The Procreation Asymmetry holds that we have strong moral reasons not to create miserable people for their own sakes, but no moral reasons to create happy people for their own sakes. To defend this conjunction against an argument that it leads to inconsistency, I show how recognizing ‘creation’ as a temporally extended process allows us to revise the conjuncts in a way that preserves their intuitive force. This defense of the Procreation Asymmetry is preferable to others because it does not (...) require us to take on controversial metaphysical or metaethical commitments – in other words, it has the theoretical virtue of portability. (shrink)

Pe parcursul anului trecut, la Institutul de Cercetări Economice şi Sociale „Gheorghe Zane” din Iaşi, a avut loc workshopul „Concepte şi argumente în filosofia social-politică. Interpretări şi dezbateri”. Workshopul s-a desfăşurat în cadrul proiectului POSDRU „Societatea bazată pe cunoaştere: cercetări, dezbateri, perspective”. Cartea de faţă este principalul rezultat al acestui workshop. Ea a fost gândită şi propusă spre publicare în primul rând din speranţa că va fi utilă celor care doresc să se iniţieze – sau celor care încearcă să-i iniţieze (...) pe alţii – în teoria şi filosofia social-politică (mai ales cea contemporană). Aceasta cu atât mai mult cu cât, la noi, lucrările de acest tip (fie semnate de autori români, fie traduceri) sunt încă destul de rare. Mă refer aici la lucrările care acordă o atenţie specială (şi) filosofiei politice (teoriei politice normative), nu doar ştiinţei politice sau politologiei (teoriei politice empirice). Dacă cele din urmă apar din ce în ce mai frecvent în ultima vreme, cele dintâi rămân, din păcate, foarte puţine, chiar insuficiente. Cartea nu este nici pe departe una exhaustivă. În ciuda acestui „defect”, cred că ea îşi poate îndeplini totuşi obiectivul fundamental, fie şi numai pentru că oferă analize, prezentări şi comentarii despre câteva dintre cele mai importante concepte şi teorii din teoria socială şi politică recentă. Mai mult, în cadrul ei sunt discutate inclusiv unele concepte sau/şi teorii încă puţin analizate la noi (precum „multiculturalismul”, „dreptatea socială”, „genul” sau „democraţia deliberativă”). Se obişnuieşte uneori ca autorul introducerii unui volum de acest tip să prezinte în rezumat şi principalele idei apărate sau/şi metodologii utilizate de autorii fiecăruia dintre capitole. Eu nu voi face acest lucru. Motivul? Aş risca să fiu redundant, de vreme ce astfel de precizări şi rezumate au fost deja realizate de autorii volumului, chiar în debutul capitolelor pe care le semnează. Acestea fiind spuse, ţin să mai evidenţiez doar un singur lucru: aşa cum se va observa cu siguranţă, multe dintre capitolele lucrării nu sunt simple texte introductive (deşi au, fără îndoială, şi o astfel de dimensiune). Altfel spus, autorii acestor capitole nu s-au mulţumit să prezinte doar ideile, argumentele sau teoriile altor autori (şi în special ale celor consideraţi de referinţă) în problemele pe care le analizează. De multe ori, ei prezintă, dimpotrivă, şi idei, opinii, interpretări, argumente, perspective sau chiar teorii ori măcar „semiteorii” proprii asupra conceptelor şi problemelor pe care le abordează. Acest lucru nu ar trebui să fie surprinzător. Pentru fiecare dintre autorii capitolelor din acest volum, conceptele şi problemele pe care le prezintă aici constituie o preocupare sistematică şi constantă, dacă nu chiar preocuparea lor fundamentală, cel puţin în ultimii ani. De altfel, cel puţin în România, preocupările şi contribuţiile în domeniu ale multora dintre ei sunt deja cunoscute şi comentate, fie şi doar în cercul restrâns al specialiştilor şi al celor interesaţi de teoria social-politică. (shrink)

Conceptul de dreptate socială este unul dintre cele mai controversate concepte ale filosofiei politice. Foarte puține aspecte legate de acest concept nu sunt înconjurate de controverse și dezbateri argumentative. Unele dintre cele mai importante astfel de controverse sunt cele legate de definirea, de specificarea și de legitimitatea lui. Prima este, în esență, o controversă în privința răspunsului la următoarea întrebare: care este conceptul care surprinde cel mai bine trăsătura fundamentală a dreptății și nedreptății sociale? A doua este o controversă în (...) privința exigențelor sau a principiilor „corecte” ale dreptății sociale. În sfărșit, a treia este o controversă pe marginea acceptabilității conceptului de dreptate socială. În studiul de față prezint pe scurt principalele idei, poziții și argumente invocate de filosofii politici recenți în cadrul fiecăreia dintre aceste controverse. (shrink)

What is a duty of justice? And how is it different from a duty of beneficence? We need a clear account of the contrast. Unfortunately, there is no consensus in the philosophical literature as to how to characterize it. Different articulations of it have been provided, but it is hard to identify a common core that is invariant across them. In this paper, I propose an account of how to understand duties of justice, explain how it contrasts with several proposals (...) as to how to distinguish justice and beneficence, respond to some objections and suggest further elaborations of it. The conceptual exploration pursued in this paper has practical stakes. A central aim is to propose and defend a capacious concept of justice that makes a direct discussion of important demands of justice (domestic and global) possible. Duties of justice can be positive besides negative, they can be imperfect as well as perfect, they can range over personal besides institutional contexts, they can include multiple associative reasons such us non-domination, non-exploitation and reciprocity, and they can even go beyond existing national, political, and economic associative frameworks to embrace strictly universal humanist concerns. We should reject ideological abridgments of the concept of justice that render these possibilities, and the important human interests and claims they may foster, invisible. (shrink)

The aim of the book is to uncover the relation between market and justice through the critical examination of the work of Friedrich Hayek. The book argues for the following thesis: the institution of free market is not the only candidate social system; substantial, not merely formal distributive justice must become the central virtue of our social institutions. Notwithstanding its achievements and virtues, the Hayekian theory makes a simple mistake by equivocating possible social systems, dividing them into two groups. One (...) is the world of liberty and free market where people follow the general and abstract rules of conduct, accepting the outcome of market processes, be those good or bad. The other is the world of coercion and repression in which organized distributive instituions dominate and free market is non-existent. According to Hayek’s famous thesis, although freedom is possible in the latter world, we are nevertheless already on the road to serfdom: this fate is inevitable. In this dichotomy the decision is indeed simple. If justice is nothing else but the Trojan horse of oppression, then it is indeed a dangerous and unworkable ideal. However, if this dichotomy does not hold and there is a variety of acceptable social systems, then justice may become the central virtue of institutions, thereby contradicting Hayek’s theory. In the second half of the book I present this alternative, justice-governed social system in more detail. (shrink)

Despite what Peter Singer and Peter Unger believe, no one violates the ‘rescue principle’ when she makes a frivolous purchase instead of giving to a charity like UNICEF. Nor does any one violate a collective action version of the rescue principle when she makes a frivolous purchase instead of giving to a charity. Garrett Cullity is also mistaken in believing that ‘the transitivity of wrongness’ can be used to reach the conclusion that a failure to give to charity is wrong (...) because a failure to save is. This makes it likely that the requirement to give to charity is based not on the requirement to rescue but instead on the moral requirement to marginally improve the ability of charitable organisations to do their important work. (shrink)

A background assumption in much contemporary political philosophy is that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, taking priority over other values such as beneficence. This assumption is typically treated as a methodological starting point, rather than as following from any particular moral or political theory. In this paper, I challenge this assumption. To frame my discussion, I argue, first, that justice doesn’t in principle override beneficence, and second, that justice doesn’t typically outweigh beneficence, since, in institutional contexts, the (...) stakes of beneficence are often extremely high. While there are various ways one might resist this argument, none challenge the core methodological point that political philosophy should abandon its preoccupation with justice and begin to pay considerably more attention to social beneficence—that is, to beneficence understood as a virtue of social institutions. Along the way, I also highlight areas where focusing on social beneficence would lead political philosophers in new and fruitful directions, and where normative ethicists focused on personal beneficence might scale up their thinking to the institutional case. GPI Working Paper No. 11-2022. (shrink)

The idea of sustainable development as a normative concept emphasizes the necessity for a wider consensus on meeting human needs, ensuring social equity, and respecting planetary boundaries. The purpose of the article focuses on the deontological orientation in perceiving sustainable development. It is expected that looking at sustainability from the deontological perspective might increase individuals’ awareness of responsibility towards respecting the needs of the world’s poor, environmental boundaries, and moral equity, which emphasizes that all people are equal. Any attempt to (...) achieve sustainability demands, first of all, rational action placed on moral duties/obligations before individual people or institutions can achieve their particular desires and goals. According to this perspective, sustainability should be treated as a prior constraint in obtaining economic maximization. (shrink)

Reference to the state is ubiquitous in debates about global justice. Some authors see the state as central to the justification of principles of justice, and thereby reject their extension to the international realm. Others emphasize its role in the implementation of those principles. This chapter scrutinizes the variety of ways in which the state figures in the global-justice debate. Our discussion suggests that, although the state should have a prominent role in theorizing about global justice, contrary to what is (...) commonly thought, acknowledging this role does not lead to anti-cosmopolitan conclusions, but to the defense of an “intermediate” position about global justice. From a justificatory perspective, we argue, the state remains a key locus for the application of egalitarian principles of justice, but is not the only one. From the perspective of implementation, we suggest that state institutions are increasingly fragile in a heavily interdependent world, and need to be supplemented—though not supplanted—with supranational authorities. (shrink)

Whenever fellow humans suffer due to natural catastrophes, we have a duty to help them. This duty is not only acknowledged in moral theory, but also expressed in ordinary people’s reactions to phenomena such as tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Despite being widely acknowledged, this duty is also widely disputed: some believe it is a matter of justice, others a matter of charity. Although central to debates in international political theory, the distinction between justice and charity is hardly ever systematically drawn. (...) To fill this gap in the literature, I consider three accounts of this distinction, the ‘Agent-based’, the ‘Recipient-based’, and the ‘Mixed’ View, and argue that they are all unsatisfactory. I then offer a fourth alternative, the ‘Autonomy’ View, which successfully overcomes the difficulties affecting its rivals. I conclude by considering the implications of this view for the moral grounds of disaster relief in earthquake-stricken Haiti, New Zealand, and Japan. (shrink)

In late 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the U.S., causing much suffering and devastation. Those who could have easily helped Sandy’s victims had a duty to do so. But was this a rightfully enforceable duty of justice, or a non-enforceable duty of beneficence? The answer to this question is often thought to depend on the kind of help offered: the provision of immediate bodily services is not enforceable; the transfer of material resources is. I argue that this (...) double standard is unjustified, and defend a version of what I call “Social Samaritanism.” On this view, within political communities, the duty to help the needy—whether via bodily services or resource transfers—is always an enforceable demand of justice, except when the needy are reckless; across independent political communities, it is always a matter of beneficence. I defend this alternative double standard, and consider its implications for the case of Sandy. (shrink)

Ethical theories normally make room both for global duties to human beings everywhere and special duties to those we are attached to in some way. Such a split-level view requires us to specify the kind of attachment that can ground special duties, and to explain the comparative force of the two kinds of duties in cases of conflict. Special duties are generated within groups that are intrinsically valuable and not inherently unjust, where the duties can be shown to be integral (...) to relationships within the group. Since nations can be shown to meet these conditions, acknowledging special obligations towards compatriots is justified. However for such partiality to be reasonable, it must be balanced against recognition of duties of global justice. These duties include duties to respect human rights and duties of fairness towards non-nationals. Weighing such duties against domestic duties of social justice is not a simple task, and the outcome should depend on the precise specification of the duty at stake. In particular, the duty to respect human rights fragments into four sub-duties whose force when set against local duties is markedly different. (shrink)

This article discusses cosmopolitanism as the moral foundation for access to health care for migrants. The focus is on countries with sufficiently adequate universal health care for their citizens. The article argues for equal access to this kind of health care for citizens and migrants alike—including migrants at special risk such as asylum seekers or undocumented migrants. Several objections against equal access are raised, such as the cosmopolitan approach being too restrictive or too permissive, or the consequences being undesirable; but (...) the objections are largely refuted. Some special cases in which a restriction of equal access to health care might be justified are described: humanitarian crisis, short term tourism, and the case of a migrant or refugee who will stay only very briefly on a state's territory. (shrink)

This paper examines the links between acting upon a duty to assist, responsibility for these actions, and how such actions link with incremental moral duties that can amass as a consequence of such action. More specifically, this paper is concerned with practices of international aid and assistance, whereby public and privately funded donations enable the actions of parties outside of the territorial and jurisdictional boundaries of a community and state to directly influence the functioning of that community, and the incremental (...) moral duties to which such action can give rise. Using a Senian account of the basis of moral duty, it explains how agents are responsible for the outcomes of their acts of assistance, even when mediated through international institutional actors, and how such acts can give rise to accumulative duties and obligations that are not bound or constrained by territorial boundaries or pre-existing special obligations. (shrink)

What does the prospect of being able to alter a human being's “natural assets” by genetic engineering imply for our understanding of the requirements of justice, and of equal opportunity in particular? Although their proponents are reluctant to admit it, some of the most prominent contemporary theories of justice yield a quite radical conclusion: If safe and effective intervention in the genetic “natural lottery” becomes feasible, there will be at least a strong prima facie case for doing so in the (...) name of equality of opportunity , if this is the most effective way to meet the demands of justice. (shrink)

When any man, even in political society, renders himself by his crimes obnoxious to the public, he is punished by the laws in his goods and person; that is, the ordinary rules of justice are, with regard to him, suspended for a moment, and it becomes equitable to inflict on him, for the benefit of society, what otherwise he could not suffer without wrong or injury?

Principles of distributive justice bind macro-level institutional agents, like the state. But what does justice require in non-ideal circumstances, where institutional agents are unjust or do not e...

This dissertation is a contribution to the debate about ‘climate justice’, i.e. a call for a just and feasible distribution of responsibility for addressing climate change. The main argument is a proposal for a cautious, practicable, and necessary step in the right direction: given the set of theoretical and practical obstacles to climate justice, we must begin by making contemporary development practices sustainable. In times of climate change, this is done by recognising and responding to the fact that emissions of (...) greenhouse gases, with climate change as their result, are an immanent threat to any reflectively embraced development project. In the universal pursuit of progress, basic needs of both present and future people are put at risk. Even so, a political stalemate and business-as-usual prevail. The situation is locked up by an uncertainty about the exact impacts of choices made and by the reasonable disagreement of modern societies. The result is passiveness, and the passing on of a slowly and indiscernibly growing problem to future generations. This dissertation brings out a crucial message about the need to make our development sustainable. Instead of delaying action through trying to resolve the intractable epistemic and normative uncertainty fully, the focus should be on vindicating already shared points of practical convergence. On the constructivist method here adopted, the task is to characterise the agent and the situation faced from a practical and first-person point of view. More specifically, to specify the practical problem climate change gives rise to; the moral importance of needs (chapter three); how a principled priority of basic needs can be defended (chapter four), intergenerationally (chapter five) and internationally (chapter six); and what natural and social limits there are to development (chapter seven). These conceptions narrows the practice of development in the present context: it can be concluded that development must not risk the basic needs of anyone implicated. This common ground brackets off disagreement irrelevant to the urgent need to act, and so brings together otherwise deeply divided agents. A sufficientarian basic needs-principle, as the focus of an overlapping consensus, is practicable and anticipatory in the disuniting moral conundrum of climate change. (shrink)

Principles of distributive justice bind macro-level institutional agents, like the state. But what does justice require in non-ideal circumstances, where institutional agents are unjust or do not exist in the first place? Many answer by invoking Rawls's natural duty ‘to further just arrangements not yet established’, treating it as a ‘normative bridge’ between institutional demands of distributive justice and individual responsibilities in non-ideal circumstances. I argue that this response strategy is unsuccessful. I show that the more unjust the status quo (...) is due to non-compliance, the less demanding the natural duty of justice becomes. I conclude that, in non-ideal circumstances, the bulk of the normative work is done by another natural duty: that of beneficence. This conclusion has significant implications for how we conceptualize our political responsibilities in non-ideal circumstances, and cautions us against the tendency – common in contemporary political theory – to answer all high-stakes normative questions under the rubric of justice. (shrink)

The principle of moral equality is one of the cornerstones of any liberal theory of justice. It is usually assumed that persons’ equal moral status should be grounded in the equal possession of a status-conferring property. Call this the property-first approach to the basis of moral equality. This approach, however, faces some well-known difficulties: in particular, it is difficult to see how the possession of a scalar property can account for persons’ equal moral status. A plausible way of circumventing such (...) difficulties is to explore another avenue for the justification of persons’ equal moral status: moral equality should be grounded in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors. Call this the relation-first approach to the basis of moral equality. This paper aims at providing some reasons as to why this approach should be rejected and clarifying why the property-first approach still represents the most promising way of justifying our commitment to moral equality. Two objections will be pressed against the relation-first approach: first, grounding moral equality in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors gives rise to some disturbing normative implications; second, relation-first accounts cannot vindicate the idea that a range of beings has equal fundamental rights. This, however, is precisely what an account of moral equality is meant to justify. The paper, then, concludes that the relation-first approach fails to provide a plausible answer to the question of the basis of moral equality. Property-first accounts, whatever problems they encounter, are still more viable in principle. (shrink)

Abraham’s “leadership by example” provides a template for business leaders to implement a tone at the top based on a balance of tzedek (righteousness) and mishpat (legal judgement). The former expresses the generosity of spirit required of leaders, while the latter expresses the sound judgement in conformity with both ethics and enacted law. We relate the two constructs to several contemporary theories of justice and jurisprudence. We also relate the development of Abrahamic Justice in the Jewish tradition from antiquity through (...) Maimonides in the middle ages. We draw insight from this tradition to answer a contemporary business ethics question: Do corporate managers violate their fiduciary duty to shareholders if they refuse to engage in legal tax avoidance? (shrink)

Kant’s moral theory is sometimes thought to mandate public welfare provision on grounds of beneficence or Kant’s commitment to freedom. However, at no point does Kant argue for welfare in these ways. Instead, the rationale he offers is that public welfare provision is instrumentally necessary for the security and the stability of the state. I argue that this is no oversight on Kant’s part. I consider plausible alternative arguments for public welfare provision, and show why Kant does not espouse them. (...) I conclude that the only viable Kantian justification for welfare is just the one Kant gives. (shrink)

This article argues that Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia has been widely misread as a crude defense of the inequalities of contemporary capitalist societies. Nozick's book was in fact a work of ideal theory that proposed an account of the emergence of the state as a new moral foundation for liberal thought and practice. Nozick believed a justification of the state derived from a hypothetical account of its emergence without violating anyone's rights was more plausible than the standard liberal (...) claim that the legitimacy of the state followed from the hypothetical consent of the governed. An appreciation of the purpose and success of Nozick's account of the emergence of the state challenges established interpretations of his book as an inherently flawed, if at times ingenious, conservative political tract. (shrink)

A recently developed view in political theory holds that only political agents, particularly states, can be primary bearers of human-rights duties. Problematically, this so-called ‘political view’ appears unable to account for the human-rights responsibilities of powerful non-state actors, such as transnational corporations (TNCs). Can a recognizably political view respond to this concern? I show that, once the moral underpinnings of the political view are made explicit, it can. I suggest that, on the political view, what makes states primary bearers of (...) human-rights duties is their possession of both (i) the capacity to fulfill human right and (ii) what I call the ‘authority-plus-sovereignty package’. Building on the existing literature on the moral responsibilities of TNCs, I argue that some TNCs—especially in areas of weak governance—meet these two conditions. I thus conclude that they count as bearers of primary human-rights responsibilities even from within a political perspective on human rights. (shrink)

A life without liberty and material resources is not a good life. Equally, a life devoid of meaningful social relationships—such as friendships, family attachments, and romances—is not a good life. From this it is tempting to conclude that just as individuals have rights to liberty and material resources, they also have rights to access meaningful social relationships. I argue that this conclusion can be defended only in a narrow set of cases. ‘Pure’ social relationship deprivation—that is, deprivation that is not (...) caused, or accompanied, by deficits in liberties and material resources— mostly generates demands of private beneficence. I suggest that social relationship deprivation is unjust, hence a rights violation, only when it is due to factors—such as one’s race—that are irrelevant to one’s being a good participant in social relationships. I thus conclude that access to meaningful social relationships is not a fundamental concern for theories of justice. (shrink)

Today we are witnessing two dramatic processes: the fragmentation of old states and empires, followed by the emergence of new states and new forms of political association; and the construction of new economies out of the ruins of state socialism. These two processes—the redrawing of political boundaries and the creation of economies—are not independent of one another. In some cases, the desire for a new, more productive economy supplements other motives for state-breaking and state-making. In others, even if the fragmentation (...) of political union results from other factors, such as ethnic divisions or the resurgence of nationalism against a weakened imperial center, the fragments may sort themselves out into new states, federations, or commonwealths, according to what they believe to be maximally productive economic units. (shrink)

One of the central theses of egalitarian liberals in the domain of distributive justice is that talented individuals should not be allowed to keep their entire market-income even if it flows solely from their greater abilities. This claim is usually supported by one of several arguments or some mixture of them, but in the present paper, I want to concentrate on the version that invokes equality of opportunity as its starting point. Namely, it is claimed that every human being should (...) enjoy an equal starting point in the life-race but that this is not secured insofar as some have greater natural talents than others. Therefore, egalitarians hold that results that arise from such an unfair situation are unjust and should be corrected by a redistributive taxation. I want to criticize this argument by hoping to show that it presupposes an untenable view about identity of persons. (shrink)

Global short-term medical volunteerism is growing, and properly conducted, is a tool in the fight for greater global health equity. It is intrinsically ethical (i.e., it involves ethics at every step) and depends upon ethical conduct for its success. At present, ethical guidelines remain in their infancy, which presents a unique opportunity. This paper presents a set of basic ethical principles, building on prior work in this area and previously developed guidelines for international clinical research. The content of these principles, (...) and the benchmarks used to evaluate them, remain intentionally vague and can only be filled by collaboration with those on-the-ground in local communities where this work occurs. Ethical review must additionally take into consideration the different obligations arising from the type of institution, type of intervention, and type of relationship involved. This paper argues that frequent and formalized ethical review, conducted from the beginning with the local community (where this community helps define the terms of debate), remains the most important ethical safeguard for this work. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that a society should be judged ethically by how it treats its least-fortunate or worst-off members. In one interpretation this is not a point about justice, but instead about moral virtues such as compassion and charity. In our response to the least fortunate among us, we display, or show that we lack, fundamental moral virtues of fellow feeling and concern for others in need. In a different interpretation, however, this point is about justice and a just (...) society—the justice of a society is shown especially in how it treats its least-fortunate members. (shrink)

Despite what one may be led to believe by breathless reports in the media, the acme of misery in America is not the woes, financial and otherwise, of Donald Trump and Michael Jackson. People lose their jobs, have their assets drained by reversals of fortune, suffer from illiteracy, malnutrition, lack of shelter, and other mishaps. The circumstances in which they find themselves are genuinely distressing. It would be an odd understanding indeed that failed to find these circumstances directly relevant to (...) what morality asks of us. If morality is to count for anything, then surely it must take notice of exigent need. This is not merely the deliverance of a late twentieth-century Western moral consciousness massaged by the blessings of comparative affluence and graced with a newfound awareness of social justice. All traditional ethical codes of which I am aware, sacred and secular, demand that one take the distress of one's neighbor as bearing on one's own activities. “Am I my brother's keeper?” is the question; the well-nigh universal answer is “Yes.” The disposition to be moved by and respond to distress is the virtue ofcharity. (shrink)

Despite what one may be led to believe by breathless reports in the media, the acme of misery in America is not the woes, financial and otherwise, of Donald Trump and Michael Jackson. People lose their jobs, have their assets drained by reversals of fortune, suffer from illiteracy, malnutrition, lack of shelter, and other mishaps. The circumstances in which they find themselves are genuinely distressing. It would be an odd understanding indeed that failed to find these circumstances directly relevant to (...) what morality asks of us. If morality is to count for anything, then surely it must take notice of exigent need. This is not merely the deliverance of a late twentieth-century Western moral consciousness massaged by the blessings of comparative affluence and graced with a newfound awareness of social justice. All traditional ethical codes of which I am aware, sacred and secular, demand that one take the distress of one's neighbor as bearing on one's own activities. “Am I my brother's keeper?” is the question; the well-nigh universal answer is “ Yes .” The disposition to be moved by and respond to distress is the virtue of charity. (shrink)

Ethical problems in business include not only genuine moral dilemmas and compliance problems but also problems arising from the distinctive characteristics of imperfect duties. Collective action by business to perfect imperfect duties can yield significant benefits. Sucharrrangements can (1) reduce temptations to moral laxity, (2) achieve greater efficiency by eliminating redundancies and gaps that plague uncoordinated individual efforts, (3) reap economies of scale and achieve success where benefits can be provided only if a certain threshold of resources can be brought (...) to bear on a social problem; (4) solve assurance problems where voluntary compliance by some parties depends upon their perception that competitors are doing their fair share, and (5) produce higher levels of contribution than would occur through independent action in response to imperfect duties, stimulated by the perception that there is a fair distribution of burdens of contribution among all parties involved. (shrink)

As each individual abandons himself to the solicitous aid of the State,so, and still more, he abandons to it the fate of his fellow-citizens.Wilhelm Von Humboldt,On the Limits of State Action.

Millions of people in our world are in need of assistance: from the global poor, to refugees, from the victims of natural disasters, to those of violent crimes. What are our responsibilities towards them? Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland’s answer is plausible and straightforward: we have enforceable duties to assist others in need whenever we can do so ‘at relatively moderate cost to ourselves, and others’. Barry and Øverland defend this answer on the ground that it best fits our intuitions (...) in a variety of hypothetical rescue scenarios. I argue that, although Barry and Øverland’s view is intuitively appealing, appeal to intuitive cases is insufficient to vindicate it satisfactorily. Intuitive cases alone do not allow us to establish: (i) what costs count as moderate and (ii) whether assistance-based responsibilities are, in fact, enforceable. These considerations suggest that Barry and Øverland’s defence of their preferred answer to the assistance question may be incomplete. (shrink)

As each individual abandons himself to the solicitous aid of the State,so, and still more, he abandons to it the fate of his fellow-citizens.Wilhelm Von Humboldt,On the Limits of State Action.

The paper offers a normative analysis of the new Loss & Damage Fund supporting vulnerable countries grappling with climate change-related harms. This fund is primarily financed by affluent nations, often identified as historical polluters. However, the perspective of relational egalitarianism highlights persistent structural injustices in the background of the fund. Addressing them necessitates conceptualizing the fund not merely as an act of cooperative solidarity but as compensation for the consequences of historical and ongoing structural injustices. Properly conceived, the fund manages (...) adverse climate effects and simultaneously tackles their underlying root causes, including the unjust distribution of advantages and power. (shrink)

The associative argument for political obligation has taken an important place in the debate on political obligation. Proponents of this view argue that an obligation to obey the government arises out of ties of affiliation among individuals who share the same citizenship. According to them, relationships between compatriots constitute basic reasons for action in the same way in which relationships between family members or friends do. As critics point out, this account of the normative force of relationships has counterintuitive implications: (...) if relationships between people sharing the same citizenship make up basic reasons for action, then relationships between people sharing other attributes, for example, relationships between racists or sexists form basic reasons for action too. In this essay, I pursue a modified version of the associative approach that is not vulnerable to this objection. (shrink)

Global justice is, at its core, about moral obligations to distant others. But which obligations ought to be included is a matter of considerable debate. In the discussion that follows I will explicate and challenge two objections to the inclusion of foundationally positive obligations in our account of global justice. The first objection is based on the proposition that negative obligations possess and positive obligations lack a property necessary for a moral demand to be a matter justice. The second objection (...) is that even the most trivial positive obligation becomes overly burdensome when applied to the global arena. And, though I do not offer any particular substantive account of positive obligations to distant others; I assess some of the implications that would arise were positive obligations to distant others to be included in our account of global justice. (shrink)

Ethnographic fieldwork is subject to a number of tensions regarding the position of the researcher. Traditionally, these are discussed from a methodological perspective, and draw attention to issues such as ‘objectivity’ of the research and the supposed need for ‘distance’ in the process of knowledge-building. Approaching the issue from a different angle, this article provides a reflection on the positionality of the researcher through an autoethnographical account based on fieldwork with socially excluded groups. Rather than reflecting on the (dis)advantages of (...) proximity for the research process, it explores from a personal stance how this role interacts with other roles in the researcher's life (e.g. being a volunteer, a citizen, an advocate, a moral being). Increased awareness about this intrinsic positionality of the researcher calls for a situated conceptualisation of professionalism and science. The author furthermore explores how an autoethnographical approach relates to educational research and su.. (shrink)

'Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is conceptualized in many ways. We argue that one cannot be indifferent about the issue of its conceptualization. In terms of methodology, our position is that any conceptual discussion must embed CSR in political theory. With regard to substance, we link up with the discussion on whether CSR must be defined on the basis of a tripartite or a quadripartite division of business responsibilities. We share A. B. Carroll's intuition that a quadripartite division is called for (...) as a basis to define CSR. However, defending the quadripartite division of business responsibilities requires that the distinctions between economic, legal, ethical and discretionary business responsibilities be made intelligible. Carroll's account is defective in this respect. We argue that contemporary Neo-Kantian political ethics is able to make sense of these distinctions, because of its specific interpretation of liberalism. Interestingly, from a conventional liberal perspective this interpretation of liberalism is atypical, as it extends public morality beyond the domain of the law. (shrink)