Akeel Bilgrami (Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, and Professor, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University) talked about the idea of “the commons.” This is the idea of something shared without rivalry, whether it is land, or the environment, or knowledge. The survival of the commons depends on human co-operation. In this lecture, Akeel Bilgrami asked the question: Can human co-operation be enforced by regulation, by policing, and punishing non-cooperation? Invoking ideas in thinkers ranging from Nietzsche and Marx to Wittgenstein, Foucault, and Bishop Tutu, Bilgrami explored the extent to which regulation and the law depends on a background of the cultural commons that is implicit and inarticulate, and the extent to which the cultural commons are themselves sustained by overcoming alienated human relations. Professor Bilgrami’s lecture was followed by a response from Joseph North (Assistant Professor of English, Yale).
