by Peter Mark (Wesleyan University)Wednesday, 14 October 2026, 16:00 Uhr / 4 p.m.
Venue: Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg
Chair: Roland Hardenberg (Goethe University Frankfurt)
About the talk
This talk presents a study of ethics in local, small-scale societies along the West African
coast from Senegal south through Guiné-Bissau, Guinea and Sierra Leone. How can one
study ethics in a society whose culture is oral, not written? Is it possible to write a history of
local ethics? What sources are available for both an indigenous and an outside perspective?
Ethical principles are too often subsumed under social organization or economic practice. I
seek to place ethics and ethical models at the center of my analysis.
What role have local ethical principles played in the attraction of Islam and Christianity? Does
»conversion« entail a radical break in ethical norms and moral codes? Or were these world
religions attractive precisely to the degree that they mirrored pre-existing local precepts?
Finally – and this part of my presentation is only adumbrated, that is, it is very much a work-
in-progress: can Western moral philosophy aid in the understanding and analysis of local
West African ethics? Or, to the contrary, do local ethics illuminate limitations, due to the
culturally contextualized nature, of modern moral philosophy as articulated by such figures as
Husserl, Bergson, or Ricœur?
The speaker
Peter A. Mark is Professor emeritus of Art History at Wesleyan University. His work focuses
on the cultural history of West Africa and European-African Interaction from the 16th to the
19th century. At present, he is a fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften at the
invitation of Roland Hardenberg, Director of the Frobenius Institute for Research in Cultural
Anthropology at Goethe University; he is collaborating with researchers from Goethe
University's interdisciplinary field of potential »Religion and De:Toxification (RelTox)«.
Beginning of term reception | Registration
After the colloquium, our semester reception for fellows and friends will take place; we look
forward to welcoming you there as well! To help us with our planning, if you havn’t already,
please register for the colloquium and the reception by Thursday, October 8.
