2005 Leo Strauss Award

For the best dissertation completed and accepted during 2003 or 2004 in the field of political philosophy.

Award Committee: Danielle Allen, University of Chicago, chair; Leslie Thiele, University of Florida; and Sammy Basu, Willamette

Recipient: Douglas Casson, St. Olaf College

Dissertation: "Liberating Judgment: John Locke and the Politics of Probability"

Dissertation Chair: Ruth Grant, Duke University

Citation: The 2004-05 Leo Strauss Award Committee is pleased to nominate Douglas Casson for receipt of the award for the best dissertation in political philosophy completed and accepted in the years 2000 and 2001. His dissertation is entitled, "Liberating Judgment: John Locke and the Politics of Probability."

This well-written, incisive dissertation argues that the mature Locke responds to the epoch-making epistemological and political problems of Renaissance skepticism (a` la Montaigne and Descartes) with a conception of reason as probable or probabilistic judgment, i.e., "proportioning assent to the available evidence." Casson offers a portrait of an epistemologically sensitive Locke content to find a kinder and gentler inclusionary political solution to the problem of judgment than the absolutist one that attracted him in his youth.  Casson's Locke is a theorist of public reasonableness whose political project was a type of pedagogy. Casson's valuable contribution is to redirect the attention of political theorists to epistemology and to reorient us to the question of how coming to know this or that affects politics.