I defend the cosmopolitan instrumentalist theory of secession, according to which a group has a right to secede only if this would promote cosmopolitan justice. I argue that the theory is preferable to other theories of secession because it is an entailment of cosmopolitanism, which is independently attractive, and because, unlike other theories of secession, it allows us to give the answers we want to give in cases like secession of the rich or secession that would make things worse for (...) minorities. I defend the view against the objections that it allows for colonialism and annexation, that it is not a distinct theory, and that it is impractical. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 122-164, May 2022. I argue that the consensus view that one must never level down to equality gives rise to a dilemma. This dilemma is best understood by examining two parallel cases of leveling down: one drawn from the economic domain, the other from the political. In the economic case, both egalitarians and non-egalitarians have resisted the idea of leveling down wages to equality. With no incentives for some people to work (...) hard social productivity will likely decline, further lowering people's wages and thus leaving everybody all-things-considered worse off as a result—hence “never level down.” On the other hand, however, the argument against leveling down does not appear to pass muster in the political sphere: denying political equality in the form of “one person, one vote”, for example, by giving a higher share of voting power to people with, say, more education seems straightforwardly objectionable, even if such a voting scheme would improve the outcomes of all people, including those who are ultimately left with fewer votes. Thus, a fundamental tension arises: we can either endorse the widely-affirmed “never-level-down” thesis, which says that sacrificing people's well-being exclusively for the sake of promoting equality can never be the right thing to do, or we can endorse the principle of “one person, one vote.” But we cannot do both. I defend this dilemma against a view I call the compatibility view: roughly, that because OPOV is strictly necessary to advance some weighty, non-egalitarian interest people have, accepting OPOV as a principle of justice is compatible with one's rejection of leveling down. (shrink)

Calls to recognize a right of return are a recurring feature of refugee crises. Particularly when such crises become long-term, advocates of displaced people insist that they be allowed to return to their country of origin. I argue that this right is best understood as the right of refugees to return, not to a prior territory, but to a prior political status. This status is one that sees not just any state, but a refugee's state of origin, take responsibility for (...) safeguarding their welfare. This entitlement I characterize as an institutional right: a right that presupposes, and is a necessary feature of, a particular institution. The institution of which the right of return is an indispensable part is the international political system that sees authority exercised by sovereign states. The institutional argument for a right of refugee return presupposes two basic factual claims about states: they play a central role in safeguarding rights and they pursue exclusionary policies of border control. Importantly, the institutional view presupposes only that states do perform both functions, not that they are justified in doing so. On a purely normative level, the institutional account assumes little more than the moral equality of human beings. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to compare and contrast the traditional Western versus the postmodern colonization of the mind. How is the current technological age barbaric? I investigate Aimé Césaire’s writings, refer to Lea Ypi’s definition of colonialism, and discuss society’s use of psychopolitics to find the answer.

When a liberal-democratic state signs a treaty or wages a war, does its whole polity do those things? In this article, we approach this question via the recent social ontological literature on collective agency. We provide arguments that it does and that it does not. The arguments are presented via three considerations: the polity's control over what the state does; the polity's unity; and the influence of individual polity members. We suggest that the answer to our question differs for different (...) liberal-democratic states and depends on two underlying considerations: the amount of discretion held by the state's officeholders; the extent to which the democratic procedure is deliberative rather than aggregative. (shrink)

Why should we decolonise knowledge? One popular rationale is that colonialism has set up a single perspective as epistemically authoritative over many equally legitimate ones, and this is a form of...

In ‘What’s Wrong with Colonialism,’ Lea Ypi argues that the wrong of colonialism can be expressed as procedural wrongs, not as wronging territorial rights. On her view, colonial practices went wrong in two ways: they forced residents into political associations, and the terms of the political association were not established through equal and reciprocal negotiations. I argue that because Ypi’s account successfully side-lines all but essential claims to territory, her theory ends up being vulnerable to an objection it means to (...) avoid. Historical residents may be subject to unequal treatment under newly formed political associations because their historical patterns of land use are not considered to have any independent moral weight. My analysis does not rely on any appeal to property or territorial rights. Instead, I appeal to pre-existing obligations holding between residents. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an outline of the oppression account of cultural appropriation and argue that it offers the best explanation for the wrongfulness of the varied and complex cases of appropriation to which people often object. I then compare the oppression account with the intimacy account defended by C. Thi Nguyen and Matt Strohl. Though I believe that Nguyen and Strohl’s account offers important insight into an essential dimension of the cultural appropriation debate, I argue that justified objections (...) to cultural appropriation must ultimately be grounded in considerations of oppression as opposed to group intimacy. I present three primary objections to the intimacy account. First, I suggest that in its effort to explain expressive appropriation claims (those that purportedly lack an independent ground), the intimacy account doubles down on the boundary problem. Second, I question whether group intimacy possess the kind of bare normativity that Nguyen and Strohl claim for it. Finally, I argue that these objections give us reason to accept the importance of group intimacy to the cultural appropriation debate, but question the source of its significance as identified by Nguyen and Strohl. (shrink)

Do members of cultural groups have special claims to own or control the products of the cultures to which they belong? Is there something morally wrong with employing artistic styles that are distinctive of a culture to which you do not belong? What is the relationship between cultural heritage and group identity? Is there a coherent and morally acceptable sense of cultural group membership in the first place? Is there a universal human heritage to which everyone has a claim? Questions (...) such as these concern the ethics of cultural heritage (or heritage ethics, for short). This entry seeks to provide an overview of the philosophical work on topics in heritage ethics, as well as introduce readers to some of the most philosophically relevant literature from other disciplines. (shrink)

I criticize two ways of interpreting Kant's claim that property rights are merely ‘provisional’ in the state of nature.Weak provisionalityholds that in the state of nature agents can make rightful claims to property. What is lacking is the institutional context necessary to render their claims secure. By contrast,strong provisionalityholds that making property claims in the state of nature wrongs others. I argue for a third view,anticipatory provisionality, according to which state of nature property claims do not wrong others, but anticipate (...) a condition in which the authority to make such claims can no longer be unilaterally determined. (shrink)

Museums are home to millions of artworks and cultural artifacts, some of which have made their way to these institutions through unjust means. Some argue that these objects should be repatriated (i.e. returned to their country or culture of origin). However, these arguments face a series of philosophical challenges. In particular, repatriation, even if justified, is often portrayed as contrary to the aims and values of museums. However, in this paper, I argue that some of the very considerations museums appeal (...) to in order to oppose repatriation claims can be turned on their heads and marshaled in favor of the practice. In addition to defending against objections to repatriation, this argument yields the surprising conclusion that the redistribution of cultural goods should be much more radical than is typically supposed. (shrink)

The current debate on why colonialism is wrong overlooks what is arguably the most discernible aspect of this particular historical injustice: its exreme violence. Through a critical analysis of the recent contributions by Lea Ypi, Margaret Moore and Laura Valentini, this article argues that the violence inflicted on the victims and survivors of colonialism reveals far more about the nature of this historical injustice than generally assumed. It is the arbitrary nature of the power relations between colonizers and the colonized (...) which is at the heart of the injustice of colonization, and violence was the way arbitrariness and domination was cemented. The example of colonialism in the Caribbean during the 16th and 17th centuries is used to expose the full extent of this historical injustice. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between justice and colonialism. It defines colonialism; examines the kind of injustice that colonialism involved; and the possibility of corrective justice.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

There is lively debate on the question if states have legitimate authority to enforce the exclusion of (would-be) immigrants. Against common belief, I argue that even non- cosmopolitan liberals have strong reason to be sceptical of much contemporary border authority. To do so, I first establish that for liberals, broadly defined, a state can only hold legitimate authority over persons whose moral equality it is not engaged in undermining. I then reconstruct empirical cases from the sphere of international relations in (...) which what I call ‘colonial norms’ continue to play significant structuring roles. I argue that it is sometimes only by unveiling these colonial norms and the roles they play that we can understand how some states today culpably contribute to undermining the moral equality of persons over whom they will come to claim immigration-related authority. I thus contend that paying attention to colonial norms distinctly enables us to reveal a set of instances in which all liberals should agree that states forfeit legitimate authority over would-be immigrants. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Egalitarians often claim that well-off states’ immigration restrictions create or reinforce objectionable inequality. Standard defenses of this claim appeal to the distributive consequences of exclusion. This article offers a relational egalitarian defense of more open borders. On this view, well-off states’ immigration restrictions are problematic because they accord the citizens of well-off states a troubling form of asymmetric power over the disadvantaged. This creates an objectionably unequal relationship between affluent states’ citizens and disadvantaged immigrants. I show that this argument offers (...) a compelling diagnosis of a central problem with border control, defend the argument against objections, and explore its implications. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 3, Page 317-333, Fall 2022.

In ‘Colonialism, territory and pre-existing obligations,’ Cara Nine argues that Lea Ypi’s account of the wrongness of colonialism has a hole in it: Ypi leaves open the possibility of justified settler colonialism. Nine suggests that we can patch this hole by attaching value to existing political associations. But Nine’s solution has its own hole. Many political associations exist due to settler colonialism, and thus if we endorse the value of these associations we seem to endorse colonialism. In response, we could (...) say that past colonial injustices have been remediated or superseded. Or, we could leave the hole open: colonialism is sometimes justified. I argue that, surprisingly, the second option is likely preferable, because it does not require us to say that the injustices of colonialism are gone, and because it points towards a better theory of colonialism’s wrongness than Ypi’s: cosmopolitan instrumentalism, according to which colonialism is wrong only when it is unjust according to one’s overall theory of cosmopolitan justice. (shrink)

In “What’s Wrong with Colonialism,” Lea Ypi argues that the distinctive wrong of colonialism should be understood as the failure of the colonial relationship to extend equal and reciprocal terms of political association to the colonized. Laura Valentini argues that Ypi’s account fails. Her argument targets an ambiguity in Ypi’s account of the relata of the colonial relationship. Either Ypi’s view is that the members of the colonized group are, as individuals, denied an equal and reciprocal political relationship to the (...) colonizer, or Ypi’s view is that the colonized individuals form a collective agent and that it is denied an equal and reciprocal relationship to the colonizer. According to Valentini, both options face insurmountable difficulties. Valentini’s argument, this paper argues, sets up a false dilemma. The third option is to think of the colonizer as relating in an unequal and non-reciprocal way to the plurality of people subjected to colonial rule. As I will argue, this view avoids Valentini’s objections. It does, however, raise some new questions about how we are to understand the distinctive wrong of colonialism. (shrink)

This article discusses two normative questions raised by cases of colonial settlement. First, is it sometimes wrong to migrate and settle in a previously inhabited land? If so, under what conditions? Second, should settler countries ever take steps to undo wrongful settlement, by enforcing repatriation and return? The article argues that it is wrong to settle in another country in cases where one comes with intent to colonize the population against their will, or one possesses an adequate territorial base somewhere (...) else, lacks an urgent interest in moving, and seeks to settle in a new place under conditions where settlement would severely harm the practices of prior occupants. It also argues for a presumption of repatriation and return in the first generation of wrongful settlement and holds that these remedies may be extended to second and higher generations in some – but not all – cases. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that a principle of rectification for past wrongdoings could and should be added to Rawls's Law of Peoples on the ground that unrectified past injustice undermines the notion of equality of peoples. I base this work on a conception of rectification that includes apologies as well as economic compensation, and I focus on the step of compensation. To do so, I briefly discuss how the maximin decision rule can adapt to the second original position. To (...) address the compatibility of rectificatory justice with Rawls's work, I focus on the strains of commitment and consider Rawls's account of peoples' fundamental interests. Rawls's conception of international justice needs to be responsive to peoples' fundamental interest in equality, which calls for proper protection of their means of self‐respect. Although the moral imbalance stemming from past injustice is overlooked in The Law of Peoples, I show that Rawls's theoretical framework can ground a principle of rectification. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Lockean proviso can be utilized as a relevant principle of justice for food security under global climate change. Since reducing GHG emissions is key to enhancing food security, we suggest a global food security scheme that systematically allots, among all people, access to GHG sinks in food systems impacted by global climate change. For consideration of the scheme, it is important to have a principle of justice. Furthermore, it should incorporate the value of fairness. A (...) relevant principle of climate justice for food security should meet the following criteria: (1) the parties concerned under the scheme are states; (2) fairness does not undermine the requirement that the basic needs of all people must be met; (3) when determining fair burdens, a fair distribution of the rights to use GHG sinks should be sensitive both to each state’s responsibility for its GHG emissions and to (4) each state’s effort to reduce such emissions. With them in mind, first, we argue that the Lockean proviso can provide legitimate guidance for each state. Second, the Lockean proviso reasonably enjoins that a state has a right to a food system that secures its citizens’ basic needs, and a duty to meet the basic needs of other people. Third, the Lockean proviso can be deployed as a principle of both global justice and intergenerational justice for food security. Finally, the Lockean proviso enables us to count the reduction of GHG emissions by each state as “the fruits of its labors”. (shrink)

Abstract:While self-determination is a cardinal principle of international law, its meaning is often obscure. Yet international law clearly recognizes decolonization as a central application of the principle. Most ordinary people also agree that the liberation of colonial peoples was a moral triumph. This essay examines three philosophical theories of self-determination’s value, and asks which one best captures the reasons why decolonization was morally required. The instrumentalist theory holds that decolonization was required because subject peoples were unjustly governed, the democratic view (...) holds that decolonization was required because subject peoples lacked democratic representation, and the associative view holds that decolonization was required because subject peoples were unable to affirm the political institutions their colonial rulers imposed on them. I argue that the associative view is superior to competing accounts, because it better reflects individuals’ “maker” interests in participating in shared political projects that they value. The essay further shows that if we accept the associative view, self-determination is not a sui generis value that applies to decolonization alone. Ultimately, our intuitions about decolonization can be justified only by invoking an interest on the part of persistently alienated groups in redrawing political boundaries. The same interest may justify self-determination in additional cases, such as autonomy for indigenous peoples, or greater independence for Scotland or Quebec. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that at least some states possess a moral right against external intervention in their domestic affairs and all human rights violations give members of the international community reasons to undertake preventive or remedial action against offending states. No state, however, currently protects or could reasonably be expected to protect its subjects’ human rights to a perfect degree. In view of this reality, many have found it difficult to explain how any existing or readily foreseeable state could (...) enjoy a moral right of nonintervention without denying the normative force of human rights. This article seeks to reconcile these apparently incompatible commitments by arguing that, in addition to acting in defense of human rights, outsiders must be appropriately responsive to individuals’ distinct and potentially countervailing interests in collective self-determination. I show that, under certain demanding but not unrealistic conditions, individuals’ interests in self-determination are of sufficient weight not simply to ground a judgment against intervention in particular cases but to generate arobust right of nonintervention on the part of some states that nevertheless fail to secure perfect protection of their subjects’ human rights. (shrink)

Instances of epistemic injustice elicit resistance, anger, despair, frustration or cognate emotional responses from their victims. This sort of response to the epistemic injustices that accompanied historical systems of oppression such as colonialism, for example, is normal. However, if their victims have internalised these oppressive situations, we could get the counterintuitive response of appreciation. In this paper, I argue for the phenomenon of appreciative silencing to make sense of instances like this. This is a form of epistemic silencing that happens (...) when the accepted hegemonic intuitions of the oppressed are formed/influenced by the ideologies of the oppressors over time. Here, we have a resilient, oppressive and hegemonic epistemic system. Put together, it creates a variant of epistemic injustice and silencing that is obscure since its victims are neither resistant nor aware of the injustice they face but are appreciative. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for amnesty of irregular migrants by reflecting on the conditions under which a wrong that is done in the past can be considered superseded. It explores the relation between historical injustice and irregular migration and suggests that we should hold states to the same stringent standards of compliance with just norms that they apply to the assessment of the moral conduct of individual migrants. It concludes that those standards ought to orient migrants and citizens’ moral (...) assessment of how their states handle questions of irregular migration and to inform political initiatives compatible with these moral assessments. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

So far, most of the philosophical literature on occupations has tried to assess the legitimacy of military rule in the aftermath of armed conflicts by exclusively employing the theoretical resources of just war theory. In this paper, I argue that this approach is mistaken. Occupations occur during or in the aftermath of wars but they are fundamentally a specific type of rule over persons. Thus, theories of political legitimacy should be at least as relevant as just war theory for the (...) moral evaluation of occupations. This paper, therefore, draws on both traditions and argues that just war theory plays a limited role in identifying the purposes and appropriate agents of occupation authority, but that theories of legitimacy are necessary for explaining why and under which conditions foreign actors have the right to rule in the aftermath of armed conflicts. (shrink)

International institutions are facing increasing criticism of the legitimacy of their authority. But what does it mean for an international institution to be legitimate? Arthur Applbaum’s latest book provides a convincing new concept of legitimacy, namely, the power-liability view, and a new normative conception, the free group agent account. However, it is not clear how they can be applied to the international level. First, this paper examines how different concepts of legitimacy can be applied to international institutions. Second, it assesses (...) three different conceptions of legitimacy, namely, the service conception, Applbaum’s free group agent account and the autonomy-based conception for the international level. It outlines how on the last conception, international institutions’ legitimacy depends on three different aspects required to protect autonomy: the political power of the institution; its purpose; and its relation to other institutions. Finally, the paper argues that the creation of an international institution should be seen as part of relational legitimacy and that state consent plays an important role to protect the political autonomy of peoples. (shrink)

This paper examines an ideology I call techno-colonialism. I argue that techno-colonialism represents an attempt to selectively reproduce settler colonial practices adjusted to twenty-first century realities. This argument has implications for contemporary settler colonialism, the radical right, and climate change politics. In what follows, I discuss the techno-colonial doctrines of Nick Land, Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, and Patri Friedman. These figures articulate a political theory about exploiting new technologies to escape the state and found new societies. To explore techno-colonial ideology, (...) I focus on Seasteading—the practice of creating floating city-states to colonize the ocean––as an attempted realization of techno-colonial ideals. As I claim, techno-colonialism attempts to humanize the politics of settlement. But I argue that techno-colonialism's ambitions fail, and techno-colonialism fails to create a harmless politics of settlement. I conclude that we should be attentive to the relations of political and economic power in which such exit projects are embedded. Moreover, this paper also promotes our understanding of climate change and the radical right's politics. While scholars most naturally associate the radical right with climate change denialism, the techno-colonists illustrate another possibility. They welcome catastrophe, and see rising-sea levels as an opportunity to start society afresh. (shrink)

What is wrong with colonialism? The standard—albeit often implicit—answer to this question has been that colonialism was wrong because it violated the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, where territorial rights were grounded on acquisition theories. Recently, the standard view has come under attack: according to critics, acquisition based accounts do not provide solid theoretical grounds to condemn colonial relations. Indeed, historically they were used to justify colonialism. Various alternative accounts of the wrong of colonialism have been developed. According to some, (...) colonialism involved a violation of territorial rights grounded on legitimate state theory. Others reject all explanations of colonialism's wrongfulness based on territorial rights, and argue that colonial practices were wrong because they departed from ideals of economic, social, and political association. In this article, we articulate and defend the standard view against critics: colonialism involved a procedural wrong; this wrong is not the violation of standards of equality and reciprocity, but the violation of territorial rights; and the best foundation for such territorial rights is acquisition based, not legitimacy based. We argue that this issue is not just of historical interest, it has relevant implications for the normative evaluation of contemporary inequalities. (shrink)

Depending on the Sitz im Leben of practical theologian, the issue of decolonisation will be a greater or lesser reality. For South Africans, decolonisation has become a part of their daily living. Decolonisation can be regarded as a second wave of liberation in the post-apartheid South Africa. Following on the first wave, or even the tsunami of transformation, is the urgent call for the decolonisation of colonial knowledge, structures and epistemologies that endured in the new dispensation. Squarely in the aim (...) of decolonisation efforts are institutions of higher learning and by implication all disciplines taught there, including theology. The non-negotiability of the decolonisation of higher education is evident in the recurring violent protests and mass action, as expressed in different ‘#must-fall’ campaigns over the last few years. This article argues that the current decolonisation drive in South Africa is urging local practical theologians to make an important choice, namely to move ‘selfishly backward’ or ‘selflessly forward’. In other words, maintaining current practices or exploring alternatives in a new context. This choice is embedded in the reality that a significant number of practical theologians in South Africa are white males that may, from a decolonisation perspective, be deemed part of the colonisation legacy. Against this background, the article attempts to provide a reflective insider’s perspective on a challenge and opportunity this creates for practical theology. (shrink)

Zionism aimed to establish a national home for Jews in Palestine. It involved settlement of Zionist Jews in the region, despite facing resistance from many local Arabs. Was the unilateral Zionist settlement morally permissible, or was it an instance of wrongful colonialism? Three objections will be discussed here and they all stem from the Kantian ethics of state-building and the minimalistic conception of statehood that follows from it. According to the ‘neutralist objection’, the establishment of a national home is not (...) a just cause for a state building project. The ‘cosmopolitan’ objection argues that unilateral settlement is permissible only in extreme circumstances and that typically, it violates the locals’ right to self-rule. Finally, the imperialist objection argues that Zionist unilateralism exploited the wrongful colonial rule to which Arab Palestinians were subject. I will show that no Kantian objection to Zionism is decisive. (shrink)