2006-2007 Speakers Bureau Catalog
RICHARD KYTE
Richard Kyte is director of the D. B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership and associate professor of philosophy at Viterbo University in La Crosse. He has written and lectured widely on topics related to justice, forgiveness, virtue, and ethics in society. He received his PhD in philosophy from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Address: Viterbo University, 900 Viterbo Drive, La Crosse, WI 54601
Phone: 608-782-5652 (home), 608-796-3704 (work), 608-796-3050 (fax)
E-mail: rlkyte@viterbo.edu
Ethical Conflict in American Society
This presentation will examine some of the moral and ethical conflicts that are most divisive in contemporary society, such as abortion, capital punishment, military intervention, gay marriage, and public expression of religion. An attempt will be made to understand the value commitments underlying the positions on each side of the conflicts, and to see how those values are deeply rooted in American tradition, in order to better understand the views and rhetoric of our fellow citizens.
The Cultural Significance of Wilderness: A Lost Voice?
Environmentalist authors from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries shared a conviction that the experience of wilderness was crucial to the health of American society. That conviction has all but disappeared from contemporary social commentary. This presentation will look at the writings of authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, and Sigurd Olson in an attempt to reclaim an important voice in American social and political life.
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