Sally Haslanger: Benjamin Lecture 2 - What Can We Do? Co-Designing Social Interventions

In the framework of the Benjamin Lectures - and the associated Benjamin Chair at the Centre for Social Critique - a distinguished philosopher is invited each year, to present the broader public with current debates on key social and political issues. In 2023, Sally Haslanger served as Benjamin Chair. The lectures took place on the 14th, 15th and 16th of June 2023 (6-8 p.m.) at the Otto Braun Saal at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
June 15th - What Can We Do? Co-Designing Social Interventions
An important feature of theoretical projects that aim to promote social justice is their commitment to empowering those in oppressive circumstances so that they can solve their own problems. There are two reasons to take this approach. First, the oppressed have situated knowledge of the circumstances that others lack. But situated knowledge may not be enough to prompt critique. The second is that because both knowledge and values are shaped by social practices, a collective engagement with historically and materially grounded practices can provide a new frame for agency that enables a creative and potentially emancipatory restructuring of social relations. I argue that such path dependency of values is compatible with social justice being objective, but not to be discovered by theory alone.
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