality of literary and argumentative genres stage the conflict between different styles of rationality (deduction, analogy, skepticism), assuming a privileged role in the exploration of the nature and limits of philosophical reasoning in the face of uncertainty?
2. Conjecture between Philosophy and Science: What is the epistemological function of conjecture in the various disciplines of the eighteenth century, from philosophy to natural history, from medicine to the history of the Earth? How does the hypothesis transform from a form of uncertain argumentation into a key instrument of the scientific method?
3. Morality in an Uncertain World: What type of morality is possible in a universe whose knowledge is governed by conjecture and not by certainty? How does the epistemology of probability force a rethinking of the very foundation of morality, rendering it intrinsically provisional, experimental, and fallibilist? We welcome contributions that explore how this culture of uncertainty makes the figure of the virtuous atheist philosophically conceivable and fits into the project of a “science of human nature”.
4. The role of theatre in the philosophical horizon of the 18th century: What is the relationship between narration, fiction, and philosophical argumentation? The theatrical logic constitutes the place where different models of thought exhibit their own modes of argumentation and of constructing a reason increasingly understood in the plural. How are the roles of observer and observed conceived in a dynamic in which, by its very nature, these roles are constantly redefined? In what way does the theatrical form configure itself as an open space capable of interrogating the languages, arguments, and philosophical narratives of the period, positioning itself on an intermediate plane between fiction and reality?
For any clarification, please write to: [email protected].
InterLegere Research Group University of Pisa
