Colloquium Lecture: Jennifer Morton (University of Pennsylvania), "Precarity: Insecurity, Instability, and the Neo-Hobbesian Political Project"

Abstract: This paper develops a philosophical approach to precarity, a concept that has garnered significant interest from social scientists but has not received as much attention in our field. I argue that precarity should be understood as encompassing both insecurity and instability. We should be concerned about precarity because it undermines our ability to act with a future-oriented mindset, thereby hindering our capacity to pursue valuable individual and collective goals. I differentiate between objective precarity, which refers to actual exposure to insecurity and instability, and subjective precarity, which pertains to the feeling of being precarious. I contend that both aspects are important for political theorizing. I argue that addressing precarity requires us to move beyond merely focusing on inequality and redistribution. The key to understanding why lies in understanding the connection between subjective feelings of precarity and objective precarity. Hobbes, I suggest, understood the importance of this connection. I draw on Hobbes’s insight to make a case for the need to think about precarity in our political theorizing.