Joseph Raz

Professor of the Philosophy of Law
Oxford University

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Lecture One: The Social Dependence Thesis
Monday, March 19, 2001 4:10-6:30 p.m.
Toll Room, Alumni House
With commentary by Bernard Williams

Lecture Two: Understanding and Change
Tueday, March 20, 2001 4:10-6:30 p.m.
Toll Room, Alumni House
With commentary by Christine Korsgaard and Robert Pippin
Reception to follow lecture in the Bechtel Room

Seminar and Discussion
Wednesday, March 21, 2001 4:10-7:00 p.m.
Toll Room, Alumni House
With commentary by Christine Korsgaard, Robert Pippin, and Bernard Williams

The lectures and the seminar are free and open to the public.

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About Joseph Raz

Joseph Raz is a Professor of the Philosophy of Law and Fellow of Balliol College at the University of Oxford, and a Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He has made major contributions to jurisprudence, political philosophy, ethics and practical reason, and is considered to be one of the most distinguished moral and political philosophers of our time.

Raz has written numerous books including and “Engaging Reason” (2000), “Practical Reasons and Norms” (1999), “Ethics in the Public Domain” (1995), “The Concept of a Legal System” (1980), ” The Authority of Law” (1979). His book entitled “The Morality of Freedom” (1986) won the W. J. M. Mackenzie Book Prize from the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom and the Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize from the conference for the Study of Political Thought in New York.

Raz first taught at Hebrew University where he joined the Faculty of Law and the Department of Philosophy in 1967. In 1972, he was appointed Fellow and Tutor of Law at Balliol College at the University of Oxford and has been a member of the sub-faculty of philosophy since 1977. In 1985 he was appointed ad hominem chair of the Philosophy of Law. Raz has been a visiting professor at a variety of prestigious universities including The Rockefeller University, University of California at Berkeley, Yale, University of Southern California, Princeton, and the University of Michigan.

Raz is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also holds several editorial and consultative appointments with a wide variety of scholarly journals including Law and Philosophy and The American Journal of Jurisprudence.

Raz earned his Magister Juris summa cum laude from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1963, and his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 1967.

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About the Commentators

Christine Korsgaard

Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy
Harvard University

Christine Korsgaard is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. Her work focuses on moral philosophy and its history, as well as the theory of personal identity.

She has recently written two books: “The Sources of Normativity” (1996), which was an expanded version of her 1992 Tanner Lectures, and “Creating the Kingdom of Ends” (1996), a collection of her previously published papers on Kant’s moral philosophy and approaches to issues in contemporary moral philosophy.

Korsgaard has held positions at Yale, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago, as well as visiting positions at Berkeley and UCLA. She is a member of the American Philosophical Association, the North American Kant Society, the Hume Society, and the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. She received her B.A. at the University of Illinois in 1974 and her Ph.D. at Harvard in 1981.

Robert Pippin

Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy
University of Chicago

Robert Pippin is the Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. His areas of specialization include Kant, German Idealism, Hegel, Nietzsche, Twentieth Century European Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, and Ethics.

He has authored numerous books and articles including “Henry James and Modern Moral Life” (2000), “Modernism as a Philosophical Problem” (1999), and “Idealism as Modernism” (1997). He is currently working on a book entitled “The Realization of Freedom: Hegel’s Practical Philosophy.” Pippin has held positions at the University of California, San Diego and Pennsylvania State University. He received his B.A. from Trinity College in 1970, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1972 and 1974, respectively.

Bernard Williams

Monroe Deutsch Professor of Philosophy
University of California, Berkeley

Bernard Williams is the Monroe Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His philosophical endeavors have been wide-ranging, but particularly influential in contributions to moral philosophy. He has written numerous books including “Shame and Necessity” (1993), “Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy” (1985), “Moral Luck” (1981), “Utilitarianism: For and Against” (1973), and “Morality: An Introduction to Ethics” (1972).

Williams has held many visiting positions at various universities throughout the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and Africa. He chaired the Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship, which produced the Williams Report in 1979, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1993. Williams was educated at Chigwell School, Essex, and Balliol College, Oxford.