“Pure” in chemistry is a neutral description of an element; in theology “pure” is a moral ideal, when taken to monopolistic extremes, a danger; in poetry “pure” is a defined movement; in affective life, “pure” is nonexistent. What “small lies”—or large--creep into the translation from mathematical notation to the murkier world of the word, or from one language to another? When is language conceived of as by definition a lie? In “lie” as opposed to “falsehood,” a question of intention slips in, thus of ethical behavior.

Language, Lies and Ethics poses questions from which no discipline can escape: sciences and humanities, economics and finance, media and communications, and perhaps foremost in our minds today, politics and international relations, where representations and differences of language, value systems, and ethical cultures are present, and truth elusive.

Mieke Bal

Professor of Theory of Literature at the University of Amsterdam, Founding Director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Theory and Interpretation (ASCA), and A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

An interdisciplinary scholar of international stature, Bal has given invited lectures from Australia to Scandinavia, and has held distinguished visiting professorships at universities around the world. She is the author of twenty-five books, and has been the subject of a documentary film in a series on leading Dutch scholars.

Evelyn Fox Keller

MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

A doctor in theoretical physics with a thesis in molecular biology, she is a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation prize fellowship (known as the "genius award") as well as of honorary degrees from universities in the United States and Europe. The author of a dozen books, published in numerous languages, she has been a leading figure in the area of women and science and language.

Roald Hoffmann

Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and Professor of Chemistry, Cornell University.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as of many foreign academies, he has received several dozen honorary degrees, and other honors such as the National Medal of Science; he is the only person ever to receive the American Chemical Society's top awards in three subdisciplines (organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, chemistry education). Professor Hoffmann has simultaneously pursued a literary career, and is a distinguished poet, essayist, and playwright.

Jean-Michel Rabaté

Marjorie Ernest Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, Program Director, Collège International de Philosophie in Paris.

A renowned multidisciplinary and bilingual scholar, in the last ten years he has published some fifteen books in English and in French on literature and literary theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, particularly on the works of James Joyce and Jacques Lacan. A French scholar teaching in America, Jean-Michel Rabaté was a visiting professor at AUP for a semester, teaching the Senior Seminar on Joyce in the Department of Comparative Literature and English.

Conference Organizer: 

Professor Margery Arent Safir, Department of Comparative Literature, The American University of Paris.

The conference was held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. A dinner, honoring the conference speakers and past AUP honorary degree recipients, was held at the Cluny Museum, le Musée National du Moyen Age, and included a private viewing of the museum's collection.