Ethics/Political Theory Seminar: "Duties to the Dead"

Zofia Stemplowska (Oxford) will speak to the joint seminar of the Centre for Ethics and Metaethics and the POLIS Contemporary Political Theory group about "Duties to the Dead".

Zofia Stemplowska is an Associate Professor of Political Theory and Asa Briggs Fellow at Worcester College, University of Oxford. Her research interests include the problem of what people owe to each other as a matter of domestic, global and historical (post war) justice and the debate about ideal and nonideal theory (the problem of how to make theories of justice relevant to urgent, real world problems while avoiding ad hoc theorizing and defeatism). She is the author of a large number of papers on these topics. More information about her work can be found on her web page.

Abstract

Is it ever possible to mitigate some of the past injustice even though the victims of the injustice are no longer alive? I will argue that it is possible. As a result, the living will sometimes have duties to the dead victims to mitigate some of the injustice the victims had suffered.