Description

Akeel Bilgrami will present an extended argument to show that the moral psychology of identity stands in deeper tension with the mentalities underlying liberal doctrine than communitarianism by exploring the work of John Stuart Mill and John Rawls.

About The Speaker

Akeel Bilgrami got his first degree in English Literature from Elphinstone College, Bombay University and then went as a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford University, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He has a Ph.D in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. He is currently the Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, and a Professor on the Committee on Global Thought, as well as the Director of the South Asian Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of the books Belief and Meaning (Blackwell, 1992), Self Knowledge and Resentment (2006 Harvard), Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment (2014 Harvard), and has edited four books, Democratic Culture (Routledge, 2011), Gandhi, Marx, and Modernity (2013, Tulika)Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom (2014, Columbia), Beyond The Secular West (2016 forthcoming, Columbia). His current work is a long project on the relation of Practical Reason to Politcs, and two short contracted forthcoming books next year: What is a Muslim? (Princeton, 2016), and Gandhi’s Integrity (Columbia, 2016). He is also an editor and President of the Trustees of The Journal of Philosophy.