Lecture Series in Practical Agency: Connie Rosati - The Value of Persons

The Value of Persons

We commonly treat persons as having a special moral status, one that gives them rights and that creates obligations to treat them in certain ways and avoid treating them in other ways. The moral status or value of persons has figured critically in certain normative moral theories, most famously, that of Immanuel Kant. But it also bears on how to understand well-being or personal good and on how to understand the normativity of facts about what is good for a person. Various accounts have been offered of the value or moral status of persons. I explore a few recent views and articulate an alternative view of why persons merit our concern and respect. On this view, persons are owed respect and concern in virtue of their critical role in bringing value into the world.

Connie Rosati is Roy Allison Vaughan Centennial Professor in Philosophy & Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests are in metaethics, ethics, and the philosophy of law. Her publications include “Welfare and Rational Fit” (Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 15), “Constitutional Realism” (in Dimensions of Normativity: New Essays on Metaethics and Jurisprudence), “Alexander’s Simple-Minded Originalism” (in Moral Puzzles and Legal Perplexities: Essays on the Influence of Larry Alexander), and “Normativity and the Naturalistic Fallacy” (in The Naturalistic Fallacy). She is currently working on a book manuscript about personal good.

17:00-19:00

Wednesday 26 November 2025

Ante Room SW1.17, Somerset House East Wing

Strand Campus, Strand, London WC2R 2LS

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