Loyalty, by making us identify with others, takes us beyond the very limited self (roughly the self of the Hobbesian natural condition) that is involved in selfishness and that is usually involved when people consider that self-concern, that aspect of human nature that must be limited if we are to live peaceably, is the main stumbling block to morality. Loyalty can thus be thought of as a version of altruism, as an inclination to identify with others and to share their (...) good. That is to say, loyalty seems opposed to the troublesome aspects of self-concern. We would, nevertheless, be mistaken to conclude that it must simply be a good in people, something to be encouraged. The primary issue is: Which loyalties should be encouraged? There is no general truth about the value of loyalty as such. (shrink)

It is universally agreed that involuntary unemployment is an evil for unemployed individuals, who lose both income and the non-pecuniary benefits of paid employment, and for society, which loses the productive labor that the unemployed are unable to expend. It is nearly as widely agreed that there is at least a prima-facie case for alleviating this evil – for reasons of justice and/or benevolence and/or social order. Finally, there is little doubt that the evils of involuntary unemployment cannot be adequately (...) addressed in contemporary societies without state intervention – whether through monetary or fiscal policies, cash payments or other subsidies to the unemployed, direct provision of employment by the state, or some combination of these measures. (shrink)

The two leading traditions of theorizing about democratic legitimacy are liberalism and deliberative democracy. Liberals typically claim that legitimacy consists in the consent of the governed, while deliberative democrats typically claim that legitimacy consists in the soundness of political procedures. Despite this difference, both traditions see the need for legitimacy as arising from the coercive enforcement of law and regard legitimacy as necessary for law to have normative authority. While I endorse the broad aims of these two traditions, I believe (...) they both misunderstand the nature of legitimacy. In this essay I argue that the legitimacy of a law is neither necessary nor sufficient for its normative authority, and I argue further that the need for legitimacy in law arises regardless of whether the law is coercively enforced. I thus articulate a new understanding of the legitimacy and authority of law. (shrink)

In recent work, Cheryl Misak has developed a novel justification of deliberative democracy rooted in Peircean epistemology. In this article, the author expands Misak's arguments to show that not only does Peircean pragmatism provide a justification for deliberative democracy that is more compelling than the justifications offered by competing liberal and discursivist views, but also fixes a specific conception of deliberative politics that is perfectionist rather than neutralist. The article concludes with a discussion of whether the `epistemic perfectionism' implied by (...) the pragmatist argument could be endorsed by liberal democrats. Key Words: deliberative democracy • epistemology • liberalism • Cheryl Misak • Charles Peirce • perfectionism • pragmatism • truth. (shrink)

Theories of happiness usually consider happiness as something that matters to us from a first-person perspective. In this paper, I defend a conception of public happiness that is distinct from private or first-person happiness. Public happiness is presented as a feature of the system of right that defines the political relationship between citizens, as opposed to their personal mental states, desires or well-being. I begin by outlining the main features of public happiness as an Enlightenment ideal. Next, I relate the (...) distinction between the political and the personal to the distinction between having normative reasons for a particular political arrangement and merely having a ‘pro-attitude’ towards a state of affairs that accords with one's preferred definition of happiness. Following this, I demonstrate why well-being, understood as a normative rather than a purely descriptive conception of personal happiness, nevertheless cannot serve as a normative reason in the political domain. In the final section, I show why normative reason-giving matters for the relationship between citizens, and how such reason-giving relates to public happiness. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper suggests a much more serious purpose for an education in music-making than play or pleasure or even the training of professional musicians. It presents and explicates a possible connection between musical performance training and the development of practical wisdom. Music in performance constitutes in effect a form of virtuous conduct, where one learns through doing and thereafter comes to love and to be capable of wise practical judgement. Excellence in this field requires the exercise of a species (...) of reasoning and judgement analogous to Aristotelian practical wisdom, and develops the distinctive qualities of character and vision of the practically wise person. (shrink)

R. M. Hare has argued for and defended a ‘two-level’, view of moral agency. He argues that moral agents ought to rely on the rules of ‘intuitive moral thinking’ for their ‘everyday’ moral judgments. When these rules conflict or when we do not have a rule at hand, we ought to ascend to the act-utilitarian,‘critical’ level of moral thinking. I argue that since the rules at the intuitive level of moral thinking necessarily conflict much more often than Hare supposes, and (...) since we often do not have ready-made rules for our moral judgments, we must necessarily use critical moral thinking very frequently. However, act-utilitarian judgements at this level will sharply conflict with our strongly held ‘intuitive’ moral convictions. I show that Hare's attempt to balance these two aspects of moral judgment requires us to simultaneously adopt two conflicting sets of moral standards, and thus an attempt to inculcate such standards constitutes a ‘schizophrenic’ moral education. Finally, I briefly outline an alternative conception of moral education, based on Aristotelian phronesis. (shrink)

This paper discusses how to deal with research that threatens to cause harm to society—in particular, whether and in what cases bans and moratoria are appropriate. First, it asks what normative resources philosophy of science may draw on to answer such questions. In an effort to presuppose only resources acknowledgeable across different comprehensive worldviews, it is claimed that the aim of credibility provides a good basis for normative reflection. A close analysis reveals an inner tension inherent in the pursuit of (...) credibility, referred to as the paradox of credibility: Although the aim of credibility involves the goal of being trusted, the immediate pursuit of the goal of being trusted as much as possible can run counter to and undermine the pursuit of credibility. From this inner tension, considerations are derived on what it means to uncompromisingly strive for trustworthiness. When applied to the problem of harmful research, it becomes apparent that it is important to distinguish between different types of cases. Some cases allow science to prevent harm while relinquishing credibility in the associated research area. In contrast, other cases demand preserving subject-specific scientific credibility in order to manage potential harm. (shrink)

Public reason views hold that the exercise of political power must be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. A growing number of philosophers argue that this reasonable acceptability principle (RAP) can be justified by appealing to the value of civic friendship. They claim that a valuable form of political community can only be achieved among the citizens of pluralistic societies if they refrain from appealing to controversial ideals and values when justifying the exercise of political power to one another. This paper (...) argues against such accounts. In order to justify RAP, one must explain and defend a conception of reasonableness. Civic friendship is unfit to perform this task, rendering it unable to ground public reason alone. Meanwhile, pluralist views that combine civic friendship with other considerations in order to specify RAP either fail or make civic friendship a spare wheel in the argument for public reason. (shrink)

According to most contemporary theorists, free riding on the cooperative contributions of others is unfair. At the same time, obligations to contribute to cooperative schemes can compel conformity with conventional practices, and can do so to a degree that poses a real threat to individuality. This paper exposes this tension between fairness and individuality, and proposes a way to resolve it. The resolution depends on an alternative approach to understanding fairness—one that appeals to the relational goods fairness is meant to (...) maintain. In particular, norms of fairness protect against the interactions within a relationship becoming disrespectful. Many instances of free riding are indeed disrespectful and hence unfair. But this is not always so: one can choose to live a lifestyle that fails to return the benefits their community provides without disrespecting one's fellows. It is thus possible to free ride without being unfair, and so duties of fairness need not add to those already formidable forces that threaten to extinguish valuable individuality. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente texto trata de la teoría de Charles Larmore, más precisamente, de las relaciones entre las concepciones de desacuerdo razonable, de pluralismo y de liberalismo. Tal teoría tiene como características el intuicionismo racional, contextualismo y defiende una posición realista de la moralidad. Palabras clave: desacuerdo razonable, pluralismo, liberalismo, intuicionismo, contextualismo.

According to recently influential conceptions of public reasoning, citizens have the right to demand of each other ‘public justifications’ for controversial political action. On this view, only arguments that all reasonable citizens can affirm from within their diverse ethical standpoints can count as legitimate justifications for political action. Both proponents and critics often assume that the case for this expectation derives from the special justificatory burden created by the systematically coercive character of political action. This paper challenges that assumption. While (...) conceding that citizens who propose to deploy the coercive apparatus of the state to enforce controversial legislation owe their fellows a justification that overcomes the strong presumption against coercing agents, it denies that this consideration can explain why public justifications are also required. Having argued that the public justification requirement is not among the justification conditions for public coercion, the paper then proposes an alternative rationale for the expectation that political action be publicly justified. On this alternative, the case for the public justification requirement depends on democratic citizens’ standing as legislative co-authors, and not on considerations having to do with their liability as private individuals to coercion at the hands of the state. (shrink)

According to the deliberative view of democracy, the legitimacy of democratic politics is closely tied to whether the use of political power is accompanied by a process of rational deliberation among the citizenry and their representatives. Critics have questioned whether this level of deliberative capacity is even possible among modern citizenries--due to limitations of time, energy, and differential backgrounds--which therefore calls into question the very possibility of this type of democracy. In my dissertation, I counter this line of criticism, arguing (...) that deliberative democrats and their critics have both idealized the wrong kind of citizen deliberation. Citizen deliberation should not be concerned with the indeterminate project of "translating" abstract democratic principles and values into everyday cases of political problem-solving. Instead, deliberation should take the form of analogy, just as we already find it in everyday politics and affairs. When ordinary citizens use analogies, they do not derive decisions from general principles or values, but they still reason nonetheless. Seen from this analogical perspective, deliberative democracy is already a practical reality to a large degree. When an election is on the horizon, a campaign season arises in which debates, forums, and "barstool" dialogues exponentially increase the amount of citizen deliberation. In these settings, citizens can readily be seen to be mapping analogous past candidates, elections, issues, and problems onto those currently on the ballot so as to reason about them. Consequently, analogical reasoning allows citizens to treat the majority rule mechanisms that proliferate in real politics as "deliberative outlets," which is to say, as catalysts of deliberation akin to the "creative outlets" that catalyze self-expression in the arts. While citizens may recognize majority rule mechanisms as catalysts of deliberation, many democratic theorists will hesitate to embrace this vision of the practical reality of deliberative politics. Isn't analogical reasoning too low in rigor to be placed at the heart of the deliberative ideal? I develop two arguments to explain the foundational role analogy plays in deliberation and to counter such critics. First, I draw on the explosion of research on analogical reasoning over the past two decades to show that it is far more rigorous and systematic than many suppose. Second, I argue that to the extent that citizen deliberation is concerned with rational planning, rather than just reasoning in general, analogical reasoning is logically superior. When we reason about what to do, we make plans that incorporate predictions about what is likely to ensue when a given course of action is selected. However, as soon as predictions enter into deliberation, its underlying logic changes as well. The reason for this change in logic is that as our probabilistic reasoning expands, the probability of its conclusions degenerates. Therefore, when assessing probabilities, we no longer should seek decisions derived from long, elegant chains of reasoning that connect our various options to generalities like values and principles. Instead, what we need is "short and sweet," or terse, humble lines of reasoning, which are more congruent with this form of deliberation. Thus, to the extent that democratic deliberation is involved in rational planning, it calls not for the elegant, deductive kind of reasoning idealized by proponents and critics of deliberative democracy alike. Instead, democratic deliberation calls for the "short and sweet," analogical kind of decision-making we associate with ordinary citizens already. After all, as research has shown, analogies are a much preferred and rigorous way by which even experts engage in probabilistic reasoning. By focusing on analogical reasoning, I therefore conclude that the practical reality of deliberative democracy should be recognized in ways that might ordinarily be dismissed. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

Among those who reject the Epicurean claim that death is not bad for the one who dies, it is popularly held that death is bad for the one who dies, when it is bad for the one who dies, because it deprives the one who dies of the good things that otherwise would have fallen into her life. This view is known as the deprivation account of the value of death, and Fred Feldman is one of its most prominent defenders. (...) In this paper, I explain why I believe that Feldman’s argument for the occasional badness of death fails. While staying within an Epicurean framework, I offer an alternative that adequately accounts for a significant range of widely held intuitions about prudential value. My account implies that death is almost always good for the one who dies, yet often less good than not dying. Finally, I discuss some puzzles that remain for my account and hint at possible ways to address them. (shrink)

Several Dutch politicians have recently argued that medical voluntary euthanasia laws should be extended to include healthy elderly citizens who suffer from non-medical ‘existential suffering’. In response, some seek to show that cases of medical euthanasia are morally permissible in ways that completed life euthanasia cases are not. I provide a different, societal perspective. I argue against assessing the permissibility of individual euthanasia cases in separation of their societal context and history. An appropriate justification of euthanasia needs to be embedded (...) in a wider solidaristic response to the causes of suffering. By classifying some suffering as ‘medical’ and some as ‘non-medical’, most societies currently respond to medical conditions in importantly different ways than they do to non-medical suffering. In medical cases, countries like the Netherlands have a health care, health research and public health system to systematically assign responsibilities to address causes of medical suffering. We lack such a system for non-medical suffering among elderly citizens, which makes completed life euthanasia importantly different from euthanasia in medical cases. Because of this moral ‘responsibility gap’, focusing on the permissibility of completed life euthanasia in separation of wider societal duties to attend to possible causes is societally inappropriate. To spell out this objection in more philosophical terms, I introduce the concept of acts that are morally permissible but contextually problematic. (shrink)

In this article, I develop a tension in the capabilities approach between committing to political liberalism and ensuring full capability for all persons. In particular, I argue that the capabiliti...

Those who wish to abolish or restrict the use of non-human animals in so-called factory farming and/or experimentation often argue that these animal use practices are incommensurate with animals’ moral status. If sound, these arguments would establish that, as a matter of ethics or justice, we should voluntarily abstain from the immoral animal use practices in question. But these arguments can’t and shouldn’t be taken to establish a related conclusion: that the moral status of animals justifies political intervention to disallow (...) or significantly diminish factory farming and animal experimentation. In this paper, we set out to do two things: First, we argue that while the arguments mentioned above may establish the moral impermissibility or injustice of the practices they condemn, they are not sufficient to justify political interventions or social policies to abolish or restrict such practices. It is one thing to argue that some moral imperative or imperative of justice exists, and quite another thing to call for the use of political power to induce compliance with that imperative. Our second task is to assess the prospects for developing an argument that is sufficient to justify political interventions to restrict or abolish the use of non-human animals in factory farming or experimentation. Beyond establishing the immorality or injustice of animal consumption or experimentation, one must show that the interventions in question constitute legitimate use of political power. Would prohibiting or discouraging animal use be legitimate? We attempt to answer this question within the context of fundamental liberal constraints on the legitimate use of coercive political power. (shrink)

John Rawls claims that public reasoning is the reasoning of ‘equal citizens who as a corporate body impose rules on one another backed by sanctions of state power’. Drawing on an amended version of Michael Bratman’s theory of shared intentions, I flesh out this claim by developing the ‘civic people’ account of public reason. Citizens realize ‘full’ political autonomy as members of a civic people. Full political autonomy, though, cannot be realised by citizens in societies governed by a ‘constrained proceduralist’ (...) account of democratic self-government, or the ‘convergence’ account of public justification formulated recently by Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier. (shrink)

Despite women’s increased labor force participation, household divisions of labor remain highly unequal. Properly implemented, gender egalitarian political interventions such as work time regulation, dependent care provisions, and family leave initiatives can induce families to share work more equally than they currently do. But do these interventions constitute legitimate uses of political power? In this article, I defend the political legitimacy of these interventions. Using the conception of citizenship at the heart of political liberalism, I argue that citizens would accept (...) political interventions aimed at protecting the ‘genuinely available option’ to enact gender egalitarian lifestyles. More strongly still, I argue that under certain circumstances, citizens would insist on the enactment of political interventions to protect this option. According to political liberalism’s constraints on legitimacy, this insistence renders these interventions not only legitimate but positively mandatory. It is legitimate for a state to exercise power to preserve the genuinely available option to enact a gender egalitarian lifestyle, and under certain circumstances, it is illegitimate for a state to fail to do so. (shrink)

Self-authorship has been established as the basis of an influential liberal principle of legislation and public policy. Being the author of one’s own life is a significant component of one’s own well-being, and therefore is better understood from the viewpoint of the person whose life it is. However, most philosophical accounts, including Raz’s conception of self-authorship, rely on general and abstract principles rather than specific, individual psychological properties of the person whose life it is. We elaborate on the principles of (...) self-authorship on the basis of self-determination theory, an empirically based psychological theory that has been at the forefront of the study of autonomy and self-authorship for more than 45 years. Our account transcends distinctions between positive and negative freedom and attempts to pinpoint the exact properties of self-authorship within the psychological processes of intrinsic motivation and internalization. If a primary objective of public policy is to support self-authorship, then it should be devised on the basis of how intrinsic motivation and internalization can be properly supported. Self-determination theory identifies three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The satisfaction of these needs is associated with the support and growth of intrinsic tendencies and the advancement of well-being. Through this analysis, we can properly evaluate the significance of rationality, basic goods, and the availability of options to self-authorship. Implications for law and policy are discussed with an emphasis on legal paternalism and what many theorists call “liberal perfectionism,” that is, the non-coercive support and promotion of the good life. (shrink)

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)

Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan standoff by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan argues that a just society is a meritocracy, in which equal opportunity prevails and social goods are distributed strictly on the basis of merit. That (...) gives citizens their just deserts. In addition to its novel conceptual approach, meritocracy is distinctive from existing work in two ways. First, it is grounded in research on how people actually think about justice. Empirical research reveals that people don't think that social goods should be distributed equally. Nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people want rewards to reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States’ widening economic inequality. Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists. (shrink)

A number of ethical frameworks have been proposed to support decision-making in public health and the evaluation of public health policy and practice. This is encouraging, since ethical considerations are of paramount importance in health policy. However, these frameworks have various deficiencies, in part because they incorporate substantial ethical positions. In this article, we discuss and criticise a framework developed by James Childress and Ruth Bernheim, which we consider to be the state of the art in the field. Their framework (...) distinguishes aims, such as the promotion of public health, from constraints on the pursuit of those aims, such as the requirement to avoid limitations to liberty, or the requirement to be impartial. We show how this structure creates both theoretical and practical problems. We then go on to present and defend a more practical framework, one that is neutral in avoiding precommitment to particular values and how they ought to be weighted. We believe ethics is at the very heart of such weightings and our framework is developed to reflect this belief. It is therefore both pluralist and value-based. We compare our new framework to Childress and Bernheim’s and outline its advantages. It is justified by its impetus to consider a wide range of alternatives and its tendency to direct decisions towards the best alternatives, as well as by the information provided by the ranking of alternatives and transparent explication of the judgements that motivate this ranking. The new framework presented should be useful to decision-makers in public health, as well as being a means to stimulate further reflection on the role of ethics in public health. (shrink)

I first distinguish four types of objection to paternalism and argue that only one – the principled objection – amounts to a substantive and distinct normative doctrine. I then argue that this doctrine should be understood as preventing certain facts from playing the role of reasons they would otherwise play. I explain how this filter approach makes antipaternalism independent of several philosophical controversies: On the role reasons play, on what reasons there are, and on how reasons are related to values. (...) I go on to contrast the filter approach with the competing and dominant action-focused approach, which understands objections to paternalism in terms of paternalistic action, behavior, law, policy and the like. Seana Shiffrin and Peter de Marneffe are singled out as prominent recent proponents of this approach. By engaging with their definitions of paternalism, I explain how the action-focused approach makes antipaternalism dependent on the sorting of actions into paternalistic and nonpaternalistic according to what reasons support them. Because one and the same action can be supported by many different reasons, and by different sorts of reasons, such sorting is very difficult. The upshot is that antipaternalism on the action-focused account fails to provide the precise normative implications of the filter approach that I favor. (shrink)

This paper scrutinizes the tension between individuals’ rights and paternalism. I will argue that no normative account that includes rights of individuals can justify hard paternalism since the infringement of a right can only be justified with the right or interest of another person, which is never the case in hard paternalism. Justifications of hard paternalistic actions generally include a deviation from the very idea of having rights. The paper first introduces Tom Beauchamp as the most famous contemporary hard paternalist (...) by outlining his moral theory (principlism) and showing why it, as it stands, has to allow for hard paternalism. Secondly, the paper focuses on the notion of rights within principlism. I will employ traditional theories of rights to make sense of rights in principlism. Unfortunately, this attempt fails. In the third part, then, I claim that rights can only be limited with reference to the rights or interests of others. This structure is the very point of rights, it is their bite. I will argue for this claim and show its implications. The most important implication is that not only principlism, but every normative theory that includes rights of individuals, has to abolish hard paternalism. (shrink)

I defend the idea that a liberal commitment to value neutrality is best honoured by maintaining a pure cardinality component in our rankings of opportunity or liberty sets. I consider two challenges to this idea. The first holds that cardinality rankings are unnecessary for neutrality, because what is valuable about a set of liberties from a liberal point of view is not its size but rather its variety. The second holds that pure cardinality metrics are insufficient for neutrality, because liberties (...) cannot be individuated into countable entities without presupposing some relevantly partisan evaluative perspective. I argue that a clear understanding of the liberal basis for valuing liberty shows the way to satisfying responses to both challenges. (shrink)

A novel rereading of the relationship between ethics and ontology in Aristotle.

A philosophical genealogy of the development of liberal 'arts of government' through the work of John Locke and Michel Foucault.

Helen Frowe has recently offered what she calls a “practical” account of self-defense. Her account is supposed to be practical by being subjectivist about permissibility and objectivist about liability. I shall argue here that Frowe first makes up a problem that does not exist and then fails to solve it. To wit, her claim that objectivist accounts of permissibility cannot be action-guiding is wrong; and her own account of permissibility actually retains an objectivist (in the relevant sense) element. In addition, (...) her attempt to restrict subjectivism primarily to “urgent” situations like self-defense contradicts her own point of departure and is either incoherent or futile. Finally, the only actual whole-heartedly objectivist account she criticizes is an easy target; while those objectivist accounts one finds in certain Western European jurisdictions are immune to her criticisms. Those accounts are also clearly superior to hers in terms of action-guidingness. (shrink)

(Winner of The Res Publica Essay Prize) This article defends a moderate version of state perfectionism by using Gerald Gaus’s argument for liberal neutrality as a starting point of discussion. Many liberal neutralists reject perfectionism on the grounds of respect for persons, but Gaus has explained more clearly than most neutralists how respect for persons justifies neutrality. Against neutralists, I first argue that the state may promote the good life by appealing to what can be called “the qualified judgments about (...) the good life,” which have not been considered by liberal perfectionists including Joseph Chan and Steven Wall. Then I clear up several possible misunderstandings of these judgments, and argue that: (a) moderate perfectionism does not rely on controversial rankings of values and is committed to promoting different valuable ways of life by pluralistic promotion; and (b) moderate perfectionism requires only an indirect form of coercion in using tax money to support certain moderate perfectionist measures, which is justifiable on the grounds of citizens’ welfare. Thus, I maintain that moderate perfectionism does not disrespect citizens, and is not necessarily unfair to any particular group of people. It is, in fact, plausible and morally important. The defence of moderate perfectionism has practical implications for the state’s policies regarding art development, drug abuse, public education, and so on. (shrink)

The paper develops and contrasts two views about the role of examples in moral education — one based on R.M. Hare's recent “two-level” conception of moral reasoning and one based on Aristotle's conception ofphronesis. It concludes that a Harean view leads to a harmful and impoverished form of moral education by encouraging children to ignore or distort the complexity of particular moral judgments. It also concludes that an Aristotelian view, by emphasizing the importance of rich examples such as those found (...) in literature, enables children to develop and exercise a capacity for moral judgment that is sensitive to the complexities of particular moral judgments. Finally, the role of examples in public moral education in liberal pluralist societies is examined. (shrink)

Learning to address moral dilemmas is important for participants on courses in business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). While modern, rule-based ethical theory often provides the normative input here, this has faced criticism in its application. In response, post-modern and Aristotelian perspectives have found favour. This paper follows a similar line, presenting an approach based initially on a critical interpretation of Ross's theory of prima facie duties, which emphasises moral judgement in actual situations. However, the retention of a modern (...) element is suggested, with an invitation to hypothetically universalise detailed proposals for action, following Hare. This further step may reassure students/managers who seek additional closure in their decision-making. Some pedagogical implications are also briefly raised regarding the use of case material and the need to recognise questions of social interaction and personal character as features of dilemma resolution in actual organisational contexts. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a distinctive epistemic rationale for the liberal practice of constant and ostentatious reason-giving in the political context. Epistemic trust is essential to democratic governance because as citizens we can only make informed decisions by relying on the claims of moral, scientific, and practical authorities around us. Yet rational epistemic trust is also uniquely fragile in the political context in light of both the radical inclusiveness of the relevant epistemic community (i.e., everyone who participates in the (...) political process) and the conflicting interests bound up in policy debate. I argue that liberal justification is a necessary condition for warranted epistemic trust in this context, and therefore a necessary condition for healthy public inquiry about politically significant questions. (shrink)

Hayek's argument that social justice is a mirage consists of six claims: that the very idea of social justice is meaningless, religious, self‐contradictory, and ideological; that realizing any degree of social justice is unfeasible; and that aiming to do so must destroy all liberty. These claims are examined in the light of contemporary theories and debates concerning social justice in order to assess whether the argument's persuasive power is due to sound reasoning, and to what extent contemporary theories of justice (...) meet or escape the Hayekian challenge. (shrink)

The paper advances a non-orthodox reading of political liberalism’s view of political legitimacy, the view of public political justification that comes with it, and the idea of the reasonable at the heart of these views. Political liberalism entails that full discursive standing should be accorded only to people who are reasonable in a substantive sense. As the paper argues, this renders political liberalism dogmatic and exclusivist at the level of arguments for or against normative theories of justice. Against that background, (...) the paper considers aspects of a more plausible, deeper and more inclusive idea of public political justification that builds on a thinner, potentially cosmopolitan idea of the reasonable. The paper considers what content such an idea may have, and identifies a method of inclusive abstraction through which it may be enriched in content to render it fruitful for the purposes of a justification of principles of political justice. But the move toward more depth and inclusiveness faces constructivism with two challenges. First, inclusivism about the scope of political justification might not be able to avoid dogmatism unless it invokes perfectionist considerations. And second, the authority and appeal of a fruitfully rich idea of the reasonable depends on whether the addressees of political justification already value wide acceptability. (shrink)

This paper builds on a number of ideas concerning the nature, management and representation in case studies, of moral issues and dilemmas as experienced by people in organisations. Drawing on some cases used in teaching business ethics, and utilising a checklist of questions derived from the more general theoretical analysis, suggestions are offered regarding the contributions which such cases can make in developing students' understanding and potential for performative competence in real life situations. The distinction between issues and dilemmas is (...) emphasised, and different types of issue are identified. The status of self-interest as an issue, and as contributory to personal dilemmas, is given particular attention. The paper also addresses the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive attributes required by individuals if they are to deal with such situations. Within the cognitive category attention is paid to the contribution of ethical and other theory, and to the need for moral imagination and judgement. (shrink)

Kantian constructivists accord a constitutive, justificatory role to the issue of scope: they typically claim that first-order practical thought depends for its authority on being suitably acceptable within the right scope, or by all relevant others, and some Kantian constructivists, notably Onora O'Neill, hold that our views of the nature and criteria of practical reasoning also depend for their authority on being suitably acceptable within the right scope. The paper considers whether O'Neill-type Kantian constructivism can coherently accord this key role (...) to the issue of scope while adhering to the universalist, ‘cosmopolitan’ commitments at its core. The paper argues that this is not so. On the one hand, it shows that O'Neill's attempt to ‘fix’ the scope of practical reasoning supposes, rather than establishes, a view of ethical standing and the scope of practical reasoning. On the other hand, the paper argues that Kantian constructivism should endorse a non-constructivist, perfectionist view of the good to determine that scope. The paper thereby supports the perfectionist conjecture that Kantian constructivism, in order to defend its universalist commitments, should take refuge in non-constructivist, perfectionist considerations, and that Kantian constructivism should therefore construe perfectionism as a partial, though uneasy, ally. (shrink)

has become an honorific title used by researchers to commend their work, or the particular approach they adopt. Conversely, the work of others is often dismissed on the grounds that it is "uncritical". However, there are important questions about what the term critical means, about what we should be critical of, and about the form that criticism ought to take. These questions are addressed here in relation to both the role of the social researcher itself and that of researchers operating (...) as public intellectuals. It is argued that the distinction between these roles is an important one, and has implications for what can legitimately be criticised, on what grounds, and in what way. In each case, there are proper limits to criticism, albeit different ones. Like anything else, criticism is not always a good thing. Key Words: critical social research • scientific criticism • social criticism • public intellectuals. (shrink)

For well over a decade, much of liberal political theory has accepted the founding premise of Rawls's political liberalism, according to which the fact of reasonable pluralism renders comprehensive versions of liberalism incoherent. However, the founding premise presumes that all comprehensive doctrines are moral doctrines. In this essay, the author builds upon recent work by Allen Buchanan and develops a comprehensive version of liberalism based in a partially comprehensive social epistemic doctrine. The author then argues that this version of liberalism (...) is sufficiently accommodating of the fact of reasonable pluralism. The conclusion is that the founding premise of political liberalism admits of a counterexample; there is a version of comprehensive liberalism that is sufficiently pluralistic. (shrink)

This paper proposes that managers add an attention to virtues and vices of human character as a full complement to moral reasoning according to a deontological focus on obligations to act and a teleological focus on consequences (a balanced tripartite approach). Even if the criticisms of virtue ethics cloud its use as a mononomic normative theory of justification, they do not refute the substantial benefits of applying a human character perspective – when done so in conjunction with also-imperfect act-oriented perspectives. (...) An interactive tripartite approach is superior for meeting the complex requirements of an applied ethic. To illustrate how deficiencies of a "strong" virtue ethics formulation can be overcome by a balanced tripartite approach, this paper compares normative leadership paradigms (each based on a combination of virtue, deontology, or consequentialist perspectives) and the dangers inherent in each. The preferred paradigm is servant leadership, grounded in a tripartite ethic. Effective application of such an ethics approach in contemporary organizations requires further empirical research to develop a greater understanding of the moral language actually used. Meeting this challenge will allow academics better to assist practicing managers lead moral development and moral reasoning efforts. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a notion of tragic-remorse. This moral emotion properly accompanies those actions that involve unavoidable moral wrongdoing in general and dirty hands scenarios in particular. Tragic-remorse differs both phenomenologically and conceptually from regret, agent-regret and remorse. By recognising the existence of tragic-remorse, we are better able to account for our complex moral reality which at times makes it necessary for good persons to act in ways that although justified leave the agent with a moral stain and (...) a particular emotional response. (shrink)