ETHICS, POLITICS, AND ECONOMICS (EPE) LITOWITZ LECTURE
The Ethics, Politics, and Economics program is hosting the annual Litowitz lecture with guest speaker Anne Phillips, Professor Emerita of Political Theory at the London School of Economics. Professor Phillips will present her work on Unconditional Equals. The lecture will take place from 4:00-5:20 pm on Tuesday, September 24th at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies (77 Prospect Street in Room A002). Coffee and pastries will be provided. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Please RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSetfCE0evdyQnEzTCXHY1UHO3B9gLmZ…
Given the scale of contemporary poverty, many consider it either inappropriate or just fantastical to also worry about inequality. The priority, it is said, should be the alleviation of poverty and destitution. If societies could once guarantee that everyone had enough – that we all had sufficient resources for an adequate life – there would be no need to also worry about inequality. The presumption is that citizens of at least liberal democracies already enjoy a basic ‘status’ equality (are already in some significant sense regarded as equals), and that the persistence of even gross material inequality does not affect this. The view seriously mistakes both the history of claims about our supposedly basic equality and the reality of contemporary society. The argument of this lecture is that we cannot so readily separate our status from material equality, and that we should worry about both poverty and inequality.