A Conversation with Philip Pettit on Popular Power and Constitutional Paradox

The HLS Law & Philosophy Society is delighted to invite you to our next event, a conversation with Professor Philip Pettit. Professor Pettit is a world-renowned philosopher and the L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University. Professor Pettit’s talk is titled “Popular Power and Constitutional Paradox.”

Here is the abstract:

“Constitutional theory has inherited from Sieyes, and ultimately from Hobbes, a view that ‘the people’ is two-ways ambiguous, referring in Sieyes’s terms either to the constituting people or to the constituted people. It is that dichotomy that supports the constitutional paradoxes invoked to question the possibility that the people could enjoy control over the constitution and the state. But the dichotomy is misleading, and the paradoxes can be resolved.”

The talk will take place on Zoom, and you may register here. The event is open to the entire Harvard community. The discussion will focus on Prof. Pettit’s new book, The State, and specifically on Chapter 4. This is an optional reading and is not required for attendance.