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This Week’s Events
Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Contractualism and Anti-Perfectionism
Friday, March 7, 2025 - 04 pm - 06 pm
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Contractualism and Anti-Perfectionism
Many contemporary liberal political philosophers are tempted by a robustly anti-perfectionist outlook, but it’s not always clear what their reasons are for embracing this position. Most of us don’t view state funding for the arts as particularly problematic. And although there are liberal theories that clearly support a staunchly anti-perfectionist stance—Rawls’s political liberalism and the Kantian theory developed by Arthur Ripstein and others, for instance—they are highly controversial. I aim to do two things in this presentation. First, I want to raise doubts about the plausibility of the kind of blanket anti-perfectionism that many liberals have embraced. Second, I want to articulate how a more nuanced assessment of the role of perfectionist considerations in political argument might go. I propose to do this by considering the (limited but real) role that appeals to perfectionist values can play in the contractualist moral theory developed by T. M. Scanlon, and by asking more specifically what room there is for such considerations when we turn from principles of interpersonal morality to principles that apply to large-scale social institutions.
► This event is in-person. Join in person at the Centre for Ethics (Larkin Building room 200).
Louis-Philippe Hodgson
Philosophy
York University