Jason Brennan, “The Ethics of Voting” (Princeton UP, 2011)
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What is the central question about the ethics of voting that the episode explores?
Hello everyone and welcome to the New Books in Philosophy channel of the New Books Network. My name is Robert Talise and I'm co-host of the channel along with Carrie Figdor. In our bi monthly podcast, we'll be talking with philosophers about their newly published books. Today I'll be talking with Professor Jason Brennan about his new book. The ethics of voting. Jason's book was published this year with Princeton University Press. Jason is Research Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. You might recall that around the time of the two thousand four presidential election in the United States, a few pop stars confronted us with an ultimatum. Vote or die. Never quite understood the point of this slogan.
Was it to be understood as a threat? Voter else? Was it meant to suggest the more elevated thought? That political non participation is a kind of death. In any case, that it was widely accepted as an appropriate public statement of civic mindedness always struck me as odd. It seems that any encouragement to vote Even if by intimidation. Is morally above board. This is because one of our great pieties Is that democratic citizens have an obligation to participate in politics? And it's typically held that the most important mode of political participation is voting. Thus it's generally thought to be obvious that democratic citizens have a duty to vote. That it's good for citizens to vote almost no matter what.
that voting is almost always morally praiseworthy, or at least that voting is never wrongful. Yet when we think about what voting is, these pieties begin to look very suspicious. By voting we make collective decisions. And we can decide to do good things or bad things. When we collectively decide to do good things, we often provide benefits to ourselves and others. But when we decide to do bad things collectively, we impose costs on ourselves. It seems odd then that the view that voting is Always morally praiseworthy should prevail. Uninformed, selfish, immoral, and incompetent voters do not vote well. Shouldn't they be blamed for voting? Might they have a duty not to vote? These broad themes are the subject of Jason Brennan's new book, The Ethics of Voting.
Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Jason.
Hi, how are you?
Good, how are you today?
Not uh not too bad, how are you? Uh just asked you how you are. Not too bad. Okay.
Uh well, uh today we're discussing uh your new book, The Ethics of Voting. And the ethics of voting takes aim. At a series of commonplace intuitions among supporters of democracy. uh about voting. Uh this is a highly provocative, lucid, very lively book. Um Democrats, that is, uh people who believe in democracy or support democracy. Typically believe that there's a duty to vote. That voting is almost never morally wrong, that nobody can vote in a way that makes them morally blameworthy. And uh that selling and buying and trading votes uh is uh unethical. Um In your book, Jason, you challenge all of this. Uh, and you challenge it in a way that doesn't embrace some form of anti democratic politics, in fact.
You say in the book. That this is a pro democracy view. Um So there's a lot to discuss and we'll get to that in a second. So but first, Jason, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into philosophy and how you got into this project of the ethics of voting? Great, thanks.
Uh well I grew up in uh northern Massachusetts and then southern New Hampshire and my my first real introduction to philosophy came in ninth grade where I had a world civilization teacher who uh focused on ideas and what role they had in history and how people's beliefs changed history. So uh thanks to her I um at one point in ninth grade I ended up going to some local bookstore and I bought a copy of uh Marx's Communist Manifesto and Locke's second treatise of government and started reading. And that was just sort of it for me. I was always into philosophy after that. I I even bought a copy of the Critique of Pure Reason and read two pages of it and realized I couldn't understand it back in high school.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central question about the ethics of voting that the episode explores?
0:07–10:26
2
How does Jason Brennan describe his personal journey into philosophy and the study of voting?
10:26–21:40
3
What is the “folk theory” of voting ethics and why does Brennan challenge it?
21:40–32:16
4
Why does Brennan argue that there is no strong moral duty to vote for most citizens?
32:16–43:12
5
How does Brennan redefine civic virtue and its relation to voting?
43:12–53:45
6
What are the main arguments for a duty not to vote, and how does Brennan respond to them?
53:45–1:03:13
7
How does Brennan address the morality of buying and selling votes?
1:03:13–1:06:20
8
What future projects does Brennan preview and how might they extend the discussion of voting ethics?
1:06:20–1:13:36
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