The Examined Life with Scott Hershovitz and Sarah Bakewell

A conversation with Scott Hershovitz and Sarah Bakewell at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 09/05/2024 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom. In Nasty, Brutish, and Short, Scott Hershovitz, co-writing with his two young children, uses the child’s sense of curiosity and simplicity as a starting point from which to investigate ethics, existence, religion, identity, and justice from fresh perspectives. In his latest book, Law is a Moral Practice, Hershovitz approaches the relationship between moral action and the law with refreshing frankness and levity, uncovering a very human history of setting, breaking, and remaking rules for good living. Sarah Bakewell’s work is similarly engaged with the idea of ethical living. Her latest book, Humanly Possible, masterfully recounts the long history of humanism and freethinking. What has humanism meant to different philosophers and writers over the last seven hundred years? What kinds of ethical orientations are illuminated by humanistic thought? And how has the history of humanism played out in literature and art? Join the two authors as they consider philosophy’s most fundamental questions, the eternal urgency of philosophy, and the necessity of making philosophical thought accessible to all. About the speakers: Scott Hershovitz is director of the Law and Ethics Program and professor of law and philosophy at the University of Michigan. He holds a BA in philosophy and politics from the University of Georgia, a JD from Yale Law School, and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Professor Hershovitz served as a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court. He is married to Julie Kaplan, a social worker, who he met at summer camp. They live in Ann Arbor with their two children, Rex and Hank. Sarah Bakewell is the author of several works of biography and philosophy, including At the Existentialist Café and How to Live: A Life of Montaigne. Her latest, Humanly Possible: 700 Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry, and Hope, was a New York Times bestseller in 2023 and was named by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year. Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.