HFIK00001U Politik, samfund og værdier

Part 1: The birth of toleration and public reason

The first module of the course, on the history of philosophy, traces how influential thinkers in the Anglo-American tradition investigated of the role of rationality in public discourse about governance, and thereby laid the groundwork for the twentieth-century emergence of the concept of "public reason" (PR). Specifically, we will consider the role played by rational public discourse, according to these thinkers, in influencing political authority, individual freedom, religious toleration, social cooperation, gender roles, and minority rights. To begin, we focus on how the thought of Locke and Hume - who both worked to delineate the limits of state authority and the importance of rationality in public life - gave way in the late eighteenth century to Adam Smith’s provocative exploration of self-interest and social cooperation as the basis for societal well-being, and ultimately to the radical thought of William Godwin, whose philosophical anarchism grew out of a deep appreciation of the role of public opinion in shaping societies and individuals.

                      Moving into the nineteenth century, we investigate the link drawn by John Stuart Mill between the free expression of views and the flourishing of individuals and societies. We then delve into recent critiques of liberal accounts of public reason from postcolonial and feminist perspectives, and conclude, crossing the Atlantic, with a critical look at three key nineteenth-century American thinkers - Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and Lucretia Mott - who contributed to broadening Western understandings of public reason through their engagement with the causes of women’s rights and abolitionism.

Part 2 Public reason and the role of science

The second part of the course will focus on a systematic discussion of the core problematics that have motivated liberal political thought: concerns about disagreement and dissensus. Reasonable individuals may and do disagree about moral, religious, and metaphysical question, and even about plain factual matters. Much political thought in the liberal tradition is about how free and equal individuals can live together, respecting one another as free and equal, while sustaining such disagreements about fundamental questions. In this part we will focus on basic questions of moral and factual disagreement and on the productive role of dissent. We will end the second part by focusing on a topic that philosophers have only recently attended to: the role of scientific expertise in public reason or liberal democracy more generally. Given that liberal democracies should respect everyone as equal and equally entitled to a say, how should we understand the characteristic epistemic authority that scientific knowledge has in democratic deliberation and decision processes? 

Part 3: public reason in contemporary philosophy

Public Reason involves the idea that legitimate political actions must, somehow, be acceptable, or non-rejectable, by all involved parties. As such, it has both a very long historical background (the tradition of social contract theory) and a considerably shorter one, as it may be claimed that it grew out of the debate over neutrality in liberal philosophy in the 80ies. In this part of the course we will dig into some of the key texts in the public reason debate and engage with some of the main themes and issues of contention: what are the key components of PR? What does it mean for the state to remain neutral vis-à-vis controversial moral, metaphysical and religious ideas? What are the attractions of PR? Do we need consensus for legitimacy of policy options? What is the relation between PR and the social contract tradition?