Respect for Persons and the Moral Force of Socially Constructed Norms

Speaker

Dr. Laura Valentini (LSE)

About the lecture: 

When and why do socially constructed norms—including the laws of the land, norms of etiquette, and informal customs—generate moral obligations? I argue that the answer lies in the duty to respect others, specifically to give them what I call “agency respect”. This is the kind of respect that people are owed in light of how they exercise their agency. My central thesis is this: To the extent that (i) existing norms are underpinned by people’s commitments as agents and (ii) they do not conflict with morality, they place moral demands on us on agency-respect grounds. This view of the moral force of socially constructed norms, I suggest, is superior to views that deny the moral force of such norms, and it elegantly explains certain instances of wrongdoing that would otherwise remain unaccounted for.

About the speaker:

Dr Laura Valentini is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics. She holds a first degree (“laurea”) in Political Science from Pavia University (Italy), and an MA and a PhD in Political Philosophy from University College London. She was a Junior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College (Oxford University), and a postdoc at the Center for Human Values (Princeton University). Prior to joining the LSE, she was a Lecturer in Political Philosophy at UCL. Dr Valentini has held visiting positions at the Australian National University, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the University of Uppsala, and Harvard University. In 2015, she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Politics and International Relations. She is the author of the book Justice in a Globalized World: A Normative Framework, and has published several peer-reviewed articles in political and legal philosophy.

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