David Willetts / John Cottingham

6.30-8pm | Wednesday 22 October 2008
Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, LSE

Speaker
David Willetts, MP
John Cottingham, Professor of Philosophy, University of Reading

Chair
Daniel Johnson, Editor of Standpoint

To many people, the contemporary emphasis on the individual in politics is responsible for loosening the web of duties and relationships that is crucial to civil life and flourishing communities. Of course, the emphasis is typically intended as an ontological as much as a moral one. The reference to the individual aims to give politics a secure foundation in reality, and, so the argument goes, the real foundations of human forms of life are individuals and their families, not societies.

In the forms of life characteristic of the West today have we got the balance between the individual and society right? Why do we find it so hard to agree the boundaries of personal freedom and collective responsibility? And is the West indeed guilty of privileging the individual at the expense of society?

In this panel discussion the Forum for European Philosophy collaborated with the new culture and politics magazine Standpoint to explore a fundamental question about the Western image of the individual and its implications for our lives with others.