[SydPhil] UOW Philosophy seminar series

[Sarah Sorial]

Dear All, 

Professor Paul Patton (UNSW) will be speaking at UOW on Tuesday 9 October,

Title: Historical normativity and the basis of rights.

Abstract: This paper aims to outline a historical concept of rights. By this I mean one that does not depend on any transcendent conception of the moral basis of rights or of the human nature in which they are supposedly grounded. I argue that the only plausible basis for rights lies in the public political culture, history and institutions of existing societies. However, if we view rights in this way, there remains the problem of explaining how rights can maintain their normative force and critical function in relation to existing institutions and practices. I argue that John Rawls’s political liberalism can help resolve this problem and support a historical and critical conception of rights. Political liberalism draws a sharp distinction between moral, legal and political rights, while insisting that political normativity ultimately rests on the considered judgments of a people and the possibility of reasonable consensus among them. I argue that Rawls is committed to the historical character of such a consensus and therefore of the rights associated with a particular political conception of justice. 


Paul Patton is Professor of Philosophy at The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Deleuze and the Political (Routledge, 2000) and Deleuzian Concepts: Philosophy, Colonization, Politics (Stanford, 2010). He is editor of Deleuze: A Critical Reader (Blackwell 1996), (with Duncan Ivison and Will Sanders) Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge, 2000), (with John Protevi) of Between Deleuze and Derrida, (Continuum, 2003) and (with Simone Bignall) Deleuze and the Postcolonial (Edinburgh 2010). He has translated work by Deleuze, Foucault, Nancy and Baudrillard. His recent publications deal with aspects of French poststructuralism and a variety of topics in contemporary political philosophy.

Date: Tuesday 9 October
Time:5.30-7pm
Location: 19.1003, The University of Wollongong


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Dr Sarah Sorial
Senior Lecturer
Philosophy
The University of Wollongong
Wollongong NSW 2522
Australia
+61 2 4221 5034