Prof. Kamil Zeidler’s lecture at the conference organized at the University of Geneva

At the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva on February 4-5, 2021, the International Scientific Conference „What prospects for ‘orphan works’? Reflections on cultural goods with no provenance” took place. The Conference was organized by: UNIDROIT and the UNESCO Chair in the International Law of the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the University of Geneva. The University of Gdańsk is an institutional partner, and prof. Kamil Zeidler is an individual partner in the UNIDROIT UCAP research project, within which the conference was organized.

 

On the first day of the conference, prof. Kamil Zeidler from the Department of Theory and Philosophy of the State and Law of the University of Gdańsk gave a lecture entitled “Freedom of Collecting, Provenance Research and Restitution of Cultural Property: Conflict of Interest and Hard Case in the Philosophy of Law.” In the lecture author presented some thoughts on restitution of cultural property from legal philosophy point of view. Restitution and return of cultural property is a very practical problem, but at the same time it is also philosophical problem. And philosophical approach is very useful when we deal with the hard cases in law. Within it, the most important question is how to place cultural heritage law in the liberal-communitarian debate. Derek Gillman in the book titled “The Idea of Cultural Heritage” stressed that “during recent decades, two parallel debates have occurred with respect to public policy and heritage”, and mentioned above is the second one, which “takes place between political philosophers, especially liberal and communitarian thinkers of various shades.”