Articles by David Reidy

“Rawlsian Liberalism in Context(s)”

Date: February 26-27, 2010
Place:Toyota Auditorium, Baker Center for Public Policy, University of Tennessee

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’s 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’s work by situating it within multiple disciplinary contexts.  Symposium speakers will address the relationships between Rawls’s thought and 20th 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’s 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, Philosophy, University of Tennessee, dreidy [at] utk.edu or 865.974.7210.

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 progam, all at the University of Tennessee.

An updated (thanks for the comments!) working draft (now with citations/footnotes) of my ”Human Rights and Liberal Toleration” has been posted to SSRN.com. 

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1436125

I would be most grateful for additional comments and suggestions (to this site or to me directly).  An earlier and much shorter version was presented at the APA Central this past spring; those who provided helpful comments on that occasion will, hopefully, not be disappointed by this continuation of the effort.

Wishing everyone the best for the remainder of the summer (in the Northern Hemisphere). 

Public Reason member David Reidy, with co-author Jeppe von Platz, has been awarded the 2009 Berger Prize by the APA Committee on Law and Philosophy for “The Structural Variety of Historical Injustices,” Journal of Social Philosophy, v. 37.3, pgs. 360-376, 2006. Reidy worked with von Platz on the paper while the latter was a graduate student at Tennessee. von Platz is now completing his Ph.D. at Penn. The paper will be discussed at a special session of the APA Pacific Division Meeting in the spring. Criticisms of or reactions to the paper are welcome (send to dreidy[at]utk.edu), as preparation for the spring session will no doubt require some rethinking. (For those interested in historical injustice and reparations, the JSP issue in which this paper appears is an excellent special issue devoted to the topic and edited by Kok-Chor Tan and Rahul Kumar.)

I have a conference length paper on Jim Nickel’s criticisms (from the second edition of “Making Sense of Human Rights”) of Rawls’s “ultraminimalist” conception of human rights in LoP. I seek readers’ comments both because I’d like to get a sense of what objections and questions I’m likely to get when I present the paper, and because I’m hoping to expand the paper both to more fully explore Nickel’s take on Rawls and to couple that discussion with an assessment of Allen Buchanan’s closely related criticisms in “Justice, Legitimacy and Self-Determination.” Thanks in advance for any and all comments. The paper can be found at: http://ssrn.com/author=382674

** Sept 1: Thanks to those (half dozen or so) who have sent comments along directly to me.  Very helpful!

As a few readers of Public Reason may know, I am in the very early stages of an intellectual biography of John Rawls. A good deal of Rawls’s correspondence is archived at Harvard, but not all. And so I am posting this request. If anyone has correspondence with Rawls that may prove relevant to my project, I would very much appreciate the opportunity to acquire or examine a copy. I will be happy to reimburse associated costs. I can be reached at dreidy (at) utk.edu. Thanks in advance for any and all assistance.  Finally, please consider passing word of this request along to others (especially senior scholars) who may have corresponded with Rawls but may not be Public Reason readers.

I have the unenviable task of drafting an encyclopedia article on Rawls for the IVR’s online encyclopedia. I’ve posted the most recent version, titled John Rawls, to my SSRN page — http://ssrn.com/author=382674. As with all online encyclopedias, the entry is nearly endlessly revisable. So I welcome critical comment. Bear in mind that the entry is meant to inform and report, not to take a particular position on Rawls’s work. (The entry was uploaded to SSRN on Tuesday, March 11; it sometimes takes a day or two for it to clear the SSRN procedures and become downloadable. — It’s now downloadable, March 14.)