The final 2025 Easter Term session of the monthly seminar run by the Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy will take place on Wednesday, 25 June at 3:00pm, through Zoom.
The seminar will be chaired by Dr Alexander Bryan, who is currently Director of Studies in Philosophy and the Isaac Newton Trust Career Development Fellow in Philosophy at Magdalene College. His talk will be entitled 'When Jobs Become (More) Hazardous'.
Abstract: When we voluntarily accept an offer of employment, we are agreeing to assume risks we otherwise would not be subject to. But as the COVID-19 pandemic showed, sometimes the risks we are later required to take on go beyond anything we could have expected when making that choice. This paper considers whether the imposition of these risks can be justified. It begins by providing an account of which risks we consent to take on when accepting a job, arguing that workers consent only to take on those risks which are foreseeable and not explicitly excluded by the contract or law. It then considers whether the imposition on workers of risks outside of this range might be justified, considering three candidate justifications (democratic political authority, reciprocity, and compensation). Arguing that none of these are sufficient, it concludes by suggesting that any successful justification must identify these risks as in the first instance a shared social burden rather than as duties attached to particular occupations.
Anyone interested in moral or political or legal philosophy in Cambridge or beyond is welcome to participate in the seminar. If you wish to receive the Zoom invitation, you should please request it from Matthew Kramer (mhk11@cam.ac.uk). Please write from an institutional e-mail account rather than from a generic account such as Hotmail or Gmail.
