CONF: Rawlsian Liberalism in Context(s)

Symposium "Rawlsian Liberalism in Context(s)", at the University of Tennessee, Baker Center for Public Policy, Toyota Auditorium, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, 26-27 February 2010

Over a period of fifty years, John Rawls developed and gave voice to the most powerful and systematic moral theory of constitutional liberal democracy since John Stuart Mill's work a century earlier. The recent publication of Rawls' undergraduate thesis, "A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith", has encouraged a profitable re-reading of his political philosophy in the context and light of his personal and scholarly engagement with theological ethics and political theology in general and Christianity in particular.

Building on this development, "Rawlsian Liberalism in Context(s)" aims to shed further light on Rawls' work by situating it within multiple disciplinary contexts. Symposium speakers will address the relationships between Rawls' thought and twentieth-century developments in economics and political economy, in analytic philosophy, in American pragmatist thought, in normative theorizing of American foreign policy and international relations, and in theological ethics and political theology.

Symposium speakers, each an expert on Rawls' work, include:
- Jerry Gaus (James E. Rogers Professor of Philosophy, University of Arizona)
- Richard Miller (Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University)
- David Reidy (Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Tennessee)
- Robert Talisse (Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, Vanderbilt University)
- Paul Weithman (Professor of Philosophy, Notre Dame University)

Sessions are free and open to the public. Schedule details will be available late fall 2009. For further information, please contact David Reidy: dreidy@utk.edu

The Symposium is sponsored by the Office of Research, the School of Law, the Baker Center for Public Policy, the departments of Philosophy and Political Science, and the American Studies programme, all at the University of Tennessee.