Political Theory on TV
By Via Brian Leiter, I see that some PBS show I’ve never heard of is showing an episode devoted to John Rawls. Leiter tells me that the host is a right-wing hack, which is unfortunate. The Guests are Samuel Freeman and Robert Talisse. The former is a Rawls student and squarely a Rawls partisan. The latter would appear to be some species of pragmatist, which could make for an interesting debate. All I really know about the work of either of them is that Freeman did write a really challenging and excellent essay recently arguing that libertarians shouldn’t really be considered liberals. I didn’t come to the essay sympathetic to this argument, and I’m not quite ready to endorse it, but it’s an impressive effort nevertheless. In fact, it’s one of the only interesting political theory essays I’ve ever read that’s primarily interested in delineating or policing the proper boundaries of liberalism.
While it’s not entirely 100% clear that it’s the right episode, the show is scheduled to air here in Seattle at (thank God for Tivo) 5:00 AM tomorrow morning. Rawls isn’t exactly my favorite topic in political theory, but given the appalling and mystifying lack of political theory-based programming on television these days, I’m gonna give it a chance.