Ethics

New England Consequentialism Workshop

The New England Consequentialism Workshop (NECW) was a forum for discussing works-in-progress in normative ethics, understood broadly to include, e.g. political philosophy and bioethics, which convened monthly from 2010 to 2013. Past presenters included Shelly Kagan, Jeff McMahan, Debra Satz, Tim Scanlon and others. Workshop participants came from Harvard, other Boston-area institutions, and New England at large.

NECW was hosted and funded by the Edmond J. Safra Center...

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New England Consequentialism Workshop

The New England Consequentialism Workshop (NECW) was a forum that discussed works-in-progress in normative ethics, understood broadly to include, e.g. political philosophy and bioethics, which convened monthly from 2010 to 2013. Past presenters included Shelly Kagan, Jeff McMahan, Debra Satz, Tim Scanlon and others. Workshop participants came from Harvard, other Boston-area institutions, and New England at large. NECW was hosted and funded by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. It was founded and coordinated by Nir Eyal...

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2015 Feb 19

Good Neighbor Nation: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America

4:30pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

Case Study Room, CGIS

Speaker: Nancy Rosenblum, Senator Joseph Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government, Harvard University

Neighbors make us miserable, disturb our sleep, provide company and care, rescue us in emergencies, betray us to political authorities. Our quality of life around home is vulnerable to neighbors' ordinary vices and, sometimes, exceptional hostility and cruelty. No wonder we tell stories about our neighbors with feeling. The scope of our interactions is unpredictable, and the temper of our encounters is colored by the human spectrum of personal and moral disposition. No...

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2014 Nov 17

Volitional Rationality and the Necessities of Love

5:30pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

Emerson Hall 105, Harvard College

Speaker: Harry Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Princeton University

An attempt to develop a naturalistic account of the source of moral normativity. This lecture seeks to allocate the appropriate roles of objectivity and of subjectivity in moral judgment and reasoning.

2015 Mar 12

Russell Muirhead, "Apolitical Animals: From Machiavelli to Morris Fiorina

5:30pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

Austin 101 East, Harvard Law School

"Apolitical Animals: from Machiavelli to Morris Fiorina"

A powerful, almost irresistible strain of modern political theory invites us to see "the people" as defined by a common-sense interest in security, prosperity, and fairness. In this image, popular common-sense might rule, were it not for the corrupting effects of political animals – partisans, defined by their irrational love of power. As Machiavelli says, the few want to oppress, while the many want not to be oppressed. Is the modern image of the apolitical people right? Can the apolitical people protect themselves against...

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2015 Feb 05

Third Annual Lester Kissel Lecture in Ethics: Arthur Ripstein

5:30pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

Austin 101 East, Harvard Law School

"Perpetual War or Perpetual Peace?

Speaker: Arthur Ripstein, Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Toronto

Arthur Ripstein is Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 2009) and Equality, Responsibility, and the Law (Cambridge University Press, 1999). He is currently completing "Private Wrongs," a book on philosophical aspects of tort law, and starting a new book project on Kant and the law of war, tentatively titled "...

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2014 Nov 03

Structural Injustice and the Irrelevance of Attachment to Resources

5:30pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

Austin 111 West, Harvard Law School

Speaker: Lea Ypi, Associate Professor in Political Theory, London School of Economics

Many people seem to think that members of indigenous groups have special, attachment-based, claims to the natural resources essential to the pursuit of their projects. The purpose of this paper is to criticise that argument. The first part suggests that attachment-based claims should be considered in analogy to luxury tastes and are subject to similar distributive requirements. The second part argues that to provide a normatively compelling account of why sometimes agents who are attached to...

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2002 Nov 08

Seminar: The Moral Authority of Nature

10:00am

Location: 

Harvard Faculty Club

Speaker: Lorraine Daston, Honorary Professor, Humboldt University and Friday Director, Max Planck Institute of the History of Science
Moderator: Allan M. Brandt, Professor of the History of Science; Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine, Harvard University
Commentator: Stephen J. Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of English and American Literature and Language, Harvard University
Commentator: Catherine Z. Elgin, Professor of Education, Harvard University

2006 Dec 07

Righting Wrongs: The Promise and Peril of Transitional Justice

4:30pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

Starr Auditorium, Kennedy School of Government

Speaker: Elizabeth Kiss, Associate Professor of the Practice of Political Science and Philosophy; Director, Kenan Ethics Program, Duke University

Globalization has provided a new framework for dealing with questions about human rights. The global human rights movement has established a new terrain for moral, legal and political discourse about this important category of wrongs. Professor Kiss' talk draws our attention to the difficult question of how we can right the wrongs of past political...

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