I. The distinction between justice and democracy II. The priority of democracy over justice Justice is not the only virtue of political institutions; legitimacy is just as important. After all, it is democracy, not justice, that establishes institutional legitimacy. At least this is the case from a republican view of democracy. Political institutions may be […]
R. Jay Wallace (Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley) I: The main features of bilateral normativity II: Claim, injustice and requirement According to one promising approach, morality is about a particular kind of interpersonal relationship. More precisely, adherence to moral norms enables us to deal with other persons on the basis of […]
Prof. Dr. James Scott (Yale University) I. The Domestication of Fire, Animals, Grain and....Us The Early State: its Fragility and the Golden Age of "Barbarians" All of the presumed civilizational steps required for state-making: agriculture, domestic animals, sedentism, towns and substantial commerce were in place several millennia before anything we might call a "state" appears […]
Liam B. Murphy (Herbert Peterfreund Chair of Law and Professor of Philosophy at New York University) I: Artificial Morality II: The Persistence of an Illusion In the public at large, property and contract law are commonly thought to reflect moral proprietary and promissory rights. Contemporary philosophers are mostly skeptical about natural property rights, but not […]
Prof. Dr. Friedrich Kratochwil (Professor emeritus of International Relations) I. Critical comments on the "practice turn" II. Critical comments on "ideal theory" The two lectures deal with the problem of the possibility of a theory of practice. The first sheds light on these problems through a critical examination of the "practice turn" in international relations […]
Prof. Dr. iur. Anne Peters, LL.M. (Harvard) (Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg) Rights of animals and nature Duties, responsibility and artificial intelligence The boundaries between animals, humans and machines are becoming increasingly blurred. The primacy of humans, who are in the process of destroying the […]
Prof Bruce A. Ackerman (Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale) I. How Real Is Virtual Reality? II. The Genetic Lottery During the early twentieth century, Heisenberg's Uncertainty and Einstein Relativity discredited the rigid Newtonian "laws" that had served as the foundation of Enlightenment thought for more than two hundred years. A host […]
Frankfurt Lectures "The Idea of the Public: Two Kantian Themes" Lecture by Prof Arthur Ripstein (Faculty of Law and Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto) Public institutions exercise powers that no private person can enjoy; they collect taxes, impose binding resolution on disputes, define and punish crimes and make difficult choices that benefit some people […]
Frankfurt Lectures "The Idea of the Public: Two Kantian Themes" Lecture by Prof Arthur Ripstein (Faculty of Law and Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto) The Kantian idea of freedom objects to any situation in which one person is subject to the private choice of another. Public institutions can only act through individual natural persons, […]