Tanner Lecture

THE 2025-2026 TANNER LECTURE 

Lea Ypi - Professor in Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science

What is Political Progress?

 Progress is both a necessary and a dangerous idea. It is necessary to motivate political action oriented to the future, and it is dangerous because the pursuit of progress has often given rise to episodes of paternalism, colonial domination and narratives of civilisational superiority. In this lecture, I try to defend a more critical account of progress. I start by distinguishing between moral and political progress, then explore the relation between political progress and justice. I suggest that we make political progress not when we approximate an ideal of justice that is always known to us, but when the political institutions we construct reflect what we learn from the trials and failures of the past. To outline how such learning processes might take place, I defend the idea that the basic function of justice is to regulate the coercive use of power. I further explain how we should understand progress in the norms of justice as the result of cumulative processes of evolution of different views of how power ought to be exercised. 

Symposium Panel:

Philip Kitcher, Columbia University

Catherine Lu, McGill University

Daniel Wodak, University of Pennsylvania

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About the Tanner Lectures on Human Values

Michigan is one of nine institutions worldwide that hosts an annual Tanner Lecture on Human Values. Tanner Lectures are funded through the generosity of the late Professor of Philosophy, industrialist, and philanthropist, Obert Clark Tanner, and his wife, Grace Tanner. Professor Tanner wrote:I hope these lectures will contribute to the intellectual and moral life of mankind. I see them simply as a search for a better understanding of human behavior and human values. This understanding may be pursued for its own intrinsic worth, but it may also eventually have practical consequences for the quality of personal and social life.Although the Tanners established the supporting endowment in 1978, Joel Feinberg's April 1977 lecture at Michigan inaugurated the international series of Tanner Lectures.Each year, Michigan has a Tanner Lecture combined with an interdisciplinary symposium to which we invite distinguished scholars from around the world. These events are free and open to the public. The complete list of Tanner Lectures at Michigan is available here.