Faculty Lecture Series: Justin Shaddock

Associate Professor of Philosophy Justin Shaddock presents “Kant and the Problem of Happiness” as part of the spring 2025 Faculty Lecture Series. Lectures will begin at 4:15 p.m. and take place in the Lawrence Hall Auditorium (L-231). Enter via the main WCMA entrance or through the Art Department corridor. Students, faculty, staff, community members – all are welcome!

In a striking passage, Kant refers to happiness as a problem, indeed, a problem imposed upon us by human nature itself. What is the problem? One might suppose that our problem is to secure the objects that make us happy, or perhaps more deeply, to discover what those objects are. Readers of Kant commonly interpret him as referring to a different problem. Because Kant maintains that an action has moral worth only if it is done for the sake of duty alone, regardless of whether it makes us happy, readers suppose that happiness is a problem, for Kant, because our human nature inclines us to do what we want to do, rather than what we know we ought to do. I will argue for a different interpretation, on which happiness and morality are not fundamentally opposed or in conflict, but instead, morality is capable of shaping happiness, in the way form shapes matter, for Kant. On my interpretation, the problem imposed on us by our human nature is to bring our wants into a systematic unity according to our knowledge of what we ought to do.

Justin Shaddock is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department, where previously he was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. He works on Kant’s theoretical philosophy and his moral theory, focusing on Kant’s conception of form and matter. His work has been published in leading philosophy journals, including the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Southern Journal for the History of Philosophy, and Kantian Review, as well as edited volumes. He has presented his work at numerous meetings of the American Philosophical Association, the North American Kant Society, and the International Kant Congress, as well as other notable venues, including Brown University, Cambridge University, and the University of Chicago. He has won prestigious awards for his research, including the North American Kant Society’s Wilfrid Sellars Prize.

This talk is presented as part of the Spring 2025 Faculty Lecture Series. The series was founded in 1911 by Catherine Mariotti Pratt, the spouse of a faculty member who wanted to “relieve the tedium of long New England winters with an opportunity to hear Williams professors talk about issues that really mattered to them.” From these humble and lighthearted beginnings, the Faculty Lecture Series has grown to become an important forum for tenured professors to share their latest research with the larger intellectual community of the college.

The Faculty Lecture Series is organized by the faculty members of the Lecture Committee. The aim of the series is to present big ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries. All lectures begin at 4:15 p.m. They are free and open to the public.

Upcoming Faculty Lectures

March 20 — Joel Lee: “On the Art of Caste Concealment”