Markets, Morals, and Methods

Catalog description

This seminar is devoted to the foundations of choice, agency, and welfare -- matters that lie at the core of normative legal and economic theory. Readings, guest speakers, and class discussion will focus on the nature of preferences, reasons, and norms, as well as (a) their inter-relations and (b) their roles in guiding human decision and action. A central theme will be the question whether and to what degree welfare, well-being, and wealth for that matter can be understood apart from and even as determinative of normative propriety (rightness and wrongness), or whether instead these concepts presuppose a prior conception of normative propriety. Many legal and economic theorists seem to assume the former, but this assumption can -- and in this course will -- be examined critically.