The H.L.A. Hart Memorial Lecture
The 2025 HLA Hart Memorial Lecture in honour of H.L.A. Hart (1907-1992), Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford in 1952 and author of the highly influential book The Concept of Law, will be given by Professor Elizabeth Anderson, Max Shaye Professor of Public Philosophy, John Dewey Distinguished University Professor, and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan. The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session. The lecture series is funded by the Tanner Trust.
The lecture will, be held at 5pm in the College Chapel, Main Quad, University College on Thursday 22 May 2025. The lecture will be followed by drinks in the Butler Room at 6.15 pm.
The Forgotten Political History of Utilitarianism”
Abstract
Utilitarianism today is distinguished from deontological approaches to ethics by two foundational differences. First, it prescribes the maximization of some good rather than its fair distribution across individuals. Second, it does not recognize directed duties as constitutive of morally permissible relationships between particular persons. There are clever ways to build distributive justice and directed duties back into utilitarianism, but they depend on empirical assumptions. Both features of contemporary utilitarianism represent a sharp departure from the original utilitarian ethic, which was embedded in the Protestant work ethic, invented by Puritan theologians in the 16th and 17th centuries. I shall show how political disputes over the application of utilitarianism--most importantly, over the treatment of the poor, including poor workers--drove the elimination of distributive and relational concerns from the foundations of utilitarianism.
The H.L.A. Hart Lecture in Jurisprudence and Moral Philosophy
1985: Richard Wollheim, 'Crime, Punishment, and Pale Criminality'
1986: John Rawls, 'The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus'
1987: Bernard Williams, 'Voluntary Acts and Responsible Agents'
1988: Quentin Skinner, 'The Idea of the State' (unpublished)
1989: William J. Brennan Jr, 'Why Have a Bill of Rights?'
1990: T.M. Scanlon, 'The Aims and Authority of Moral Theory'
1991: Joel Feinberg, 'In Defence of Moral Rights'
1992: Tony Honoré, 'The Dependence of Morality On Law'