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Ethics and Political Philosophy Group Talk (Victor Tadros, Warwick)
Friday October 7, 2022, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
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The Ethics and Political Philosophy Research Group is pleased to welcome as guest speaker Victor Tadros, a professor in the School of Law at the University of Warwick. Dr. Tadros’s research interests span across much of moral, legal, and political philosophy. Quite a lot of his work has concerned itself with the philosophy of criminal law and the philosophy of war, but he has also written on a wide range of general issues in moral and political philosophy. He is currently working mainly on consent to sex and on responsibility. His books include Criminal Responsibility (OUP, 2005), The Ends of Harm (OUP, 2011), Wrongs and Crimes (OUP, 2016), and To Do, To Die, To Reason Why (OUP, 2020).
Join the Zoom meeting: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/83313239341
Talk Title
The Conditional Value of Autonomy
Talk Abstract
Autonomy is conditionally valuable, and conditionally disvaluable. If you’ve done a wholly excellent thing, like saving a child, better to have done it autonomously. If you’ve done a wholly terrible thing, like killing an innocent person, autonomy makes things all the worse. But what is the value or disvalue of autonomy conditional on? I focus on the relationship between autonomy and duty. And I focus on the value of autonomy for the person themselves. Does autonomy always make wrongdoing worse for the wrongdoer, as Joseph Raz argued? I argue not. Does autonomy always make complying with one’s duties better for the person who complies, as Kant may have believed? I also argue not. In doing so I explore the divergence in the way value contributes to how well a person’s life goes and how it figures in determining our duties.
About the Ethics and Political Philosophy Group
The Ethics and Political Philosophy Group meets periodically throughout the year to discuss topics in value theory and related fields, including meta-ethics, normative ethics, applied ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, moral psychology, practical reason, agency, and identity.
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