Brackenridge professor speaks Dec. 2-3 on morality

(Nov. 24, 2004)--The UTSA College of Liberal and Fine Arts and the Department of English, Classics and Philosophy present two lectures Dec. 2-3 by Brackenridge Distinguished Visiting Professor Thomas M. Scanlon Jr., Harvard University Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity.

Scanlon will speak on "What is Morality?" at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 2 and "Blame" at 2 p.m., Friday, Dec. 3. Both lectures, free and open to all, are in the Business Building University Room (2.06.04) at the UTSA 1604 Campus.

He is author of "What We Owe Each Other" (New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year, 1999) and "The Difficulty of Tolerance: Essays in Political Philosophy." "What We Owe Each Other" discusses how we judge right and wrong based on relationships and agreements.

Scanlon received his B.A. degree from Princeton in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Harvard. In between, he studied for a year at Oxford as a Fulbright Fellow. He taught at Princeton from 1966 before going to Harvard in 1984.

Scanlon's dissertation and some of his first papers were in mathematical logic, but the bulk of his teaching and writing has been in moral and political philosophy. He has published papers on freedom of expression, the nature of rights, conceptions of welfare and theories of justice, and foundational questions in moral theory. He has taught courses on theories of justice, equality and recent ethical theory.

For more information, call the Department of English, Classics and Philosophy at (210) 458-4376.

--Tim Brownlee