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Professor David van Mill
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David van Mill received
his undergraduate degree from Lancaster University in 1989. He
gained his Masters (1991) and Ph.D. (1996) from the University of
Colorado at Boulder. He then taught at the University of Chicago
for three years on a Harper Fellowship, and for six months as
part of the Political Science department. He arrived in Australia
at the start of 2000 and has taught at UWA ever since.
David teaches courses in
the history of political philosophy (POLS2211/3311) and in
contemporary political thought (POLS 2227/3327). Both of these
courses are arranged around the themes of liberty, justice and
democracy. The history of thought course looks at how these ideas
have been addressed by political philosophers accross time. Some
of the authors covered over the past few years include Plato,
Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, Bentham,
J.S. Mill, Marx, and Nietzsche. The contemporary political
thought course looks at how the themes are addressed in current
political thought. Prominent thinkers covered include Isaiah
Berlin, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Robert Nozick, Judith
Thompson, Charles Taylor, Iris Marion Young, Barbara Goodwin,
William Riker, and Kenneth Arrow. This course also includes
sections that examine how political philosophy inform
controversial topics such as abortion, affirmative action, human
rights, drug use, and the distribution of social resources.
David is also the course
coordinator for the first year course “The Liberal
Democratic State: Ideas and Institutions”. He teaches the
first section of the course that deals with the philosophical
underpinnings of liberal democracy before handing over to Bruce
Stone and David Denemark who examine how these ideas play out in
the U.S.A, Britain, Europe, and Australia. Research David engages in research
in the history of ideas and in contemporary political philosophy.
He has published articles and a book on the work of Thomas
Hobbes. He is particularly interested in how past thinkers can
inform our contemporary understanding of topics such as freedom,
rationality, equality, justice, and democracy. Other authors in
the history of ideas that inform David’s work include,
Locke, Rousseau, J.S. Mill and Marx. David has also written
articles and a book on contemporary democratic theory. He is
interested in social choice theory, with a particular focus on
the arguments made by Kenneth Arrow, andhe also has an interest
in the arguments made in favour of deliberative democracy by
thinkers such as Habermas, Dryzek, and Cohen. In his book on
democratic theory, David combined the insights of Hobbes, who is
usually seen as an opponent of democracy, with those of
contemporary theorists, to argue for what he describes as
“absolutist democracy.” Selected
Publications Books Deliberation, Social
Choice and Absolutist Democracy, London, Routledge (2006)
Civil
Liberty in Hobbes's Commonwealth, Australian Journal of
Political Science, 37:1, pp 21-38
(2002) “Free Speech”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (6000 word entry)
2002.
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