Religion and Values in a Liberal State by Professor the Lord Plant of Highfield

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source: GreshamCollege         2012年10月12日
A series of public lectures on religion and values in a liberal state, by Professor the Lord Plant of Highfield, Gresham Professor of Divinity.
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The transcript and downloadable versions of the lectures are available from the Gresham College Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...

1 59:25 Markets in their Place: Moral Values and the Limits of Markets
The aim of this lecture is to be both self contained but also an introduction to the other lectures. Market based orders are usually thought of as embodying a sense of individualism and moral subjectivism. At the same time there is unease about both the moral basis of markets as well as their limits. How are we to understand the moral basis of markets - for example of property rights since markets are essentially exchanges of property rights, the role of trust in economic exchange and questions of justice in relation to markets? Throughout these lectures we shall consider what place if any religious thinking about such matters can play in a liberal pluralistic society.
2 47:51 Markets, Freedom and Choice
This lecture focuses on the relationship between markets and freedom and the extent to which freedom should be seen as being entirely a matter of freedom of choice and the number of choices which an individual has available. Markets have often been seen as the embodiment of individual choice. Does freedom mean that the ends or goals which an individual chooses are beyond moral assessment or does choice involve some reference to moral standards and, if so, what can be the source and basis of such standards if in fact they do seem to be necessary?  If freedom has to be linked to ideas about virtue and the greater value of some sorts of goods over others how can such judgements be justified -- aren't we just imposing our own choices in order to restrict the choices of others?
3 46:19 Just Markets
This lecture focuses on the question of whether justice in relation to markets is entirely to be seen as being procedural -- that justice is a matter of securing the conditions of non-coercive economic exchange between free individuals. Or is justice also about social justice- that is to say about the proper distribution of resources and a concern about the outcomes of markets? If justice is about social as well as procedural justice how can we arrive at criteria for distributive justice if all moral values are seen as subjective? Should we not rather see market outcomes, in the words of the economist Fred Hirsch as being "in principle unprincipled"?
4 55:26 Selling Yourself Short: The body, property and markets
It might be thought that if I own anything then I own my body and this idea has been crucial in justifying rights to private property through the exercise of my intellectual and physical capacities.  In addition if I own my body it might be thought that I should be in a position to determine what I should do with it for example in selling organs and bodily products such as blood, stem cells or gene lines. In this lecture we shall look in detail at the issue of self ownership and its relationship to property rights and the idea of the body as a commodity.
5 1:01:13 What's it Worth? Values, Choice and Commodification
In this lecture I shall look more directly at the idea which has been central to the others - namely that in fact it is not possible to see markets as a morally free zone.  However, it is one thing to establish this, but it is quite another to provide a good explanation of how such values can be understood and justified.  If values are subjective can there be anything that can legitimately restrict choice and the transformation of values into market values?  In a market based society can we make sense of intrinsic values - the values which are to be seen as independent of choice - or are all values just a matter of subjective commitment? If so, is there any reason for thinking that certain types of goods should not be bought and sold?
6 55:06 Trust in Markets?
In this lecture we shall concentrate on the issue of the extent to which markets at least implicitly depend on collective values such as trust and civic virtue. Such values are very difficult to analyse and justify in terms of purely rational economic man (sic) models of human motivation and ideas about values being wholly subjective.  Are there ways in which features such as trust can be understood in ways which are wholly compatible with markets?   So for example, can brands and brand franchises be seen as ways of creating trust in a way wholly compatible with markets?  Equally can game theory provide a plausible way of modelling collective agreements as a basis for something like civic virtue in a way that is wholly compatible with market individualism?
7 1:02:14 Religion: A Challenge to Liberalism 
It is frequently argued that liberalism as a set of political ideas arose out of the 16th and 17th century wars of religion that culminated in the Peace of Westphalia. Does liberalism provide a way of dealing with contested doctrines and, if it does, is this bought at what from a religious point of view may be seen as too high a cost, that is by turning religion into a set of private beliefs which should have no place in the public realm. Many religious believers dispute this, insisting that their beliefs have an intrinsic social and public dimension. If this is so then such religious beliefs pose a central challenge to liberal political and legal thought.
8 51:14 Liberalism: A Challenge to Religion
A liberal state will put ideas about rights and individual autonomy at the centre of the relationship between the individual and the state. However, it is sometimes argued that the liberal state should be neutral, not seeking to impose an overall conception of the good on society. Should individuals choose their own values, with the state providing a framework within which individuals can pursue their own conception of the good without interference from others?
9 1:01:20 Rights, Law & Religion in a Liberal Society 
There have been quite a few high profile legal cases relating to the extent of the recognition of the role of religion in a person's life and the need for a liberal society to accommodate such beliefs on the one hand whilst recognising the claim that religions should be regarded as private belief which should not give rise to any specific forms of recognition in the public realm. It is often argued that religion is a much weaker form of identity than, say, gender or sexual orientation because religion is chosen and is a self assumed form of identity whereas, so it is argued, this is not true of other forms of identity which should be protected because they are given rather than chosen forms. We need to look at these arguments and if they hold water and what follows for politics and the law in a liberal society.
10 52:24 Rights, Law and Religion in a Liberal Society: Part 2 
There have been quite a few high profile legal cases relating to the extent of the recognition of the role of religion in a person's life and the need for a liberal society to accommodate such beliefs on the one hand whilst recognising the claim that religions should be regarded as private belief which should not give rise to any specific forms of recognition in the public realm.  It is often argued that religion is a much weaker form of identity than, say, gender or sexual orientation because religion is chosen and is a self assumed form of identity whereas, so it is argued, this is not true of other forms of identity which should be protected because they are given rather than chosen forms.  We need to look at these arguments and if they hold water and what follows for politics and the law in a liberal society.
11 52:55 Religious Identity and Freedom of Expression
The last twenty years or so has seen the development of what has come to be called identity politics. This has led to the claim that a liberal society should recognise and protect various important aspects of identity including religious identity. This means that a liberal society and its laws and politics should seek to accommodate strong senses of identity whether these are ethnic, cultural, gender, sexual or religious. This moves liberalism in rather a communitarian direction. How does a liberal state identify, recognise and respect these various identities? What happens when they conflict as religious identities for example often conflict with sexual forms of identity as the debate about gay marriage shows.
12 48:59 Rights and Liberal Interventionism in International Affairs
There is a distinct school of thought in our day which seeks to justify what has come to be called liberal interventionism in the affairs of other states. These interventions are justified by an appeal to human rights with the concomitant view that it is the job of all states to guarantee basic rights and that sovereignty is purely an instrumental value.  A state which egregiously infringes rights loses its own right to sovereignty since the whole purpose of the state is the protection of rights.  This connects up with Christian and other religious ideas about just and unjust wars.