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Culture and Injustice
Here's an observation: Social injustice is caused not only by unjust laws but also by social norms, patterns of behavior, and other informal social practices often referred to as elements of "culture." This observation is often taken to support an objection to liberal theorizing, because influential liberals focus their theories of justice on formal political institutions. My lecture will advance a reorientation in liberal theorizing about justice, one that deflates longstanding and ongoing debates about the subject matter of justice by showing that liberal justice issues illuminating guidance with respect to culture even if it retains its focus on political institutions. One upshot is that liberals and their critics don't need to litigate this longstanding debate in order to engage fruitfully on substantive questions about how to address injustice--including injustice sustained by culture.
About the Speaker
Gina Schouten is Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. She writes on issues of justice and political legitimacy, gender, and education. Her 2019 book, Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor, assesses the adequacy of a neutrality framework of political legitimacy and considers its capacity to approve political intervention aimed at eroding the gendered division of labor. Her current book project, The Anatomy of Justice, develops a pluralist approach to theorizing liberal egalitarian justice and argues for that approach on the grounds that it supports compelling resolutions to longstanding disputes and difficulties internal to egalitarianism, and compelling defenses of liberalism against egalitarian critics.
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The Mala and Solomon Kamm Lecture in Ethics is supported by Frances M. Kamm, the Henry Rutgers University Professor of Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, and important long-term member of the Center for Ethics Community. Professor Kamm named the series in honor of her parents, Mala and Solomon Kamm, who survived internment at Auschwitz in World War II. The Kamms were dedicated to education, justice, and ethics throughout their lives, and we are pleased to honor their memory with this series. The Mala and Solomon Kamm Lecture in Ethics will be given by a leading philosopher to maintain the Center’s commitment to our disciplinary roots.