Testing liberal naturalism: the case of political anthropology

Prof Mario De Caro (University of Roma Tre)

There certainly is a sense in which, in order to make the reflection on social justice more reliable and effective, political philosophers should take into account the anthropological model that emerges from recent cognitive research regarding self-assertiveness, egoism, competition, pro-sociality, cooperation and altruism. This, however, does not mean that political philosophy (or any other branch of philosophy) can be reduced to some non-normative field – and even less that normativity in general can be eliminated altogether. In this perspective, liberal naturalism – a form of naturalism that does full justice to normativity – recommends itself as the best metaphilosophy for our age.

Bio:

Mario De Caro is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Università Roma Tre and a Visiting Professor at Tufts University since 2010. Author of six books in Italian and English and of many articles. He is Associate editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.