Philosophy Taught in English

Irreconcilable Conceptions of Social and Political Justice

Master’s Program in Philosophy Taught in English is pleased to invite you to a lecture on Social Philosophy to be given by Prof. Dr. Manuel Knoll, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. Prof. Knoll’s exact topic will be On Irreconcilable Conceptions of Social and Political Justice. The lecture will be held in Room 63, Faculty of Philosophy, Main Campus on 15 Tsar Osvoboditel Blvd. on Friday, June 13 at 18:30.

Prof. Dr. Manuel Knoll earned his PhD in Philosophy, Political Science and History from the University of Munich in 2000. Since 1998 he has been lecturing at the University of Munich  and at the Munich School of Political Science. In 2008 he achieved his habilitation and venia legendi in Political Theory and Philosophy.

In 2011 he became a Professor of Philosophy at Fatih University, Istanbul. In 2013 he became a member of Instituto "Lucio Anneo Séneca", Madrid, and started to teach at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He is a co-publisher of the biannual journal Widerspruch.

His main research and lecturing interests are Ancient, Modern and Contemporary Political Philosophy and Ethics, in particular Ancient and Contemporary Theories of Justice, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Rawls and Michael Walzer, Social Philosophy and Critical Theory, Greek Philosophy of Classical Antiquity.

 

[lecture:]

On Irreconcilable Conceptions of Social and Political Justice 

June 13th, 2014, 18:30, Lecture Room 63

Abstract

Following Rawls, leading contemporary political thinkers, like Martha Nussbaum, aim at some form of consensus or rational agreement about justice. The notion that a consensus on social and political justice could be achieved was questionable from the start. This was made evident by Robert Nozick’s immediate and strong disagreement with Rawls.

The talk argues for the need of a significant shift of the research perspective on social and political justice. It criticizes the notion that a consensus about justice is possible, laying out a few of the disagreements about just distributions and a just society that have existed from antiquity till today. The talk prepares the ground for a discussion of the reasons for the fundamental oppositions concerning social and political justice found within existing moral intuitions.
You could dowload a handout here.