12.-.13.Juni.2025: Dortmund Philosophical Disputes on Economic Justice
Dortmund Philosophical Disputes on Economic Justice
Date: June 12 and 13, 2025.
Place: Dortmund, Germany
Keynotes: Miranda Fleischer (San Diego), Nicholas Vrousalis (Rotterdam)
Organizers: Peter Königs, Christian Neuhäuser, Lea Prix, Dick Timmer (TU Dortmund University)
Most fundamental questions of economic justice remain unresolved. There is little agreement on the place of markets, the nature of property, the justifiability of taxes, the importance of workplace democracy, the injustice of economic inequality, and, generally, the merits of capitalism and socialism.
While debates on economic justice often take place within specific political camps, where many assumptions are shared, the Dortmund Disputes take a different approach. The idea of the Dortmund Disputes is to foster debate across political boundaries. It seeks to bring together open-minded scholars with diverse political outlooks—whether liberal egalitarian, libertarian, socialist, conservative, or otherwise—who are committed to our shared goal of advancing our understanding of economic justice.
The keynote speakers for the first installment of the Dortmund Disputes are Miranda Fleischer and Nicholas Vrousalis. Miranda Fleischer is Richard and Kaye Woltman Professor in Finance at University of San Diego’s School of Law. Her work focuses on ethical and legal issues surrounding taxation, wealth and wealth transfer, and charitable giving. She’s the co-author of a recent book on Universal Basic Income. Nicholas Vrousalis is Associate Professor in Practical Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. His work revolves around distributive ethics, democratic theory, and the history of political philosophy, with emphasis on Kant, Hegel, and Marx. He is the author of a recent book on capitalism and exploitation.
Conference Program
June 12, 2025 (Thursday)
- Daniel Halliday (Melbourne): Does contemporary political philosophy have a concept of capitalism?
- Kate Petroff (Chicago): Was Marx a Republican? Marx, Republicanism, and the “Rule” of Nature
- Etye Steinberg (Jerusalem): The Point of Competitive Markets
- Colin von Negenborn (Hamburg): An (in)decent proposal? Price justice in digital markets
- Miranda Fleischer (San Diego): The Libertarian Case for a Universal Basic Income
June 13, 2025 (Friday)
- Nicole Hassoun (Binghamton): Doing Our Part in this Non-Ideal World: A Duty to Pick Up the Slack
- Andreas Cassée (Mannheim): Dead Hand Control as Normative Pollution: The Case Against Perpetual Trusts
- Philipp Stehr (Utrecht), Daniel Sharp (Munich): A Life Plan View of Employment and the Ethics of Dismissal
- András Szigeti (Linköping), Erik Malmqvist (Gothenburg): Social Injustice and the Harm of Exploitation
- Nicholas Vrousalis (Rotterdam): Walrasian Domination: Proletarian Unfreedom under Exit Options, Competitive Markets, and Equal Political Influence
Detailed schedule at https://philevents.org/event/show/127542.
Registration
To register for the event, please send an email to dick.timmertu-dortmundde. Participation is free of charge, but places are limited. The registration deadline is May 31, 2025.