Has there been moral progress? - The Annual Symposium 2025

Can there be moral progress? Some optimists would argue that there can, because there already has been, with fewer people living in poverty, and corporal punishment now a rarity. But do optimists confuse material progress with moral progress? Is their story too Eurocentric? If there is less poverty but more inequality or less community, how do we take the overall balance? And if moral standards themselves change along with other changes, how are we to gain the perspective we need in order to arrive at an answer? These and other related questions will be addressed by our panel of experts.

Our panellists are Professor Edward Harcourt (University of Oxford), Professor Allen Buchanan (Duke University), and Professor Julia Hermann (University of Twente). The discussion will be chaired by Ritula Shah.