Talk by Prof. Shmulik Nili (Northwestern University) on Philosophizing the Indefensible: Strategic Political Theory

This book asks what distinctive contributions political philosophers might make when reflecting on obvious moral failures in public policy. I defend a particular kind of contribution: I argue that political philosophers can and should craft “strategic” arguments for public policy reforms, showing how morally urgent reforms can be grounded, for the sake of discussion, even in problematic premises associated with their opponents. I begin by developing the general contours of this approach, situating it within a broader conception of political philosophy’s social responsibilities.
 

Speaker Bio:

Shmuel Nili earned his PhD in political science at Yale University (2016). Nili's work focuses on links between domestic and global injustice, with special attention to issues like corporate agency, corruption, and abuse of power. His writing on these themes has appeared in Ethics, the Journal of Political Philosophy, and the American Political Science Review. Nili’s books include  The People’s Duty (Cambridge UP, 2019) and Integrity, Personal and Political (Oxford UP, 2020).

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