Iris Marion Young

Iris Young has died. Though I don't wish to make this site an obituary page for those political theorists that have served as inspiration for me (and many others), these two recent losses are worth noting (during a summer in which I've otherwise been too busy to post).

Young was born January 2, 1949 in New York City. She studied philosophy as an undergraduate at Queens College, where she graduated with honors in 1970, before she went on to earn her masters and doctorate in philosophy in 1974 from Pennsylvania State University.

Early on, Young built a reputation for her teaching and writing on global justice; democracy and difference; continental political theory; ethics and international affairs; and gender, race and public policy. But it was her 1990 book Justice and the Politics of Difference that propelled her to the international stage. It was in that text, a staple in classrooms the world over, that Young critically analyzed the basic concepts underlying most theories of justice, argued for a new conception of justice and urged for the affirmation rather than the suppression of social group difference. More recently she had been working on the issue of political responsibility, and especially on the question of how to conceive of responsibility for large-scale structural injustices that can’t easily be traced back to the doings of any single person or group.

“There is no question in my mind that she is one of the most important political philosophers of the past quarter-century,” said Cass Sunstein, the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago’s Law School and in Political Science. “She was unexcelled in the world in feminist and leftist political thought, and her work will have an enduring impact.”

Known for her fierce commitment to social justice and her grassroots political activity on causes such as women’s human rights, debt relief for Africa and workers’ rights, Young was praised for being as comfortable working at the street level as she was writing about political theorists Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas.

“She combined a mind that went for the jugular with a passionate commitment to social justice, and the combination produced an absolutely magnificent colleague and an absolutely magnificent political philosopher,” said Jane Mansbridge, Adams Professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “She was a committed, decent human being and that informed every aspect of her work.”

I had the immense good fortune of being one of suprisingly few audience members on a global justice panel at the MPSA meeting in April, which Professor Young not only graciously agreed to chair, but from which she moderated a discussion on developments in the field that somehow managed to include both panelists and audience and yield key critical insights while generously acknowledging a wide array of points of view. Though she was never my teacher, I've learned a lot from her written work over my career, and I could tell from this rare gem of a panel (few involving major figures in the field are able to replicate the feel of an actual dicussion) why her courses were so popular at Chicago.