Tanner Lectures on Human Values

Member institutions

• Linacre College, Oxford
• University of California, Berkeley
• Clare Hall, Cambridge
• Harvard University
• University of Michigan
• Princeton University
• Stanford University
• University of Utah
• Yale University

  Lecturers

• 1976-77 Joel Feinberg—"Voluntary Euthanasia and the Inalienable Right to Life"
• 1977-78 Thomas Nagel—"The Limits of Objectivity"
• 1977-78 Karl Popper—"Three Worlds"
• 1977-78 John Rawls—"The Basic Liberties and Their Priority"
• 1978-79 Lord Ashby—"The Search for an Environmental Ethic"
• 1978-79 R.M. Hare—"Moral Conflicts"
• 1978-79 Amartya Sen—"Equality of What?"
• 1978-79 Edward O. Wilson—"Comparative Social Theory"
• 1979-80 Raymond Aron—"Arms Control and Peace Research"
• 1979-80 Jonathan Bennett—"Morality and Consequences"
• 1979-80 Robert Coles—"Children as Moral Observers"
• 1979-80 Michel Foucault—"Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of ‘Political Reason’"
• 1979-80 Wallace Stegner—"The Twilight of Self-Reliance: Frontier Values and Contemporary America"
• 1979-80 George Stigler—"Economics or Ethics?"
• 1980-81 Brian Barry—"Do Countries Have Moral Obligations? The Case of World Poverty"
• 1980-81 Saul Bellow—"A Writer from Chicago"
• 1980-81 Charles Fried—"Is Liberty Possible?"
• 1980-81 John Passmore—"The Representative Arts as a Source of Truth"
• 1980-81 Joan Robinson—"The Arms Race"
• 1980-81 Solomon H. Snyder—"Drugs and the Brain and Society"
• 1981-82 Kingman Brewster—"The Voluntary Society"
• 1981-82 Freeman Dyson—"Bombs and Poetry"
• 1981-82 Leszek Kolakowski—"The Death of Utopia Reconsidered"
• 1981-82 Richard Lewontin—"Biological Determinism"
• 1981-82 Thomas C. Schelling—"Ethics, Law, and the Exercise of Self-Command"
• 1981-82 Alan Stone—"Psychiatry and Morality"
• 1982-83 Carlos Fuentes—"A Writer from Mexico"
• 1982-83 David Gauthier—"The Incompleat Egoist"
• 1982-83 H.C. Robbins Landon—"Haydn and Eighteenth-Century Patronage in Austria and Hungary"
• 1982-83 Ilya Prigogine—"Only an Illusion"
• 1983-84 : Donald D. Brown—"The Impact of Modern Genetics”
• 1983-84 : Leonard B. Meyer—"Music and Ideology in the Nineteenth Century”
• 1983-84 : Helmut Schmidt—"The Future of the Atlantic Alliance”
• 1983-84 : Herbert Simon—"Scientific Literacy as a Goal in a High-Technology Society”
• 1983-84 : Quentin Skinner—"The Paradoxes of Political Liberty”
• 1983-84 : Georg Henrik von Wright—"Of Human Freedom”
• 1984-85 : Nadine Gordimer—"The Essential Gesture: Writers and Responsibility”
• 1984-85 : Barrington Moore—"Authority and Inequality under Capitalism and Socialism”
• 1984-85 : Amartya K. Sen—"The Standard of Living”
• 1984-85 : Michael Slote—"Moderation, Rationality, and Virtue”
• 1985-86 : Stanley Cavell—"The Uncanniness of the Ordinary”
• 1985-86 : Clifford Geertz—"The Uses of Diversity”
• 1985-86 : Arnold S. Relman—"Medicine as a Profession and a Business”
• 1985-86 T. M. Scanlon—"The Significance of Choice"
• 1985-86 : Michael Walzer—"Interpretation and Social Criticism”
• 1986-87 : Roger Bulger—"On Hippocrates, Thomas Jefferson the Bureaucratic, Technologic Imperatives and the Future of the Healing Tradition in a Voluntary Society and Max Weber”
• 1986-87 : Daniel Dennett—"The Moral First Aid Manual”
• 1986-87 : Jon Elster—"Taming Chance: Randomization in Individual and Social Decisions”
• 1986-87 : Jürgen Habermas—"Law and Morality”
• 1986-87 : Gisela Striker—"Greek Ethics and Moral Theory”
• 1986-87 : Laurence H. Tribe—"On Reading the Constitution”
• 1987-88 : Louis Blom-Cooper—"The Penalty of Imprisonment”
• 1987-88 : Robert A. Dahl—"The Pseudodemocratization of the American Presidency”
• 1987-88 : William Theodore de Bary—"The Trouble with Confucianism”
• 1987-88 : Albert Hirschman—"Two Hundred Years of Reactionary Rhetoric: The Case of the Perverse Effect”
• 1987-88 : Javier Muguerza—"The Alternative of Dissent”
• 1987-88 : Lord Quinton—"The Varieties of Value”
• 1987-88 : Frederik van Zyl Slabbert—"The Dynamics of Reform and Revolt in Current South Africa”
• 1987-88 : Barry Stroud—"The Study of Human Nature and the Subjectivity of Value”
• 1988-89 : S. N. Eisenstadt—"Cultural Tradition, Historical Experience, and Social Change: The Limits of Convergence”
• 1988-89 : Fei Xiaotong—"Plurality and Unity in the Configuration of the Chinese People”
• 1988-89 : Stephen J. Gould—"Challenges to Neo-Darwinism and Their Meaning for a Revised View of Human Consciousness”
• 1988-89 : Albert Hourani—"Islam in European Thought”
• 1988-89 : Toni Morrison—"Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature”
• 1988-89 : John G. A. Pocock—"Edward Gibbon in History: Aspects of the Text in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”
• 1988-89 : Judith N. Shklar—"American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion”
• 1988-89 : Michael Walzer—"Nation and Universe”
• 1989-90 : Umberto Eco—"Interpretation and Overinterpretation: World, History, Texts”
• 1989-90 : Ernest Gellner—"The Civil and the Sacred”
• 1989-90 : Carol Gilligan—"Joining the Resistance:Psychology, Politics, Girls, and Women”
• 1989-90 : Irving Howe—"The Self and the State”
• 1989-90 : János Kornai—"I. Market Socialism Revisited” and "II. The Soviet Union’s Road to a Free Economy: Comments of an Outside Observer”
• 1989-90 : Bernard Lewis—"Europe and Islam”
• 1989-90 : Edward Nicolae Luttwak—"Strategy: A New Era?”
• 1989-90 : Octavio Paz—"Poetry and Modernity”
• 1990-91 : Annette Baier—"Trust”
• 1990-91 : Gro Harlem Brundtland—"Environmental Challenges of the 1990s: Our Responsibility toward Future Generations”
• 1990-91 G.A. Cohen—"Incentives, Inequality, and Community"
• 1990-91 : Robertson Davies—"Reading and Writing”
• 1990-91 : David N. Montgomery—"Citizenship and Justice in the Lives and Thoughts of Nineteenth-Century American Workers”
• 1990-91 : Richard Rorty—"Feminism and Pragmatism”
• 1991-92 : David Baltimore—"On Doing Science in the Modern World”
• 1991-92 : Jared Diamond—"The Broadest Pattern of Human History”
• 1991-92 : Christopher Hill—"The Bible in Seventeenth-Century English Politics”
• 1991-92 : Helmut Kohl
• 1991-92 : Robert Nozick—"Decisions of Principle, Principles of Decision”
• 1991-92 : Roald Sagdeev—"Science and Revolutions”
• 1991-92 : Charles Taylor—"Modernity and the Rise of the Public Sphere”
• 1992-93 : Stanley Hoffmann—"The Nation, Nationalism, and After: The Case of France”
• 1992-93 : Evelyn Fox Keller—"Rethinking the Meaning of Genetic Determinism”
• 1992-93 : Christine Korsgaard—"The Sources of Normativity”
• 1992-93 : Fritz Stern—"I. Mendacity Enforced: Europe, 1914-1989” and "II. Freedom and Its Discontents: Postunification Germany”
• 1993-94 : K. Anthony Appiah—"Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections”
• 1993-94 : Oscar Arias Sanchez—"Poverty: The New International Enemy”
• 1993-94 : Peter Brown—"Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World”
• 1993-94 : Thomas E. Hill Jr.—"Respect for Humanity”
• 1993-94 : A.E. Dick Howard—"Toward the Open Society in Central and Eastern Europe”
• 1993-94 : Jeffrey Sachs—"Shock Therapy in Poland: Perspectives of Five Years”
• 1993-94 : Lord of Hadley Slynn—"Law and Culture – A European Setting”
• 1993-94 : Lawrence Stone—"Family Values in a Historical Perspective”
• 1993-94 : William Julius Wilson—"The New Urban Poverty and the Problem of Race”
• 1994-95 : Amy Gutmann—"Responding to Racial Injustice”
• 1994-95 : Alasdair MacIntyre—"Truthfulness, Lies, and Moral Philosophers: What Can We Learn from Mill and Kant?”
• 1994-95 : Sir Roger Penrose—"Space-time and Cosmology”
• 1994-95 : Richard Posner—"Euthanasia and Health Care: Two Essays on the Policy Dilemmas of Aging and Old Age”
• 1995 Antonin Scalia—"Common-law Courts in a Civil-Law System: The Role of the United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws"
• 1994-95 : Cass R. Sunstein—"Political Conflict and Legal Agreement”
• 1994-95 : Janet Suzman—"Who Needs Parables?”
• 1995-96 : Harold Bloom—"I. Shakespeare and the Value of Personality” and "II. Shakespeare and the Value of Love”
• 1995-96 : Peter Brown—"The End of the Ancient Other World: Death and Afterlife between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages”
• 1995-96 : Nancy Fraser—"Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation”
• 1995-96 : Mairead Corrigan Maguire—"Peacemaking from the Grassroots in a World of Ethnic Conflict”
• 1995-96 : Onora O'Neill—"Kant on Reason and Religion”
• 1995-96 : Gunther Schuller—"I. Jazz: A Historical Perspective”, "II. Duke Ellington” and "III. Charles Mingus”
• 1996-97 : Dorothy Cheney—"Why Animals Don’t Have Language”
• 1996-97 : Marian Wright Edelman—"Standing for Children”
• 1996-97 : Francis Fukuyama—"Social Capital”
• 1996-97 : Peter Gay—"The Living Enlightenment”
• 1996-97 : Stuart Hampshire—"Justice Is Conflict: The Soul and the City”
• 1996-97 : Barbara Herman—"Moral Literacy”
• 1996-97 : Liam Hudson—"The Life of the Mind”
• 1996-97 : Elaine Pagels—"The Origin of Satan in Christian Tradition”
• 1996-97 : T. M. Scanlon—"The Status of Well-Being”
• 1996-97 : Robert Solow—"Welfare and Work”
• 1997-98 : Timothy Garton Ash—"The Direction of European History”
• 1997-98 : Myles Burnyeat—"Culture and Society in Plato's Republic”
• 1997-98 J.M. Coetzee "The Lives of Animals"
• 1997-98 : Antonio Damasio—"Exploring the Minded Brain”
• 1997-98 : Arthur Kleinman—"Experience and Its Moral Modes: Culture, Human Conditions, and Disorder”
• 1997-98 : Michael Sandel—"What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets”
• 1997-98 : Elaine Scarry—"On Beauty and Being Just”
• 1997-98 : Jonathan Spence—"Ideas of Power: China’s Empire in the Eighteenth Century and Today”
• 1997-98 : Stephen Toulmin—"The Idol of Stability”
• 1998-99 : Walter Burkert—"Revealing Nature amidst Multiple Cultures: A Discourse with Ancient Greeks”
• 1998-99 : Geoffrey Hartman—"Text and Spirit”
• 1998-99 : Steven Pinker—"The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine”
• 1998-99 : Judith Jarvis Thomson—"Goodness and Advice”
• 1998-99 : Sidney Verba—"Representative Democracy and Democratic Citizens: Philosophical and Empirical Understandings”
• 1998-99 : Richard White—"The Problem with Purity”
• 1999-2000 : Jared Diamond—"Ecological Collapses of Pre-industrial Societies”
• 1999-2000 : Geoffrey Hill—"Rhetorics of Value”
• 1999-2000 : Michael Ignatieff—"I. Human Rights as Politics” and "II. Human Rights as Idolatry”
• 1999-2000 : Jonathan Lear—"Happiness”
• 1999-2000 : Wolf Lepenies—"The End of “German Culture””
• 1999-2000 : William C. Richardson—"Reconceiving Health Care to Improve Quality”
• 1999-2000 : Charles Rosen—"Tradition without Convention: The Impossible Nineteenth-Century Project”
• 1999-2000 : Helen Vendler—"Poetry and the Mediation of Value: Whitman on Lincoln”
• 1999-2000 : Marina Warner—"Spirit Visions”
• 2000-01 K. Anthony Appiah—"The State and the Shaping of Identity"
• 2001 : Michael Fried—"Roger Fry's Formalism”
• 2000-01 : Partha Dasgupta
• 2000-01 : Sarah Hrdy—"The Past, Present, and Future of the Human Family”
• 2000-01 : Alexander Nehamas—"A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art”
• 2000-01 : Robert Pinsky—"American Culture and the Voice of Poetry”
• 2000–2001 : Joseph Raz—The Practice of Value
• 2000-01 : Simon Schama
• 2001 : Dorothy Allison—"I. Mean Stories and Stubborn Girls” and "II. What It Means to Be Free”
• 2001 : Sydney Kentridge—"Human Rights: A Sense of Proportion”
• 2001-02 : Kathleen Sullivan
• 2001 : Sir Frank Kermode—"Pleasure, Change, and the Canon”
• 2002 : Benjamin R. Barber—"Democratic Alternatives to the Mullahs and the Malls”
• 2002 : T. J. Clark—"Painting and Ground Level”
• 2002 : Lorraine Daston—"I. The Morality of Natural Orders” and "II. Nature's Customs vs. Nature's Laws”
• 2002 : Derek Parfit—"What We Could Rationally Will”
• 2002 : Salman Rushdie—"Step Across This Line”
• 2002 : Laurence H. Tribe—"The Constitution in Crisis”
• 2003 : Richard Dawkins—"I. The Science of Religion” and "II. The Religion of Science”
• 2003 : Frans de Waal—"Morality and the Social Instincts”
• 2003 : Jonathan Glover—"Towards Humanism in Psychiatry”
• 2003 : David M. Kennedy—"The Dilemma of Difference in Democratic Society”
• 2003 : Martha C. Nussbaum—"Beyond the Social Contract: Toward Global Justice”
• 2003 : Mary Robinson—"I. Human Rights and Ethical Globalization” and "II. The Challenge of Human Rights Protection in Africa”
• 2003 : Garry Wills—"Henry Adams: The Historian as a Novelist”
• 2004 : Seyla Benhabib—"Reclaiming Universalism: Negotiating Republican Self-Determinism and Cosmopolitan Norms”
• 2004 : Stephen Breyer—"Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution”
• 2004 : Harry Frankfurt—"I. Taking Ourselves Seriously” and "II. Getting it Right”
• 2004 : Christine Korsgaard—"Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals”
• 2005 : Carl Bildt—"Peace After War: Our Experience”
• 2005 Paul Farmer—"Never Again? Reflections on Human Values and Human Rights"
• 2005 : Axel Honneth—"Reification: A Recognition-Theoretical View”
• 2005 : Avishai Margalit—"I. Indecent Compromise" and "II. Decent Peace”
• 2005 : Ruth Reichl—"Why Food Matters”
• 2005 : Marshall Sahlins—"Hierarchy, Equality, and the Sublimation of Anarchy: the Western Illusion of Human Nature”
• 2005 : James Q. Wilson—"I. Politics and Polarization” and "II. Religion and Polarization”
• 2006 : David Brion Davis—"Exiles, Exodus, and Promised Lands”
• 2006 : Allan Gibbard—"Thinking How to Live with Each Other”
• 2006 : Margaret H. Marshall—"Tension and Intentions: The American Constitutions and the Shaping of Democracies Abroad”
• 2007 : Judy Illes—"Medicine, Neruoscience, Ethics, and Society”
• 2007 : Brian Skyrms—"Evolution and the Social Contract”
• 2007 : Bill Viola—"Presence and Absence”
• 2007 : Susan Wolf—"Meaning in Life and Why It Matters”
• 2008 : Howard Gardner—"What is Good Work? Achieving Good Work in Turbulent Times”
• 2008 : Marc Hauser—"The Seeds of Humanity”
• 2008 : Lisa Jardine—"What's Left of Culture and Society?”
• 2008 : David Miller—"Global Justice and Climate Change: How Should Responsibilities Be Distributed?”
• 2008 : Sari Nusseibeh—"Philosophical Reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian War”
• 2008 : Annabel Patterson—"Pandors's Boxes”
• 2008 : Michael Tomasello—"Origins of Human Cooperation”
• 2009 : John Adams—"Doctor Atomic and His Gadget”
• 2009 : Isabel Allende—"In the Hearts of Women”
• 2009 : Sir Christopher Frayling—"Art and Religion in the Modern West: Some Perspectives”
• 2009 : Jonathan Lear—"To Become Human Does Not Come That Easily”
• 2009 : Jeremy Waldron—"Dignity, Rank and Rights”
• 2009 : Roberto Mangabeira Unger-"The Future of Religion and the Religion of the Future"
• 2010 : Bruce Ackerman—"The Decline and Fall of the American Republic”
• 2010 : Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im—"Transcending Imperialism: Human Values and Global Citizenship”
• 2010 : Mark Danner—"Torture and the Forever War”
• 2010 : Spike Lee—"America through My Lens: The Evolving Nature of Race and Class in the Films of Spike Lee”
• 2010 : Susan Neiman—"Victims and Heroes”
• 2010 : Robert Putnam—"American Grace”
• 2010 : Ahmed Rashid—"Afghanistan and Pakistan: Past Mistakes, Future Directions?”
• 2010 : Martin Seligman—"Flourish: Positive Psychology and Positive Interventions”
• 2010 : Susan J. Smith—"Care-full Markets: Miracle or Mirage?”
• 2011-12 : John Broome—"The Public and Private Morality of Climate Change”
• 2011-12 : John M. Cooper—"Ancient Philosophies as a Way of Life”
• 2011-12 : Esther Duflo—"Human Values and the Design of the Fight against Poverty”
• 2011-12 : Ernst Fehr—"The Psychology and Economics of Authority”
• 2011-12 : Stephen Greenblatt—"Shakespeare and the Shape of a Life: The Uses of Life Stories”
• 2011-12 : Lisa Jardine—"The Two Cultures: Still Under Consideration”
• 2011 : Rebecca Newberger Goldstein—"The Ancient Quarrel: Philosophy and Literature”
• 2011 : Rebecca Newberger Goldstein - "The Ancient Quarrel: Philosophy and Literature,"
• 2011 : Elinor Ostrom—"I. Frameworks” and "II. Analyzing One-Hundred-Year-Old Irrigation Puzzles”
• 2011 : James Scott—"Four Domestications: Fire, Plants, Animals, and… Us”
• 2011–12 : Samuel Scheffler—"The Afterlife: I. How People Who Don't Yet Exist Matter More to Us than People Who Do and II. How the Present Depends the Future"
• 2011-12 : Abraham Verghese—"Two Souls Intertwined”
• 2011-2012 : Diane Coyle—"The Public Responsibility of the Economist”
• 2012-13 : Michael Ignatieff—"Representation and Responsibility: Ethics and Public Office"
• 2012-13 : Frances Kamm—"I. Who Turned the Trolley?" and "II. How Was the Trolley Turned?"
• 2012-13 : Joseph Koerner—"The Viennese Interior: Architecture & Inwardness”
• 2012-13 : Claude Lanzmann—"Resurrections”
• 2012-13 : Ian Morris—"Human Values in the Very Long Run”
• 2012-13 : Robert Post—"Representative Democracy: The Constitutional Theory of Campaign Finance Reform”
• 2012-13 : Michael J. Sandel—"The Moral Economy of Speculation: Gambling, Finance, and the Common Good”
• 2012-2013 : William Bowen—"I. Costs and Productivity in Higher Education” and "II. Prospects for an Online Fix: Can We Harness Technology in the Service of our Aspirations?”
• 2012-2013 : Craig Calhoun—"The Problematic Public: Revisiting Dewey, Arendt, and Habermas”
• 2013-14 : Shami Chakrabarti—"Human Rights as Human Values”
• 2013-14 : Neil deGrasse Tyson—"Science as a Way of Knowing”
• 2013-14 : Paul Gilroy—"The Black Atlantic and the Re-enchantment of Humanism”
• 2013-14 : Bruno Latour—"How Better to Register the Agency of Things”
• 2013-14 : Nicholas Lemann—"The Transaction Society: Origins and Consequences”
• 2013-14 : Walter Mischel—"Overcoming the Weakness of the Will”
• 2013-14 : Philippe Sands—"The Great Crimes: The Quest for Justice Among Individuals and Groups”
• 2013-14 : Eric Santner—"The Weight of All Flesh: On the Subject Matter of Political Economy”
• 2013-14 : Peter Singer—"From Moral Neutrality to Effective Altruism: The Changing Scope and Significance of Moral Philosophy”
• 2013-14 : Andrew Solomon—"Love, Acceptance, Celebration: How Parents Make Their Children”
• 2013-14 : Archbishop Rowan Williams–"The Paradox of Empathy"
• 2014-15 : Danielle Allen—"Education and Equality”
• 2014-15 : Elizabeth Anderson—"I. Private Government” and "II. When the Market Was 'Left'"
• 2014-15 : Margaret Atwood—"Human Values in Age of Change”
• 2014-15 : Dipesh Chakrabarty—"The Human Condition of the Anthropocene”
• 2014-15 : Peter Galison—"Science, Secrecy and the Private Self"
• 2014-15 : Ruth Bader Ginsburg—"A Conversation with Ruth Bader Ginsburg"
• 2014-15 : Carlo Ginzburg—"Casuistry, For and Against: Pascal's Provinciales and Their Aftermath”
• 2014-15 : Philip Pettit—"I. From Language to Commitment” and "II. From Commitment to Responsibility”
• 2015-16 : Andrew Bacevich—"The American Military Encounters Islam"
• 2015-16 : Abhijit Banerjee—""What do Economists Do?"”
• 2015-16 : Dame Carol Black—"Women: Education, Biology, Power, and Leadership"
• 2015-16 : Robert Boyd—"I. Not by Brains Alone: The vital role of culture in human adaptation" and "II. Beyond Kith and Kin: How culture transformed human cooperation"
• 2015-16 : Judith Butler—"Interpreting Non-Violence"
• 2015-16 : Didier Fassin—"The Will to Punish"
• 2015-16 : Derek Gregory—"Reach for the Sky: Aerial Violence and the Everywhere War"
• 2015-16 : Siddhartha Mukherjee—""The Gene: An Intimate History"”
• 2015-16 : Shirley Williams—""The Value of Europe and European Values"”
• 2016-17 : Seana Shiffrin—"I. Democratic Law” and "II. Common and Constitutional Law: A Democratic Legal Perspective”