The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in school closures around the world, leaving lasting negative impacts on many children. Given that such closures are justified public health measures, this raises the question of compensating children for school closures. In this article I address the question of compensation from the perspective of a popular theory of justice: luck egalitarianism. In doing so, I examine a problem with applying luck egalitarianism to children, called the agency assumption. I then argue this assumption results in a (...) dilemma for luck egalitarianism and suggest how this dilemma can be overcome. I argue that the resulting form of luck egalitarianism reveals something interesting about compensating children for school closures: luck egalitarianism requires us to address all bases of justice-relevant inequality among children—Covid-19-related and beyond. Although much of the current discussion of compensating children for such closures has focused narrowly on the need to make up for lost instruction time or to prevent reductions in educational achievement, I argue that a luck egalitarian conception of justice requires us to go beyond merely compensating children for educational losses and instead aim for radical equality in education. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically analyze Andrea Sangiovanni’s approach to international justice in the EU that he labels Reciprocity-based Internationalism (RBI). I aim to show that the type of reciprocity RBI operates with is not a morally attractive ground for distributive justice because it cannot cope with the case of member states’ inability to reciprocate the production of collective goods at the EU level. I illustrate this with the case of disability. I contrast RBI’s understanding of reciprocity with Christie Hartley’s (...) ‘relationship model’. I argue that the relationship model of reciprocity should characterize the EU, whose two core normative features are fraternity and equal status. The advantage of the relationship model is that it calls for a stronger type of solidarity than RBI does. That not only entails the willingness to support those worse-off members that cannot productively reciprocate other member states’ efforts at the EU level but also calls for a higher redistribution rate within the EU. In the paper, I make three comparisons between RBI’s ‘productive reciprocity’ and the relationship model. The first concerns non-EU-integration-related disadvantages; the second concerns membership cases, such as accession to federations and supranational unions, while the third comparison examines EU-integration-related disadvantages. I argue that the relationship model is a better alternative to RBI in both integration-related and non-integration-related disadvantages. Also, the relationship model can justify accession cases where previous historical ties are relevant, which are outside of the purview of RBI. (shrink)

In his 2011 book Justice for Hedgehogs, Ronald Dworkin makes a case for the view that genuine values cannot conflict and, moreover, that they are necessarily mutually supportive. I argue that by prioritizing coherence over the conceptual authenticity of values, Dworkin’s ‘interpretivist’ view risks neglecting what we care about in these values. I first determine Dworkin’s position on the monism/pluralism debate and identify the scope of his argument, arguing that despite his self-declared monism, he is in fact a pluralist, but (...) unusual in denying conflict between plural values. I then set out the structure of his interpretive theory of value relations and present a case of value conflict which I think interpretivism cannot deal with. Following this I argue that there are structural reasons why cases like this are liable to occur and suggest that interpretivism will frequently fail to properly reflect people’s moral commitments because reinterpretation of values has the side effect of excluding important moral commitments from our conceptions of values. While, as Dworkin argues, there are no brute moral facts concerning values, moral psychology constrains the range of acceptable conceptions of values. Given the shortcomings of interpretivism I conclude that we should acknowledge that values may conflict. (shrink)

Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre and Centre for Philosophy, Justice and Health, UCL, First Floor, Charles Bell House, 67–73 Riding House Street, London W1W 7EJ, UK. Tel.: +44 (0)20 7679 9417; Fax: +44 (0)20 7679 9426; Email: james-gs.wilson{at}ucl.ac.uk ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> . Abstract This paper aims to shed some light on the difficulties we face in constructing a generally acceptable normative framework for thinking about public health. It argues that there are three factors that (...) combine to make theorising about public health difficult, and which when taken together defeat simplistic top-down and bottom-up approaches to the design of public health policies. The first factor is the problem of complex systems, namely that the distribution of health both affects and is affected by the distribution of other goods. The second is the difficulty of defining the goals of public health: we still need to get clear about what we should mean by health in this context, and what the goals of public health should be. The third is that we stand in need of an account of how important health is relative to the importance of other goods that a just society should be trying to secure for its citizens. The paper argues that these problems should lead us to abandon the search for a ‘one-size fits all’ normative framework for thinking about public health. Rather, different approaches will be appropriate at different levels of abstraction. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper considers the social justice initiative of the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA). It focuses mainly on the two editions of the CNA's discussion document on social justice, and particularly on its emphasis on the principle of equity. The paper considers whether a coherent justification can be made for the CNA's espousal of equity, and the discussion focuses in turn on the principle of equity itself and on the CNA's position in relation to equity. A body of arguments supporting an (...) active moral role for professions, generally known as civic professionalism, provides a framework for exploring the CNA's role in this respect. Justifications for equity are explored in relation to the liberal‐contextualist spectrum, and civic professional arguments are subjected to the same structure of analysis. This is in turn related to evidence from the literature concerning nursing perceptions of equity. The paper concludes that contextualist justifications of equity and civic professionalism support one another more robustly than liberal justifications in relation to the CNA's initiative; and that they also sit more comfortably with the realities of the CNA's role in relation to nursing, and to the Canadian health care system. (shrink)

The WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health revealed that there is a 28-year disparity between the life expectancy in the poorest postcode and the richest postcode of Glasgow (CSDH, 2008). There are two sets of questions that it is important to ask about health inequalities like these: first, epidemiological questions about the mechanisms that cause inequalities in health and the measures that are effective in reducing them. Second, normative questions about which inequalities in health are wrong and why (...) they are wrong. The papers in this symposium result from the inaugural conference of UCL's Centre for Philosophy, Justice and Health (CPJH) and focus on the relationship between these epidemiological and normative questions. (shrink)

This paper examines G. A. Cohen's final criticism of Ronald Dworkin's theory of equality of resources, which targets its treatment of inequalities that arise when some individuals make luckier choices than others make. Rebutting Cohen's argument that such option luck inequalities fail to be just in an unqualified sense, the paper argues that choice does not merely render inequality legitimate but instead can sometimes make inequality just. It also examines the relationship between Cohen's criticism and the conception of equality developed (...) in his earlier influential paper,. (shrink)

Robert Sparrow (2014) argues that moral bioenhancement - the project of attempting to improving moral character via medical or biological means - ought to be of great concern to egalitarians. Importantly, Sparrow's argument is meant to apply regardless of whether such bioenhancement is likely to be successful. In this response, I argue against Sparrow's worries concerning successful moral bioenhancement. This response highlights that it may not be possible to separate moral questions of the permissibility of bioenhancement from scientific and conceptual (...) questions regarding its possibility. (shrink)

Standard tools used in societal risk management such as probabilistic risk analysis or cost–benefit analysis typically define risks in terms of only probabilities and consequences and assume a utilitarian approach to ethics that aims to maximize expected utility. The philosopher Carl F. Cranor has argued against this view by devising a list of plausible aspects of the acceptability of risks that points towards a non-consequentialist ethical theory of societal risk management. This paper revisits Cranor’s list to argue that the alternative (...) ethical theory responsibility-catering prioritarianism can accommodate the aspects identified by Cranor and that the elements in the list can be used to inform the details of how to view risks within this theory. An approach towards operationalizing the theory is proposed based on a prioritarian social welfare function that operates on responsibility-adjusted utilities. A responsibility-catering prioritarian ethical approach towards managing risks is a promising alternative to standard tools such as cost–benefit analysis. (shrink)

Within the small literature on homelessness in political philosophy, freedom-based accounts loom large. Such accounts, however, give rise to minimalism concerns: concerns that these accounts are too modest in what they demand for those who are homeless, particularly when homelessness is considered in the context of wealthier countries. In this paper, I consider the success of minimalism charges against freedom-based accounts of homelessness. I argue that whilst such charges are aptly levelled against two major freedom-based accounts, from Jeremy Waldron and (...) Christopher Essert, a third account can evade or respond to such charges. This is the autonomy-based account of homelessness. Although the autonomy-based account has come in for significant recent criticism on grounds of minimalism, I argue that properly understood and developed, it has the resources to ground a plausible account of homelessness. (shrink)

Naturalist theories of the meaning of life are sometimes criticised for not setting the bar high enough for what counts as a meaningful life. Tolstoy’s version of this criticism is that Naturalist theories do not describe really meaningful lives because they do not require that we connect our finite lives with the infinite. Another criticism of Naturalist theories is that they cannot adequately resolve the Absurd—the vast difference between how meaningful our actions and lives appear from subjective and objective viewpoints. (...) This article proposes a novel view, Optimistic Naturalism, in order to refute these criticisms. Optimistic Naturalism is the view that scientific and technological advancement might allow us to lead Truly Meaningful lives in a purely physical universe by enabling our actions, which we find meaningful partly because they might have particular infinite consequences, to actually have infinite consequences for life. The central tenets of Optimistic Naturalism are Infinite Consequence and Scientific Optimism. By explaining how the correct connection of the subjective and objective meaning of actions can result in True Meaning, Infinite Consequence provides a theoretical blueprint for resolving the Absurd. Scientific Optimism provides reason to think that it is possible to follow that blueprint in a purely physical universe. Therefore, when taken together, these two principles provide relatively plausible reasons to think that at least one kind of Naturalist theory can connect the finite with the infinite in a meaningful way and resolve the Absurd. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the claim that luck egalitarianism is incompatible with Marxian theory because it allows for the possibility of a ‘clean path’ to capitalism. It explores the nature and structure of the clean path argument generally and critically discusses luck egalitarian versions of the argument. It contends that the Marxian theory of exploitation can meet the challenge of the clean path to capitalism argument, that luck egalitarianism and the Marxian theory of exploitation are not incompatible, and that luck (...) egalitarianism can explain why Marxian exploitation is unjust. (shrink)

This paper defends the pertinence of global justice in the contemporary world. It accepts, for the sake of argument, Nagel's view that matters of justice arise only when political authority is asserted or exercised and, connectedly, his rejection of the cosmopolitan thesis. However, it challenges his conclusion that considerations of justice do not apply beyond the state. It argues that on any plausible account of the relationship between authority and justice international institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation, are now (...) authoritative in the right way to justify their evaluation from the point of view of justice. (shrink)

People evolved as part of an ecosystem, making use of the Earth’s bounty without reflection. Only when our ancestors developed the capacity for moral agency could we begin to reflect on whether we had taken in excess of our due. This outlines a ‘green libertarianism’ in which our property rights are grounded in fundamental ecological facts. It further argues that it is immune from two objections levelled at right- and left- libertarian theories of acquisition: that Robert Nozick, without justification, divided (...) people into those who were able to acquire unowned resources, and those would could not; and, that left-libertarian attempts, such as Hillel Steiner’s, to separate choice from circumstance cannot account for the fact that not only people’s decisions to have children, but even their decisions to continue living, affect people’s entitlements to use the natural world. (shrink)

:This paper argues that capitalist social relations do not presuppose wage-labour. The paper defends a functional definition of the capitalist relations of production, in terms of what Marx calls the ’subsumption of labour by capital’. I argue that there are at least four modes of subsumption, one transitional to and one transitional from the capitalist mode of production. Unlike the capitalist mode of production, capitalist relations of production are compatible with the absence of a labour market, and even with the (...) absence of workplace authority relations. The ambit of capitalist domination is therefore broader than typically thought. (shrink)

This paper argues that Cohen’s early work on Marxism, and his work in political philosophy, entails commitment to a distributive paradigm, that is, the view that exploitation obtains only if distributive injustice obtains. Cohen’s early espousal of that paradigm is explicitly reaffirmed in his defence of luck egalitarianism. The paper argues that Cohen’s distributive paradigm is neither the only defensible theory of exploitation, nor indeed the most plausible. It also shows that Cohen himself had doubts about the distributive paradigm, and (...) in fact came to reject it towards the end of his life. (shrink)

Kant’s theory of citizenship replaces the French revolutionary triptych of liberty, equality and fraternity with freedom (Freiheit), equality (Gleichheit) and civil self-sufficiency (Selbständigkeit). The interpretative question is what the third attribute adds to the first two: what does self-sufficiency add to free consent by juridical equals? This article argues that Selbständigkeit adds the idea of interdependent independence: the independent possession and use of citizens’ interdependent rightful powers. Kant thinks of the modern state as an organism whose members are agents possessed (...) of rightful (productive) powers, whose interdependent mode of exercise independently of unilateral permission matters for right. The empirical form of that ideal, according to Kant, is a republic of independent commodity producers. I will show that this reading of Selbständigkeit can consistently explain Kant’s disenfranchisement of women, wage labourers and landless farmers; that it offers a robust alternative to influential republican, libertarian and proprietarian interpretations of the Kantian state; and that it can buttress an original account of community as productive interdependence. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that reflection on competence and enfranchisement in relation to profound disability forces re-examination of the grounds of citizenship, with implications for theories of distributive justice in education. The primary purpose is less to point up that some people are disenfranchised without injustice; it is more to advance the view that, since enfranchisement is not an option for some profoundly disabled people, we require a conception of citizenship that is more sensitive to their distinctive needs and (...) interests. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to examine some problematic implications of the fact that individuals are prone to making systematic reasoning errors, for resource egalitarianism. I begin by disentangling the concepts of preferences, choices and ambitions, which are sometimes used interchangeably by egalitarians. Subsequently, I claim that the most plausible interpretation of resource egalitarianism takes preferences, not choices, as the site of responsibility. This distinction is salient, since preference-sensitive resource egalitarianism is faced with an important objection when applied to situations (...) in which the empirically reasonable assumption that individuals have different degrees of computational abilities is introduced. I first show that this objection can be raised in cases involving individuals who have incomplete information, but that it ultimately fails for such cases since we can appeal to higher order insurance markets in order to mitigate any initial concerns. I further claim, however, that the objection is much more powerful in cases involving individuals who have different reasoning skills, since the appeal to higher order insurance markets is no longer tenable. Consequently, the ideal principle of justice proposed by Dworkin is met with a new feasibility challenge. Finally, I claim that the problem of reasoning errors and various forms of cognitive biases also affect Dworkin’s non-ideal principle of justice, skewing the outputs of the hypothetical insurance mechanism in an unjustifiable manner. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to examine a novel view on distributive justice, i.e. limitarianism, which claims that it is morally impermissible to be rich. Our main goal is to assess the two arguments provided by Ingrid Robeyns in favour of limitarianism, namely the democratic argument and the argument from unmet urgent needs and the two distinct limitarian views which these arguments give rise to. We claim that strong limitarianism, which is supported by the democratic argument, should be rejected as (...) it fails to fully instantiate the value of political equality, while having some other unattractive implications as well. By contrast, we argue that weak limitarianism, which is supported by the argument from unmet urgent needs, should be endorsed, albeit in a qualified version which also takes responsibility constraints into consideration. (shrink)

According to luck egalitarianism, inequalities are justified if and only if they arise from choices for which it is reasonable to hold agents responsible. This position has been criticised for its purported harshness in responding to the plight of individuals who, through their own choices, end up destitute. This paper aims to assess the Harshness Objection. I put forward a version of the objection that has been qualified to take into account some of the more subtle elements of the luck (...) egalitarian approach. Revising the objection in this way suggests that the Harshness Objection has been overstated by its proponents: because luck egalitarians are sensitive to the influence of unequal brute luck on individuals’ choices, it is unlikely that there will be any real world cases in which the luck egalitarian would not have to provide at least partial compensation. However, the Harshness Objection still poses problems for the luck egalitarian. First, it is not clear that partial compensation will be sufficient to avoid catastrophic outcomes. Second, the Harshness Objection raises a theoretical problem in that a consistent luck egalitarian will have to regard it as unjust if any assistance is provided to the victim of pure option luck, even if such assistance could be provided at no cost. I consider three strategies the luck egalitarian could pursue to accommodate these concerns and conclude that none of these strategies can be maintained without either violating basic luck egalitarian principles or infringing upon individual liberty. (shrink)

This article analyses the relationship between rights and capabilities in order to get a better grasp of the kind of consequentialism that the capability theory represents. Capability rights have been defined as rights that have a capability as their object (rights to capabilities). Such a definition leaves the relationship between capabilities and rights to a great extent underspecified since nothing is said about the nature of those rights. Hence, it is not precluded that they are mere negative liberties, something that (...) capability theorists deny. On the other hand, to say that all capability rights are substantive in the sense that they themselves are capabilities (rights as capabilities) will in a significant number of cases fail to match well with our intuitions. This article presents an account of the relationship between rights and capabilities that avoids these problems of underspecification and of plausibility, respectively. First, it is argued that to take the idea of capability rights seriously, three new ‘list issues’ need to be addressed. Second, developing a point made by Nussbaum, it is argued that capability rights are to be defined as being purely instrumental. Whereas the resulting analysis of capability rights solves the problems of underspecification and plausibility, it raises doubts about the claim that the capability approach gives more importance to rights than do traditional forms of consequentialism. (shrink)

As lifestyle diseases put a heavy burden on health care expenditures, voices are raised and win in sound to hold people responsible for their unhealthy lifestyle. Most of the arguments in favour of responsibility are backward-looking. In this article, we describe the distributional consequences of these backward-looking measures and show that they are very harsh on those who regret a past unhealthy lifestyle. We demonstrate that it is possible to take policy measures which respect individual responsibility but which are at (...) the same time able to grant fresh starts to individuals who regret their past unhealthy lifestyle (which is an application of Fleurbaey (2005)). This ‘forgiving’ policy is confronted with a moral hazard problem, however. In general the regulator does not observe whether individuals really regret their past choices or they just pretend to have changed preferences in order to enjoy the compensatory measures for regretful people. In this article, we argue that the health setting offers interesting opportunities to move beyond this moral hazard problem and offer a solution through the use of redistributive instruments that are conditional on lifestyle changes. (shrink)

There has recently been a revived interest in temporal justice among political philosophers. For example, lone mothers have, on average, 30 h less free time per week than people in couples without children. Recent work has focussed on free time as a distinct distributive good, but this paper argues that it would be a mistake for a theory of temporal justice to focus only on shares of free time. First, I argue that the concept of free time does not succeed (...) in tracking discretionary control over time. All of time is a resource, and the particular moral relevance of free time must be established otherwise. Second, hours of time differ in use value, and we cannot fully track our concerns about the allocation of time, whether free or necessary, without taking this into account. We care about free time but also about ‘quality time’. To explain this observation, I develop an account of the value of time as a resource. The value of time periods differs with the prospects for which a time period can be used, that is, what we can do and be with it. What we are allocating when we are allocating time is not just hours; it is hours of time with a certain value. Finally, I argue that a concern for the value of time is compatible with a resourcist theory of temporal justice. (shrink)

Recently, there has been an effort to make libertarianism compatible with a redistributive inheritance tax: When the tax is levied, the taxpayer in question is already dead and as such she cannot be a bearer of rights. The state is therefore allowed to redistribute the (value of) the estate according to some distributive principle. I consider (and finally dismiss) four successive arguments, each concluding that the state is allowed to use the estate for redistributive purposes. I show that neither of (...) them is able to reconcile (right-) libertarianism with a redistributive inheritance tax. Instead of trying to square the circle, proponents of such a tax should meet the theoretical essentials of (right-) libertarianism head-on. (shrink)

Argument-giving reasons for a view-is our model of rational dispute resolution. Fogelin suggests that certain "deep" disagreements cannot be resolved in this way because features of their context "undercut the conditions essential to arguing" . In this paper we add some detail to Fogelin's treatment of intractable disagreements. In doing so we distinguish between his relatively modest claim that some disputes cannot be resolved through argument and his more radical claim that such disputes are beyond rational resolution. This distinction, along (...) with some ofthe detail we add to Fogelin's treatment, sheds some useful light on the project of informal logic. (shrink)

The family of theories dubbed ‘luck egalitarianism’ represent an attempt to infuse egalitarian thinking with a concern for personal responsibility, arguing that inequalities are just when they result from, or the extent to which they result from, choice, but are unjust when they result from, or the extent to which they result from, luck. In this essay I argue that luck egalitarians should sometimes seek to limit inequalities, even when they have a fully choice-based pedigree (i.e., result only from the (...) choices of agents). I grant that the broad approach is correct but argue that the temporal standpoint from which we judge whether the person can be held responsible, or the extent to which they can be held responsible, should be radically altered. Instead of asking, as Standard (or Static) Luck Egalitarianism seems to, whether or not, or to what extent, a person was responsible for the choice at the time of choosing, and asking the question of responsibility only once, we should ask whether, or to what extent, they are responsible for the choice at the point at which we are seeking to discover whether, or to what extent, the inequality is just, and so the question of responsibility is not settled but constantly under review. Such an approach will differ from Standard Luck Egalitarianism only if responsibility for a choice is not set in stone—if responsibility can weaken then we should not see the boundary between luck and responsibility within a particular action as static. Drawing on Derek Parfit’s illuminating discussions of personal identity, and contemporary literature on moral responsibility, I suggest there are good reasons to think that responsibility can weaken—that we are not necessarily fully responsible for a choice for ever, even if we were fully responsible at the time of choosing. I call the variant of luck egalitarianism that recognises this shift in temporal standpoint and that responsibility can weaken Dynamic Luck Egalitarianism (DLE). In conclusion I offer a preliminary discussion of what kind of policies DLE would support. (shrink)

Fairness is one of the most prominent values in the Ethics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) debate and, specifically, in the discussion on algorithmic decision-making (ADM). However, while the need for fairness in ADM is widely acknowledged, the very concept of fairness has not been sufficiently explored so far. Our paper aims to fill this gap and claims that an ethically informed re-definition of fairness is needed to adequately investigate fairness in ADM. To achieve our goal, after an introductory section aimed (...) at clarifying the aim and structure of the paper, in section “Fairness in algorithmic decision-making” we provide an overview of the state of the art of the discussion on fairness in ADM and show its shortcomings; in section “Fairness as an ethical value”, we pursue an ethical inquiry into the concept of fairness, drawing insights from accounts of fairness developed in moral philosophy, and define fairness as an ethical value. In particular, we argue that fairness is articulated in a distributive and socio-relational dimension; it comprises three main components: fair equality of opportunity, equal right to justification, and fair equality of relationship; these components are grounded in the need to respect persons both as persons and as particular individuals. In section “Fairness in algorithmic decision-making revised”, we analyze the implications of our redefinition of fairness as an ethical value on the discussion of fairness in ADM and show that each component of fairness has profound effects on the criteria that ADM ought to meet. Finally, in section “Concluding remarks”, we sketch some broader implications and conclude. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism. I argue that sufficientarianism combines three claims: a priority claim that we have non-instrumental reasons to prioritize benefits in certain ranges over benefits in other ranges; a continuum claim that at least two of those ranges are on one continuum; and a deficiency claim that the lower a range on a continuum, the more priority benefits in that range have. This characterization of sufficientarianism sheds new light on two long-standing philosophical (...) debates, namely about the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and about the common objections to sufficientarianism. (shrink)

Since the 16th National Congress of Communist Party of China (16th NCCPC) in 2002, more and more private entrepreneurs have appeared on the political arena in China. The article first describes the state of the phenomenon, and analyzes the reasons and the related ethical issues of private entrepreneurs participating in politics. For this purpose, the article begins by suggesting a framework of analyzing the ethical analysis of corporate political actions, then applies it to a case study of the phenomenon, and (...) finally, makes some policy suggestions to the government for regulating the practice of private entrepreneurs' involvement in politics. (shrink)

In recent work, Joseph Fishkin has helpfully enriched understandings of equality of opportunity as a feature of distributive justice schemes. One branch of his argument focuses upon the degree to which ‘merit’, as a function of talent and effort, is conceptually and practically vexing for these goals. While Thompson is in general agreement with the direction of Fishkin’s critiques and new offerings, in this article he extends and strengthens Fishkin’s analysis of talent, specifically focusing upon its role as a defensible (...) criterion for access to developmentally useful educational opportunities.Developing an account sympathetic to Fishkin’s contributions, Thompson provides a limited defense of talent as a morally relevant criterion for access to some educational opportunities. Of course, Thompson acknowledges that this relevance is not absolute and, therefore, points towards reasons why talent enjoys only this occasionally relevant status in relation to educational opportunities and what systemic issues ought to be avoided as a result. (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)

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)

With the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, John Rawls not only rejuvenated contemporary political philosophy but also defended a Kantian form of Enlightenment liberalism called “justice as fairness.” Enlightenment liberalism stresses the development and exercise of our capacity for autonomy, while Reformation liberalism emphasizes diversity and the toleration that encourages it. These two strands of liberalism are often mutually supporting, but they conflict in a surprising number of cases, whether over the accommodation of group difference, the design (...) of civic education, or the promotion of liberal values internationally. During the 1980’s, however, Rawls began to jettison key Kantian characteristics of his theory, a process culminating in the 1993 release of Political Liberalism and completing the transformation of justice as fairness into a Reformation liberalism. -/- Reconstructing Rawls argues that this transformation was a tragic mistake because it jeopardized the most important features of his theory, viz. the lexical priorities of right, liberty, and fair equality of opportunity as well as the difference principle. Controversially, this book contends that Rawls’s so-called “political turn,” motivated by a newfound interest in diversity and the accommodation of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and has pushed liberalism more broadly towards cultural relativism, be it in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. The book then demonstrates that the central elements of justice as fairness can only be defended within the context of a Kantian Enlightenment liberalism and that Rawls’s hope for a more pluralistic grounding for his theory, endorsed by a wide variety of belief systems present in modern democratic societies, is illusory. -/- Reconstructing Rawls is the first book to systematically compare Rawls’s and Kant’s theories and the first to offer an internal critique and reconstruction of justice as fairness, reconceiving it as a comprehensive, universalistic Kantian liberalism. By doing so, it gives us both the vision of a liberal world order—“a republicanism of all states, together and separately,” as Kant put it—and a mode of justification addressed to all men and women, not as members of particular nations, races, and faiths, but as human beings, as citizens of the world. In short, it reclaims Rawls for the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Are government restrictions on hate speech consistent with the priority of liberty? This relatively narrow policy question will serve as the starting point for a wider discussion of the use and abuse of nonideal theory in contemporary political philosophy, especially as practiced on the academic left. I begin by showing that hate speech (understood as group libel) can undermine fair equality of opportunity for historically-oppressed groups but that the priority of liberty seems to forbid its restriction. This tension between free (...) speech and equal opportunity creates a dilemma for liberal egalitarians. Nonideal theory apparently offers an escape from this dilemma, but after examining three versions of such an escape strategy, I conclude that none is possible: liberal egalitarians are indeed forced to choose between liberty and equality in this case and others. I finish the paper by examining its implications for other policy arenas, including markets in transplantable human organs and women’s reproductive services. (shrink)

Luck egalitarianism provides one powerful way of defending global egalitarianism. The basic luck egalitarian idea that persons ought not to be disadvantaged compared to others on account of his or her bad luck seems to extend naturally to the global arena, where random factors such as persons’ place of birth and the natural distribution of the world’s resources do affect differentially their life chances. Yet luck egalitarianism as an ideal, as well as its global application, has come under severe criticisms (...) in recent debate. My aim in this article is to restore plausibility to the luck egalitarian idea, and to suggest how it could then provide a plausible grounding for global egalitarianism. To do this, I will propose a more modest but also more defensible conception of luck egalitarianism that can also strengthen the case for global distributive justice. (shrink)

Contemporary Marxism may seem to have been eclipsed by the dominance of Left-liberalism in egalitarian thought. Since Rawls, the liberal tradition has made a robust contribution to the argument for distributive justice, whilst Marxist orthodoxy regarding the “withering away” of the state has seemed unhelpful in comparison. However, most Left liberals are wedded to several claims that constrain the ambition and depth of the egalitarian project, claims which can be shown to be wanting in light of the socialist commitment to (...) distribution on the basis of need, as well as the Marxist critique of alienation. This paper explores the potential of Marxism to address some of the limitations of contemporary liberal egalitarianism. (shrink)

Political philosophers are divided on the question of whether society should guide individuals in their projects and goals in light of the competing, yet overlapping, values of moral independence and human well-being. The lively neutralism-perfectionism debate appears to be significantly muted, however, when it comes to children who, all parties assume, should be guided by adults in their plans of life. Thus, in their stimulating new book, Family Values: the Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships, liberals Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift affirm (...) the role of the family in directing and enabling children’s flourishing. My paper challenges this distinction between parents and children in the liberal position to argue that the idea that it is appropriate to direct children to enable them to flourish, entails in fact, a commitment to policies that promote and enable the flourishing of all. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 190-227, May 2022. There is a sense of fairness that is distinctive of markets. This is fairness among economic competitors, competitive fairness. We regularly make judgments of competitive fairness about market participants, public policies and institutions. However, it is not clear to what these judgments refer, or what moral significance they have. This paper offers a rational reconstruction of competitive fairness in terms of non-domination. It first identifies competitive fairness as a (...) distinctive claim, advanced within markets in turn characterized as antagonistic, instrumental and procedural. It distinguishes competitive fairness from a number of familiar ideals with which it might be confused: legitimate expectation, equality of opportunity, sporting fairness and economic efficiency. While many exponents likely assume competitive fairness can be explained in terms of one of these ideals, in each case there are significant objections to doing so. Instead, the paper argues that the most promising justification of competitive fairness is under the republican ideal of non-domination, which can reconstruct many of the intuitive judgments of competitive fairness that we make in particular cases. However, it concludes, this explanation makes it difficult for exponents to continue to emphasize competitive fairness, given diverse other risks of domination, and to other values, in markets. (shrink)

While Risse and Wollner make an important contribution to theorising global justice and trade, I identify certain concerns with their approach and suggest an alternative that addresses these. First, I query their emphasis on subjection to the trade regime as a morally salient feature, suggesting their argument trades on an ambiguity, and fails to connect the trade regime, as a trigger, with their preferred account of trade-justice-as-non-exploitation. Second, I examine their treatment of the WTO, how they understand international organisations as (...) inheritors of states’ obligations, and how far an organisation like the WTO can or should be self-consciously reoriented towards justice-as-non-exploitation. Third, I ask how their account is distinct from existing approaches, and whether it makes sense to apply the same conception of justice across diverse agents and institutions. I conclude by sketching an alternative approach, which makes the justification of states’ policies to outsiders the central problem of trade justice. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper I address the distributive, inclusive, and relational dimensions of educational justice individually in relation to transnational migration. First, I thematize distributive issues with regard to immigrant students, the central question being whether these students are entitled to more or less educational resources as non-immigrant students. Second, I discuss to which extent and in which sense enabling immigrant students to participate fully in the social and political life of their receiving country is a demand of educational justice. Third, (...) I elaborate on which kinds of educational interactions – in the first place, which types of teaching – could perpetuate unjust treatment of those students in the form of disrespect. I claim that educational justice with regard to immigrated students consists in their enabling to full social and political participation by a mode of teaching that positively addresses students’ biographical experiences with migration, and by constructing school curricula which encourage inter-lingual, inter-cultural, and inter-contextual translations in the classroom. That is to say, that educational justice in context of migration is to be ultimately understood as relational justice, or more specific – as a matter of just pedagogical relations. (shrink)

In the wake of Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission, more companies are spending heavily on political speech, but the moral implications of doing so are not clear. Few business ethicists have directly addressed the moral legitimacy of corporate political speech and the conditions under which it may be morally permissible. My goal here is to outline the moral hazards associated with engaging in corporate political speech. I argue that whether one takes a narrow Friedman-style shareholder primacy view of (...) managerial duty, a broader stakeholder view, or an even more wide-ranging political corporate social responsibility view of the moral duties of business, various moral hazards must be taken into account in determining the moral legitimacy of corporate political speech. I discuss a number of moral hazards endemic to corporate political speech and suggest ways in which business practitioners might avoid those moral hazards. (shrink)

In their excellent monograph, Crimes, Harms and Wrongs, Andrew Simester and Andreas von Hirsch argue for an account of legitimate criminalisation based on wrongfulness, the Harm Principle and the Offence Principle, while they reject an independent anti-paternalism principle. To put it at its simplest my aim in the present paper is to examine the relationship between ‘the harms’ and ‘the wrongs’ of the authors’ title. I begin by comparing the authors’ version of the Harm and Offence Principle with some other (...) influential accounts. After examining the role wrongfulness plays in their work, I ask what there is left for their Harm and Offence Principles to do. In the light of the understanding and foundations of the Harm and Offence Principles proposed by the authors, I suggest that the answer is little or nothing. The wrongfulness constraint the authors place on their Offence Principle comes close to swallowing it up entirely. Furthermore the part of their Offence Principle that is not thus swallowed by wrongfulness leaves the account with a commitment that is probably best dropped. As far as their Harm Principle is concerned I suggest that the authors’ account of ‘harm’ is so broad that it lacks the resources to distinguish harm-based reasons from wrongfulness- or immorality-based reasons in any principled way. Among other things, I ask in this context, first, whether one can be harmed as one’s character deteriorates and, secondly, whether one is harmed by virtue of the serious wrong one does to another. What really drives the authors’ account of legitimate criminalisation, I believe, is wrongfulness together with an important, amorphous set of potential defeating conditions. They themselves accept such a picture so far as paternalism is concerned. I conclude that their account, which I think has considerable force, would lose little of any significance were their Harm and Offence Principles simply excised. More generally I suspect that a strong role for wrongfulness in an account of legitimate criminalisation is likely to put into serious question the plausibility of an independent principled role for harm and offence. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians contend that, while each person starts out with a claim to an equal quantity of advantage, she can forfeit this claim by making certain choices. The appeal of luck egalitarianism is that it seems to satisfy what this paper calls the moral tyranny constraint. According to this constraint, any acceptable theory of justice must preclude the possibility of an agent unilaterally, discretionarily, and foreseeably leaving others with less advantage under conditions of full compliance with the theory. This paper (...) argues that claim forfeiture is built into luck egalitarianism specifically to preclude such moral tyranny. However, it contends that the dominant interpretation of luck egalitarianism fails to fully satisfy the moral tyranny constraint. It offers an alternative interpretation that both eliminates the possibility of moral tyranny and rescues the position from two other prominent objections that have been directed against luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

If D commits a wrong against V, D typically incurs a corrective duty to V. But how should we respond if V has false beliefs about whether she is harmed by D’s wrong? There are two types of cases we must consider: those in which V is not harmed but she mistakenly believes that she is those in which V is harmed but she mistakenly believes that she is not. I canvass three views: The Objective View, The Subjective View and (...) The Mixed View. The Objective View holds that V’s claim depends on the correct account of harm, rather than her false beliefs, and so D has a duty to offer damages to V in but not in in order to compensate her. The Subjective View holds that, for broadly anti-perfectionist reasons, V’s claim depends on her sincere beliefs, even if they are mistaken, and so D has a duty to compensate V in but not in. The Mixed View holds that we should defer to her beliefs in but not in, so D has a duty to compensate her in both cases. In this article, I argue that we should accept The Mixed View. (shrink)