Most right-libertarians deny the permissibility of government redistribution, referring to the inviolability of private property rights. In a rare exception, Eric Mack offers a right-libertarian argument for luck sufficientarianism based on the catastrophe clause. In this view, people who find themselves in trouble through no fault of their own may violate someone else’s property rights in minor ways to save their own lives. But since a literal interpretation of this clause makes property rights too uncertain, Mack proposes a system of (...) redistribution that will protect people from dire circumstances. As it only applies to those who find themselves in poverty through no fault of their own, Mack’s argument rules out a basic income. However, one can combine Mack’s argument with basic income by arguing that responsibility-insensitive sufficientarianism is superior to luck sufficientarianism. First, luck sufficientarianism allows for the counterintuitive conclusion that people who have made mistakes in their lives do not deserve help from the rest of the community, even if they are engaged in some socially important activity. Second, luck sufficientarianism unduly interferes with people’s private lives to distinguish between deserving and undeserving recipients of social assistance, and inevitably excludes some deserving recipients from the pool of recipients. Third, a condition for holding people responsible for their choices is that they have agency. But maintaining agency requires the presence of some kind of material resources that would protect people from the fear and stress associated with poverty. Thus, responsibility-insensitive sufficientarianism is superior to luck sufficientarianism as an interpretation of the catastrophe clause. And within a libertarian framework, this requires introducing a basic income. First, a basic income technically guarantees everyone protection from extreme poverty and destitution. Second, a basic income guarantees everyone autonomy in how they manage their resources. Third, a basic income does not require means testing and is therefore responsibility-insensitive. Mack’s catastrophe clause therefore offers a right-libertarian argument for a basic income. (shrink)

The liberal-egalitarian concept formulated by John Rawls in his book A Theory of Justice is still vehemently debated today. Critics of this concept include, among others, Rodion Belkovich and Sergei Vinogradov, according to whom Rawlsians inevitably face a dilemma: they need to reject either the difference principle or luck egalitarianism, and each of these solutions leads to the erosion of the basic foundations of Rawls’s theory. The article presents a detailed analysis of the arguments put forward by Belkovich and Vinogradov (...) and demonstrates that the dilemma they identified is flawed for three reasons. First, it blurs the distinction between luck egalitarianism and “straight egalitarianism,” which assumes the complete equality of income and wealth in society. Luck egalitarians do not support the idea of absolute equality in distribution and consider inequality that reflects people’s responsibility for their own choices fair. Second, Rawlsian egalitarianism is essentially equated with luck egalitarianism, while they represent two clearly distinguishable approaches. Third, the kidnapper’s argument, which proves that the difference principle is incompatible with luck egalitarianism, does not provide solid reasoning against the difference principle. The argument is only applicable under limited conditions, when the difference principle is embedded as an assumption in the “argument from incentives,” which in turn is put forward by the potential beneficiaries of this incentive. According to the author’s conclusion, the above mentioned considerations clearly indicate that Rawlsians do not face any dilemma of choosing between luck egalitarianism and the difference principle, and the criticism of Rawls’s theory proposed by Belkovich and Vinogradov should be considered groundless. (shrink)

One prominent criticism of luck egalitarianism is that it requires either shameful revelations or otherwise problematic declarations by the state toward those who have had bad brute luck. Relational egalitarianism, by contrast, is portrayed as an alternative that requires no such revelations or declarations. I argue that this is false. Relational equality requires the state to draft anti-discrimination laws for both state and private action. The ideal of relational egalitarianism requires these laws to be asymmetric, that is to allow affirmative (...) action for disadvantaged groups while prohibiting affirmative action for advantaged groups. Hence, the state needs to make a public declaration on which groups are privileged and which are underprivileged; and individuals need to reveal whether they belong to groups officially declared underprivileged. These declarations are no more problematic in this case than in the case of luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

Our aesthetic judgments are embedded in and shaped by unjust social orders. But can our aesthetic judgments themselves—“this is beautiful; that is not”—be unjust? This article argues that they can. Admitting that this is so does not require us to be unduly revisionary with respect to our concept of justice. Rather, the thought that aesthetic judgments are unjust flows naturally from familiar egalitarian constraints.

Much philosophical work has examined both imperatival and non-imperatival forms of address that aim to motivate others to action. But one such kind of address has received relatively little attention: begging. This is partly surprising as begging, both as an individual act and as a widespread social practice, raises acute, yet difficult to articulate, moral and political concerns. In this paper, I identify a central form of the phenomenon which constitutively involves communicating one’s relative powerlessness as a means of motivating (...) one’s target to act. I argue that this form of begging is present in a number of cases that animate many of our pre-theoretic normative worries about begging. I argue that when begging of this kind is bad for the beggar herself, this is so because either (i) the invoked powerlessness is bad for the beggar and thereby gives the action a negative evaluative meaning, or (ii) the invoked powerlessness is good/neutral, but the act of begging precludes or replaces valuable ways of interacting that the parties have reasons to care about in the context. In a slogan, the badness of begging revolves around power and helplessness. (shrink)

Coercion is morally objectionable: it’s bad to be coerced and it’s wrong to coerce people. But why is coercion objectionable? In this paper, I advance an egalitarian account of what’s objectionable about coercion. The account is rooted in the idea that certain relationships, like those of master to slave and lord to peasant, are relationships of subordination or domination. These relationships are morally objectionable. Moreover, such relationships are in part constituted by asymmetries of power. A master subordinates a slave because (...) the master has more power over the slave than vice versa. The account says that coercion is objectionable because it creates such asymmetries of power, and so creates relationships of subordination. I show how this account can address its most serious problems, and how it can illuminate what’s wrong with blackmail, exploitation, withholding aid, and compulsion. (shrink)

In this introduction, I briefly summarize Sophia Moreau's Faces of Inequality. I situate her monograph within two highly contemporary bodies of literature — relational egalitarianism and discrimination theory — to show how it provides important insights for understanding both what it means to treat others as equals in society and how to define wrongful discrimination. Moreau's work on discrimination is of great relevance for philosophers and socio-legal theorists alike as the commentaries from the symposium contributors demonstrate, including Dale Smith, Pablo (...) Gilabert, Andrea Sangiovanni, Daniel Viehoff, Jessica Eisen, Alysia Blackham, and Iyiola Solanke. (shrink)

The policy of earmarked paternity leave aims to promote mothers’ position in the labor market and fathers’ relationship with their child. Critics argue that the policy prevents parents from pursuing their own ideas about what is best for them. This provides reason to consider whether the policy is paternalistic or, in other ways, disrespectful of parental autonomy. I argue that the state implicates itself in the gender inequalities that result from parents’ unequal parental leave agreements when the state financially facilitates (...) such agreements. This argument for earmarked paternity leave is not disrespectful of parental autonomy. (shrink)

There is a basic methodological difference in the way anarchists and non-anarchists think about politics, often more implicit than explicit. Anarchists see politics and justice as being concerns of social institutions, norms, and relations generally – both inside and outside the state. Much of academic political philosophy talks of politics and justice as if they are definitionally concerns about what states should do, or our relationships with each other through the state. In this chapter, we argue that the anarchists are (...) on the right side of this difference. We call the insight that undergirds the anarchists’ understanding of politics and justice “methodological anarchism.” We seek to exorcise the policy framework in favor of methodological anarchism. Indeed, we believe it should be embraced by all political philosophers, not only the anarchists among their ranks. Political philosophers ought to abstain from the policy framework for two reasons. Firstly, it is analytically impoverished inasmuch as, when followed to its logical conclusion, it is unable to engage with enormous areas of analysis that are relevant to what makes a society just or unjust. Secondly, it instills subtle prejudice against other important approaches to mitigating injustice that are unconcerned with public policy. This also carries the danger of lending ideological support for existing injustices and thereby entrenching them. Accepting our critique of the policy framework and adopting methodological anarchism does not necessarily require the acceptance of any kind of substantive political anarchism. But it does mean thinking a bit more like an anarchist about how to make society more just – thus our characterization of it as “methodological.”. (shrink)

According to relational egalitarianism, justice requires equal relations. In this paper, I ask the question: can equal relations be unjust according to relational egalitarianism? I argue that while on some conceptions of relational egalitarianism, equal relations cannot be unjust, there are conceptions in which equal relations can be unjust. Surprisingly, whether equal relations can be unjust cuts across the distinction between responsibility-sensitive and non-responsibility-sensitive conceptions of relational egalitarianism. I then show what follows if one accepts a conception in which equal (...) relations can be unjust, including why it provides a reason to grant some people less political power than others. (shrink)

I argue that the principle of care, developed in care ethics, can be a better ground for civic solidarity than that of civic friendship. To make my argument, I present a preliminary categorization of extant discussion on civic solidarity as either falling under the commonality model or the relationship model. I argue that the reciprocity model of civic friendship proposed by Danielle Allen and Sibyl Schwarzenbach serves as a synthesis of the two models, constructing the most compelling theory of civic (...) friendship available.Despite the many virtues of the reciprocity model of civic friendship, I argue that the principle of care is practically prior and more appealing as a model of civic solidarity than that of civic friendship. In unpacking this argument, I present the concept of care as a political principle developed in care ethics and compare and contrast it with the concept of civic friendship. (shrink)

The practical goal of preventing premature death seems uncontroversial. But the term ‘premature death’ is vague with several, sometimes conflicting definitions. This ambiguity results in several conceptions with which not all will agree. Moreover, the normative rationale behind the goal of preventing premature deaths is masked by the operational definition of existing measures. In this article, we argue that ‘premature death’ should be recognized as a normative concept. We propose that normative theories should be used to justify measures of premature (...) death to provide them with normative validity and public legitimacy. (shrink)

Construed as a theory of justice, relational egalitarianism says that justice requires that people relate as equals. Construed as a theory of what makes democracy valuable, it says that democracy is a necessary, or constituent, part of the value of relating as equals. Typically, relational egalitarians want their theory to provide both an account of what justice requires and an account of what makes democracy valuable. We argue that relational egalitarians with this dual ambition face the justice-democracy dilemma: Understanding social (...) relations in such a way that renders relational egalitarianism plausible as an answer to what makes democracy valuable comes at the price of understanding social relations in a way that makes it less plausible as a theory of justice, and vice versa. We also argue that there is no easy way out of the dilemma and that relational egalitarians, who want relational equality to provide both accounts mentioned, may simply have to set their ambitions lower on behalf of relational equality. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to identify the wrong that is done in all cases of testimonial injustice, if there is one. Miranda Fricker (2007) proposes one account of this distinctive wrong, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. (2014) offers another. I think neither works. Nor does an account based on giving due respect to the testifier's epistemic competence. Nor does an account based on exposing the testifier to substantial risk of harm. Rachel Fraser (2023) describes a further account, and the (...) proposal I favour is a slight amendment of this. (shrink)

Several leading theorists embrace the Simple Desert Account of Discrimination. This account involves two claims: it claims that a mismatch between what people deserve, on the one hand, and what they get, on the other hand, is (a) integral to discrimination, and (b) wrong. I shall query (a). First, I challenge what I see as the principal, positive argument for the Simple Desert Account. Second, in some cases wrongful discrimination brings about a better match between desert and what people get. (...) Situations in which this could be the case include those where: the discriminatee is a serial discriminator herself; the person wrongfully discriminated in favour of deserves greater advantages than she enjoys; by engaging in wrongful discrimination the discriminator reduces her moral deservingness and thereby the gap between her level of deservingness and her otherwise unfittingly low level of advantage. (shrink)

Distributive justice is one of the central questions of contemporary moral and political philosophy. Discussions on this topic are often presented as a confrontation between two groups of thinkers: libertarians and luck egalitarians. The former emphasize the dependence of the existing distribution on the individual choice and personal responsibility of people, and therefore are skeptical about various redistribution programs. The latter, on the contrary, emphasize the influence of morally arbitrary luck on the economic situation of people, and therefore welcome redistributive (...) measures to compensate for this brute luck. Left-libertarian claims to reconcile these two types of moral considerations. The classical left-libertarian point of view seeks to offset the influence of brute luck through an egalitarian distribution of the benefits of owning natural resources that are independent of anyone’s choice and responsibility. However, this position does not sufficiently take into account the influence of other factors of brute luck and, in particular, genetic endowments on the distribution of economic wealth. This article discusses three approaches that allow left-libertarians to take into account the factor of genetic luck in interpersonal distribution. First, it is Hillel Steiner’s proposal to attribute genetic information to natural resources, the benefits of which are subject to egalitarian redistribution. Second, it is the concept of equal opportunity for welfare by Peter Vallentyne, Michael Otsuka and Eric Roark. Third, it is the universal dominance criterion of Philippe Van Parijs and Kasper Ossenblok. The first two approaches face a number of moral and practical difficulties, but the third approach is able to overcome them. Thus, the universal dominance criterion is the most promising way to reconcile left-libertarianism and justice in the distribution of genetic endowments. (shrink)

Social or relational egalitarians try to defend democracy non-instrumentally as a constitutive element of a society where no one stands as inferior or superior to anyone else. However, they face an instrumentalist challenge from within: Why not uphold a non-democratic regime if it outperforms democracy in protecting or promoting egalitarian social relations, for example, by stably producing substantive political decisions that guard against social hierarchies? This article explores the best response to this challenge from the social egalitarian non-instrumentalist standpoint. It (...) argues that the instrumentalist challenge can be accommodated without abandoning the essential non-instrumentalist commitment to democracy; while a nondemocratic regime may be justified under less-than-ideal circumstances as a contingently effective means to realize more social equality, democracy can nevertheless be viewed as a necessary condition for the realization of full social equality. (shrink)

Robinson offers the ‘superior personhood’ approach (SPA) to capture the value of gestation and ground justice for women/gestators.1 SPA holds that women/gestators are more than mere persons given the reality of pregnancy and the vital role women/gestators play in reproduction.1 In this commentary, I speak to some background context perhaps relevant to SPA, lay out areas of agreement with Robinson and then raise four worries about the approach. In my view, the devaluing of gestation and injustice for women/gestators need rectifying, (...) but SPA is not the way. It is difficult not to read Robinson’s piece through the lens of 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision and the politics of abortion, with its focus on fetal status. This background offers a certain kind of sympathetic strategic/rhetorical reading of the motivation for SPA—one to which I found students and others with whom I discussed the piece quite open. Perhaps the goal here is to offer an ingenious defence of abortion rights: if women/gestators are more than one person, then the immorality of abortion cannot be easily grounded in claims about fetal personhood.2 However, Robinson downplays abortion, affirming only ‘my approach could support a wide range of positions on abortion’. This is curious. Is SPA compatible with significant restrictions on abortion? Assuming a realistic political context, this would involve mere persons (men/non-gestators) legislating how superior persons can …. (shrink)

Relational egalitarians claim that a situation is just only if everyone it involves relates to one another as equals. It implies that relational egalitarians believe the ideal of “living as equals” (for short) is desirable, and furthermore, necessary for justice. In this paper, I distinguish three accounts of the desirability of the ideal: the instrumental value account, the non‐instrumental value account, and the non‐consequentialist account. I argue that the former two accounts cannot provide satisfying reasons for being a relational egalitarian. (...) Instead, the ideal of “living as equals” ought to be understood as fundamentally a moral requirement in a non‐consequentialist sense. In addition, a pluralist (though fundamentally non‐consequentialist) approach is welcome. (shrink)

How might people be wronged in relation to their feelings, moods, and emotions? Recently philosophers have begun to investigate the idea that these kinds of wrongs may constitute a distinctive form of injustice: affective injustice. In previous work, we have outlined a particular form of affective injustice that we called emotional imperialism. This paper has two main aims. First, we aim to provide an expanded account of the forms that emotional imperialism can take. We will do so by drawing inspiration (...) from William Reddy’s (2001) concept of an emotional regime and investigating ways in which colonial powers of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries sought to impose their emotional regimes on their colonial subjects. Second, we will offer more expansive accounts of both emotional imperialism and affective injustice that can accommodate these additional forms of emotional imperialism. (shrink)

In “Racial Integration and the Problem of Relational Devaluation,” I argue that blacks should reject racial integration on self-protective and solidarity grounds. Integration will intensify the self-worth harms of stigmatization and phenotypic devaluation by leading blacks to more fully internalize their devaluation, and while the integrating process itself might reduce the former, it may well leave in place the latter. In this paper, I reply to the challenges to these arguments presented by Sharon Stanley, Andrew Valls, Elvira Basevich, Michael Merry, (...) and Ronald Sundstrom. (shrink)

How could ectogestative technology disrupt gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘body’, or ‘parent’? In this chapter, we situate this emerging technology in the context of the history of reproductive technologies and analyse the potential social and conceptual disruptions to which it could contribute. An ectogestative device, better known as ‘artificial womb’, enables the extra-uterine gestation of a human being, or mammal more generally. It is currently developed with the main goal of improving the survival chances of (...) extremely premature neonates. We argue that the intended use of the technology in neonatal intensive care units, as an alternative to current incubators (’partial-ectogestation’), challenges concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘fetus’, and ‘neonate’, and has several ethico-legal implications. We moreover address a more futuristic scenario where the entire embryological and fetal development could happen within an artificial womb (’full-ectogestation’). Such a scenario reveals the disruption of gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘mother’, ‘father’, and ‘parent’. Both full- and partial-ectogestation would have implications for engineering and design, law-making, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

In 1970, Stewart advocated disenfranchising everyone reaching retirement age or age 70, whichever was earlier. The question of whether senior citizens should be disenfranchised has recently come to the fore due to votes on issues such as Brexit and climate change. Indeed, there is a growing literature which argues that we should increase the voting power of non-senior citizens relative to senior citizens, for reasons having to do with intergenerational justice. Thus, it seems that there are reasons of justice to (...) disenfranchise senior citizens, or at least to grant them a lower voting weight than non-senior citizens. In this paper, we investigate whether there are democratic reasons to do so. To answer this question, we turn to the boundary problem in democratic theory, i.e., the question of who should be included in democratic decision-making. Two prominent solutions, and a more recent one, are particularly relevant: the all-affected principle, the all-subjected principle, and the relational egalitarian principle. When it comes to the all-affected principle and the all-subjected principle, we argue that there is reason to grant most senior citizens a lower voting weight than most non-senior citizens in most decisions. Whether that is the case on the relational egalitarian principle depends on how people relate to each other in society. Indeed, it is sometimes in accordance with the relational egalitarian view to grant senior citizens a greater voting weight than non-senior citizens. (shrink)

Luck egalitarianism is a responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice. Its application to health and healthcare is controversial. This article addresses a novel critique of luck egalitarianism, namely, that it wrongfully discriminates against those responsible for their health disadvantage when allocating scarce healthcare resources. The philosophical literature about discrimination offers two primary reasons for what makes discrimination wrong (when it is): harm and disrespect. These two approaches are employed to analyze whether luck egalitarian healthcare prioritization should be considered wrongful discrimination. Regarding (...) harm, it is very plausible to consider the policies harmful but much less reasonable to consider those responsible for their health disadvantages a socially salient group. Drawing on the disrespect literature, where social salience is typically not required for something to be discrimination, the policies are a form of discrimination. They are, however, not disrespectful. The upshot of this first assessment of the discrimination objection to luck egalitarianism in health is, thus, that it fails. (shrink)

According to the relational egalitarian theory of justice, justice requires that people relate as equals. To relate as equals, many relational egalitarians argue, people must (i) regard each other as equals, and (ii) treat each other as equals. In this paper, we argue that, under conditions of background injustice, such relational egalitarians should endorse affirmative action in the ways in which (dis)esteem is attributed to people as part of the regard-requirement for relating as equals.

This article focuses on the challenge of determining the relative weight of domestic and global justice demands. This problem concerns a variety of views that differ on the metric, function, scope, grounds and fundamental interpretation of justice norms. I argue that domestic and global economic justice are irreducibly interdependent. In order to address their exact relation, I discuss and compare three theoretical models: (i) the bottom-up-approach, which prioritizes domestic justice; (ii) the top-down-approach, which prioritizes global justice; and (iii) the horizontal (...) framework, according to which both domestic and global principles pose equally stringent demands that are to be implemented horizontally, without attributing a simple priority to one over the other. I argue that the third model represents the best overall framework, although more complex normative criteria need to be elaborated on the basis of this approach, affecting issues such as justice in climate change mitigation and adaption, development cooperation, trade, finance, taxation and immigration. (shrink)

Public healthcare systems are increasingly refusing (temporarily) to reimburse newly approved medical treatments of insufficient or uncertain cost-effectiveness. As both patient demand for these treatments and their list prices increase, a market might arise for voluntary additional health insurance (VHI) that covers effective but (very) expensive medical treatments. In this paper, we evaluate such potential future practices of VHI in public healthcare systems from a justice perspective. We find that direct (telic) egalitarian objections to unequal access to expensive treatments based (...) on different ability to afford VHI do not stand up to scrutiny. However, such unequal access might lead to loss of self-respect among individuals, or loss of fraternity within society, rendering it more difficult for citizens to interact on equal moral footing. This would be problematic from a relational egalitarian perspective. Moreover, the introduction of VHI might turn out to have negative consequences for the comprehensiveness and/or the quality of the public healthcare services that are offered to all patients equally through basic health insurance. These consequences must be weighed against potential health gains and the value of liberty. We conclude that governments should be careful when considering the introduction of VHI in public healthcare systems. (shrink)

Contemporary political philosophers often take for granted that for political purposes all humans are to be considered of equal worth. The difficulty, as Bernard Williams observed, is to find an interpretation of this claim that does not collapse into absurdity or triviality. I show that the principal attempts to solve this problem all beg the question against an Aristotelian proponent of natural hierarchy. I then explore existing proposals for dissolving the problem of basic equality, whether by denying the need for (...) justification altogether or by reframing justification in either ostensive or coherentist fashion, showing that each fails to account for our sense that basic equality is objectively true. In response, I outline a Hegelian approach that treats the commitment to basic equality as a social fact that constrains philosophical reasoning in contemporary liberal democracies. By itself that might suggest complacent conservatism or cultural relativism, but I argue that practices and institutions that reflect and foster a commitment to basic equality have a distinct value in permitting reciprocal recognition and thereby enabling us to make a distinct class of normative claims on one another. This Hegelian resolution of the problem is dialectically superior to its rivals and therefore warrants further development. (shrink)

This thesis defends utilitarianism: the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being. Utilitarianism is widely rejected by philosophers today, largely because of a number of influential objections. In this thesis I deal with three of them. Each is found in Bernard Williams’s ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ (1973). The first is the Integrity Objection, an intervention that has been influential whilst being subject to a wide variety of (...) interpretations. In Chapter Two I give my interpretation of Williams’s Integrity objection; in Chapter Three I discuss one common response to it, and in Chapters Four and Five I give my own defence of utilitarianism against it. In Chapter Six I discuss a second objection: the problem of pre-emption. This problem is also found in Williams, but has received greater attention through the work of other authors in recent years. It suggests that utilitarianism is unable to deal with some of the modern world’s most pressing moral problems, and raises an internal tension between the twin utilitarian aims of making a difference and achieving the best outcomes. In Chapter Seven I discuss a third objection: that utilitarianism is insufficiently egalitarian. I find this claim to be unwarranted, in light of recent social science and philosophy. My responses to Williams’s objections draw upon resources from the socialist tradition – in particular, that tradition’s emphasis on the importance of social connections between individuals. Socialists have often been hostile to utilitarianism, in part for socialist-inflected versions of Williams’s objections. Thus, in responding to these objections I aim to demonstrate that socialist thought contains the means to defuse not only mainstream philosophy’s rejection of utilitarianism but also its own, and thus to re-open the possibilities for a productive engagement between the two traditions. (shrink)

This article explains how social norms can help to distinguish and understand a range of different kinds of social inequality and social hierarchy. My aim is to show how the literature on social norms can provide crucial resources to relational egalitarianism, which has made social equality and inequality into a central topic of contemporary normative political theorizing. The hope is that a more discriminating and detailed picture of different kinds of social inequality will help relational egalitarians move beyond a discussion (...) of the justice or injustice of social equality as a single general category. (shrink)

The Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration has recently proposed to make in-person citizenship ceremonies optional. These ceremonies are oaths of allegiances: naturalizing citizens swear loyalty to King Charles and obedience to the laws of Canada. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration proposes to allow naturalizing citizens to take these oaths by checking a box online rather than by taking part in an in-person ceremony. In this commentary, I argue that Canada should go much further. It should stop forcing naturalizing (...) immigrants to swear oaths of allegiance altogether. Such oaths create an unjust inequality between naturalized and natural-born citizens: they mean the former have much weightier political obligations than the latter. (shrink)

We set out longtermist political philosophy as a research field by exploring the case for, and the implications of, ‘institutional longtermism’: the view that, when evaluating institutions, we should give significant weight to their very long-term effects. We begin by arguing that the standard case for longtermism may be more robust when applied to institutions than to individual actions or policies, both because institutions have large, broad, and long-term effects, and because institutional longtermism can plausibly sidestep various objections to individual (...) longtermism. We then address points of contact between longtermism and some central values of mainstream political philosophy, focusing on justice, equality, freedom, legitimacy, and democracy. While each value initially seems to conflict with institutional longtermism, we find that these conflicts are less clear-cut upon closer inspection, and that some political values might even provide independent support for institutional longtermism. We end with a grab bag of related questions that we lack space to explore here. (shrink)

This paper contributes to recent discussions on ideal anarchism vs. ideal statism. I argue, contra ideal anarchists, that coercive state institutions would be justified even in a society populated by morally perfect individuals. My defense of ideal statism is novel in that it highlights the moral benefits of state coercion. Rather than the practical effects on individual compliance or the distributive outcomes that follow therefrom, coercive state institutions are justified through the moral benefits they provide. The state is morally beneficial (...) because it a) lessens the demands on the will that fall on agents under ideal anarchism, and b) counters the structural domination that follows from differences in natural endowments. By shifting the focus of the debate from feasibility to desirability, the paper exposes the flaws of ideal anarchism and provides new insights into the moral value of the state. (shrink)

According to relational egalitarianism, justice requires equal relations. The theory applies to those who stand in the relevant social relations. In this paper, I distinguish four different accounts of what it means to be socially related and argue that in all of them, self-relations—how a person relates to themselves—fall within the scope of relational egalitarianism. I also point to how this constrains what a person is allowed to do to themselves.

This paper argues that there are good reasons to limit the scope of luck egalitarianism to co‐existing people. First, I outline reasons to be sceptical about how “luck” works intergenerationally and therefore the very grounding of luck egalitarianism between non‐overlapping generations. Second, I argue that what Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen calls the “core luck egalitarian claim” allows significant intergenerational inequality which is a problem for those who object to such inequality. Third, luck egalitarianism cannot accommodate the intuition that it might be required (...) to leave future generations better off than we are, even if it would come at no cost to ourselves. Finally, I argue that following another, broader, version of luck egalitarianism would require us to level down future generations and possibly even ourselves, which is a problem for those persuaded by the levelling‐down objection. (shrink)

Certain states in the Global North have responded to refugees seeking safety on their territories through harmful practices of border violence, detention, encampment and containment that serve to prevent and deter refugee arrivals. These practices are ostensibly justified through an appeal to a right to control borders. This paper therefore assesses whether these harmful practices can indeed be morally justified by a state’s right to control borders. It analyses whether Christopher Heath Wellman’s account of a state’s right to freedom of (...) association, which represents the most restrictive account of a state’s right to control borders available in the literature, can extend to justify current harmful practices against refugees. If not, then no available justification will be able to do so, and thus contemporary harmful practices used against refugees cannot be justified by a state’s right to control borders. (shrink)

This dissertation identifies and responds to a problem for liberal relational egalitarians. There is a prima facie worry about the compatibility of liberalism and relational egalitarianism, concerning the requirements of equality in informal social life. Liberalism at least involves a commitment to leaving individuals substantial discretion to pursue their own conceptions of the good. Relational equality is best understood as a kind of deliberative practice about social institutions and practices. Patterns of otherwise innocuous social choices (e.g., where to live, whom (...) to befriend or marry) can create emergent, severe differentials in power, status, and influence, and when they do they can threaten relational equality. If relational equality required individuals to subordinate personal choices to egalitarian considerations, it would run into conflict with liberal commitments. In response, I defend the value of accepting an imperfect realization of relational equality. What I call fair relational equality demands that members of society treat some informal social norms and practices as part of the basic structure of society, in need of justification. Three practices are required to meet that demand. First, the relational-egalitarian society must develop institutional strategies to preempt or mitigate tendencies toward emergent inequality as they are identified. Second, members of society must engage in broad social deliberation about the norms and expectations of informal social interaction. Third, they must be willing to reform social practices where doing so does not impinge on important personal projects and values. (shrink)

For Martin, the right to free higher education may be claimed only by those ready and willing pursue autonomy supporting higher education. The unready and unwilling, among whom may be counted carers, disabled, and devout, are excluded. This is unjust. I argue that this injustice follows from a tension between three elements of Martin’s argument: (1) a universal right to autonomy supporting higher education; (2) qualifications on entitlements to access this right in order to preserve the value of higher educational (...) goods; (3) luck egalitarian motivations in Martin’s distributive ethics. I consider options for avoiding such injustices and their implications for Martin’s argument. (shrink)

Relational egalitarianism is a theory of justice according to which people must relate as equals. In this article, we develop relational sufficientarianism – a view of justice according to which people must relate as sufficients. We distinguish between three versions of this ideal, one that is incompatible with relational egalitarianism and two that are not. Building on this, we argue that relational theorists have good reason to support a pluralist view that is both egalitarian and sufficientarian.

It has been argued by disability advocates that supported decision-making must replace surrogate, or substituted, decision-making for people with cognitive disabilities. From a moral perspective surrogate decision-making it is said to be an indefensible form of paternalism. At the heart of this argument against surrogate decision-making is the belief that such paternalistic action expresses something fundamentally disrespectful about those upon whom it is imposed: that they are inferior, deficient or child-like in some way. Contrary to this widespread belief, I will (...) argue that surrogate decision-making sometimes expresses more respect for people with life-long, ‘severe’ or ‘profound’ cognitive disabilities than does the adoption of supported decision-making.. Specifically, I argue that in some cases supported decision-making can arguably express that people with severe or profound cognitive disabilities lack equal moral value. I also argue that supported decision-making for people with profound cognitive disabilities can arguably express that they lack complex and rich inner lives. If our aim is to ensure our behaviour and practices express respect for people with life-long ‘severe’ or ‘profound’ cognitive disabilities, then sometimes surrogate rather than supportive decision-making will be a better option. (shrink)

Recent philosophical accounts of discrimination face challenges in accommodating robust intuitions about the particular way in which it is wrongful—most prominently, the intuition that discriminatory actions intrinsically violate equality irrespective of their contingent consequences. The paper suggests that we understand the normative structure of discrimination in a way that is different from the one implicitly assumed by these accounts. It argues that core discriminatory wrongs—such as segregation in Apartheid South Africa—divide into two types, corresponding to violations of relational and distributive (...) equality; and that a pluralistic view of the internal structure of each type should be adopted. This normative structure serves to appropriately vindicate the mentioned intuitions; it also contributes to clarifying the normative underpinnings of legal concepts associated with discrimination (including the distinctions between direct and indirect, or ‘disparate treatment/impact’ discrimination, and intentional vs. unintentional discrimination), and developing a more productive public discourse around allegations of discrimination. (shrink)

Despite being increasingly available to us all, retirement pensions remain unequally distributed: between rich and poor, young and old, men and women, and possibly different generations. As this topic receives little attention in moral and political philosophy, the articles in this thesis aim to deliver an original account of justice in retirement pensions along liberal egalitarian lines. The first part defends retirement pensions as a distribution of free time. It shows that including free time in the list of goods that (...) liberal egalitarians prioritise is plausible and avoids problems that would otherwise arise with other candidates, most notably leisure. Retirement as free time is an essential feature of liberal egalitarian societies by (re)distributing the means to pursue any life project, and especially valuable for the poor who work and contribute the longest. The second part makes a case for 'libertirement', a proposal to increase the freedom to enjoy free time across life, as a matter of justice between those who live long and those who die early. Specifically, I propose adding reverse pensions and sabbaticals on top of old-age retirement. Besides showing the importance of longevity for age-group justice, I also draw implications for distributing unconditional basic income and income taxes across life, which I suggest may offer alternative paths to libertirement. Finally, the third part discusses the cases of pension inequality between genders and generations, pushing us to refine our account further. I conclude that there is often a mismatch between liberal egalitarian justice and the design of retirement schemes. The solution is often but not always to reform these systems. Sometimes, we have reasons to revise our very own principles of justice. (shrink)

Justice Across Ages offers an attractive account of justice between the young and the old that brings together three notable principles of age-group justice: complete-lives equality, relational equality, and prudence. Yet, the book says little about the fact that many of us live longer than others, and the little it does say casts doubt on whether lifespan inequality threatens justice as construed by the three principles. This essay argues, instead, that theories of justice between the young and the old should (...) not dispense with a conception of justice between different longevity groups. It concludes that we must be sensitive to lifespan variations when designing policies to promote justice across age groups. (shrink)

This volume bridges contemporary philosophical conceptions of risk and responsibility and offers an extensive examination of the topic. It shows that risk and responsibility combine in ways that give rise to new philosophical questions and problems. Philosophical interest in the relationship between risk and responsibility continues to rise, due in no small part due to environmental crises, emerging technologies, legal developments, and new medical advances. Despite such interest, scholars are just now working out how to conceive of the links between (...) risk and responsibility, the implications that risks may have to conceptions of responsibility (and vice versa), as well as how such theorizing might play out in applied cases. With contributions from leading scholars, this volume brings together new work examining the interplay between risk and responsibility, exploring its varied philosophical aspects and applications to contemporary issues in law, bioethics, technology, and environmental ethics. Risk and Responsibility in Context will be of interest to philosophers working in ethics, bioethics, philosophy of law, and philosophy of technology, as well as scholars and practitioners in law, health and science management, public policy, and environmental studies. (shrink)

Devrions-nous remplacer les élections par des loteries ? Le célèbre livre de Bernard Manin sur le gouvernement représentatif a appris à beaucoup que les Grecs considéraient les élections comme un moyen aristocratique, et non démocratique, de sélectionner des personnes pour le pouvoir et l'autorité politique, en comparaison avec le tirage au sort, où chacun a une chance égale d'être sélectionné. (Manin 1997) Jusqu'à récemment, cependant, l'idée qu'un engagement envers la démocratie nécessite de remplacer les élections par le tirage au sort (...) a suscité peu d'intérêt parmi les philosophes politiques. (Blondiaux, 2008 ; Courant et Sintomer, 2019) Cela a maintenant changé. (Abizadeh 2020) ( A. Guerrero 2014) (A. Guerrero 2021b ; 2021a) (Landemore 2020) (Owen et Smith 2018) (P.-É. Vandamme et al. 2018). Cet article pose donc la question de savoir si le tirage au sort est plus démocratique que les élections et si, pour cette raison, nous devrions l’utiliser pour compléter ou remplacer les élections ? (shrink)

What is domination? According to a leading strand of republican political philosophy, a person is dominated when under the unconstrained power of another. Call this the dyadic conception of domination, because it involves a two‐person relation. I argue that domination is better understood structurally. Structural domination is domination by institutions. Rather than a master dominating a slave and a boss dominating a worker (as in dyadic domination), structural domination holds that the institution of slavery dominates the slave and labor law (...) dominates the worker. Without the structural conception, I contend, one misdescribes the power dynamics of paradigm cases of domination. (shrink)

Should it be a matter of concern that youth unemployment rates are significantly higher in some countries than they have been historically? Or that parliaments.