In a recent article, Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve argue that prioritarianism fails to account for the shift in moral significance in gains to individuals in interpersonal as compared to intrapersonal cases. In this article, I show that the priority view escapes this objection but in a way that deprives it of its anti-egalitarian stance. Despite Otsuka and Voorhoeve, prioritarianism, rightly understood, provides consistent and attractive recommendations in both single- and multi-person cases. Yet prioritarians, the article goes on to show, (...) cannot do so while availing themselves of the leveling down objection to egalitarianism. They may not do so because similarly to egalitarianism, prioritarianism also must reject the principle of personal good. That is, egalitarians and prioritarians may sometime recommend certain actions and outcomes even when these are better for no one. Prioritarians may survive the Otsuka–Voorhoeve critique, but to do so they must abandon their anti-egalitarian stance. (shrink)

Is equality a distributive value or does it rather point to the quality of social relationships? This article criticizes the distributive character of luck egalitarian theories of justice and fleshes out the central characteristics of an alternative, relational approach to equality. It examines a central objection to distributive theories: that such theories cannot account for the significance of how institutions treat people (as opposed to the outcomes they bring about). I discuss two variants of this objection: first, that distributive theories (...) fail to account for the importance of how institutions cause good shortfalls and, second, that they fail to account for the normative attitude of social and political institutions expressed in different ways of treating people. The article argues that the causal variant of the objection has only very limited reach, and endorses the expressive variant: the attitudes expressed by institutions in their treatment of persons, such as contempt or neglect, generate potentially unjust social relationships and hierarchies. This should be the focus of a relational egalitarian approach to social justice. The article proceeds to explain how it is possible that artificial agents such as institutions have attitudes and how these attitudes are not reducible to those of the individuals that sustain them, and argues that distributive theories cannot be so modified as to account for such attitudes. It concludes by indicating several directions for the development of more worked-out conceptions of relational equality on this basis. (shrink)

Liberal egalitarians tend to be committed both to generous asylum policies and generous, universal welfare states. Yet there may be political, social and economic reasons why there is a conflict in realising both. Asylum seekers may create economic pressures to the welfare state, or undermine national solidarity supposedly necessary to support redistribution. In this paper, I discuss how political theorists should approach these empirical concerns. I take issue with the view that theorists can simply move between ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’ by (...) accepting more or less of reality. Instead, political theorists should seek to offer a critical description of the conflict, which can reveal structures of power that ought to be subject to normative scrutiny. To this end, I discuss two accounts of how the welfare state may justify asylum restrictions in relation to the case of Sweden, a universal welfare state that has recently introduced restrictions on asylum to protect the welfare state. I argue along these accounts that the welfare state is both an important source of political and social order and a foundation of the personal moral experience. Yet a critical analysis also illustrates how these claims weaken as underlying methodological nationalism and bias towards existing power structures are brought to light. Asylum restrictions cannot be justified if they contribute to perpetuating these power structures, which cause some of the conflict with the welfare state in the first place. (shrink)

Health and Social Justice (Ruger 2009a) developed the ?health capability paradigm,? a conception of justice and health in domestic societies. This idea undergirds an alternative framework of social cooperation called ?shared health governance? (SHG). SHG puts forth a set of moral responsibilities, motivational aspirations, and institutional arrangements, and apportions roles for implementation in striving for health justice. This article develops further the SHG framework and explains its importance and implications for governing health domestically.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 7, Page W1-W3, July 2011.

Public justification-based accounts of liberal legitimacy rely on the idea that a polity’s basic structure should, in some sense, be acceptable to its citizens. In this paper I discuss the prospects of that approach through the lens of Gerald Gaus’ critique of John Rawls’ paradigmatic account of democratic public justification. I argue that Gaus does succeed in pointing out some significant problems for Rawls’ political liberalism; yet his alternative, justificatory liberalism, is not voluntaristic enough to satisfy the desiderata of a (...) genuinely democratic theory of public justification. So I contend that—pace Gaus, but also Rawls—rather than simply amending political liberalism, the claims of justificatory liberalism bring out fatal tensions between the desiderata of any theory of liberal-democratic legitimacy through public justification. (shrink)

This paper argues that an individualist perspective is a crucial element of William James’s metaphilosophical outlook. In broad outline, the individualist argument the paper attributes to James can be characterized like this. Disputes among philosophers about the optimal point of view from which to consider this or that philosophical problem are themselves only adequately adjudicated from an individualist perspective. That is, when it comes to an assortment of important philosophical questions (not all of them perhaps, but a significant number), an (...) individualist perspective should replace a more objective one, and whether it should or not is itself a question that should be decided from an individualist perspective. (shrink)

This critical notice provides an overview of Harry Frankfurt’s On Inequality and assesses whether Frankfurt is right to argue that equality is merely formal and empty. I counter-argue that egalitarianism, properly tweaked and circumscribed, can be defended against Frankfurt’s repudiation. After surveying the main arguments in Frankfurt’s book, I argue that whatever plausibility the ‘doctrine of sufficiency’ defended by Frankfurt may have, it does not strike a fatal blow against egalitarianism. There is nothing in egalitarianism that forbids acceptance of the (...) moral platitude expressed in sufficientarianism's positive thesis,. Nor is there anything in egalitarianism as such that makes it impossible to recognize the banal truth that there are many important things besides equality, and that many dimensions of human affairs are improperly appraised from a relational or comparative point of view. The fact that a relational or comparative point o... (shrink)

This paper critically examines Richard Rorty’s “justice as larger loyalty” proposal. While Rorty is right, I argue, to reject the Kantian idea of a strict bifurcation between justice and loyalty, the former corresponding to reason the latter corresponding to sentiment, my argument is that it is nevertheless a mistake to follow Rorty in conceiving of justice as he recommends we should. This is not an endorsement of the rationalistic Kantian view Rorty rejects. Rather, I argue that there are compelling Rortyan (...) reasons for rejecting the “justice as larger loyalty” proposal, and that the argument against that proposal is paradoxically very much in the spirit of Rorty’s moral and political thought. (shrink)

Unequal treatment of human research subjects is a significant ethical concern, because justice in research involving human subjects requires equal protection of rights and equal protection from harm and exploitation. Disputes sometimes arise concerning the issue of unequal treatment of research subjects. Allegedly unequal treatment occurs when subjects are treated differently and there is a genuine dispute concerning the appropriateness of equal treatment. Patently unequal treatment occurs when subjects are treated differently and there is not a genuine dispute about the (...) appropriateness of equal treatment. Allegedly unequal treatment will probably always occur in research with human subjects due to disagreements about fundamental questions of justice. The best way to deal with allegedly unequal treatment is to promote honest and open discussions of the issues at stake. Research regulations can help to minimize patently unequal treatment by providing rules for investigators, ethical review boards, institutions, and sponsors to follow. However, patently unequal treatment may still occur because the regulations are subject to interpretation. Federal agencies have provided interpretive guidance that can help promote consistent review and oversight of human subjects research. Additional direction may be needed on topics that are not adequately covered by current guidance or regulations. International guidelines can help promote equal treatment of human subjects around the globe. While minor variations in the treatment of research subjects should be tolerated and even welcomed, major ones (i.e. those that significantly impact human rights or welfare) should be avoided or minimized. (shrink)

Tännsjö’s book Setting Health-Care Priorities defends the view that there are three main normative theories in the domain of distributive justice, and that these theories are both highly plausible in themselves, and practically convergent in their normative conclusions. All three theories point to a somewhat radical departure from the present distribution of medical resources: in particular, they suggest redirecting resources from marginal life extension to the care of mentally ill patients. In this paper I wish to argue, firstly, that prioritarianism (...) should not be considered as an amendment to utilitarianism, as it is in Tännsjö’s view, but as a distinctive fourth option. This can best be appreciated if we focus on a reading of the theory that emphasizes its derivation from egalitarianism and its attempt to develop an intermediate approach between utilitarian and egalitarian intuitions. Secondly, in response to Tännsjö’s central objection to prioritarianism, I will argue that the theory does not apply in intrapersonal cases but is only relevant for decisions regarding the interpersonal distribution of benefits. Finally, I will suggest that a practical convergence of the four theories on specific issues such as artificial reproduction or mood enhancement is far less likely than Tännsjö seems to believe. (shrink)

Conceptions of desert and responsibility have had a powerful influence in justifying economic inequality. Currently, they are being reaffirmed in policies advocated by the centre left in Britain. In contrast, luck egalitarianism, one of the dominant theoretical positions in contemporary political philosophy, puts equality at the top of the agenda and notoriously undermines traditional notions of desert and rejects the conception of personal responsibility on which traditional ideas rely. Although luck egalitarians are sceptical about desert and redefine responsibility to reduce (...) its role in arguments for just distribution, they nevertheless retain a commitment to holding people responsible for the distributive consequences of what they freely choose to do. They attempt to demonstrate that equality can be reconciled with responsibility. I will argue that luck egalitarians have not gone far enough in eliminating desert and responsibility from the armoury of social justice, and that their own arguments should have led them to do so. My aim in this article is to push the ideas implicit in luck egalitarian's arguments to their logical conclusion. I argue that for practical and conceptual reasons, they should have formulated their theories as though hard determinism is true, or nearly true, even if it is not. Denying the pertinence of judgements of desert and responsibility to questions of distributive justice removes an obstacle to egalitarian aims by suggesting a more egalitarian distribution than one that is hostage to voluntary choice. It could be accepted that luck egalitarianism cannot accommodate the concept of personal responsibility without accepting the conclusion that considerations of responsibility should be abandoned. However, any plausible account of responsibility would demonstrate that existing inequalities are undeserved, and that these inequalities make a mockery of politicans current emphasis on personal responsibility. (shrink)

Global justice or the lack thereof has internal connections with global poverty. Global justice is an ideal pursuit of cosmopolitanism, which regards basic human needs as its rightful object. The right to life, from the point of view of global justice, is the most fundamental in the list of Human Rights. International anarchy and the current international economic order, however, cast a utopian shadow on the realization of this right when we consider the de facto institutions and the ostensible goal (...) of impartial love for everyone. Humanitarian aid is another approach to the problem of contemporary global poverty. Its difficulty lies first in people’s different conceptions of obligation and donation. They consider the former as duty while the latter is seen to lie beyond the call of duty. Second, in terms of a correlation between right and duty, since everyone has the right to life, the duty falls accordingly upon organizations or individuals. Meanwhile, donation as duty is not perfect obligation, thus is not compulsory either. Finally, international humanitarian aid is constrained by nationalism and partial love. Hence, in the light of either government or individual, the humanitarian aid approach is beset with challenges. Global justice has gained academic importance worldwide since John Rawls’ later works. By contrast to domestic justice, it is a theory of justice that proposes to include all human beings. Global justice stands for a kind of utopian justice in regard to both the institutional path and the humanitarian aid approach. I shall examine the theory of global justice under these two aspects. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The nature of state governance in consolidated liberal democracies has important implications for the ideal theory debate. The states of these societies are polycentric. Decision-making power within them is disaggregated across multiple sites. This rules out one major justification for ideal theory. On this influential view, the ideal furnishes a blueprint of the morally perfect society that we should strive to realise. This justification is not viable in consolidated liberal democracies because their states lack an Archimedean point from which the (...) institutional structure as a whole can be designed to accord with the true ideal – whichever it might be. However, knowledge of the ideal can still aid agents in those societies to determine the worth of more modest political objectives other than the ideal itself. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss a powerful challenge to high-liberalism: the challenge presented by neoclassical liberals that the high-liberal assumptions and values imply that the full range of economic liberties are basic rights. If the claim is true, then the high-liberal road from ideals of democracy and democratic citizenship to left-liberal institutions is blocked. Indeed, in that case the high-liberal is committed to an institutional scheme more along the lines of laissez-faire capitalism than property-owning democracy. To present and discuss this (...) challenge, I let John Rawls represent the high-liberal argument that only a narrow range of economic liberties are basic rights and John Tomasi represent the neoclassical liberal argument that the full range of economic liberties are basic rights. I show that Rawls’s argument is inadequate, but also that Tomasi’s argument fails. I thus conclude that high-liberalism is in a precarious situation, but is not yet undone by the neoclassical liberal challenge. (shrink)

Political theory has been described as an `enterprise of discovery' that carries within it the danger of utopianism. This article explores one aspect of that danger: the question of the paradoxical or circular nature of much political thinking. This seems to be both a necessary and an impossible feature of such theorizing. Political theory itself seems to require an idea of utopia that is, by definition, impossible to achieve.

The idea of sustainable development as a normative concept emphasizes the necessity for a wider consensus on meeting human needs, ensuring social equity, and respecting planetary boundaries. The purpose of the article focuses on the deontological orientation in perceiving sustainable development. It is expected that looking at sustainability from the deontological perspective might increase individuals’ awareness of responsibility towards respecting the needs of the world’s poor, environmental boundaries, and moral equity, which emphasizes that all people are equal. Any attempt to (...) achieve sustainability demands, first of all, rational action placed on moral duties/obligations before individual people or institutions can achieve their particular desires and goals. According to this perspective, sustainability should be treated as a prior constraint in obtaining economic maximization. (shrink)

Cost-effectiveness analysis suggests that a society should allocate its health care budget in order to achieve the greatest total health for its budget. However, in ‘rescue’ cases, where an individual’s life is in immediate peril, reasoning in terms of cost-effectiveness can appear inhumane. Hence considerations of cost-effectiveness and of rescue appear to be in tension. However, by attending to the division of labour in medical decision making it is possible to see how cost-effectiveness analysis and rescue-style reasoning are commonly combined (...) in an ethically acceptable fashion. (shrink)

This paper argues that close personal relationships play an important role in our judgments about what is fair. I start with an explanation of leading theories of fairness, highlighting the potential for further work on the grounds of fairness. Next, I offer an account of close personal relationships as having the ability to generate legitimate and reasonable expectations of one or other party to a judgment about fairness, or both. I show how and when close personal relationships can ground fairness.

In this paper I explore the concept of tolerance and suggest a description of that concept that could be accepted regardless of the political theory one supports. Since a neutral perception of the limits of tolerance is impossible, this paper offers a guideline for a substantive-liberal or a perfectionist-liberal approach to it. The limits of tolerance are described through the principles of reciprocity and proportionality. The former explains why intolerance should not be tolerated whereas the latter prescribes how and to (...) what extent it should be tolerated. The cumulative effect of these principles is that apart from extremely rare occasions intolerance should not be tolerated at any time. (shrink)

Oppression can be unjust from a luck egalitarian point of view even when it is the consequence of choices for which it is reasonable to hold persons responsible. This is for two reasons. First, people who have not been oppressed are unlikely to anticipate the ways in which their choices may lead them into oppressive conditions. Facts about systematic phenomena (like oppression) are often beyond the epistemic reach of persons who are not currently subject to such conditions, even when they (...) possess adequate information about the particular consequences of their choices. Second, people may be (much) less responsible for remaining in oppressive conditions, even if they are responsible for entering circumstances of oppression. Oppression that results from a person’s choice may cause or contribute to dramatic changes in that person, and these changes may be sufficient to undermine the person’s responsibility for the results of her earlier choice. (shrink)

Nowadays, special attention is given to the hazards associated with genetic engineering and new inventions in biotechnology, and in fear of severe consequences, researchers, institutions and governments are required to act responsibly. The term “responsibility” may be defined in numerous ways. The definition considered in this paper, is one we believe is in common use: “Generally speaking, a person has a special responsibility for a particular outcome if they knowingly brought it about and it would not exist if not for (...) what they did”. This concept of moral responsibility rests on what we term the three ‘I's’: individual, intentional and informed. Responsibility is individual in the sense that it must be directed towards someone. A second requirement of moral responsibility presupposes the ability to do otherwise, i.e. it presupposes each human being as an intentional actor, capable of acting according to his/her own free will. In order for someone to be responsible for their actions, the choice between alternatives must be informed. The article focus' on these three aspects of responsibility in order to reveal how difficult it is to apply and make sense of this definition with regard to new inventions in science. (shrink)

In "epistocratic" forms of government, political power is wielded by those who possess the knowledge relevant to good policymaking. Some democrats--notably, David Estlund--concede that epistocracy might produce better political outcomes than democracy but argue that epistocracy cannot be justified under public reason. These objections to epistocracy are unsound because they violate a viability constraint: they are also fatal to democracy and all other plausible political arrangements. Moreover, there is a problem with the public reason framework itself--a problem that can only (...) be solved by providing a better definition for what makes an objection to a political arrangement a "reasonable" one. (shrink)

According to the orthodox or humanist conception of human rights, individuals have a moral duty to promote the universal realization of human rights. However, advocates of this account express the implications of this duty in extremely vague terms. What does it mean when we say that we must promote human rights satisfaction? Does it mean that we must devote a considerable amount of our time and resources to this task? Does it mean, instead, that we must make occasional donations to (...) charities working to advance human rights realization? In this essay, I argue that this duty can only be constructed as imperfect. This means that it confers agent-relative discretion on us to decide when, how, and to what extent to advance the human rights of others. It also means that it is neither correlative with rights nor enforceable. As I will explain, the main reason for this is that any attempt to construct it as a perfect duty would infringe the dignity of the potential duty bearers and thereby undermine the very values that human rights practice aspires to serve. Finally, I will conclude by providing some guidelines for those who wish to comply with their imperfect duties to improve the situation of those whose human rights are in peril. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The principle of nationality is widely believed to be philosophically disreputable and politically reactionary. As defined here, it embraces three propositions: national identities are properly part of personal identities; they ground circumscribed obligations to fellow‐nationals; and they justify claims to political self‐determination. To have a national identity is to think of oneself as belonging to a community constituted by mutual belief, extended in history, active in character, connected to a particular territory, and marked off from others by its members’distinct (...) traits. Such identities are inevitably partly mythical in nature, yet they answer a pressing modern need, the maintenance of solidarity in large, anonymous societies. They are allied to no particular political programme. They do not require the suppression of minority cultures within the political community. They do not justify a secessionist free‐for‐all. Nor finally does recognition of the role of sentiments in constituting national communities commit us to a subjectivist view of social obligations. Philosophers should recognise the value of these loyalties even if they cannot be rationally grounded in a strong sense. [1]. (shrink)

Imagine entering a public high school history classroom. A student suggests the American Constitution was ratified in 1952. If a teacher corrected the student noting that New Hampshire became the n...

Some moral theorists defend a holistic account of practical reasons and deny that the possibility of moral thought depends upon the existence of moral principles. This article explores the implications of this position for theorising about justice, which has often aspired to provide us with an ordered list of principles to govern our institutions and practices.

Most of us are partial to our friends and loved ones: we treat them with special care, and we feel justified in doing so. In recent years, the idea that good friends are also epistemically partial to one another has been popular. Being a good friend, so-called epistemic partialists suggest, involves being positively biased towards one's friends – that is, involves thinking more highly of them than is warranted by the evidence. In this paper, I outline the concept of epistemic (...) partiality and its relation to non-epistemic partiality and explore some considerations that speak in favour of and against such partialism in friendships. I finish by suggesting some directions in which this debate could go next. (shrink)

Many social institutions function with rivalry, whether it is the legal adversarial system, the electoral system, competitive sports or the market. The literature on adversarial ethics (with authors such as Arthur Applbaum, David Luban and Joseph Heath) attempts to clarify what is a good behavior in these situations, but this work does not examine if institutionalized rivalry is desirable given its good and bad aspects. According to Monroe Freedman, for instance, the confrontation between lawyers in a trial may help discover (...) important facts about a case. Most economists believe that competition in the market increases economic efficiency. But institutionalized rivalry can also lead to morally wrong acts such as violence, deception or coercion. The aim of this article is to identify the conditions under which rivalry may be more or less desirable in our social arrangements. First, it will be necessary to clarify what is institutionalized rivalry and what is an adversarial scheme. Then, this article will explain what are the generic advantages and problems of adversarial schemes. Finally, this analysis will be used to outline a series of minimal requirements to consider that an adversarial scheme is desirable. (shrink)

John Rawls's work has greatly contributed to rehabilitating equality as a basic social value, after decades of utilitarian hegemony,particularly in normative economics, but Rawls also emphasized that full equality of welfare is not an adequate goal either. This thesis was echoed in Dworkin's famous twin papers on equality, and it is now widely accepted that egalitarianism must be selective. The bulk of the debate on ‘Equality of What?’ thus deals with what variables ought to be submitted for selection and how (...) this selection ought to be carried out. (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)

Confucian scholars should satisfy two conditions insofar as they think their theories enable Confucianism to make contributions to liberal politics and social policy. The liberal accommodation condition stipulates that the theory in question should accommodate as many reasonable conceptions of the good and religious doctrines as possible while the intelligibility condition stipulates that the theory must have a recognizable Confucian character. By and large, Joseph Chan’s Confucian perfectionism is able to satisfy the above two conditions. However, contrary to Chan and (...) many other Confucian scholars, I argue that any active promotion of Confucianism will violate the liberal accommodation condition. I propose the “wide view of moderate perfectionism,” which enables Confucianism to shed light on a wide range of political and social issues without promoting Confucianism actively. Thus, I present a new approach to the long-standing question of how Confucianism may improve political and social development in a liberal society. (shrink)

La pregunta acerca de por qué las personas deben obedecer el derecho introduce uno de los temas más complejos y discutidos de la filosofía política y jurídica contemporáneas. Entre las diversas respuestas ofrecidas en la literatura científica, Rawls formuló la teoría del deber natural de apoyar y promover las instituciones justas. El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer un análisis crítico de esta propuesta y mostrar cómo se podrían superar algunas de sus debilidades mediante un enfoque que enfatice la importancia (...) de preservar un esquema social beneficioso que ofrezca un marco de posibilidades para el desarrollo moral de las personas. (shrink)

The value of health states is often understood to depend on their impact on the goodness of people's lives. As such, prominent health states metrics are grounded in particular conceptions of wellbeing – e.g. hedonism or preference satisfaction. In this paper, I consider how liberals committed to the public justification requirement – the requirement that public officials choose laws and policies that are justifiable to their citizens – should evaluate health states. Since the public justification requirement prohibits public officials from (...) appealing to controversial conceptions of the good life, liberals committed to this principle face a significant puzzle. (shrink)

As the world is getting increasingly connected and interdependent it becomes clear that the world’s most pressing public problems such as poverty or global warming call for cross-sector solutions. The paper discusses the idea of business leaders acting as agents of world benefit, taking an active co-responsibility in generating solutions to problems. It argues that we need responsible global leaders who are aware of the pressing problems in the world, care for the needs of others, aspire to make this world (...) a better place, and act in word and deed as global and responsible citizens. The argument is structured as follows: first, in highlighting some leadership challenges we discuss why it takes a responsible, global, and ultimately cosmopolitan mindset to enhance human values on a global scale. Second, we define more specifically responsible global leadership and the (potential) role of business leaders acting as agents of world benefit. Third, drawing on latest research on cosmopolitanism, we discuss the hallmarks of contemporary cosmopolitanism. Fourth, and concluding our argument, we propose key cosmopolitan business principles to help leaders build a more inclusive world. (shrink)

The argument of Katrina Forrester’s In the Shadow of Justice explains the present neglect of Rawlsian thinking in the social and political world beyond academia. She there convincingly shows how its deep assumptions, conceptual framing and narrow view of what constitutes politics disabled it from grappling with the subsequent massive transformations of capitalism. Her second argument, advanced in her article and questioned here, offers an ideology critique of Rawlsian thinking that claims, in its strongest version, that such thinking fails to (...) acknowledge that capitalism is not reformable and that this failure derives from its liberal assumptions. What is needed, she claims, is a critique that implies the feasibility of attaining a post-capitalist world that is based on a theory that goes beyond the boundaries of liberalism. (shrink)

I propose a modal logic that enables to reason about self-regarding and otherregarding motivations in strategic games. This logic integrates the concepts of joint action, belief, individual and group payoff. The first part of the article is focused on self-regarding agents. A self-regarding agent decides to perform a certain action only if he believes that this action maximizes his own personal benefit. The second part of the article explores different kinds of other-regarding motivations such as fairness and reciprocity. Differently from (...) self-regarding agents, other-regarding agents also consider the benefits of their choices for the group. Moreover, their decisions can be affected by their beliefs about other agents' willingness to act for the well-being of the group. The analysis also considers team-directed reasoning, i.e. the mode of reasoning that people use when they take themselves to be acting as members of a group or a team. (shrink)

El artículo defiende la tesis de que el liberalismo igualitario nos lleva a una teoría de justicia global y, como parte de ésta, a un derecho de inmigración. Así, el peso de la prueba contra la justicia global y la inmigración se desplaza hacia aquéllos que las desean limitar. Un argumento corriente es que las obligaciones especiales hacia nuestros conciudadanos tienen prioridad sobre las obligaciones generales de justicia. El artículo examina argumentos particularistas y reduccionistas a favor de estas obligaciones especiales, (...) y sostiene que éstos no justifican la restricción de la justicia hacia nuestros conciudadanos y tampoco la discrecionalidad total de los estados en el control de sus fronteras. (shrink)

This article presents two rejoinders to Frankfurt’s arguments against egalitarianism. In developing the first, I introduce a novel relational view of justice: relational sufficiency. This is the view that justice requires us to relate to one another as people with sufficient, but not necessarily equal, standing. I argue that if Frankfurt’s objections to distributive equality are sound, so are analogous objections to relational equality. However, in a range of cases involving comparative justice we should be relational egalitarians, not relational sufficientarians, (...) and that we must therefore reject Frankfurt’s objections to distributive equality. The second rejoinder takes the form of a demonstration that all of Frankfurt’s objections to distributive equality are unsound. In effect, the article rehabilitates the ideal of distributive equality in the face of Frankfurt’s objections. (shrink)

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

G. A. Cohen’s critique of standard liberal interpretations of the difference principle has been very influential. According to Cohen, justice is not realized simply because the state’s tax policies and other distributive tools maximize the position of the worst off. Rather – possibly in addition to, but not to the exclusion of, certain state policies – justice requires talented people to improve the position of the worst off through their actions in their daily lives. Specifically, it prohibits talented people from (...) insisting on inequality-causing incentives. To this extent, Cohen’s view of distributive justice is anti-statist. On standard liberal interpretations, human rights are such that, logically, they can be violated only by states, not private individuals. An individual who tortures someone commits a moral wrong but does not violate the victim’s human rights. For this reason, the crime is less problematic than it would have been had a police officer done it on behalf of the state. To this extent the standard liberal understanding of human rights is statist. This parallel between liberal understandings of distributive justice and human rights raises two questions: Is the statist understanding of human rights vulnerable to Cohenian criticisms parallel to those that he canvasses against the statist understanding of distributive justice? If so, should we welcome an anti-statist understanding of human rights, or should we see it as a problem with Cohen’s critique of a statist focus in distributive justice that it commits us to an implausible anti-statist view of human rights? (shrink)