The annual public Uehiro Lecture Series captures the ethos of the Uehiro Centre, which is to bring the best scholarship in analytic philosophy to bear on the most significant problems of our time, and to make progress in the analysis and resolution of these issues to the highest academic standard, in a manner that is also accessible to the general public. Philosophy should not only create knowledge, it should make people’s lives better.
http://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/lectures/uehiro_lectures_and_book_series
2019 Uehiro Lectures (3/3): Improving Political Discourse (2): Communicating moral concern beyond blaming and shaming
Lies, propaganda, and fake news have hijacked political discourse, distracting the electorate from engaging with the global problems we face. These Uehiro Lectures suggest a pathway for democratic institutions to devise solutions to the problems we face t People often resist facts because accepting facts exposes them to shame and blame. Yet, when the point of raising facts is to orient others to moral concerns, how can we communicate these concerns without resorting on blaming and shaming those who resist? Without denying that sometimes we must resort to these practices, I suggest alternative ways in which testimony and empathy can be mobilized to communicate moral concern so that those who resist shame and blame can come to share such concern. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/