Open guest lecture: Tara Smith

While people routinely debate the demands of justice in the legal and political arenas, we tend to overlook the role that justice plays – or should play – in everyday life. This lecture aims to remedy that neglect, to clarify the essential character of justice, to highlight the demands of objectivity and the appropriate conditions for making judgments.
Second, prof. Smith will explain why a person should be just – why is this virtuous? What, if any, is its practical benefit? Who benefits from acts of justice: the judge, or the person judged?
Finally, prof. Smith will explore some of the unconventional implications of this account, stressing the emphatic need to judge other people, the fact that forgiveness is not always appropriate, and (tying it back to larger social issues) the incompatibility between justice and egalitarianism.

Tara Smith - Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas, Ayn Rand Institute