Thursday, March 22, 2007

Follow Up: Lunch in Mansfield and Contemporary Egalitarianism

Further to two earlier posts...

Today I had lunch in Mansfield SCR with Joel. It was very impressive - although I always feel slightly awkward eating in such circumstances (I refused after lunch cheese and crackers because it meant reaching across someone and wine too). We didn't really discuss next term's teaching plans, but we did mostly talk about Oxford, academia, teaching and so on more generally, so it was useful in that respect.

While I was in town, I went to the SSL and had a look at the book I'd recently ordered from the stack. The Christiano paper is indeed (a descendant of) the one I've read - I recall the section on Nozick (which is pp.64-70) being quite useful. I only read the introduction, which wasn't quite what I was expecting. I thought it would describe the real cutting edge of a debate I'm a bit behind on. Instead it largely summarized events since 1971 - equality of what, levelling down, etc - but it was a good overview of such. It didn't really summarize the papers in the volume, but it did at least highlight where they enter the debates. Also being in the department allowed me to see Alia, Rob, John William and - entering as I was leaving (7pm) - Kieran, so at least it was a bit more sociable than many days recently.

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