Cass Sunstein: belief

Transcript context

…Why do you think it is that it’s we economists who are holding the line, at least for the time being? It’s a great question. I’m thinking, are the philosophers now at a stage when they’re thinking about things other than liberalism? Is liberalism a previous generation’s focus? That might be the truth of the matter. Robert Goodin is a great liberal thinker who’s not young, though he’s doing fantastic work. He has a new journal called Political Philosophy. I think if it’s challenging for you and me to come to a long list of philosophers rather than economists, it might be just that their early career and what they’re going to look like when they’re mid-career is obscure. Rawls did some work on utilitarianism when he was young, and who would have thought he’s going to be Rawls? Probably not. It was good work on utilitarianism, but a theory of justice came not when he was terribly young, and political liberalism came a lot later. But we knew about you when you were young. Not just young at heart. [laughter]…

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