Philippe van Parijs, Just Democracy: The Rawls-Machiavelli Programme

REGISTRATION ESSENTIAL

Philippe van Parijs is one of the world's leading political philosophers. This event, co-organised by the Belgian Embassy in London and  the European Institute of University College London sees the launch of his latest book (published by ECPR press).

In this book, he argues that the purpose of democracy should be to promote justice - we need not just democracy (in the sense of unqualified democracy) but a just democracy. Machiavelli and Rawls must be brought together. In a series of provocative and timely essays, he explores what creating such a just democratic political system would involve in order to tackle such issues as intergenerational justice, multiculturalism and linguistic diversity. He illustrates his arguments with examples drawn from the Euroipean Union and his native Belgium.

These ideas will be discussed by three UCL academics: Professors Veronique Munoz-Darde (Philosophy), Albert Weale (Political Science/School of Public Policy) and Richard Bellamy (Political Science/School of Public Policy and Director of the European Institute).

About the speaker

Philippe Van Parijs is professor at the Faculty of economic, social and political sciences of the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), where he directs the Hoover Chair of economic and social ethics since its creation in 1991. He is also a Visiting Professor at Harvard University's Department of Philosophy since 2004 at at the KuLeuven's Higher Institute for Philosophy since 2006. He is  a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of Belgium's Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts and of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2001, he was awarded the Francqui Prize, Belgium's most generous scientific prize. In 2007, a post stamp was devoted to him within the framework of a series ("This is Belgium") honouring nine outstanding Belgian scholars. His books include Evolutionary Explanation in the Social Sciences (London & Totowa NJ 1981), Le Modèle économique et ses rivaux (Genève 1990), Qu'est-ce qu'une société juste? (Paris 1991), Arguing for Basic Income (London 1992, ed.), Marxism Recycled (Cambridge 1993), Real Freedom for All (Oxford 1995), Sauver la solidarité (Paris 1995), Refonder la solidarité (Paris 1996), Solidariteit voor de XXIste eeuw (Leuven 1997), Ethique économique et sociale (Paris 2000, with C. Arnsperger), What's Wrong with a Free Lunch? (Boston 2001), Hacia una concepcion de la justicia global (Medellín 2002), Cultural Diversity versus Economic Solidarity (Brussels 2004, ed.), L'Allocation universelle (Paris 2005, with Y. Vanderborght), Just Democracy. The Rawls-Machiavelli Programme (Colchester, forthcoming in May 2011) and Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World (Oxford, forthcoming in August 2011).