Professor Joseph Heath Lectures on Justice and Future Generations

On April 15, 2014, Professor Joseph Heath spoke on the topic of intergenerational cooperation at a lecture sponsored by the Center for the Study of Business Ethics, Regulation, and Crime (C-BERC) and Department of Philosophy. 

"Our obligations toward future generations are not just a matter of benevolence, but of assuring that our existing institutions respect basic principles of justice." 

Joseph Heath is the Director of the Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto, and Professor, Department of Philosophy and School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto. An important contemporary political philosopher, he is the author of multiple books and articles. His first book, Communicative Action and Rational Choice (MIT Press, 1981), is a critical study of Habermas’s theory of communicative action, from the perspective of contemporary rational choice theory. His other academic books are Following the Rules: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint (Oxford, 2008) and Morality, Competition and the Firm (Oxford, August 2014). 

Heath is also the author of a number of very successful trade books: The Efficient Society: Why Canada is as Close to Utopia as it Gets (Penguin, 2001), The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, with Andrew Potter (HarperCollins, 2004), Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism (Harper Collins, 2009), and Enlightenment 2.0 (HarperCollins, 2014).