Social Philosophy and Political Economy

|Peter Boettke|

I am currently visiting the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State Univesity, where I will give a talk today in an Ethics and Political Economy seminar.  This is the second time I have been here for this purpose, and I find the place amazingly interesting in terms of the staff and the graduate students.  I have never done the extended stay visit, but the list of visitors is very impressive, and I should add that by my casual calculation the books written during those stays have been quite significant.  The journal published out of the Center is also outstanding.

I have taken the symbol of three interlocking circles representing the disciplines of philosophy, politics and economics as the description of the research program I would like to encourage (Pete Leeson likes to make fun of me for this and how much mileage I think I can get out of manipulating the circles on the board in explaining the intellectual fate of different economists).  The PPE programs at Duke (contact MIke Munger) and Penn (contact Cristina Bicchieri) are some of the most exciting intellectual/educational ventures I know of, also throw in UVA's Program in Political Philosophy, Policy and Law (contact Loren Lomasky).  But the Social Philosophy and Policy Center has been the flagship research and graduate education center for PPE for several decades.

Do you know any other PPE programs that have been developed or is being developed at the moment?  And can someone tell me why an F. A. Hayek Institute for the Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Princeton, or Harvard, or Chicago, or Stanford, or LSE hasn't been established?

Comments

[john]

Jerry Gaus is developing a PPE track at Arizona

[Rob]

Denison University has a PPE program.

[Gary Chartier]

But isn't it the case that all of the PPE programs in the US derive their names from the "modern Greats" program, leading to the BA in PPE, that Oxford introduced after World War II? It's still going strong, I believe.

[Troy Camplin]

Chicago doesn't make much sense, considering Hayek was there, but as for the rest, why, who would want a center named after some right-wing nut? That, at least, is my guess as to why they don't have one yet -- though, of course, each one of them really should. Some reality-based research would be nice.

[yee sian]

In the UK, Oxford, Warwick and the School of PEP, University of York (not to be confused with New York University or Canada's York University) offer undergraduate courses that are as challenging as the ones offer by UPenn and Duke.

If you're looking at graduate PPE programs, The School of PEP) has one that allows for a permutation of any of the three subjects here leading to a MA. The School of PEP also offers a research degree programme (MPhil/PhD) - research interests here.

[yee sian]

looks like hyperlinks are purged from comments - I'll leave the links here:

Oxford PPE (BA) - http://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/prospective/ug/ppe/#grad

Warwick PPE (BA/BSc) - http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ppe/

School of PEP
1. BA
2. MA - http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/pep/grad/admissions/mappe.htm
3. MPhil/PhD - http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/pep/grad/admissions/researchdegrees.htm
*research interests: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/pep/grad/admissions/research.htm

hope that helps!

[Troy Camplin]

Maybe you should start one. Maybe hire an interdisciplinary humanities scholar who uses Hayek's spontaneous order theory. :-)

[Paul]

Yee sian, thanks for the info. If anyone else knows of a PPE program that grants Phds, please post further. My applications for a Phd in philosophy did not go well, despite my qualifications (I am getting an MA in philosophy at Va Tech), and I am looking for more options for next year's application cycle.

[Troy Camplin]

Paul,

In what area in philosophy are you are interested?

[Paul Poenicke]

Well, that's one of the problems. I am a bit all over the place. I do have a significant interest in political and social thought, although a good bit of my research in that area is the result of work bleeding over from applied ethics, language, or social epistemology. I am interested in epistemology generally, virtue and social specifically; also, I can't seem to get the metaphysics bug out of my system. I have side interests in Chinese thought--a greatly underappreciated source for Austrians--and philosophy of religion. So the only thing that really leaves out is ethics and aethetics.

Enrolling in a PPE graduate program would be great, as it would allow me to get back to an interest in economics; but it would force me to table my other interests in philosophy, which is not something I would want to do.

[topills.com review]

The School of PEP) has one that allows for a permutation of any of the three subjects here leading to a MA .