Faculty Seminars

The Center for Ethics and Public Affairs Faculty Seminar is a bimonthly event in which Tulane faculty, the Center’s Faculty Fellows and distinguished visitors present works in progress.

The seminar is open to the Center Faculty Committee, Faculty Fellows, Graduate Fellows, and invited faculty and graduate students.

Papers are available to seminar participants approximately one week before each session. Papers are posted here as password-protected PDF’s.

Past Faculty Seminars

2013

Apr Russ Shafer-Landau, Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Center for Ethics and Public Affairs Faculty Seminar
Apr Sarah Stroud, Associate Vice-Principal and Associate Professor of Philosophy, McGill University
Center for Ethics and Public Affairs Faculty Seminar
Feb Sharon Street
“Nothing ‘Really’ Matters, but That’s Not What Matters”
Feb Mary Clayton Coleman
“A Coherent Constitutivism”
Jan Monika Betzler
“Why Should We Value Personal Projects?”

2012

Dec Victoria McGeer
“Civilizing Blame”
Nov Peter Railton
“The Affective Dog and Its Rational Tale”
Nov Ruth Chang
“Grounding Practical Normativity: Going Hybrid”
Nov Dale Dorsey
“How Not to Argue Against Consequentialism”
Oct Michael Davis
“The Essence of Babel: Rousseau on the Origin of Languages”
Apr Michael McKenna
“Directed Blame and Conversation”
Apr Tamler Sommers
“The Ethical Significance of Victim Impact Statements”
Mar Sharon Krause
“Freedom Beyond Sovereignty”
Mar Daniel Fessler
“The Strategy of Affect: Emotions in Human Cooperation”
Mar Wayne Sumner
“The Ethics of Assisted Death”
Jan Jerry Gaus
“On the Appropriate Mode of Justifying a Public Moral Constitution”

2011

Dec Dana Villa
“Hegel, Tocqueville, and ‘Individualism’”
Oct Hanoch Sheinman
“The Conventional Meaning of Institutional Discrimination”
Oct CANCELLED: Nadia Urbinati
Sep John Deigh
“Reactive Attitudes Revisited”
Apr Mikhail Valdman
“Autonomy: Incoherent or Unimportant?”
Feb Larry Temkin
“On the Nature of Moral Ideals”
Jan Michael Zuckert
“Sparta: Polybius and Classical Constitutionalism”
Jan Paul Weithman
“Legitimacy and the Project of Political Liberalism”

2010

Dec Shaun Nichols
“Debunking Ethics”
Nov Daniel Jacobson
“Moral Dumbfounding and Moral Stupidity”
Oct Joshua Gert
“Response-Dependence, Harms, and Objective Practical Reasons”
Oct Peter Stone
“Lotteries, Education, and Opportunity”
Sep Simon May
“Democratic Legitimacy and the Meaning of Religious Establishment”
Apr Charles Larmore
“What is Political Philosophy?”
Apr Susan Shell
“Are All Rights Human Rights?”
Mar David Brink
“Responsibility as Fairness”
Feb Jesse Prinz
“Sentimentalism and Self-Directed Emotions”
Feb Geoffrey Brennan
“The Context of Justice or ‘Cooperative Venture for Mutual Advantage’?”
Jan Richard F. Teichgraeber III
“The Arrival of Up-or-Out Tenure: James B. Conant and the ‘Tempest at Harvard,’ 1937-39”

2009

Nov Anne Margaret Baxley
“Kant’s Conception of Virtue and the Autocracy of Pure Practical Reason”
Oct Stephen M. Griffin
“War Powers and Constitutional Change”
Oct Alan Thomas
“The Neo-Marxist Critique of Rawlsian Liberalism”
Sep Michael Moehler
“The (Stabilized) Nash Bargaining Solution as a Principle of Distributive Justice”
Apr Peg Birmingham
“On Political-Theological Violence: Before the Law”
Apr Fred Dallmayr
“The Concept of the Political: Politics between War and Peace”
Mar Jerry Gaus
“The Demands of Impartiality and the Evolution of Morality”
Mar Henry E. Allison
“Kant’s Metaethical Grounding of his Metaphysics of Morals and the Derivation of the Categorical Imperative”
Feb Jennifer Culbert
“Law as a Work of Art: A Philosophy of Law in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt”
Feb Brad Hooker
“Fairness and Promises”
Jan Richard F. Teichgraeber III
“What Does ‘Tenure’ Do?”

2008

Nov Aaron James
“Global Economic Fairness: Internal Principles”
Oct Oliver Sensen
“Kant’s Conception of Inner Value”
Oct Douglas Portmore
“Imperfect Reasons and Rational Options”
Oct Ruth Abbey
“The Return of Feminist Liberalism”
Sep Eric Mack
“The Natural Right of Property”
Apr Gary Watson
“The Trouble with Psychopaths”
Apr Cheshire Calhoun
“What Good is Commitment?”
Mar Laurence J. Kotlikoff
“On the General Relativity of Fiscal Language”
Mar Rex Martin
“The Social Recognition Thesis: Constitutional Rights and Human Rights”
Feb Edward McClennen
“Rational Bargaining”
Feb Michael E. Zimmerman
“The Singularity: A Crucial Phase in Divine Self-Actualization?”
Feb Richard Arneson
“Luck Egalitarianism: A Primer”
Jan Michael Rosen
“‘The Shibboleth of All Empty-Headed Moralists’:The Place of Dignity in Ethics and Politics”

2007

Nov Thomas Hill
“Torture and Kantian Values”
Nov David Shoemaker
“Responsibility Without Identity”
Oct Steven Wall
“Democracy and Respect”
Oct Elizabeth Brake
“An Argument for ‘Minimal Marriage’”
May Oliver Sensen
“Why We Should Respect Others: Kant’s Formula of Humanity”
Apr David Weinstein
“Exile, Historicism and the Autonomy of Texts”
Apr Stuart White
“What (if Anything) is Wrong with Inheritance Tax”
Mar Gary Gutting
“What Did Rawls Achieve? Intuitions, Convictions, and Reflective Equilibrium in A Theory of Justice”
Jan Susanne Sreedhar
“The Hobbesian Right of Rebellion”

2006

Dec Lawrie Balfour
“W.E.B. Du Bois and Critical Race Autobiography”
Nov Peter Vanderschraaf
“The Circumstances of Justice”
Nov Roderick T. Long
“Free Minds and Future Contingents”
Oct Jill Locke
“Between Therapy and Tragedy: Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Shame”
Oct Karl Widerqust
“Effective Control Self Ownership: Freedom as the Power to Say No”
Sep Eric Mack
“Hayek on Justice and the Order of Actions”
Apr Paul L. Harris
“Trust in Testimony: How Children Learn about Science and Religion”
Mar Samuel R. Freeman
“The Burdens of Public Justification”
Mar Alison Denham
“Psychopathy, Empathy, and Moral Agency”
Feb Fred Miller
“Aristotelian Statecraft and Modern Politics”
Jan George Klosko
“Fairness Obligations and Moral Principles”
Jan James E. Mahon
“Kant on Reticence and Deception”

2005

Dec Lad Sessions
“The Concept of Personal Honor”
Nov Eric Mack
“Hayek on Justice and the Order of Actions”
Nov Jonathan Quong
“Contractarianism, Reciprocity, and Egalitarian Justice”
Oct Richard Dagger
“Neorepublicanism and the Civic Economy”
Apr Cheryl Misak
“How to be an Empiricist in Bioethics: Some Empirical Lessons in the Ethics of Critical Care”
Feb David Estlund
“Political Authority and the Tyranny of Non-Consent”
Jan Robert Talisse
“Social Epistemic Liberalism: Comprehensive not Political”
Jan Marcia Baron
“Excuses, Excuses”

2004

Nov Eric Cavallero
“Immigration Pressure Equilibrium”
Oct Jonathan Riley
“Mill’s Liberalism and Pluralism”
Oct Eric Mack
“The Instability of Contractualism: Scanlon as Natural Rights Theorist”
Sep Martyn Thompson
“Intimations of Poetry in Practical Life: On the Relationship between Philosophy, Practice and Liberal Education in Michael Oakeshott’s Thought”
Feb Mathias Risse
“Fairness in Trade”