Date:
Location:
"The Politics of Dignity: Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott"
Speaker:
Michael Rosen, Senator Joseph S. Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government, Department of Government, Harvard University.
Contact:
Ilana Freedman
ifreedman@g.harvard.edu
Chairs:
Panagiotis Roilos, Faculty Associate. George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies, Department of the Classics; Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, Associate Professor, Department of Classics, Department of Anthropology, and the Humanities Center, The Johns Hopkins University.
Abstract:
On a received view of the nature of politics, when we approach politics normatively we are really asking a dual question: what values are we trying to realize?, and what social rules will realize those values most effectively? This way of looking at things reflects a very important feature of modern political life: the pre-eminent role of the sovereign power of the modern state, yet it can lead to a partial and unrealistic conception of politics, one that treats values as if they were external to the practice of politics. Political activity is often of intrinsic value to those who take part in it and it involves various and diverse emotions. As we put these different aspects – instrumental goals, emotions, values – together, we can see them as producing a variety of recognizably distinct styles of politics. This talk explores a single – immensely important and inspiring – episode that embodies what I call “the politics of dignity” and asks what it may tell us about the practice of politics more generally.
