PPE Seminar | Shai Agmon (Oxford/UCL)

‘Sucker’ is a surprisingly powerful moral term. It is used to condemn the credulous, the naive, the exploited. In other words, it kind of sucks to be a sucker.


Since Donald Trump’s entrance into American politics, the rhetoric of not being a sucker—of being ‘smart’—has moved to the centre of political discourse. It has become a rallying cry for both domestic resentment (‘Real Americans won’t be suckers for undocumented immigrants’) and foreign policy retrenchment (‘The U.S. won’t be NATO’s sucker anymore’). But what exactly does it mean to be a ‘sucker’? And should we care?
 
This talk distinguishes between two distinct kinds of suckers. The first is the dupe—the fool who should have known better. Their failing is epistemic, perhaps even moral. The second is the good citizen—the person who refrains from exploiting the system, even when doing so would be legal or profitable. Their ‘mistake’ is not stupidity, but restraint: choosing to abide by the law or prevailing norms according to a reasonable—though not supererogatory—interpretation. This analytical distinction between the dupe-sucker and the good-citizen sucker is the talk’s first move.

 
The second part draws out the normative implications. While ‘sucker’ is always pejorative, its use to describe good citizens is both conceptually confused and normatively corrosive. The deeper argument is that most standard justifications for political obligation—fair play, consent, and reasons-compliance—and their corresponding theories of civil disobedience rest on a crucial assumption: that once we agree on what constitutes legitimate political authority, and assuming disobedience is not justified, citizens will, by and large, interpret the law in a broadly charitable spirit, not as self-interest-maximising decision theorists. Without such an ethos, the collective character of law-abiding society begins to erode. Yet this is anything but an obvious assumption.


 
To borrow from G.A. Cohen’s critique of Rawls: a theory of political obligation cannot even get off the ground without a background ethos—something akin to ‘law as integrity’, not just for judges but for ordinary citizens. When those who uphold this ethos are dismissed as suckers, we risk corroding the social conditions that make political obligation possible in the first place. That is not merely a misdescription—it is a political problem.

The Institute of Philosophy hosts a regular workshop series entitled ‘The Practical, the Political, and the Ethical’.
The series was created in 2015 by Véronique Munoz-Dardé (UCL) and Hallvard Lillehammer (Birkbeck) in order to discuss work in progress from visiting speakers. This year the series is convened by Elise Woodard (KCL) and Michael Hannon (Nottingham). Talks are normally 45 minutes (no pre-circulation of the paper), followed by discussion. All are welcome. 

The Institute of Philosophy hosts a regular workshop series entitled ‘The Practical, the Political, and the Ethical’.
The series was created in 2015 by Véronique Munoz-Dardé (UCL) and Hallvard Lillehammer (Birkbeck) in order to discuss work in progress from visiting speakers. This year the series is convened by Elise Woodard (KCL) and Michael Hannon (Nottingham). Talks are normally 45 minutes (no pre-circulation of the paper), followed by discussion. All are welcome. 

The Institute of Philosophy hosts a regular workshop series entitled ‘The Practical, the Political, and the Ethical’.
The series was created in 2015 by Véronique Munoz-Dardé (UCL) and Hallvard Lillehammer (Birkbeck) in order to discuss work in progress from visiting speakers. This year the series is convened by Elise Woodard (KCL) and Michael Hannon (Nottingham). Talks are normally 45 minutes (no pre-circulation of the paper), followed by discussion. All are welcome. 

The Institute of Philosophy hosts a regular workshop series entitled ‘The Practical, the Political, and the Ethical’.
The series was created in 2015 by Véronique Munoz-Dardé (UCL) and Hallvard Lillehammer (Birkbeck) in order to discuss work in progress from visiting speakers. This year the series is convened by Elise Woodard (KCL) and Michael Hannon (Nottingham). Talks are normally 45 minutes (no pre-circulation of the paper), followed by discussion. All are welcome.