Event Title

"Freedom" and "Coercion" - Virtue Words and Vice Words

Presenter Information

Peter Westen

Location

Duke Law School

Start Date

17-1-1985 8:45 AM

End Date

17-1-1985 10:00 AM

Description

Much has changed since young Thomas Jefferson took up his quill pen in the winter of 1781 and wrote by candlelight about "freedom" and "coercion." More has changed since Plato lauded freedom and derogated coercion two thousand years earlier. Yet despite these tidal transformations in our conceptions of good and evil, one thing remains the same: We use much the same language to express our conceptions of good and evil today as Jefferson and Plato used in their times. The author should like to focus here on what he believes to be a large subset of these recurring terms of moral discourse, a category which I shall call "virtue words" and "vice words."'

Comments

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Related Paper

Peter Westen, “Freedom” and ”Coercion”—Virtue Words and Vice Words, 1985 Duke Law Journal 541-593 (1985)

Available at: http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol34/iss3/1


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Jan 17th, 8:45 AM Jan 17th, 10:00 AM

"Freedom" and "Coercion" - Virtue Words and Vice Words

Duke Law School

Much has changed since young Thomas Jefferson took up his quill pen in the winter of 1781 and wrote by candlelight about "freedom" and "coercion." More has changed since Plato lauded freedom and derogated coercion two thousand years earlier. Yet despite these tidal transformations in our conceptions of good and evil, one thing remains the same: We use much the same language to express our conceptions of good and evil today as Jefferson and Plato used in their times. The author should like to focus here on what he believes to be a large subset of these recurring terms of moral discourse, a category which I shall call "virtue words" and "vice words."'