Online seminar on Kant & Hegel on the corporation

Did you miss the seminar? Click here to watch the recording.

Abstract
Much of political theory today derivesfrom the innovations of Kant and Hegel, yet their relevance for understanding the business corporation is rarely explored. In our seminar, we will discuss how their respective conceptions of justice, freedom, legitimacy, and social institutions bear upon our project’s core themes. Among the many questions we may consider are: does the corporation promote or restrict its members’ freedom and moral agency, from a Kantian standpoint? Does corporate power subject individuals to a unilateral will? Where would the modern corporation fit in Hegel’s understanding of institutionalized ethical life?

Speakers

Dr. Garrath Williams
Garrath Williams is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University. His research interests fall across ethics, political theory and applied ethics. One of his main interests, in all three of these areas, is in the many facets of the concept of responsibility. Williams has also worked, and still works, extensively on Kant. His recently published articles include ‘The Social Creation of Morality and Complicity in Collective Harms: A Kantian Account’, and ‘Regulation Enables: Corporate Agency and Practices of Responsibility’. Williams has also been involved in large EUfunded, AHRC- funded and ESCR-funded projects on, among other topics, public health and policy

Dr. Hannes Kuch
Hannes Kuch is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Philosophy at Goethe-University Frankfurt in Germany and is the leader of the DFG-research project ‘Economy and Social Freedom’, which examines the normative foundations and the institutional framework of what is referred to as liberal socialism. Central to the project is the Hegelian concept of social freedom, which Kuch has been specializing in since his PhD. Kuch has published several books, among which are Herr und Knecht. Hegel, Anerkennung und symbolische Macht and, most recently, From Marx to Hegel and Back: Capitalism, Critique, and Utopia