Claude V. Roebuck Lecture - Christopher Shields

Christopher Shields, George N. Shuster Professor of Philosophy at University of Notre Dame, will speak on "Good Bad Better Worse."

Here is a choice for you, supremely, multiply gifted student that you are. You might choose one of two careers: given your remarkable musical talents and your love of music, you might become a concertizing cellist; but given your shrewd legal mind and your passionate commitment to justice, you might become an eminent jurist. You realize that as a practical matter, you cannot do both at the level at which you might wish to do either; and you do not wish to do both sub-optimally. Your goal in life is to maximize value overall. Which do you choose? You reasonably see your choice as enhancing one of two values: you can augment the world’s beauty or you can augment the world’s justice.

We will pursue two questions about this choice: First question: is justice worth more or less than beauty? Second question: does this first question make any sense? This event is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the A. C. Reid Philosophy Fund