This article argues that the civic virtue of tolerance has to be understood as a virtue of justice. Based on an analysis of the concept of toleration and its paradoxes, it shows that toleration is a 'normatively dependent concept' that needs to take recourse to a conception of justice in order to solve these paradoxes. At the center of this conception of justice lies a principle of reciprocal and general justification with the help of which a distinction between moral norms (...) and ethical values is possible. While the former are strictly binding and define the realm of the tolerable, the latter are subject to reasonable disagreement that calls for toleration. Essentially, the virtue of tolerance is the capacity and willingness to accept the principle and criteria of justification of generally binding norms in an ethically pluralist society.This virtue is analyzed with respect to its normative and epistemological components. Finally, the idea of a 'tolerant character' is discussed. (shrink)

The issue of whether religious belief should be an appropriate grounding for business ethics raises issues very similar to those raised in asking whether religious belief should be an appropriate grounding for political morality. In light of that fact that writings in political morality have been a common resource for contemporary business ethics, this paper presents contemporary arguments about the role of religion in political morality while noting the relevance of these debates for business ethics.The paper takes the position that (...) rather than excluding religion from public morality, political morality (and business ethics) ought to take an inclusive, ecumenical approach. To argue this position and to present fully a range of literature normally not studied in business ethics circles, the paper presents and critiques the major contemporary authors in the field of political morality and contrasts them with the inclusionists who seek to keep public grounds open for all moral perspectives. (shrink)

The ethical matrix approach was developed by Prof Ben Mepham and his colleagues at the University of Nottingham in the early 1990s. Since then the approach has received increasing attention and has been used by several researchers in different projects related to assessing ethical impacts of different food production technologies and other policy options of societal concern. The ethical matrix is sometimes understood simply as a checklist of ethical concerns, but might also be seen as a guide to coming to (...) conclusions on moral questions. The problem I discuss in this paper relates to how using the ethical matrix method as a decision guide can be combined with respecting pluralism. The aim of the paper is to suggest a framework making it possible to – at the same time – enhance public justification of judgments and respect pluralism. I argue that pluralism is fundamental to the ethical matrix approach; I distinguish between intuitionist principled pluralism and societal value pluralism; and I show how both kinds of pluralism imply restrictions on how conclusions can be made. No substantive moral decision principles can be allowed. Still, I argue, decision principles of a more epistemological or procedural character can be acceptable even within pluralism. The pragmatist principle of inquiry is defended as an account of moral problem solving compatible with both principled pluralism and value pluralism. When an ethical matrix is used within such a participatory inquiry process substantive conclusions can be drawn. (shrink)

Existing accounts of public-goods distribution rely on the existence of solidarity for providing non-universal public goods, such as the humanities or national parks. There are three fundamental problems with these accounts: they ignore instances of social fragmentation; they treat preferences for public goods as morally benign, and they assume that these preferences are the only relevant moral consideration. However, not all citizens unanimously require public goods such as the humanities or national parks. Public-goods distribution that is based only on citizens’ (...) preferences, therefore, means that non-universal public good are at a constant risk of under-provision, and has negative implications for human flourishing. The paper, therefore, develops a complementary justification for the distribution of public goods, that decouples the distribution of public goods from ad hoc preferences, and grounds the distributive justification in the intrinsic value of these goods. There are three reasons to include intrinsic-value considerations in public-goods distribution: responding to crowding-out effects; promoting shared heritage and cross-fertilization. Finally, the intrinsic-value justification may indirectly promote solidarity. Thus, the intrinsic-value and the solidarity justifications need not be mutually exclusive, rather they can be mutually reinforcing. (shrink)

Agonist theorists have argued against deliberative democrats that democratic institutions should not seek to establish a rational consensus, but rather allow political disagreements to be expressed in an adversarial form. But democratic agonism is not antagonism: some restriction of the plurality of admissible expressions is not incompatible with a legitimate public sphere. However, is it generally possible to grant this distinction between antagonism and agonism without accepting normative standards in public discourse that saliently resemble those advocated by (some) deliberative democrats? (...) In this paper we provide an analysis of one important aspect of political communication, the use of slippery slope arguments, and show that the fact of pluralism weakens the agonists’ case for contestation as a sufficient ingredient for appropriately democratic public discourse. We illustrate that contention by identifying two specific kinds of what we call pluralism slippery slopes, i.e. mechanisms whereby pluralism reinforces the efficacy of slippery slope arguments. (shrink)

Several influential characterizations of paternalism or its distinctive wrongness emphasize a belief or judgement that it typically involves—namely, 10 the judgement that the paternalized is likely to act irrationally, or some such. But it's not clear what about such a belief can be morally objectionable if it has the right epistemic credentials (if it is true, say, and is best supported by the evidence). In this paper, I elaborate on this point, placing it in the context of the relevant epistemological (...) discussions. I explain how 15 evidentialism is opposed to such thoughts; I show that possible ways of rejecting evidentialism (along lines analogous to those of pragmatic encroachment) won't work; and I sketch an account of the wrongness of paternalism that doesn't depend on any flaw in the belief about others' likely behaviour. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 143-165, June 2022.

Den offentlige beslutningsprosessen i bioetiske spørsmål i Norge preges av stor bruk av etiske komiteer. I denne artikkelen reiser jeg spørsmålet om hvordan denne bruken kan begrunnes. Mens en god offentlig prosess krever at det finnes organer som tar seg av nemndenes drøftende og informasjonsgivende funksjon, er det mindre sikkert hvorvidt vi trenger deres rådgivende funksjon, som det til en viss grad er mulig å skille fra de to andre funksjonene. Nemndenes rådgivende funksjon kjennetegnes ved at deres råd gis en (...) spesiell vekt i høringsrunder, uavhengig av argumentene bak rådene, og slik må det også være hvis man skal ha rådgivende nemnder overhodet. Men det er uklart hva som rettferdiggjør at nemndenes råd gis spesiell vekt.Jeg ser på to måter å svare på dette spørsmålet på, enten med utgangspunkt i en moralsk epistemologi som sannsynliggjør at nemndene finner moralsk riktige svar, eller med utgangspunkt i en teori om politisk legitimitet som tilsier at nemndenes konklusjoner har politisk legitimitet. Jeg drøfter og forkaster to former for moralsk epistemologi; én som ser på nemnder som en samling etikkeksperter som kan resonnere seg frem til riktig svar, og én som ser på nemnder som en samling vismenn med spesiell moralsk innsikt. Mer plausibelt er en mellomløsning, som ser på nemndsmedlemmene som de kompetente dommere i en reflektiv likevektprosess. I en slik prosess spiller imidlertid skjønnsvurderinger en uunngåelig rolle, og jeg argumenterer for at beslutninger basert på subjektive skjønnsvurderinger ikke vil være politisk legitime. I den grad nemnder bidrar til politisk legitime beslutninger, er det mer fordi de bidrar til å oppdage løsninger som av uavhengige grunner har politisk legitimitet, enn at de selv gir slik legitimitet. (shrink)

My interest here is to consider ‘whether non-violent civil disobedience should be used as a means to promote action on global climate change’ (Lemons & Brown 2011, p. 3), as a result of one’s obligation towards the members of one’s own political community. In the second part, the interests of nongoverned persons are considered within the scope of political obligation, including the authors’ appeal to Gandhi’s movement and autonomy to protect the interests of foreigners in conjunction with civil disobedience.

According to the Public Justification Principle, legitimate laws must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Proponents of this principle assume that its satisfaction requires speakers to offer justifications that are representable as arguments that feature premises which reasonable listeners would accept. I develop the concept of dark knowledge to show that this assumption is false. Laws are often justified on the basis of premises that many reasonable listeners know, even though they would reject these premises on the basis of the (...) further considerations that speakers implicitly rely on for their support. Accommodating the fact of dark knowledge requires us to consider the civic virtue of speakers to be more important for public justification than the acceptability of their arguments to reasonable citizens. I sketch an alternative conception of public justification that incorporates these results and argue that it provides a rationale for ignoring the otherwise sound contributions of some participants in political deliberation. (shrink)

The Public Justification Principle requires that coercive institutions be justified to all who live under them. I argue that this principle often cannot be satisfied without persons depending on the pure informative testimony of others, even under realistically idealized situations. Two main results follow. First, the sense of justification relevant to this principle has a strongly externalist component. Second, normative expectations of trust are essential to public justification. On the view I propose, whether the Public Justification Principle is satisfied depends (...) on the features of the network of testifiers in which persons are embedded. I consider several such networks to show which features are plausibly relevant. The importance of testimony for public justification ultimately suggests that we should moderate our expectations about the kind of conciliation we can achieve with the social order in which we live. (shrink)

This paper is part of a broader argument that seeks to offer a justification for political authority. It aims to investigate the role of truth in political argument and to place the problem of reasonable disagreement. The argument focuses on the possibility of political deliberation, that figures as a stage of political decision‐making. It has to do with a confrontation between incompatible substantive beliefs which, however, all seem to be reasonable. How can citizens holding incompatible beliefs engage in an enterprise (...) of justifying them to one another? That is the question. (shrink)

I would like to begin by expressing my sincere and profound thanks to all those who suggested criticism and comments to my paper. As I write this reply, like many around the world, I am at home, in...

In this paper, I contrast two approaches to political legitimacy, both influenced by Rawls. One is the classic political liberal picture, according to which a state is legitimate if its “constitutional essentials” could be endorsed by reasonable citizens. The alternative is the idea that what makes a state legitimate is primarily its success at organizing the basic structure in a way that is demonstrably favorable to the governed. Specifically, I suggest that a state is legitimate insofar as it organizes the (...) basic structure in a manner that makes it easier for citizens to behave justly towards one another and adopt autonomous choices. I then move to demonstrate the superiority of this normative impact solution to the problem of legitimacy vis-à-vis political liberalism, even when reasonable disagreement about justice is factored in. (shrink)

The aim of the book is to uncover the relation between market and justice through the critical examination of the work of Friedrich Hayek. The book argues for the following thesis: the institution of free market is not the only candidate social system; substantial, not merely formal distributive justice must become the central virtue of our social institutions. Notwithstanding its achievements and virtues, the Hayekian theory makes a simple mistake by equivocating possible social systems, dividing them into two groups. One (...) is the world of liberty and free market where people follow the general and abstract rules of conduct, accepting the outcome of market processes, be those good or bad. The other is the world of coercion and repression in which organized distributive instituions dominate and free market is non-existent. According to Hayek’s famous thesis, although freedom is possible in the latter world, we are nevertheless already on the road to serfdom: this fate is inevitable. In this dichotomy the decision is indeed simple. If justice is nothing else but the Trojan horse of oppression, then it is indeed a dangerous and unworkable ideal. However, if this dichotomy does not hold and there is a variety of acceptable social systems, then justice may become the central virtue of institutions, thereby contradicting Hayek’s theory. In the second half of the book I present this alternative, justice-governed social system in more detail. (shrink)

The question of the morality of abortion has long been the subject of intense, sometimes acrimonious debate. Even people within the same religious or philosophical tradition often disagree on the issue. For example, there are Christians who are “pro- choice” and there are Christians who are “pro-life.” Both sides marshal biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments in support of their positions. The substance of the abortion debate seems to reduce to one tricky question: when does personhood begin? Christian experts in various (...) fields, such as theology, biblical studies, ethics, and philosophy, have protracted disagreements over this question. In this article we will apply insights from the current literature on epistemic peer disagreement to the abortion issue. We will assume that there is only one correct answer to the abortion question. However, after making a crucial distinction between rationality as understood by internalists versus externalists, we will argue that there is more than one rational answer to the abortion question, since there is more than one rational way to weight evidence. We will conclude that, in a case of disagreement between two Christians who are epistemic peers with regards to the morality of abortion, both parties can be rational in adhering to their respective positions, but that this does not entail or even support ethical relativism. (shrink)

This paper comments on the strategies and goals of a politics of recognition as celebrated by Nancy Nicol’s important documentary coverage of the gay and lesbian movement for family rights in Quebec. While agreeing that ending legal discrimination against lgbt families is important, I suggest that political recognition of same-sex families and their children is a too limited goal for queer families and their allies. Moreover, it is a goal, I argue, that often trades on trades on troublesome assumptions about (...) gender, class, race, age and normative commitments to monogamy as these relate to distinctions between, for example, “fit” and “unfit” parents. (shrink)

Explains the concept and conceptions of public justification found in the philosophy and political theory literatures.

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

The conciliationist and steadfast approaches have dominated the conversation in the epistemology of disagreement. In this paper, drawing on Jennifer Lackey’s justificationist approach and the casuistry paradigm in medical ethics, I will develop a more contextual epistemology of political disagreement. On this account, a given political disagreement’s scope, domain, genealogy, and consequence can be helpful for determining whether we should respond to that disagreement at the level of our confidence, beliefs, or with policy. Though some may argue that responding with (...) policy is a practical consideration instead of an epistemic matter, I argue that even policy responses to disagreements have an epistemic dimension to them that we should not ignore. (shrink)

The paper discusses two ways to understand political liberalism. On the one hand, political liberalism may rely on the existence of an overlapping consensus among all reasonable comprehensive views present in our society. On the other hand, we may ground political liberalism on the moral value of equal respect for everyone. The dilemma between a factual identification of an overlapping consensus and a normative appeal to moral values arises at two levels. First, when we fill the content of our political (...) conception of justice. And second, when we require impartiality to fill that content. In the former case, we may argue for a particular conception of justice through normative argument with moral premises, or our political conception of justice might be the area where all reasona-ble comprehensive views overlap. Similarly, we require that citizens offer impartial public reasons because this is what people holding different comprehensive views do think ap-propriate, or because they should consider it so. The author argues that we should define our political conception of justice through impartial normative argument, and that we should ground the demand of impartiality on the moral value of equal respect. (shrink)

Let justice be a feature of the social order imposed by a state and legitimacy a feature of how it is imposed: one that makes the imposition acceptable. This article argues that, so understood, legitimacy is quite a distinct concern from justice; that the core concern is with showing how state coercion is consistent with people’s being free citizens; that this does not require showing that the state exists by consensus or contract; that the best hope of satisfying the concern (...) lies with arguing that state coercion need not be dominating; and that this is possible only within the republican theory that identifies freedom with the absence of domination, not interference. (shrink)

Aumann’s theorem states that no individual should agree to disagree under a range of assumptions. Political liberalism appears to presuppose these assumptions with the idealized conditions of public reason. We argue Aumann’s theorem demonstrates they nevertheless cannot be simultaneously held with what is arguably political liberalism’s most central tenet. That is, the tenet of reasonable pluralism, which implies we can rationally agree to disagree over conceptions of the good. We finish by elaborating a way of relaxing one of the theorem’s (...) axioms that arguably lends itself to a coherent account of political liberalism, namely the condition of indexical independence. (shrink)

This article tries to show that commonplace economic, ethico-religious, anti-racist,and logical-consistency objections to public funding of abortions and abortion counseling for poor women are quite weak. By contrast, arguments appealing to basic human rights to freedom of speech, informed consent, protection from great harm, justice and equal protection under the law, strongly support public funding. Thus, refusing to provide abortions at public expense for women who cannot afford them is morally unacceptable and rationally unjustifiable, despite the opinions of former Presidents (...) Reagan and Bush, the more conservative members of the Supreme Court of the United States, the current Congress, and the majority of the American people. (shrink)

In Democratic Authority, David Estlund argues that decision-procedures are to be judged solely by their tendency to generate morally superior decisions, but that because any relationship of authority must be acceptable to all qualified moral points of view, the epistemic benefits of less equal procedures must be evident beyond qualified objection. If all doctrines involved in political justification must be qualifiedly acceptable, however, the qualified acceptability requirement must itself be acceptable to qualified points of view. This article provides reasons for (...) doubting that this ‘insularity’ can be achieved, and explores ways of reformulating the principle so that it does not exclude itself. (shrink)

I first provide an analysis of Joel Feinberg’s anti-paternalism in terms of invalidation of reasons. Invalidation is the blocking of reasons from influencing the moral status of actions, in this case the blocking of personal good reasons from supporting liberty-limiting actions. Invalidation is shown to be distinct from moral side constraints and lexical ordering of values and reasons. I then go on to argue that anti-paternalism as invalidation is morally unreasonable on at least four grounds, none of which presuppose that (...) people can be mistaken about their own good: First, the doctrine entails that we should sometimes allow people to unintentionally severely harm or kill themselves though we could easily stop them. Second, it entails that we should sometimes allow perfectly informed and rational people to risk the lives of themselves and others, though they are in perfect agreement with us on what reasons we have to stop them for their own good. Third, the doctrine leaves unexplained why we may benevolently coerce less competent but substantially autonomous people, such as young teens, but not adults. Last, it entails that there are peculiar jumps in justifiability between very similar actions. I conclude that as liberals we should reject anti-paternalism and focus our efforts on explicating important liberal values, thereby showing why liberty reasons sometimes override strong personal good reasons, though never by making them invalid. (shrink)

Contemporary political liberalism defends the view that any legitimate law ought to be justified to those reasonable citizens subject to it. A standard way in which to accomplish this task is to construct a set of public reasons, comprised of constitutional essentials and public democratic values, which are then used to justify all political mandates. The dissertation begins with a criticism of this process of justification for outcomes of legitimate procedures of public decision-making. It argues that given how reasons contribute (...) to judgment formation, it is highly optimistic to assume that reasonable consent on procedures of collective decision-making correspond to the justifiability of procedural outcomes. Instead, I argue for an ideal of legitimate decision-making which enables each citizen to assume a threshold level of personal responsibility for all political decisions made by the political collective. Integrating responsibility into a theory of liberal legitimacy requires a reformulation of the rules of public justification. I argue that citizens concerned with making responsible political decisions must be allowed to justify their political positions through both reasonable judgments as well as sympathetic judgments such as compassion for those who live with disability and mercy towards the criminally motivated. The notion of sympathy, as formulated by David Hume and expanded by Adam Smith, provides an account of how individuals’ ethical evaluations are affected by their ability to be in fellow-feeling with other people. A substantial portion of my doctoral thesis considers the situations in which a private judgment couched in sympathetic terms can meet political liberalism’s demands of publicity and reciprocity. (shrink)

Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means. (shrink)

Public reason liberals claim that legitimate rules must be justifiable to diverse perspectives. This Public Justification Principle threatens that failing to justify rules to reprehensible agents makes them illegitimate. Although public reason liberals have replies to this objection, they cannot avoid the challenge of powerful deceivers. Powerful deceivers trick people who are purportedly owed public justification into considering otherwise good rules unjustified. Avoiding this challenge requires discounting some failures of justification according to what caused people’s beliefs. I offer a conception (...) of public justification that accommodates these externalist considerations while positioning Public Reason Liberalism to provide insight into real cases of deception. (shrink)

The following essay begins by outlining the pragmatist link between truth claims and democratic deliberations. To this end, special attention will be paid to Jeffrey Stout’s pragmatist enfranchisement of religious citizens. Stout defends a deliberative notion of democracy that fulfills stringent criteria of inclusion and security against domination. While mitigating secular exclusivity, Stout nonetheless acknowledges the new visibility of religion in populist attempts to dominate political life through mass rule and charismatic authorities. In response, I evaluate recent innovations in deliberative (...) democratic systems theory (DDST). By adding a pragmatist inflection to DDST, I aim to apprehend the complex religious interactions between partisan interest groups as well as the trust-building capacities of minipublics. (shrink)

Rawlsian liberals define legitimacy in terms of the public justification principle (PJP): the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justified on the grounds of reasons that all may reasonably be expected to accept. Does PJP exclude religious reasons from public justification of legal provisions? I argue that the requirement of ‘reasonable acceptability’ is not clear enough to answer this question. Furthermore, it fails to address the problematic fact that justification on the grounds of religious faith involves (...) non-negotiable claims, which is incompatible with respect for fellow citizens as co-legislators. Accordingly, I reformulate PJP in fallibilistic terms: the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justified on the grounds of reasons that can be subject to reasonable criticism. I show that reasons based on religious faith do not meet this principle, just like any other reasons that involve claims about final values. (shrink)

One of the challenges that liberal neutrality faces in diverse societies is how to maintain neutrality towards conception of the good life, when establishment of a particular conception of the good and exclusion of other conceptions is inevitable, as in the case of language regulation. A possible solution is to justify this establishment by appealing to universal reasons, thus refraining from endorsing the intrinsic value of the established conception. This paper argues that such a solution is limited, as it does (...) not cover all inevitable-establishment domains. This is because there is a distinction within inevitable-establishment domains: domains in which rival options can coexist, such as language policy, and domains in which options are mutually exclusive, such as land-use policy. The paper argues that language policy is a coexistence domain, since it allows for a degree of personal agency, and it can refrain from making value judgments about the language that is endorsed by the state. Spatial organization and land-use policy, on the other hand, must rest on value judgments about the good life and cannot accommodate neutral justifications. The distinction has important implications for the scope of neutrality: neutrality turns out to be applicable in coexistence domains, and inapplicable in mutually-exclusive domains. Ultimately, it may be the case that neutrality may not be applicable even in language policy, since language policy exhibits characteristics of a mutually-exclusive domain. (shrink)

Me propongo analizar críticamente la idea de abstinencia epistémica desarrollada por un importante grupo de teóricos liberales a partir de los años ochenta del siglo pasado. Para los propósitos del liberalismo político la propuesta de la abstinencia epistémica desempeña un papel crucial. Consiste en garantizar el consenso en torno a las reglas procesales y principios públicos de justicia, exigiendo que la pluralidad de intereses y concepciones sustantivas que coexisten en la sociedad se abstengan de realizar atribuciones de verdad sobre sus (...) propias concepciones morales cuando éstas son debatidas en la esfera pública. Mi argumento es que esta estrategia fracasa toda vez que la abstinencia epistémica no resiste la aplicación de sus propias cláusulas a sí misma. (shrink)

Varios autores afines al proyecto del liberalismo político han propuesto diferentes modelos de razón pública para enfrentar la situación de desacuerdo moral permanente en las sociedades liberales. En este trabajo presentamos un modelo que defiende dos argumentos. Primero, argumentamos a favor de una interpretación deflacionista de las razones que son aceptables para los ciudadanos razonables. Segundo, introducimos una nueva terminología que distingue entre lo que llamamos razones dependientes, accesibles y aceptables. Sostenemos que sólo las segundas y las terceras son medios (...) adecuados de discusión dentro de la razón pública, y las terceras son un estándar correcto de justificación de política pública. (shrink)

In their strife for designing a moral system where everyone is given equal consideration, cosmopolitan theorists have merely tolerated partiality as a necessary evil (insofar it means that we give priority to our kin opposite the distant needy). As a result, the cosmopolitan ideal has long departed from our moral psychologies and our social realities. Here I put forward partial cosmopolitanism as an alternative to save that obstacle. Instead of demanding impartial universal action, it requires from us that we are (...) equally responsive in all the relationships we stand in. That goes from the local to the cosmopolitan sphere, since I defend that we are related with strangers as co-members of the global community. Thus, partiality not only is accommodated by cosmopolitanism, but actually supports it: only by having meaningful personal relationships we become able to care for distant strangers. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo sostengo que los argumentos específicos desarrollados por John Rawls para justificar la adopción de un estándar de bienes sociales primarios no logran su cometido. En primer lugar, presento y critico los argumentos rawlsianos relacionados con intuiciones antidiscriminatorias y con el hecho del pluralismo razonable. Asimismo, caracterizo y critico las ideas rawlsianas concernientes al alcance del concepto de equidad, así como el argumento de los gustos caros y de la responsabilidad por los fines. Estimo que ellos no (...) logran justificar el distribuendum recursivista de bienes sociales primarios. En cambio, entiendo que tales consideraciones brindan apoyo a un estándar bienestarista. Ello se debe a que un estándar welfarista enfrenta exitosamente las dificultades que Rawls menciona para favorecer el estándar recursivista de bienes sociales primarios. In the present paper I argue that the specific arguments developed by John Rawls to justify the standard of social primary goods do not succeed. In the first place I develop and criticize the Rawlsian arguments grounded in antidiscriminatory intuitions and the fact of reasonable pluralism. I also characterize and criticize Rawls's ideas concerning the scope of the concept of fairness as well as his argument concerning extensive tastes and responsibility for ends. I believe that they do not justify a resourcist distribuendum. On the contrary, I argue that such considerations support a welfarist standard. The reason is that a welfarist standard successfully deals with the difficulties Rawls mentions in favoring the resourcist standard of social primary goods. (shrink)

I argue that political liberals should not support the monopoly of a single educational approach in state sponsored schools. Instead, they should allow reasonable citizens latitude to choose the worldview in which their own children are educated. I begin by defending a particular conception of political liberalism, and its associated requirement of public reason, against the received interpretation. I argue that the values of respect and civic friendship that motivate the public reason requirement do not support the common demand that (...) citizens “bracket” their comprehensive commitments in politics. Rather, citizens should seek to enact policies the justification of which is compatible with the truth of their fellow reasonable citizens’ worldviews. Next I argue that no single educational approach can meet this standard of justification. Many believe that state sponsored education in a pluralist, liberal society ought to present multiple worldviews in a neutral way. I argue that this aspiration is unrealizable, and no other educational model will plausibly meet the justificatory demand. Finally, I address two objections to my favored alternative: that it may allow for the inculcation of disrespect, and that it violates children’s autonomy. Against the first, I claim that political liberals have no grounds for thinking that reasonable citizens will seek to inculcate disrespect. Finally, I argue that there is no conception of autonomy that can sustain the second. (shrink)

May a government attempt to improve the lives of its citizens by promoting the activities it deems valuable and discouraging those it disvalues? May it engage in such a practice even when doing so is not a requirement of justice in some strict sense, and even when the judgments of value and disvalue in question are likely to be subject to controversy among its citizens? These questions have long stood at the center of debates between political perfectionists and political neutralists. (...) In what follows I address a prominent cluster of arguments against political perfec- tionism—namely, arguments that focus on the coercive dimensions of state action. My main claim is simple: whatever concerns we might have about coercion, arguments from coercion fall short of supporting a thoroughgoing rejection of perfectionism, for the reason that perfectionist policies need not be coercive. The main body of the paper responds, however, to several neutra- list challenges to this last claim. (shrink)