It is often claimed that liberalism is falsely and perniciously universalist. I take this charge seriously, exploring three positions: the communitarians’, Rorty’s, and that of “comprehensive” liberalism. After explaining why universalism is thought impossible, I examine the communitarian view that value is determined within communities and argue that it results in a form of relativism that is unacceptable. I next discuss Richard Rorty’s liberal acceptance of “conventionalism” and explain how, despite his rejection of universalism, Rorty remains a liberal. I then (...) present a defense of universalism, based in part on arguments that parallel Thomas Nagel’s arguments in defense of a “view from nowhere” and Jean Hampton’s objectivist arguments against Rawls’s moves to a “merely political” theory. That defense requires that we can distance ourselves from our ends to make moral judgments shorn of all partialities. (shrink)

This paper begins with a critical part and concludes with a constructive part. First, with reference to a definition of liberalism and using immanent critique, I show deficiencies in the claims of four selfprofessed postliberals to have articulated non-liberal positions. Then, I argue that postliberal political theory consists in acknowledging that in political contexts some voluntary groups as such can be moral, not merely political, agents. Analysis of what moral autonomy is for persons as empirical (not noumenal) agents reveals that (...) that account can be transposed to some groups. A key common element among the four rejected positions is their emphasis on the normative authority of some practices as over against principles. My proposal congeals that normative emphasis on the social into group-moral authority. Recognition of some voluntary groups’ episodic moral authority over their members is non-liberal but not anti-liberal. (shrink)

Integrative social contracts theory is a novel approach to normative questions and has been widely evaluated, discussed, and applied by academics and practitioners alike. While the "I" in ISCT leads the title, it has not received the analytical attention it deserves, especially since the "integrative" component in ISCT is multifaceted and at the conceptual core of the theory. In this paper we therefore take a closer look at two facets of integration. First, we examine the normative integration that takes place (...) in ISCT. For our analysis we draw on theories of legitimacy and obligation. Second, given that empirical inquiry is an important part of the normative integration, we take a closer look at how research that has applied or used ISCT has embraced the empirical components of the theory. This analysis of the normative–empirical integration focuses on problems and realities of empirical inquiry in ISCT. (shrink)

At least since the publication of the monumental Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, the "stakeholder theory" originated by R. E. Freeman has engrossed much of the business ethics literature. Subsequently, some advocates have moved a bit too quickly and without proper definition or argument. They have exceeded Freeman's intentions which are more libertarian and free-market than is often thought. This essay focuses on the versions of stakeholder theory directly authored or coauthored by Freeman in an effort to recover Freeman's intentions (...) and the argumentative justification of stakeholder theory. It then argues that Freeman's appeal to legal, economic, and ethical constraints ultimately produce arguments that are invalid. One can thoroughly support legislation constraining corporations or seeking to prevent age discrimination, market monopolies, and externalities and regret the extent that capitalism is heir to such shortcomings without it following that business beneficiaries should be changed from stockholders to stakeholders and the latter should be given serious decision-making power. Further, stakeholder theory neither defines nor battles any obvious opposition. Hence, it is difficult to see what it changes about business management. In short, stakeholder theory either changes too much about business, or nothing important at all. Efforts to supplant or improve the reigning theory of capitalism will have to do better. (shrink)

This article assesses the quality of Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) as a social contract argument. For this purpose, it embarks on a comparative analysis of the use of the social contract model as a theory of political authority and as a theory of social justice. Building on this comparison, it then develops four criteria for any future contractarian theory of business ethics (CBE). To apply the social contract model properly to the domain of business ethics, it should be: (1) (...) self-disciplined, i.e., not aspire results beyond what the contract model can realistically establish; (2) argumentative, i.e., it should seek to provide principles that are demonstrative results of the contractarian method; (3) task-directed, i.e., it should be clear what the social contract thought-experiment is intended to model; and (4) domain-specific, i.e., the contractarian choice situation should be tailored to the defining problems of business ethics. (shrink)

Traditional philosophy has been under attack from several quarters in recent years. The traditional philosopher views philosophy as an armchair discipline relying, for the most part, on reason and reflection. Some philosophers doubt the legitimacy of this type of inquiry. Their arguments usually occur along two dimensions. Some argue that the primary data source for the armchair philosopher--intuition--does not provide evidence for philosophical theories. Others argue that conceptual analysis, which is the preferred method of inquiry for armchair philosophers, can't yield (...) the results the philosopher is looking for, since concepts like 'knowledge' or 'free-will' vary from culture to culture or even between persons within a culture. Finally, some philosophers argue that we should abandon the armchair program because philosophy should be an empirical enterprise continuous with the sciences. I argue that attempts to undermine intuition fail and that one can justify the evidential status of intuition in a non-question begging way. I then argue that attacks on the belief in shared concepts do not succeed because they often conflate the nature of scientific objects with those of interest to the philosopher. However, if concepts do vary from culture to culture, I show that the philosopher need not abandon the armchair. She can still do conceptual analysis but it will be only the entry point into the philosophical dialogue. I apply this approach to epistemology arguing that the central epistemic questions ought to be the existential and the normative. This approach helps to vindicate epistemic internalism. (shrink)

This paper examines the tensions in classical liberal theory ? particularly that of Locke and Kant ? between reason and conscience, and in contemporary liberal theory between the demands of reasonableness and the dictates of conscience. We intend to show that the relationship between reasonableness and conscience is both unstable and necessary; on occasions there seems to exist a moral obligation to provide public reasons for our conduct and at other times the silent call of conscience precludes public justification of (...) conscientious objection or dissent. (shrink)

Political legitimacy is a virtue of political institutions and of the decisions—about laws, policies, and candidates for political office—made within them. This entry will survey the main answers that have been given to the following questions. First, how should legitimacy be defined? Is it primarily a descriptive or a normative concept? If legitimacy is understood normatively, what does it entail? Some associate legitimacy with the justification of coercive power and with the creation of political authority. Others associate it with the (...) justification, or at least the sanctioning, of existing political authority. Authority stands for a right to rule—a right to issue commands and, possibly, to enforce these commands using coercive power. An additional question is whether legitimate political authority is understood to entail political obligations or not. Most people probably think it does. But some think that the moral obligation to obey political authority can be separated from an account of legitimate authority, or at least that such obligations arise only if further conditions hold. (shrink)

When officials of some political society portray their state as legitimate - and when do they not! - they intend to be laying claim to a large body of rights, the rights in which their state's legitimacy allegedly consists. The rights claimed are minimally those that states must exercise if they are to retain effective control over their territories and populations in a world composed of numerous autonomous states. Often the rights states are trying to claim in asserting their legitimacy (...) go far beyond this minimum. But whether a state's claims are modest or extravagant, the rights claimed invariably fall into three categories. The first category is a set of rights held over or against those persons who fall within the state's claimed legal jurisdiction - what I will call rights over subjects. The second is a set of rights claimed against those persons without the state's jurisdiction - what we can call rights against aliens. And the third category is a set of rights held over a particular geographical territory (whose extent largely determines the scope of the state's jurisdiction) - call these rights over territory. The rights states claim in these three categories jointly define their conception of the sovereignty that they (or their governments or institutions) enjoy, sovereignty that is more extensive (strong, absolute) as the rights asserted in these categories are more numerous and wide-ranging. It is principally on the third of these categories - on the nature and possible moral bases for the claims states make over geographical territories - that I will focus in this essay. The modern state is a territorial entity, and it claims to be legitimately so. Sidgwick was surely correct when he wrote that "it seems essential to the modern conception of a State that its government should exercise supreme dominion over a particular portion of the earth's surface ... Indeed, in modern political thought the connection between a political society and its territory is so close that the two notions almost blend." Common sense seems to view the territoriality of the modern state as natural and unquestionable. That, perhaps, explains why so little has been written, either by contemporary theorists or by the authors of the classics of modern political philosophy, on the moral bases of the modern state's claimed rights over territory. States typically claim not only legal authority over their territories (i.e., that their rights over those territories should be affirmed by international law), but moral authority as well - at the very least insofar as the relevant principles of international law are thought themselves to have moral weight. My concern here, then, will be with the possible moral bases for the kinds of claims made over geographical territories by typical modern states. (shrink)

Principles of distributive justice are normative principles designed to guide the allocation of the benefits and burdens of economic activity.

This article assesses Jean Hampton’s feminist contractarianism by considering the way in which she draws together the contradictory positions of Hobbes and Kant to produce a test for exploitation in personal relationships. The ways in which this work fits with her other analysis of retribution, gratitude and self-worth are examined. Hampton’s work is evaluated in the context of Carole Pateman’s argument that moral theories distract from the political analysis of who has a voice in relationships. Hampton’s work presumes the social (...) and economic structures that Pateman has done so much to understand. It is useful as a claim for justice in personal relationships, to be considered as part of consciousness-raising or public debate. (shrink)

This paper operates from the assumption that revolution is a legitimate tool for members of oppressed minority groups to secure their rights. I argue that this type of robust right of revolution cannot be derived from Locke’s justification of revolution in the Second Treatise. For Locke, revolution is justified when the government uses its power in a manner contrary to the principles on which the state was established. Whether or not an action is contrary to these principles is determined by (...) the people as a whole (i.e., the majority). Members of oppressed minority groups, therefore, would be justified in exercising their right of revolution only if they could garner support from a majority of the citizenry. In many instances, satisfying this criterion would require oppressed individuals to receive support from their oppressors—a practical impossibility. Since this requirement is rooted in Locke’s account of the origins of civil society, if it is the case that revolution is a legitimate tool for members of oppressed minority groups to secure their rights, then it would be necessary to look elsewhere for theoretical support to justify a robust right of revolution. I argue that such support can be found in a deontological account of civil society. (shrink)

moral foundation of liberalism can be defended in one of three ways: (1) as a conception one accepts as a result of one’s affirmation of political liberalism, (2) as a conception one must affirm as a presupposition for political liberalism, or (3) as a philosophical truth about practical reason and persons. The first option makes it impossible to distinguish a moral consensus from a modus vivendi . The second renders the moral foundation of liberalism dogmatic because it affirms a moral (...) foundation for which no justification is provided. Since there are good reasons for rejecting (1) and (2), that leaves option (3). I argue that (3) should be the preferred option for liberals who advance liberalism as a political doctrine with a moral foundation. (shrink)

The scale and asymmetry of commercial technology firms’ power over people through data, combined with the increasing involvement of the private sector in public governance, means that increasingly, people do not have the ability to opt out of engaging with technology firms. At the same time, those firms are increasingly intervening on the population level in ways that have implications for social and political life. This creates the potential for power relations of domination, and demands that we decide what constitutes (...) the legitimacy to act on the public. Business ethics and private law are not designed to answer these questions, which are primarily political. If people have lost the right to disengage with commercial technologies, we may need to hold the companies that offer them to the same standards to which we hold the public sector. This paper first defines the problem and demonstrates that it is significant and widespread, and then argues for the development of an overarching normative framework for what constitutes non-domination with regard to digital technologies. Such a framework must involve a nuanced idea of political power and accountability that can respond not only to the legality of corporate behaviour, but to its legitimacy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to critically inquire into some of the interpretations of what appears to me to be the core of Hobbes's political philosophy: his concept of political obligation. And in so doing I will provide a new way of reading the problem of obedience in Hobbes, one that does not dismiss the limits of political obligation and the theological context that surrounds it.

Authority figures permeate our daily lives, particularly, our political lives. What makes authority legitimate? The current debates about the legitimacy of authority are characterised by two opposing strategies. The first establish the legitimacy of authority on the basis of the content of the authority’s command. That is, if the content of the commands meet some independent normative standard then they are legitimate. However, there have been many recent criticisms of this strategy which focus on a particular shortcoming – namely, its (...) seeming inability to account for who can legitimately command whom. This is the basis of the second strategy, which attempts to characterize the normative relationship that underlies and makes possible authoritative commands. The central point of Part I is that these two strategies are, in fact, not opposed and both raise questions which a theory of legitimacy must answer. If this is the case, then we need to ask: how ought we to determine the legitimacy both of the content of commands as well as who can command whom? Part II will answer this question. Starting with the question of standing, I argue that we ought not to look for normative principles outside of the institutions in which authority is embedded. Rather, one ought to start by elaborating the ontology of institutions in which a sui generis form of normativity arises. A joint commitment account of social ontology provides the tools necessary to see how the direction obligations emerge concurrently with the formation of institutions. Similarly, the question of content can be answered by paying close attention to the social ontology of institutions. We need not look beyond the internal constitutive standards of the institution itself. The constitutive standards provide an internal criterion by which the legitimacy of commands can be established. (shrink)

In this article I introduce the notion of crucial evidence and I use it to shed light on an ongoing scholarly controversy in Hobbes studies, namely whether Hobbes holds a prudential or a deontological theory of contractual obligation. Even though there is important evidence for both readings, I argue that there is crucial evidence for interpreting Hobbes’s account in a deontological fashion.

This article argues that we can improve the way we teach early modern political philosophy if we introduce students to alternative views about the development of the state. First, it summarizes the work of contemporary philosophers and historians who are critical of the modern state. Second, it points out ways in which early social contract theorists take the state for granted. Third, it argues that alternative views about the development of the state can help students take a more critical perspective (...) on standard works of early modern political philosophy. Fourth, it argues that these alternative views will help students better understand dissenting voices in early modern political philosophy. (shrink)

A number of academic disciplines are seeking to rearticulate the distinction between the natural and the normative by rethinking the position humans occupy within nature. This article surveys this interdisciplinary debate in which the possibility of understanding humans as normative beings is often called into question. The aim of this survey is to identify the stakes involved in such debates and to reveal the underlying policy dimension of current discussions about human nature. This article concludes by arguing that the main (...) target of the current battles for recognition between disciplines is the `public', which is becoming the ultimate epistemic authority in a game with high political stakes. Key Words: humanity • normativity • performativity • political theory • public understanding of science. (shrink)