Harry Brighouse of the philosophy department at University of Wisconsin-Madison will present at a colloquium at 4 p.m. Thursday, November 20, in 401A Stevenson. The topic for the afternoon’s talk will be “What’s so great about the family anyway?”
Everyone agrees that the family is a good thing. But they disagree about why it is a good thing, and these disagreements influence other disagreements, like how much parents should be able to influence their children’s religious beliefs, and the extent to which they should be able to help them compete in the labor market (eg. by paying for better schooling, or subsidizing summer internships, or reading bedtime stories to them).
Brighouse, co-author of Family Values: The Ethics of Parent Child Relationships, will argue that the family is valuable because it makes possible a certain kind of intimate relationship which benefits both children and adults; and explores the extent to which parents may legitimately advantage, and influence, their children.
