‘How do you know the world exists behind you?’

As a 10 year old, Leif Wenar ’87 recalls turning around to peer into his shadow in response to his father’s question — only to realize that this wouldn’t bring him any closer to an answer.

Wenar, Olive H. Palmer professor in humanities and courtesy professor of political science and law, attributes his early interest in philosophy and ethics to his father, who always challenged his understanding of the world and his role within it. 

“The particular questions of philosophy just turned out to be so challenging, and the opportunity to think with some of the greatest minds of human history was so exciting that it was hard to resist,” Wenar said. 

After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard, Wenar served as chair of philosophy and law at King’s College London for over two decades. However, the decision to cross the pond and return to Stanford in 2020 “was an easy one,” Wenar said.

“At Stanford, you are really free to think what you want to think and to build something new, to innovate, to disrupt, to make big changes, and that’s just very exciting,” said Wenar, who serves as the faculty director of the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. 

Through the McCoy Center, Wenar offers advice to students on applying ethics within various disciplines, from computer science to sustainability. 

“We’re hoping to really get people to think about the societal implications of what they’re doing automatically,” Wenar said. “Not just as an afterthought, but as part of their understanding of what they want to do with their lives and how they’re living day-to-day.” 

Philosophy department chair Lanier Anderson emphasized Wenar’s many contributions to the Stanford community, particularly his leadership at the McCoy Center, “whose activities make a big difference to the whole University.” 

In his research, Wenar focuses on theoretical ethics, applied ethics and political philosophy. Wenar lauded the work of philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Claude Rousseau and John Stuart Mill — intellectuals who were deeply engaged in the political struggles of their time, and who were sometimes vilified or exiled for their ideas. 

“You have to be willing to step into the big game of politics [outside of] the academy, but for those who can do that kind of work, the chance of making a real contribution to the human project is immense, because everything is changing very fast, and philosophers are amongst the people who could show the big picture of where we could go,” he said. 

Over the past several years, Wenar has worked on one of the oldest and most daunting questions in philosophy: ‘What is good in itself?’ According to Wenar, the question has been known since at least the time of Socrates, and the four main ‘answers’ in the Western tradition have been known since the age of Aristotle. 

However, 2,400 years later, “we’re still stuck debating the same four theories that we’ve known literally for millenia,” Wener said.

Asserting that none of the theories are correct, Wenar noted that every civilization has its own answer to ‘what is good.’ “In our times, when we do cost-benefit analysis, we’re assuming some particular account of what’s good and bad. When we say we want the economy to grow, higher GDP, that depends on a particular understanding of what’s good and bad,” he said.

After years of contemplating this timeless question, Wenar has formulated a new answer in the form of ‘unity theory’ — a revolutionary approach that overcomes the individualism of Western thinking about goodness, and the assumption of the ‘separateness of persons.’

“Every genius throughout the centuries has assumed that goodness is in some way coming to individuals,” Wenar said. “But much to my surprise, it turns out that the way to understand what’s good in itself is to model the problem as if all of us are one. What’s good in itself turns out to be unity with the world, unity with each other and unity with ourselves.” 

“If you feel like you’ve made even a little bit of progress on not only one of the oldest but one of the most important philosophical questions there is, what better way to feel like you’ve made a contribution,” he said. 

Debra Satz, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, noted that Wenar’s work “exemplifies an approach to political philosophy that Stanford has long been known for: the rigorous consideration of big philosophical ideas … combined with attention to the empirical evidence that helps illuminate alternative human possibilities.” 

Wenar teaches several courses on the intersection of moral issues and international affairs, including a graduate course on race and structural inequality and an undergraduate introductory seminar, PHIL 20N: Justice Across Borders, which examines issues such as climate change, war, fast fashion, global poverty and inequality. 

“America is [less than] 5% of the world’s population. Why should it take 95% of our attention?” Wenar said. “Of course, the people who live in other places have lives just as valuable as our own. How can we understand the lives of people outside our country, and especially how we are influencing their daily lives through our government policies, our corporate decisions, and what we do?” 

Wenar commended the social conscience and political awareness of the student body. “Stanford students really want to make a difference in the world, not just for themselves, but to make it better for a lot of people. That’s a special, special feature of Stanford which not all elite schools have,” he said. 

Reflecting on the pressures facing Stanford students, Wenar stressed the importance of incorporating ethics into their future careers. “The real figures that make a mark on human consciousness are the ones who are born ethicists, who think always about their impacts on other people, like Socrates, Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, King, Du Bois. They [offer] a model for how we should want to be,” he said.

Of all the places on campus, Wenar said that his favorite spot is the Coffee House (CoHo) — a hub of intellectual activity. 

“When I was here [as an undergraduate], you could still smoke unfiltered French cigarettes and pretend to be existential,” Wenar said. “[CoHo was] where the philosophers hung out. But even now, I can feel the brain waves from all the students bouncing off the walls. It’s fun, and it’s inspiring to be there.”

Throughout the years, Wenar’s favorite memory within the Stanford philosophy department has been engaging with philosophers from a wide range of backgrounds in the philosophical seminar.

“The philosophers have very different personalities, but they all share this talent, and to see them engage thoroughly on a profound question together, really interrogate it, see how it could be answered better – that’s a real joy,” Wenar said.