Digital Kant-Lecture with Sorin Baiasu

Sorin Baiasu (Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford University)

The Digital Kant-Centre NRW is pleased to invite you to a lecture by Sorin Baiasu (University of Liverpool) with the following topic: Kant and ‘Merit’: Retrieving a Neglected Notion ofVerdienst.

The lecture will take place online (via Webex) on Wednesday, 30 April 2025, from 18:00 – 19:30 CET. The lecture will be held in English.

Please see below for the Webex-link and an abstract of the lecture. 

The talk is part of the lecture series Digital Kant-Lectures, organized by Digital Kant-Centre NRW, which takes place on the last Wednesday of each month via Webex. For the program of the series, please see here: https://kant-zentrum-nrw.de/digital-kant-lectures/

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Webex-Link: 

https://uni-siegen.webex.com/uni-siegen/j.php?MTID=me63fe1cb80f195cc3bfcbee7fdafb99a

Abstract: 

The aim of this talk is very ambitious, as it proposes to argue for a change of perspective in the reading of some aspects of Kant’s political philosophy and potentially of his practical thought more generally. Within the confines of this presentation, I will only be able to develop a few main arguments in support of the new interpretative perspective and to provide an outline of the new direction. In particular, I will argue that, beyond the well-known and influential Socialist (e.g., van der Linden 1988, Dodson 2003), Republican (e.g., Ripstein 2009, Forst 2013), Liberal (e.g., Rawls 2000, Pogge 2012), Consequentialist (e.g., Cummiskey 1996, Parfit 2011) and Libertarian (Williams 1983, Otteson 2009) readings of Kant, it would be promising to consider a Desert-sensitive reading. I will start, however, with the discussion of a frequently expressed worry that connects ‘desert’ with a conservative discourse attempting to justify privileges and the status quo.

References

Cummiskey, D. (1996) Kantian Consequentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dodson, K. E. (2003) “Kant’s Socialism: A Philosophical Reconstruction”, in Social Theory and Practice. 29(4): 525-38.

Forst, R. (2013) “A Kantian Republican Conception of Justice as Nondomination”, in A. Niederberger and P. Schink (eds)Republican democracy: liberty, law and politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Otteson, J. R. (2009) “Kantian Individualism and Political Liberalism”, in The Independent Review. 13(3): 389-409.

Parfit, D. (2011) On What Matters. Vol. III. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pogge, T. (2012) “Is Kant’s Rechtslehre a ‘comprehensive liberalism’?“, in E. Ellis (ed.) Kant’s Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.

Rawls, J. (2000) Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Ripstein, A. (2009) Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

van den Linden, H. (1988) Kantian Ethics and Socialism. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Wiliams, H. (1983) Kant’s Political Philosophy. New York: St. Martin’s Press.