Values are properties that are apt, like any desiderata, to trigger desire but also fit in a special way to trigger it — they can vindicate as well as explain. It turns out that persons must treat various properties as values — deep values, as Charles Taylor puts it — if they are to personate. And it transpires in addition that they are constitutively required, in whatever cultural mode, to recognize the values of autonomy, respect and freedom.
Philip Pettit is the L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at Princeton University and distinguished professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University.
This conference is organized by a partnership between the Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique, the Lin Centre, the Centre de recherche en éthique, the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie, the Groupe de recherche sur les sociétés plurinationales, and the Social Justice Centre.