Event Details
Event Title Ethics Around the Table: David Schmidtz
Location Hyde Hall, University Room
Sponsor Parr Center for Ethics
Date/Time 02/19/2015 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Registrants
For more information, contact the event administrator: Katie Bunyea kbunyea@unc.edu
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Ethics Around the Table: David Schmidtz, “The Pretense of Consent”

What terms of engagement are appropriate for people who don’t even agree on what terms of engagement are appropriate?  The question is not cute. It’s a real question at heart of human condition. So many theories represent political authority as grounded in consent, which leads them to define consent in insufferably attenuated and abstract ways. By contrast, if we start with actual politics—from the idea that disagreement is an inevitably central feature of our lives together—then the objective becomes to make it safe to live among people with whom we fundamentally disagree. On this view, the point of politics is not to reach consensus so much as to create realms where people are not a threat to each other, and in which minding one’s own business is a concretely available and genuinely palatable option.

David Schmidtz is Kendrick Professor at the University of Arizona. He teaches in Philosophy and in Economics and holds a courtesy appointment in the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship at Eller College of Management.  He is editor of Social Philosophy & Policy and is the Freedom Center's founding director. Dave also was named National Phi Beta Kappa Scholar in Philosophy for 2014-15.

This event is free and open to all. Lunch will be provided, and registration is kindly required.

UNC - Chapel Hill