The Adam Smith Lecture in Jurisprudence seeks to make productive in a contemporary context the distinctive approach of the Scottish Enlightenment to legal philosophy. The Lecture invites some of the world’s most distinguished legal and political philosophers whose ideas have reached out beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries, to shape innovative thinking on key philosophical, political and social aspects of law and government. It is envisaged that these lectures will form landmark moments in our understanding of contemporary debates on law and its place in an interconnected world.

2017 Lecture

T?he 2017 Adam Smith Lecture in Jurisprudence will take place on Friday 26 May.  The invited speaker is A J Julius (UCLA) who will be presenting on ‘Free production through and against property’.

The event will take place at 5:30pm, Humanities Lecture Hall, Main Building.  A drinks reception will follow the lecture.

Free Entry – All welcome

Abstract

This lecture will arrange for Locke, Rousseau, Smith, Kant, and Fichte to agree about property by arranging for them to agree with Karl Marx. The project of using what’s mine to make what’s mine is an attempt at producing freely. It fails: the general interdependence of individual production activity as it’s organized by private property is a mutual subjection. The attempt will succeed only when propertyless workers free themselves to work together on purpose.