About this Event
Date:
Wednesday 9 December 2026
Time:
17:00-19:00
Venue:
Ante Room 1.17 Somerset House East Wing
Title:
‘Consequentialism, Bureaucracy and the “Administered World"'
Abstract:
The paper explores some apparent similarities between consequentialism and bureaucratic administration, at least as modelled by Weber – for example with respect to welfarism, impartiality and transparent public justification. The question is then about explanatory or justificatory direction: for example, is the truth of consequentialism needed to justify administration on the Weberian model? Or does consequentialism borrow its credibility from the fact that some of its features are already embodied in structures that owe nothing in particular to philosophy? If time permits, connections will be drawn between the ‘administered world’ – Adorno’s phrase – and some contemporary aspirations for AI.
Speaker Bio:
Edward Harcourt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Keble College. His research lies in ethics, and he has published on topics including neo-Aristotelianism and child development, the moral emotions, love and the virtues, Nietzsche's ethics, the philosophy of mental health and mental illness, and the ethics of AI. He has a part-time secondment to Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry where he has led on Patient and Public Involvement, Engagement and Participation (PPIEP) on a variety of major funded programmes. He also has a record of academic management and public service, having served as Director of Research, Strategy and Innovation at the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, as chair of trustees of a mental health charity, and as Academic Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, a charity whose mission is to ‘educate the public in philosophy’.
Event venue & nearby stays
SW.1.17 (Ante Room), Somerset House East Wing, Strand, London, United Kingdom
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