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Imagine: you are designing a society, but you don't know who you'll be within it – rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like?

This is the revolutionary thought experiment proposed by the 20th century's greatest political philosopher, John Rawls. As economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler will argue in the Voltaire Lecture 2024, it is by rediscovering Rawls that we can find a way out of the escalating crises that are devastating our world today.

Taking Rawls's humane and egalitarian liberalism as his starting point, Chandler builds a careful and ultimately irresistible case for a progressive agenda that would fundamentally reshape our societies for the better. He shows how we can protect free speech and transcend the culture wars, get money out of politics, and create an economy where everyone has the chance to fulfil their potential, where prosperity is widely shared, and which operates within the limits of our finite planet.

In a Voltaire Lecture brimming with hope and possibility, Daniel Chandler will offer a galvanising alternative to the cynicism that pervades our politics.

About Daniel Chandler

Daniel Chandler is an economist and philosopher based at the London School of Economics. He has degrees in economics, philosophy, and history from Cambridge and the LSE, and was awarded a Henry Fellowship at Harvard where he studied under Amartya Sen. He has worked in the UK Government as a policy advisor in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit and Deputy Prime Minister's Office, and as a researcher at think tanks including the Resolution Foundation and Institute for Fiscal Studies.

About the Voltaire Lecture series

The Voltaire Lecture explores ‘any aspect of scientific or philosophical thought or human activity as affected by or with particular reference to humanism’. The Voltaire medallist has made a significant contribution in one of these fields. 

The lecture and medal are named for the philosopher Voltaire. The inaugural lecture took place in 1968 and was delivered by Theodore Besterman, biographer of Voltaire, who went on to fund the lecture series in his legacy.