People tend to be biased and irrational about politics. Should this constrain what our normative theories of democracy can require? David Estlund argues that the answer is ‘no’. He contends that even if such facts show that the requirements of a normative theory are very unlikely to be met, this need not imply that the theory is unduly unrealistic. I argue that the application of Estlund’s argument to political irrationality depends on a false presupposition: mainly, that being rational about politics (...) is something people could easily do if they tried. Since the empirical evidence shows that being rational about politics is actually quite difficult, Estlund’s argument comes up short. Moreover, I argue that the argument cannot plausibly be extended to insulate normative theories of democracy from facts about political irrationality because of the need for constraints of realism to explain the crucial role that appeals to (reasonable) disagreement play within such theories. (shrink)

Ideal theory has been extensively contested on the grounds that it is ideology: namely, that it performs the distorting social role of reifying and enforcing unjust features of the status quo. Indeed, a growing number of philosophers adopt a nonideal methodology—which dispenses with ideal theory—because of this ideology critique. I argue, however, that such philosophers are confused about the ultimate dialectical upshot of this critique even if it succeeds. I do so by constructing a parallel—equally plausible—ideology critique of nonideal methodology; (...) specifically, I argue that capitalist and managerial social attitudes have commodified people’s conception of justice and induced suspicion of ideal theory, which is not construed as having direct practical value. Consequently, nonideal methodology performs the distorting role of reifying and enforcing the hegemonies of capitalism and managerialism. Ideal theory and nonideal methodology are, therefore, in symmetrically bad positions. (shrink)

In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but (...) groups cannot spontaneously secure collective decisions and are prone to conflicts. Particularly, the fact that potentially violent conflicts emerge unilaterally means that order requires coercion. I conclude that mischaracterizing conflict and order leads to undesirable normative principles, and that this criticism can be leveraged not only against Rawlsian liberals who moralize conflicts away, but also against some agonists who underestimate the need for order and some communitarians who underplay both circumstances. (shrink)

The article critically examines the neo-Republican conception of respect put forward by Philip Pettit in Robust Demands of the Good. The paper argues that Pettit’s treatment of respect as a rich good in RDG is too thin in some ways, but too rich in others. There are four critical claims to support this argument. First, that both invading the domain of basic liberties, and failing to protect and resource the capacity to exercise choice, constitute individually sufficient conditions for disrespectful treatment, (...) and that the protection and resourcing of basic liberties are both relevant domains over which an appropriate disposition is also necessary for the provision of the rich good of respect. Second, that it is unnecessary and undesirable to rely on local conventions to provide a specification of the treatment that the status of respect requires. Third, that providing respect as a rich good in conditions of reasonable pluralism implies treating minorities in a disrespectful way. Fourth, that the role given to law in supporting the provision of the rich good of respect leads to a difficult dilemma for Pettit: either the full enjoyment of respect is not possible in nearby worlds, or it is only possible in ideal conditions that are far from nearby worlds. (shrink)

Can John Stuart Mill’s radicalism achieve liberal egalitarian ends? Joseph Persky’s The Political Economy of Progress is a provocative and compelling discussion of Mill’s economic thought. It is also a defense of radical political economy. Providing valuable historical context, Persky traces Mill’s intellectual journey as an outspoken proponent of laissez-faire to a cautious supporter of co-operative socialism. I propose two problems with Persky’s optimistic take on radical social reform. First, demands for substantive equality have led past radicals to endorse exclusionary (...) nationalist and eugenics policies. It pushes some contemporary radicals towards illiberal interventions into intimate social life. Second, the radical critique of capitalism relies on an account of profit that neglects the epistemic function of private-property markets. Once this is acknowledged, capitalism retains some progressive credentials against radical alternatives. (shrink)

Political philosophy offers a range of utopian proposals, from open borders to global egalitarianism. Some object that these proposals ought to be constrained by what is feasible, while others insist that what justice demands does not depend on what we can bring about. Currently, this debate is mired in disputes over the fundamental nature of justice and the ultimate purpose of political philosophy. I take a different approach, proposing that we should consider which facts could fill out a feasibility requirement. (...) This search for the facts requires requires looking to the social sciences, but I argue that it turns out that the social sciences will not provide us with findings that rule out, nor even count against, the kinds of proposals that political philosophers actually make, whether ideal or non-ideal. At the least, to deny this requires adopting deeply controversial commitments within the philosophy of social science. Thus, I conclude that a feasibility requirement has little practical use for political philosophers. Disputes over that requirement ought to be replaced by other, more fruitful ways for political philosophers to address both the findings of social science and the debates over non-ideal theory or political realism. (shrink)

In recent work in political philosophy there has been much discussion of two approaches to theorizing about justice that have come to be called ‘ideal theory’ and ‘non-ideal theory’. The distinction was originally articulated by Rawls, who defended his focus on ideal theory in terms of a supposed ‘priority’ of the latter over non-ideal theory. Many critics have rejected this claim of priority and in general have questioned the usefulness of ideal theory. In diagnosing the problem with ideal theory, they (...) have frequently fingered for blame the idealization it involves. In this paper I focus on one particular, much-discussed idealization—full compliance—in order to defend it. Focusing on the assumption, I argue that Rawls’s work is not ideal in the way that it is usually thought to be, is less ideal than is widely recognized, and became less ideal over time. I also argue that critics who in effect claim that it is not realistic enough simply fail to understand Rawls’s central motivation. Finally, I defend the assumption by arguing that there is an important sense in which all theories of justice must assume full compliance. Such an assumption, I argue, is needed if we are to have a plausible basis on which to judge the normative attractiveness of a theory. (shrink)

In ‘Bureaucratic respectful equality’, Christopher Nathan puts forward two challenges for the author’s claim that basic equality can be grounded in a form of ‘opacity respect’ appropriately shown b...

G.A. Cohen y John Rawls atribuyen a Karl Marx haberse adherido al principio libertarista de autopropiedad y una plena confianza en la abundancia ilimitada como solución a los defectos distributivos del socialismo. Asimismo, consideran que el comunismo marxiano está, en cierto sentido, más allá de la justicia. Contra estas posiciones, veremos que Marx rechaza la autopropiedad en términos normativos, que la predicción de plenitud material no es estrictamente marxiana, y que la doble valoración del comunismo —a la vez justo y (...) más allá de la justicia— no es totalmente consistente. (shrink)

Although the discussion about feasibility in political theory is still in its infancy, some important progress has been made in the last years to advance our understanding. In this paper, we intend to make a contribution to this growing literature by investigating the proper place of feasibility considerations in political theory. A motivating force behind this study is a suspicion that many presumptions made about feasibility in several current debates—such as that between practice-independence and practice-dependence, ideal and non-ideal theory, and (...) political moralism and political realism—are too rigid and underestimate the numerous different ways in which feasibility concerns may enter into our theorizing. To chisel out this feasibility space, our aim is to suggest two metatheoretical constraints on normative political principles as intuitively plausible, the so-called ‘fitness constraint’ and the ‘functional constraint’, through which we elucidate five central aspects for determining proper feasibility constraints of an account in political theory. (shrink)

Are there any conditions under which to justify deliberately hiding or manipulating the expression of our opinions, emotions or character traits in front of others? this article examines David Hume’s answer to this question by discussing the practices that he calls good manners and impudence. the conclusion is that Hume’s description of the moral point of view allows for two conditions under which practices of opacity such as good manners and impudence can be morally assessed.

G. A. Cohen's critique of Rawls's defence of economic incentives echoes some of J. S. Mill's insights on the subject. Some of Cohen's arguments, however, clash not only with those of Rawls but also with each other as well as with Mill's. A similar charge, however, may be made against Rawls. This article has conciliatory ambitions. It suggests reconciling each author with himself, as well as with each other, by focusing onthe worthof liberty. It stresses the importance of non-pecuniary occupational (...) inequalities and proposes various measures to enhance the worth of the occupational freedom of those with fewer options. (shrink)

A leading classical utilitarian, John Stuart Mill is an unlikely contributor to the public reason tradition in political philosophy. To hold that social rules or political institutions are justified by their contribution to overall happiness is to deny that they are justified by their being the object of consensus or convergence among all those holding qualified moral or political viewpoints. In this chapter, I explore the surprising ways in which Mill nevertheless works to accommodate the problems and insights of the (...) public reason tradition, and the extent to which he makes arguments that can help those working within that tradition. Mill’s utilitarian theory incorporates the claim that the demands of social life require a publicly accepted set of normative expectations to govern judgments about when one has met one’s obligations and, relatedly, about the appropriateness of blame or punishment. (shrink)

Abstract:In this essay, I argue against the bright-line distinction between ideal and nonideal normative political theory, a distinction used to distinguish “stages” of theorizing such that ideal political principles can be deduced and examined before compromises with the flawed political world are made. The distinction took on its familiar form in Rawls and has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the past few years. I argue that the idea of a categorical distinction — the kind that could allow for a (...) sequencing of stages of theorizing — is misconceived, because wholly “ideal” normative political theory is a conceptual mistake, the equivalent of taking the simplifying models of introductory physics (“frictionless movement in a vacuum”) and trying to develop an ideal theory of aerodynamics. Political organization and justice are about moral friction in the first instance. I examine both logical and epistemological arguments for the position that we need the uniquely idealizing assumptions of ideal theory in order to arrive at, or to know, a genuine theory of justice or political morality; and I find them wanting. Such assumptions as full compliance, consensus, and the publicity principle of universal knowledge about consensus can sometimes be useful, if used carefully and with justification; but they are not categorically different from other idealizing and abstracting assumptions in generating normative theory. What is referred to as “nonideal” theory is all that there is, and it is many kinds of theory, not one — the many ways in which we learn about justice and injustice, and seek to answer questions of practical reason about what ought to be done in our political world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:There is considerable overlap between the interests of business ethicists and those of political philosophers. Questions about the moral justifiability of the capitalist system, the basis of property rights, and the problem of inequality in the distribution of income have been of central importance in both fields. However, political philosophers have developed, especially over the past four decades, a set of tools and concepts for addressing these questions that are in many ways quite distinctive. Most business ethicists, on the other (...) hand, consider their field to be primarily a domain of applied ethics, and so adopt methods and conceptual frameworks developed by moral philosophers. In this paper, we discuss some of the salient differences between these two approaches, and suggest some ways in which business ethicists could benefit from taking a more “political philosophy” approach to these questions. Throughout, we underline the importance of seeking greater compatibility among the principles used in normative theorizing about markets, regulations, corporate governance, and business practices. (shrink)

Die Idee, dass vor allem monetäre Anreize das Verhalten von Wirtschaftsakteuren in gewünschte Richtungen lenken und sogar dabei helfen können, durch Leistungssteigerung zusätzliche Wohlfahrtseffekte zu generieren, spielt in der politischen Ökonomie seit ihren Anfängen eine zentrale Rolle. Es spricht sogar einiges dafür, dass dieser Gedanke das verbindende Glied der Ökonomik als Gesellschaftstheorie im Gegensatz zu anderen gesellschaftstheoretischen Entwürfen ausmacht. Dennoch halte ich dieses Anreizargument aus normativer Perspektive für unterentwickelt, wie ich in Auseinandersetzung mit der Ökonomischen Ethik bzw. Ordnungsethik nach Karl (...) Homann und der Integrativen Wirtschaftsethik zeigen möchte. Weder gelingt es der Ordnungsethik nach Karl Homann, die Bedeutung von Anreizstrukturen hinreichend zu begründen, obwohl sie in Ansätzen wichtige Argumente formuliert. Noch gelingt es der Integrativen Wirtschaftsethik, die zentrale Rolle von Anreizstrukturen für die normative Theoriebildung überzeugend zurückzuweisen. Mir geht es nicht darum, den einen oder anderen wirtschaftsethischen Ansatz grundsätzlich zurückzuweisen, sondern vielmehr, auf Lücken in der Argumentation und sich daraus ergebende Forschungsfragen hinzuweisen. Vor diesem Hintergrund könnte es helfen, einen verwandten Diskurs aus der gegenwärtigen Gerechtigkeitstheorie in die Überlegungen mit einzubeziehen. Denn die grundlegende Idee der ökonomischen Gesellschaftstheorie einer Wohlfahrtssteigerung durch die gezielte Manipulation von Anreizstrukturen hat auch in der gegenwärtigen Gerechtigkeitstheorie ihre Wirkung entfaltet. In seiner Theorie der Gerechtigkeit hat John Rawls argumentiert, dass selbst Egalitaristen bestimmte Einkommensunterschiede zulassen müssen, wenn dadurch für Leistungsträgerinnen solche Anreize gesetzt werden, die gleichzeitig auch den Schlechtestgestellten zum Vorteil gereichen. Diese Argumentation ist von Gerald Cohen einer harschen Kritik ausgesetzt worden. Cohen behauptet, dass Rawls mit diesem Anreizargument seinen eigenen Egalitarismus unterläuft. Ich glaube, dass diese philosophische Diskussion des Anreizargumentes in der Gerechtigkeitstheorie für wirtschaftsethische Überlegungen relevant ist, obwohl sie innerhalb eines idealtheoretischen und egalitaristischen Bezugsrahmens geführt wird. Für diese Relevanz werde ich in vier Abschnitten argumentieren. In einem ersten Teil werde ich die Positionen der Ökonomischen Ethik von Karl Homann und der Integrativen Wirtschaftsethik von Peter Ulrich zur Rolle von Anreizen einführen und darlegen, warum ich beide Ansätze für normativ unterbestimmt halte. In einem zweiten Teil werde ich kurz die Argumentation von John Rawls und ausführlicher die Kritik von Gerald Cohen an dieser Position vorstellen. In einem dritten Teil werde ich einige Einwände gegen Cohen formulieren und die Notwendigkeit einer nichtidealen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit betonen. In einem vierten und abschließenden Teil werde ich vorschlagen, einen Teil der Wirtschaftsethik als nichtideale Gerechtigkeitstheorie zu verstehen und aus dieser Perspektive nur kurz andeuten, welche systematische Rolle dem Anreizargument zukommt. (shrink)

If it is a requirement of justice that everyone has access to basic goods and services, then justice requires that the work that is necessary to produce the relevant goods and provide the relevant services is performed. Two widely accepted views, however, together rule out requirements of justice to perform such work. These are, roughly, that the state cannot force people to perform it, and that individuals are not obligated to perform it voluntarily. Lucas Stanczyk argues that we should resolve (...) this inconsistency by endorsing widely rejected coercive policies, such as compulsory service requirements. I argue that Stanczyk’s proposal fails to fully resolve the inconsistency, and that any acceptable resolution will entail that individuals can be obligated to voluntarily perform the necessary work. I conclude that accepting even modest requirements of access to basic goods and services requires rejecting the view that principles of justice do not apply directly to individual conduct. (shrink)

This article considers and ultimately rejects three prominent liberal egalitarian strategies for safeguarding the occupational freedom of the economically talented. First, Dworkinian concerns regarding the envy of the talented for the less talented are shown to be insufficient to rule out occupationally coercive taxation. Second, Rawlsian arguments about the priority of basic liberties in general and freedom of occupation in particular are shown to be unsuccessful, primarily because Rawls lacks the theoretical resources to protect freedom of occupation as a basic (...) liberty. Finally, concerns about the practical difficulty and moral undesirability of gathering the information necessary to implement occupationally coercive taxation are shown to be insufficient to rule out such taxation. The aim of the article is not to lead liberal egalitarians to reject freedom of occupation. Rather, the aim is to highlight the difficulties in protecting freedom of occupation and to motivate work on alternative liberal egalitarian strategies for safeguarding this important economic liberty. At the end of the article, a hypothesis is put forward for why occupationally coercive taxation should be rejected that appeals to the prohibition on using people as means. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen is famous for his critique of John Rawls’s view that principles of justice are restricted in scope to institutional structures. In recent work, however, Cohen has suggested that Rawlsians get more than just the scope of justice wrong: they get the concept wrong too. He claims that justice is a fundamental value, i.e. a moral input in our deliberations about the content of action-guiding regulatory principles, rather than the output. I argue here that Cohen’s arguments for extending the (...) scope of justice equivocate across his distinction between fundamental principles of justice, i.e. principles that tell us what justice is; and regulatory principles of justice, i.e. principles that tell us what is required of us, all things – including justice – considered. Though Cohen initially had the regulatory sense of the word ‘justice’ in mind when critiquing the basic structure restriction, his replies to the problem of demandingness presuppose his own, fundamental sense of the word ‘justice’. The upshot is that he escapes demandingness at the cost of sacrificing regulatory justice’s capacity to provide clear guidance. I conclude by considering Peter Singer’s efforts to deal with demandingness in his own work on global poverty. Since Singer manages to deal with demandingness without giving up clarity, his work is a good a place to start in the search for regulatory principles that are suitable for the context of personal choice. (shrink)

The feasibility constraint on the concept of justice roughly states that a necessary condition for something to qualify as a conception of justice is that it is possible to achieve and maintain given the conditions of the human world. In this paper, I propose three alternative interpretations of this constraint that could be derived from different understandings of the Kantian formula ‘ought implies can’: the ability constraint, the motivational constraint and the institutional constraint. I argue that the three constraints constitute (...) a sequence in the sense that accepting the motivational constraint presupposes that we accept the ability constraint, and to accept the institutional constraint presupposes that we accept both previous constraints. Adding the possibility of rejecting all three constraints, we get four distinct metatheoretical positions that theorists could take vis-à-vis the feasibility constraint on justice. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen’s claim that fundamental principles are ‘fact-insensitive’ has not received an especially warm welcome from the philosophical community. While some philosophers have expressed doubts about the plausibility of his claim, others have complained that even if his thesis is true, it is also relatively insignificant. In my paper, I argue that the fact-insensitivity thesis, if true, provides considerable support for value pluralism, and is thus of interest for that reason. Though Cohen himself assumes a plurality of fundamental principles, (...) he never argues that the fact-insensitivity thesis supports this assumption. One of my paper’s aims, then, is to fill an argumentative gap in Cohen’s meta-ethical framework. (shrink)

According to luck egalitarianism, it is not unfair when people are disadvantaged by choices they are responsible for. This implies that those who are disadvantaged by choices that prevent disadvantage to others are not eligible for compensation. This is counterintuitive. We argue that the problem such cases pose for luck egalitarianism reveals an important distinction between responsibility for creating disadvantage and responsibility for distributing disadvantage which has hitherto been overlooked. We develop and defend a version of luck egalitarianism which only (...) holds people responsible for creating disadvantage. This revision enables luck egalitarianism to offer compensation to those who are disadvantaged by preventing disadvantage to others, like dependent caretakers, without compromising the responsibility–sensitivity at the heart of luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify what it means for a normative theory to be fact-sensitive, and what might be wrong with such sensitivity, by examining the ways in which ‘justice as fairness’ depends upon facts. While much of the fact-sensitivity of Rawls’s principles consists of innocent limitations of generality, Rawls’s appeal to stability raises a legitimate worry about defining justice down in order to make ‘justice’ stable. If it should turn out that the correct principles of justice are inconsistent with (...) human nature, it might be important for us to recognize that as a feature of human psychology we regret, rather than revising our principles for the sake of stability in a way that obscures the fact that there is anything to regret. Whether or not Rawlsian principles are in fact watered down depends on how one interprets the role of reciprocity in the theory. Reciprocity can be seen as a fact about human psychology that limits the extent to which justice can be realized where assurance of compliance on the part of others is lacking. Or it can be seen as a fact about justice, to wit, that its point is to create a relationship of mutual recognition and respect, making strictly unilateral compliance pointless. (shrink)

The ‘global justice gap’ refers to the state of affairs in which the just entitlements of the global poor do not correlate with the justly enforceable duties of the global rich. The possibility of a global justice gap is controversial, because it is widely thought that claims of justice cannot exist unless they are matched up with corresponding duties. In this essay, I refute this sceptical view by showing that the global justice gap is indeed a theoretical possibility. My strategy (...) is to argue for a particular way of understanding the concept of distributive justice which I call the ‘dual-component model of justice’. On this view, distributive justice is a single value with two distinct components: (1) a fairness component, which specifies the situation that people would be in if they lived under conditions of what I call ‘basic distributive fairness’, and (2) a legitimacy component, specifying the rights that people have according to what I call the ‘principles of justified coercion’, which limit the ways in which they may permissibly be coerced. The global justice gap arises when the two components of justice are not in alignment. This happens when, although it is within the collective capacity of the members of the developed world to bring the global distribution much closer to the ideal of basic distributive fairness, there are considerations that make it unjust to coerce them into exercising this capacity. (shrink)

The practice-dependent approach to justice has received a lot of attention in post-millennium political philosophy. It has been developed in different directions and its normative implications have been criticized, but little attention has been directed to the very distinction between practice-dependence and practice-independence and the question of what theoretically differentiates a practice-dependent account from mainstream practice-independent accounts. The core premises of the practice-dependent approach, proponents argue, are meta-normative and methodological. A key feature is the presumption that a concept of justice (...) is dependent on the function or aim of the social practices to which it is supposed to be applied. Closely related to this meta-normative thesis is an interpretive methodology for deriving principles of justice from facts about existing practices, in particular regarding their point and purpose. These two premises, practice-dependent theorists claim, differentiate their account since they are not accepted by practice-independent accounts and they justify different principles of justice than practice-independent accounts. Our aim in this article is to refute both and, demonstrating that practice-independent accounts may indeed accept the meta-normative and methodological premises of the practice-dependent accounts, and that we are given no theoretical reason to think that practice-dependent accounts justify other principles of justice for a practice than do practice-independent accounts. In other words, practice-dependent theorists have not substantiated their claim that practice-dependence is theoretically differentiated from mainstream accounts. When practice-dependent proponents argue for other principles of justice than mainstream theorists, it will be for the usual reason in normative theory: their first-order normative arguments differ. (shrink)

This essay responds to the thoughtful essays on the Order of Public Reason (OPR) by Elvio Baccarini, Giulia Bistagnino and Nenad Miscevic. All three essays interrogate OPR’s understanding of moral theory - “meta” matters about the nature of morality, reasons and modeling within moral theories. I first turn to the general understanding of the moral enterprise underlying OPR, explaining why it takes a view at odds with the contemporary mainstream in moral philosophy. I then explain the idea of moral truth (...) in OPR: when it comes to social morality, moral truth is necessarily a function of what can be endorsed by some collectivity. Th is leads to a fundamental worry about theories of public reason: why is the endorsement of the public so important? And if some sort of public endorsement is really so terribly important, how can a theory of public reason withstand the fact that it advances its own controversial claims that cannot be publicly endorsed? After considering when public endorsement is necessary, and when public reason theories can make controversial claims, I close by considering in what way OPR does, and in what way it does not, employ a thought experiment, and the complexities of that. (shrink)

It is common in political theory and practice to challenge normatively ambitious proposals by saying that their fulfillment is not feasible. But there has been insufficient conceptual exploration of what feasibility is, and very little substantive inquiry into why and how it matters for thinking about social justice. This paper provides one of the first systematic treatments of these issues, and proposes a dynamic approach to the relation between justice and feasibility that illuminates the importance of political imagination and dynamic (...) duties to expand agents’ power to fulfill ambitious principles of justice. (shrink)

What, if anything, is wrong with high executive compensation? Is the common “lay reaction” of indignation and moral outrage justified? In this paper, my main goal is to articulate in a more systematic and philosophical manner the egalitarian responses to these questions. In order to do so, I suggest that we take some insights from recent debates on two versions of egalitarianism: a distributive one, according to which no one should be worse off than others because of unfair distributions of (...) goods and resources, especially ones based on matters of luck or arbitrary factors, and a relational one, which maintains that egalitarian justice requires members of a society to relate to one another as equals. Drawing on recent attempts to highlight the tricky nature of managerial authority, I argue that high inequalities in pay are not simply a distributional matter but should also be analyzed through a relational lens. I also attempt to show that relational egalitarians are well-equipped to question the now dominant “incentives” view of CEO compensation. (shrink)

Pluralist egalitarians think that luck and relational egalitarianism each articulates a component in a pluralist account of egalitarian justice. However, this ecumenical view appears problematic in the light of Elizabeth Anderson's claim that the divide arises because two incompatible views of justification are in play, which in turn generates derivative disagreements – e.g. about the proper currency of egalitarian justice. In support of pluralist egalitarianism I argue that two of Anderson's derivative disagreements are not rooted in the disagreement over justification (...) she identifies, and that the disagreement over justification cuts across standard disagreements between luck and relational egalitarian justice. (shrink)

The family disrupts equality while also, think many, providing goods of unique value. In Family Values, Brighouse and Swift tackle both of these tendencies, offering a refined and distinctive liberal egalitarian account both of the value of family life, and the limits of what may be done in its name. It builds up from an account of children's specific interests to a defence of ‘familial relationship goods’ as providing the best way of satisfying those interests. Thus though parenthood carries goods (...) of its own, parental prerogatives are delimited by what is good for children. The position which emerges plays out in nuanced, sometimes surprising ways. I raise three main lines of potential criticism, concerning, respectively, the distribution of family relationship goods, their value in relation to fair equality of opportunity, and the viability of distinguishing between family-located and other contributions to the realisation of a child's interests. (shrink)

Adversarial scheme points to situations of rivalry like auctions, public tendering, sports competitions, elections or trials. Thomas Pogge suggested that these schemes have great advantage: they force agents to reveal their full performance. But they also incentivize agents to manipulate the rules. In other schemes with incentives, he also suggests, agents can easily downplay their performance, but won’t engage in rule manipulation to the same extent. In this paper, I will argue that adversarial schemes and other schemes with incentives advantages (...) or disadvantages do not map from one to the other as Pogge suggests. Performance-downplaying also takes place in adversarial schemes, as well as in other schemes with incentives also lead to rule manipulation. I will also argue that there are genuine differences between these two types of schemes. Adversarial schemes have three unique advantages: first, they may be more effective in producing motivational improvements at a lower cost, second, they may lead to an automatic optimization of performances and, third, they may produce unique system benefits. In order to produce these advantages, we must design adversarial schemes properly and use them in the right situation. (shrink)

The question of what role social and political practices should play in the justification of normative principles has received renewed attention in post-millennium political philosophy. Several current debates express dissatisfaction with the methodology adopted in mainstream political theory, taking the form of a criticism of so-called ‘ideal theory’ from ‘non-ideal’ theory, of ‘practice-independent’ theory from ‘practice-dependent’ theory, and of ‘political moralism’ from ‘political realism’. While the problem of action-guidance lies at the heart of these concerns, the critics also share a (...) number of methodological assumptions. Above all, their methodology is practice-dependent in the sense that an existing practice is assumed to put substantial limitations on the appropriate normative principles for regulating it. In other words, we cannot formulate and justify an appropriate principle without first understanding the practice this principle is supposed to govern. The aim of this paper is to map out and analyze the common denominators of these debates with regard to methodological commitments. We will investigate how this practice-dependent method may be understood and motivated. In particular, we point to challenges that must be met in order for the position to remain both distinct and attractive. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of realist thinkers have charged much contemporary political theory with being idealistic and moralistic. While the basic features of the realist counter-movement are reasonably well understood, realism is still considered a critical, primarily negative creed which fails to offer a positive, alternative way of thinking normatively about politics. Aiming to counteract this general perception, in this article I draw on Bernard Williams’s claims about how to construct a politically coherent conception of liberty from the non-political (...) value of freedom. I do this because Williams’s argument provides an illuminating example of the distinctive nature of realist political thinking and its attractions. I argue that Williams’s account of realist political thinking challenges the orthodox moralist claim that normative political arguments must be guided by an ideal ethical theory. I then spell out the repercussions Williams’s claims about the significance of political opposition and non-mor... (shrink)

Many political theorists of multiculturalism describe their theories as “contextualist.” But it is unclear what “contextualism” means and what difference it makes for political theory. I use a specific prominent example of a multiculturalist discussion, namely Tariq Modood’s argument about “moderate secularism,” as a test case and distinguish between different senses of contextualism. I discuss whether the claim that political theory is contextual in each sense is novel and interesting, and whether contextualism is a distinct feature of political theory of (...) multiculturalism. I argue that the forms of contextualism which concern the scope and methodology of political theory are sensible, but not novel or distinctive of multiculturalism. I then discuss the more controversial forms of contextualism, which I call political and theoretical contextualism. Finally, I apply the distinctions to Modood’s argument. I argue that it is not a form of theoretical contextualism and that theoretical contextualism would in fact undermine arguments for multiculturalist policies of accommodation. (shrink)

This book offers an original account of a distinctly republican theory of social and global justice. The book starts by exploring the nature and value of Hegelian recognition theory. It shows the importance of that theory for grounding a normative account of free and autonomous agency. It is this normative account of free agency which provides the groundwork for a republican conception of social and global justice, based on the core-ideas of freedom as non-domination and autonomy as non-alienation. As the (...) author argues, republicans should endorse a sufficientarian account of social justice, which focuses on the nature of social relationships and their effects on people's ability to act freely and realize their fundamental interests. On the global level, the book argues for the cosmopolitan extension of the republican principles of non-domination and non-alienation within a multi-level democratic system. In so doing, the book addresses a major gap in the existing literature, presenting an original theory of justice, which combines Hegelian recognition theory and republican ideas of freedom, and applying this hybrid theory to the global domain. Fabian Schuppert creates a grand synthesis uniting neo-republican insights on freedom with Hegelian recognition theory. The result is an account of agency that arises from the idea of non-domination whose aim it is to safeguard individual freedom. When combined with Hegelian recognition theory a social focus also emerges. This amalgam comments on many of the major disputes concerning global justice from a cosmopolitan perspective. Because of the broad scope and the many contemporary discussions engaged this book will be of keen interest to scholars as well as a welcome addition to the classroom. (shrink)

An important question in recent work in political philosophy concerns whether facts about individuals’ motivational deficiencies are facts to which principles of justice are sensitive. In this context, David Estlund has recently argued that the difficulties individuals’ face in motivating themselves to act do not affect the content of normative principles that apply to them. Against Estlund, the paper argues that in principle the motivational difficulties individuals face can affect the content of normative principles that apply to them. This argument (...) is made with reference to so-called Agent-Centred Prerogatives. The paper argues that because the limits on human motivational capacities can affect the extent to which it is burdensome to do something, those limits also impact on the nature of justified Agent-Centred Prerogatives. If Agent-Centred Prerogatives to depart from a putative normative principle depend on the burdensomeness of complying with that requirement, human motivational capacities can affect which normative principles apply. (shrink)

This essay argues that the proffered grounds for Cohen's rejection of market relations – that they are sustained by the base motives of greed and fear – are unsound and also unnecessary to explain the maximising behaviour induced by those relations.

Must principles of justice be practical? Some political philosophers, the “implementers,” say yes. Others, the “idealists,” say no. Despite this disagreement, the implementers and idealists agree on what “practical” means, subscribing to the “implementation-prediction” conception of practicality. They also seem to agree that principles of so-called “ideal theory” need not be IP-practical. The implementers take this as a reason to reject ideal theory as an approach to principles of justice, while the idealists do not. In this paper, I argue that (...) we should reject the IP conception of practicality. The implementers make a mistake, then, by requiring principles of justice to be IP-practical. But the idealists make a mistake, too, by rejecting in general the requirement that principles of justice be practical. For there is a plausible alternative conception of practicality that political philosophers should accept: the “experimentation-learning” conception. EL-practicality makes for a more realistic and epistemically accessible standard of practicality, and thus should be welcomed by the realistically-inclined implementers. It also preserves a crucial role for ideal theory, so should be welcomed by the idealists, too. (shrink)

Wayne Norman argues that there should be more similarity or unity between the justifications for markets and the extra-legal norms that apply to market agents. I question two aspects of his claim. First, why does Norman refer to this view as a view about the self-regulation of market agents? Agents could self-regulate with many different norms, not necessarily norms informed by the justifications for markets. Second, asking for more similarity might create problems in terms of the liberty of market agents (...) to pursue other morally relevant objectives. How are we to balance these other relevant objectives and the objectives of markets? (shrink)

A recurrent challenge in applied ethics concerns the development of principles that are both suitably general to cover various cases and sufficiently exact to guide behavior in particular instances. In business ethics, two central approaches—stockholder and stakeholder—often fail by one or the other requirement. The author argues that the failure is precipitated by their reliance upon “universal” theory, which views the justification of principles as both independent of their context of application and universally appropriate to all contexts. The author develops (...) a contextual interpretation of “constructivism” as an alternative approach, and argues that this alternative meets the above challenge. (shrink)

The nature of basic equality (what it is that makes us all equals) can have implications not only for the question of the currency of egalitarian justice but also for that of its . The latter question is raised by G. A. Cohen in his critique of John Rawls's theory of justice. In this paper I argue that Rawlsian liberals might provide an answer to Cohen's critique by establishing two distinct kinds of basic equality, thus providing a of basic equality. (...) A first kind of basic equality gains moral relevance in the context of respectful relations between individuals, and establishes egalitarian duties between them. A second kind of basic equality gains moral relevance in the context of respectful relations between the state and individual citizens, and establishes egalitarian duties of the state toward citizens. The strength of Cohen's critique depends, in part, on the fact that Rawls identified only one kind of basic equality while at the same time wishing to defend a dualist account of individual and state duties. (shrink)

The Financial Crisis in Europe puts pressure on welfare states and its tax systems as well as on considerations of social justice. In this paper, we would like to explore the status of the idea of progressive taxation and its justification (especially the ‘ability-to-pay’ principle) in times of a financial crisis. We will discuss it within a social justice framework following David Miller—using the principles of (i) need, (ii) merit, and (iii) equality. We will conclude that progressive taxation can be (...) justified in the light of these three principles, even more so in the situation of a financial crisis that undermines decent living conditions for millions. The principle of need has to be given priority even if this move violates the principles of equality and desert. (shrink)

(2013). On Justice and Other Values: G.A. Cohen's Political Philosophy and the Problem of Trade-offs. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 1-24. doi: 10.1080/05568641.2013.774721.

Traditional outcome-orientated egalitarian principles require access to information about the size of individual holdings. Recent egalitarian political theory has sought to accommodate considerations of responsibility. Such a move may seem problematic, in that a new informational burden is thereby introduced, with no apparent decrease in the existing burden. This article uses a simple model with simulated data to examine the extent to which outcome egalitarianism and responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism (‘luck egalitarianism’) can be accurately applied where information is incomplete or erroneous. It (...) is found that, while outcome egalitarianism tends to be more accurately applied, its advantage is not overwhelming, and in many prima facie plausible circumstances luck egalitarianism would be more accurately applied. This suggests that luck egalitarianism cannot be rejected as utopian. Furthermore, while some argue that, in practice, luck egalitarianism is best realized indirectly, by securing equality of outcome, our evidence suggests that a luck egalitarian rule of regulation offers a far more accurate implementation of the luck egalitarian ideal than does an outcome egalitarian rule of regulation. (shrink)