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Online | Philosophy of Work

18 May 2021, 4:00 pm–6:00 pm

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This event is organised by the Institute of Laws, Politics and Philosophy (ILPP)

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UCL Laws

Please note that the time allocated for this seminar will be devoted to discussion of the paper. Download a copy of the paper.

About the paper: This chapter identifies three domains of philosophical questions about work. First, an ontological issue: What is work? This question is both historical and conceptual, as questions in social ontology usually are. Second, an ethical issue: How does work fit into the good life? The hard problem here is to substitute, in new economic conditions, for the four main things a good job currently does: first, produce the goods and services we need, while also providing people with income, sociability, and significance. These are issues on which many popular writers on the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” and on globalization have, of course, written for some time. But what’s lacking, the chapter claims, is serious organized reflection on the normative issues raised by these challenges. And that leads to the third cluster of concerns: How should law and other sources of normative authority be configured to allow work to contribute to the flourishing of workers, and how should the opportunities and rewards of work be shared?

About the Speaker: Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah is Professor of Philosophy and Law at NYU. Earlier, he taught at the University of Ghana, Cambridge, Yale, Cornell, Duke, Harvard and Princeton. He grew up in Ghana and received undergraduate and doctoral degrees in philosophy from Cambridge University in England. His work has been in the philosophy of mind and language, ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of art, of culture, and of the social sciences, especially anthropology; as well as in literary studies, where he has focused on African and African-American literature. He served as President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association (2007). In 2012, President Obama presented him with the National Humanities Medal. His publications include Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers and The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. Professor Appiah writes the weekly Ethicist column for the New York Times Sunday magazine.

About the Institute:The Institute brings together political and legal theorists from Law, Political Science and Philosophy and organises regular colloquia in terms 2 and 3.

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