Just Europe

Max Weber Lecture by Philippe Van Parijs (Université Catholique de Louvain)

On 16 November 2016 at 17:00 in the Refettorio of the Badia Philippe Van Parijs will deliver the second Max Weber Lecture of this academic year.

The lecture will be chaired by MW Fellow Christine Hobden (SPS) and the speaker will be introduced by Professor Rainer Bauboeck (SPS)

Abstract:

How should we think about justice within the European Union? As a fair sharing of the benefits of voluntary cooperation between member states? Or on the model of domestic distribution justice, i.e. as the equalisation of opportunities between European citizens? Or both? Or neither?

In his only explicit discussion of the European Union, John Rawls, the founding father of contemporary political philosophy, takes a clear stance on this issue. The lecture will spell out this stance but argue for the opposite view. And it will sketch the implications for the struggles ahead, in Europe and elsewhere.

About the speaker:

Philippe Van Parijs is a professor at the University of Louvain (Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics) and a special guest professor at the University of Leuven. From 2004 to 2010 he was a visiting professor at Harvard University and from 2011 to 2015 at the University of Oxford.

He is one of the founders of the Basic Income Earth Network and chairs its International Board. His books include Real Freedom for All. What (if anything) Can Justify Capitalism? (Oxford UP, 1995), What’s Wrong with a Free Lunch? (Beacon Press, 2001), Just Democracy. The Rawls-Machiavelli Programme (ECPR, 2011), Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World (Oxford UP, 2011) and Basic Income. A radical proposal for a free society and a sane economy (Harvard UP, forthcoming 2017, with Y. Vanderborght).

Link to registration.