Please join us next Monday from 12-1:30 in Rm. S200 for lunch and a discussion with Devin O’Rourke on his paper.

Devin summarizes his paper thusly:

I pose a series of questions in this essay that examine how political theorist William Connolly justifies a doctrine of pluralism when the enactment of a pluralist politics is challenged by competing conceptions of the good, especially given that Connolly’s pluralism is tasked with respecting the continued existence of those conceptions while being critically responsive to them, thus instantiating an ethos of presumptive generosity that maintains boundaries. I argue that Connolly’s suspension of the pluralist virtues at the limits of what pluralism deems tolerable not only risks reifying an authoritative center that Connolly wants to diffuse, but it relies on particular judgments regarding the value of pluralism that may not be compatible with the values of all who endorse a pluralist politics. This paper functions as an initial exploration into a fundamental problem in ethical theory: what resources are available to subjects whose political and moral norms are determined by incompatible and/or incommensurable constellations of values?