Although there are many conceptions of Justice, these different perceptions can provide many interesting insights into a business person's ethical standards as well as that person's decision-making processes. Using the Bishops' Pastoral Letter on the U.S. Economy as the basis for asking questions about justice, twenty-four business executives were interviewed about their conception of justice. An analysis of these interviews reveals that this group of businesspeople operated under very different conceptions of Justice at the Macroenvironmental and Microenvironmental levels. This result (...) has some interesting implications not only for those scholars concerned with business ethics but for everyone who has a stake in business education. (shrink)

It is the contention of this paper that some progress in alleviating the social and environmental problems which are beginning to face Papua New Guinea can be achieved by supporting traditional Melanesian values through maintaining the customary system of communal land tenure. In accordance with this aim, I will proceed to contrast certain Western attitudes towards individual freedom, selfinterested behaviour, individual and communal interests and private ownership with attitudes and values expressed in the traditional Melanesian approach. In order to demonstrate (...) the latter, I will briefly touch upon the phenomenon of wantokism and indicate how the Melanesian values associated with this concept find their locus in the system of customary communal ownership. Subsequently, I will describe how the emergence of a cash economy and the attachment to Western gadgetry and products have effected injury to the environment and undermined values which have previously maintained Melanesian social cohesion. While admitting that little can be done to eradicate the desire for cash and the products it can buy, I suggest that Melanesian communities and the environment itself would receive more protection if future development in Papua New Guinea embraced a system which incorporated certain of the traditional Melanesian values through the preservation of the communal form of land tenure. Ultimately, I suggest a way in which customary communal land tenure can be integrated into the established Anglo-Australian legal system. (shrink)

Organizations in competitive markets are often assumed to be voluntary associations, involving free exchange between various participants for mutual benefit. Just how voluntary or free organizational exchanges really are, however, is problematic. Even the criteria for determining whether specific transactions are free or coerced are not clear. In this paper, I review three general approaches to specifying such criteria: consequentialist, descriptive, and normative. I argue that the last is the most reasonable, that freedom is an essentially moral concept, whose meaning (...) is relative to preconceptions of human rights. Implications for freedom of contract are discussed.[O]n the whole, market competition, when it is permitted to work, protects the consumer better than do the alternative government mechanisms that have been increasingly superimposed on the market. ... If one storekeeper offers you goods of lower quality or of higher price than another, you're not going to continue to patronize his store. If he buys goods to sell that don't serve your needs, you're not going to buy them. The merchants therefore search out all over the world the products that might meet your needs and might appeal to you. And they stand back of them because if they don't, they're going to go out of business. When you enter a store, no one forces you to buy. You are free to do so or go elsewhere. That is the basic difference between the market and a political agency. You are free to choose (Friedman and Friedman, 1979, 222–223). (shrink)

Concern with material equality as the central form of distributive justice is a very modern idea. Distributive justice for Aristotle and many other writers for millennia after him was a matter of distributing what each ought to get from merit or desert in some sense. Many, such as Hume, thought material equality a pernicious idea. In the medieval village life of Bodo, villagers knew enough about each other to govern relations through norms, including, when necessary, a norm of charity. In (...) more complex modern societies, economic destitution cannot so well be handled by individual charity, but now it can be handled by states. Hence, we begin to conceive of the idea of distributive justice as driven essentially by concern for material equality. The difference in state capacities is largely epistemological: states today can know much more about their citizens. (shrink)

Basic human rights are supposed to protect people from abuse and harm. They are the means whereby we protect our humanity. One would expect, therefore, that basic human rights would be valid and sacred in any context, including industrial relations. However, the complexity of the employee–employer relationship obscures this issue, and it is not clear whether such rights can be protected or whether they are valid in the context of industrial relations. Since rights are relational, they are preconditioned on the (...) special nature of the relationship between employee and employer. Hence, the specific meaning that these rights have in industrial relations cannot be grounded in the notion of human rights as such, but rather depends on the special relationships between employers and employees. Though much legislation has been passed to regulate the relationship between employees and employers, the issues surrounding this relationship remain one of the most debated topics in business ethics. Our paper focuses specifically on the right to equal pay and the right to privacy. With respect to the right to property, the paper examines whether there is a conflict between general human rights and the fundamental right of employers to their property. The Israeli legislature has responded to this conflict by enacting ‘protective laws’ that legally outline and mandate certain human rights. Under these laws, employees are prevented and prohibited from waiving the rights granted to them by law, even if employed in private industries. Despite this legislative effort, market forces are at times stronger, and consequently some basic rights are not fully applied or implemented. (shrink)

The paper contains four arguments to show that experiences don't represent. The first argument appeals to the fact that an experience can't occur without what the experience is of; the second appeals to the fact we can have an experience without having any awareness of what it is of, the third argument appeals to the fact that long experiences, such as the experience of being kidnapped, don't represent anything; and the fourth appeals to the fact that experiences often leave physical (...) traces. The author rebuts several arguments for the conclusion that experiences represent. The author also considers some of the pitfalls involved in stipulating that experiences represent in a technical sense of “experience” or “represent”. (shrink)

Liberalism and paternalism are often seen as incompatible on the grounds that liberalism recognizes autonomy as the highest value, while paternalism limits autonomy for the sake of more valuable goods such as health and safety. This article offers an argument for the compatibility of liberalism and paternalism. At the heart of the argument is the philosophical distinction between having autonomy and exercising autonomy. The second way of defending autonomy is indeed incompatible with paternalism, but the first justifies paternalism when its (...) purpose is to limit choices that reduce one’s autonomy. A modified version of John Rawls’s veil of ignorance is presented to justify the preference for having autonomy over exercising autonomy. The practical consequences of this form of liberal paternalism are then examined and analyzed using three examples: voluntary sale of oneself into slavery, addiction to opioid drugs, and compliance with road safety measures (seat belt, motorcycle helmet). The argument presented provides a justification for liberal paternalism that does not rely on any controversial or perfectionist conception of the good, and is therefore compatible with the classical interpretation of liberal neutrality. It concludes by considering the compatibility of the proposed argument with other versions of liberal paternalism, including perfectionist, respectful, Kantian, libertarian, and left-libertarian paternalism. The conclusion is that all versions except the left-libertarian one is compatible with the justification described, while Peter Vallentyne’s left-libertarian paternalism suffers from internal inconsistency. (shrink)

Every year, 1.35 million people are killed on roads worldwide and even more people are injured. Emerging self-driving car technology promises to cut this statistic down to a fraction of the current rate. On the face of it, this consideration alone constitutes a strong reason to legally require — once self-driving car technology is widely available and affordable — that all vehicles on public roads be self-driving. Here I critically investigate the question of whether self-driving, or autonomous, vehicles should be (...) legally mandated. I develop an argument — premised upon Mill’s Harm Principle — that any legislation mandating the use of self-driving vehicles on public roads is morally impermissible. The Harm Principle, under its most plausible interpretation, has it that the state is warranted in legislating against some activity only if that activity violates the rights of others. In brief, I argue that a human driver, who opts to drive herself on public roads rather than rely on self-driving technology, does not violate anyone’s rights when she so acts. Consequently, when granting the Harm Principle, it follows that the state is not warranted in mandating the use of self-driving vehicles on public roads. If I am correct, the proponent of a self-driving vehicle mandate must reject the Harm Principle. Given its intuitive plausibility and central place in liberal philosophical thought, this is a weighty cost. (shrink)

Conventionalism as a distinct approach to the social contract received significant attention in the game-theoretic literature on social contract theory. Peter Vanderschraaf’s sophisticated and innovative theory of conventional justice represents the most recent contribution to this tradition and, in many ways, can be viewed as a culmination of this tradition. In this article, I focus primarily on Vanderschraaf’s defense of the egalitarian bargaining solution as a principle of justice. I argue that one particular formal feature of this bargaining solution, the (...) baseline consistency requirement, may stand in tension with other features of conventionalism as an approach to the social contract and limit the scope of Vanderschraaf’s theory to societies in which de facto an egalitarian sense of justice evolves. It limits the scope of Vanderschraaf’s theory in the face of moral diversity. A similar limitation applies to Vanderschraaf’s theory of democratic political authority. Despite these minor limitations, Vanderschraaf’s theory can only be seen as a major success and significant contribution to social contract theory. (shrink)

Cryptomarkets function as self-regulating forms of governance, close to what Hayek would describe as a spontaneous order. At the same time, in cases like the online market Silk Road, they construct an identity that portrays their illegal activities as operating within a framework of individual rights and voluntary transactions. As has already been examined in the wider literature, the political and economic philosophy of libertarianism has been mobilized by participants in such markets in order to provide a moral theoretical background (...) to their activities. This article examines: (1) why libertarianism indeed provides a suitable narrative for such activities and how the theoretical work of Foucault on power and resistance (and, more specifically, his notion of ‘counter-conduct’) can help us understand the contentious relationship between the state and cryptomarkets; and (2) how libertarian practices such as the ones taking place in cryptomarkets are at odds with neoliberal governmentality. (shrink)

This article presents an argument related to justice obligations during a pandemic and explores implications of the argument. A just society responds to a serious threat to the well-being of its people such as a viral pandemic to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the well-being of its members. This creates identifiable societal obligations which are discharged by the institutions and individuals within society that are situated to do so. There are therefore identifiable obligations resting on various societal institutions, (...) such as government, churches, schools, and corporate institutions, as well as obligations resting on individuals. Should an institution or individual fail to act in ways consistent with these social obligations, they perpetrate an injustice on society and its members. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize two recent and influential arguments for no-platforming advanced by Robert Simpson and Amia Srinivasan and by Neil Levy, respectively. What both arguments have in common is their attempt to reconcile no-platforming with liberal values. For Simpson and Srinivasan, no-platforming does not contradict liberalism if grounded on the distinction between norms of free speech and norms of academic freedom; for Levy, those who defend the practice need not be accused of promoting paternalism. I argue that neither (...) view succeeds: these authors’ views are in strong tension with core tenets of liberalism. I proceed as follows: after introducing some basic liberal principles, I explain Simpson and Srinivasan’s argument in more detail and argue that it is too strong for some their stated purposes; then I proceed to show that both Simpson and Srinivasan and Levy’s arguments would justify extremely closed universities; finally, after arguing that Levy’s stance does not circumvent paternalism, I present some evidence that no-platforming would be captured by censors and probably threaten the very academic freedom that the authors want to protect. (shrink)

This article is a close reading of Edward Said’s image of the intellectual and offers a critique and restatement of that image. Said characterizes the intellectual in contrast to two other images:...

El artículo sostiene que la teoría liberal está tensionada por una pretensión de universalidad normativa y su implementación institucional en el contexto de los Estados nacionales. Esta tensión se expresa claramente en el caso de la inmigración con la demanda estatal de control discrecional de las fronteras. El artículo desarrolla cuatro argumentos a favor de la relevancia normativa de las fronteras, y sostiene que no son conclusivos. Correspondientemente, desde una perspectiva liberal se dispondría de menos argumentos para justificar el cierre (...) discrecional de las fronteras. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have drawn on tools from game theory to explore behavior in Hobbes’ state of nature. I take a similar approach and argue the Lockean state of nature is best conceived of as a conflictual coordination game. I also discuss Nozick’s famous claim regarding the emergence of the state and argue the path to the minimal state is blocked by a hitherto unnoticed free-rider problem. Finally, I argue that on my representation of the Lockean state of nature both widespread (...) conflict and lasting peace are possible. This, I contend, is in line with one popular interpretation of Locke. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide autonomy-based reasons in favour of limitarianism. Limitarianism affirms it is of primary moral importance that no one gets too much. The paper challenges the standard assumption that having more material resources always increases autonomy. It expounds five mechanisms through which having too much material wealth might undermine autonomy. If these hypotheses are true, a theory of justice guided by a concern for autonomy will support a limitarian distribution of wealth. Finally, the paper discusses two issues (...) autonomy-based limitarianism would raise. First, insofar as coercion invades autonomy, do autonomy-based reasons legitimate coercive measures to secure a limitarian distribution of wealth? Second, is a limitarian ethos consistent with the incentive to produce enough wealth to secure distributive justice? (shrink)

Utopias from ancient times to the present have come and gone. They remain as a part of literary, philosophical and historical texts and communal practices. Yet this subject has never ceased to inspire contemporary minds as well. My aim in this paper is to consider the communities known as favelas that have formed on the edges of the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro as a contemporary form of utopian community. The paper begins with a brief analysis of the concept (...) of utopia. Then follows a discussion of the Favela as an urban utopia as seen from the perspective of Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of liberation as represented in his book, The Philosophy of Liberation. The remainder of the paper will consider in what sense the Favela settlements can be understood as a form of utopia. Among additional sources for this paper, I will refer to the research on the favelas by such scholars as Janice Perlman and Catalytic Communities. Other sources will include art projects in the favelas, the novel and film City of God made on site, and photographs of Miguel Rio Branco taken in the Favelas. All of these artists’ representations reflectactual experiences of life in the Favelas. An underlying question throughout will be the role that art might play in understanding utopias. (shrink)

The relevance of justice for the current debate on long-term care is explored on the basis of demographic and economic data, especially in the U.S. and Germany. There is a justice question concerning the quality and availability of long-term care for different groups within society. Mapping the justice debate by discussing the two main opponents, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, the article identifies fundamental assumptions in both theories. An exploration of the biblical concept of the “option for the poor” and (...) its influence on a new “ecumenical social teaching from below” leads to the conclusion that a Christian ethical account of long-term care will argue for a system that guarantees decent care to every citizen. The German model of Soziale Pflegeversicherung is presented as one possible option for putting this ethical guideline into political practice. In a final reflection, the role of religious affiliation for long-term care is discussed by looking at empirical data and by naming seven dimensions of faith-driven long-term care. (shrink)

Many liberal egalitarians support laws that prevent people from making exploitative and unconscionable contracts. These contracts may include low-wage labor agreements or payday loans, for example. I argue that liberal egalitarians should rethink their support for laws that limit the freedom to make these illiberal contracts, as long as the contracts are voluntary and do not violate people’s other enforceable rights. Paternalistic considerations cannot justify limits on illiberal contracts because they are not only likely to misfire; they also express condescending (...) and inegalitarian judgments of citizens. I then consider Seana Shiffrin’s argument that officials may avoid paternalism while still deterring illiberal contracts if they instead refuse to use public institutions to accommodate contracts that are contrary to the fundamental values on which those institutions are based. This argument encounters a dilemma. Officials may refuse to enforce illiberal contracts and ban private enforcement of illiberal contracts, but this strategy encounters the charges of paternalism it aimed to avoid. Or, officials may refuse to enforce illiberal contracts but tolerate private enforcement, but this approach would make the worst off members of society even more vulnerable and marginalized. Therefore, liberal egalitarians should support public enforcement of illiberal contracts because the alternatives are worse. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to piece together the elements of G. A. Cohen’s thought on the theory of socialism during his long intellectual voyage from Marxism to political philosophy. It begins from his theory of the maldistribution of freedom under capitalism, moves onto his critique of libertarian property rights, to his diagnosis of the “deep inegalitarian” structure of John Rawls’ theory and concludes with his rejection of the “cheap” fraternity promulgated by liberal egalitarianism. The paper’s exegetical contention is that (...) Cohen’s work in political philosophy is best understood in the background of lifelong commitment to a form of democratic, non-market, socialism realizing the values of freedom, equality and community, as he conceived them. The first part of the essay is therefore an attempt to retrieve core socialism-related arguments by chronologically examining the development of Cohen’s views, using his books as thematic signposts. The second part brings these arguments together with an eye to reconstructing his vision of socialism. It turns out that Cohen’s political philosophy offers a rich conception of objective and subjective freedom, an original understanding of justice as satisfaction of genuine need, and a substantive ideal of fraternity as justificatory community with others. If properly united, these values can suggest a full-bloodied account of the just polity, and give us a glimpse into what it means, for Cohen, to treat people as equals. (shrink)

In his 2011 book Justice for Hedgehogs, Ronald Dworkin makes a case for the view that genuine values cannot conflict and, moreover, that they are necessarily mutually supportive. I argue that by prioritizing coherence over the conceptual authenticity of values, Dworkin’s ‘interpretivist’ view risks neglecting what we care about in these values. I first determine Dworkin’s position on the monism/pluralism debate and identify the scope of his argument, arguing that despite his self-declared monism, he is in fact a pluralist, but (...) unusual in denying conflict between plural values. I then set out the structure of his interpretive theory of value relations and present a case of value conflict which I think interpretivism cannot deal with. Following this I argue that there are structural reasons why cases like this are liable to occur and suggest that interpretivism will frequently fail to properly reflect people’s moral commitments because reinterpretation of values has the side effect of excluding important moral commitments from our conceptions of values. While, as Dworkin argues, there are no brute moral facts concerning values, moral psychology constrains the range of acceptable conceptions of values. Given the shortcomings of interpretivism I conclude that we should acknowledge that values may conflict. (shrink)

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

What is wrong with participating in a democratic decision-making process, and then doing something other than the outcome of the decision? It is often thought that collective decision-making entails being prima facie bound to the outcome of that decision, although little analysis has been done on why that is the case. Conventional perspectives are inadequate to explain its wrongness. I offer a new and more robust analysis on the nature of voting: voting when you will accept the outcome only if (...) the decision goes your way is an act of bad faith: you are not taking part in a ‘process that decides what we will do’. This analysis sheds light on understanding the intrinsic nature of voting and what we are doing when we make decisions collectively. (shrink)

In Plato’s dialogue the Republic, Glaucon challenges Socrates to prove that the just (or moral) life is better or more advantageous than the unjust one. Socrates’s answer to the challenge is notoriously unsatisfying. Could new research on well-being in philosophy and psychology allow us to do better? After distinguishing two different approaches to the question “why be moral?” I argue that while new research on well-being does not provide an answer that would satisfy Glaucon, it does shed light on the (...) topic. Empirical research has different implications for our prudential reasons to be moral depending on which philosophical theory of well-being is accepted. Some well-being theories sustain stronger links to morality than others, but any theory of well-being can make use of empirical research to narrow the gap between prudence and morality to some extent. (shrink)

In this paper I put forward an ethical argument for the provision of extensive patient choice by the British National Health Service. I base this argument on traditional liberal rights to freedom of choice, on a welfare right to health care, and on a view of health as values-based. I argue that choice, to be ethically sustainable on this basis, must be values-based and rational. I also consider whether the British taxpayer may be persuadable with regard to the moral acceptability (...) of patient choice, making use of Rawls’ theory of political liberalism in this context. I identify issues that present problems in terms of public acceptance of choice, and also identify a boundary issue with regard to public health choices as against individual choices. (shrink)

People often assign ownership to the person who has invested labor into making an object (labor rule). However, labor usually improves objects and increases their value, and it has not been investigated whether these considerations underlie people's use of the labor rule. We presented participants with third-party ownership conflicts between an owner of materials and an artist who used the materials for some artwork. Experiment 1 revealed that participants were more likely to transfer ownership to the artist for low-value materials (...) than for high-value materials, and Experiment 2 showed that this effect was further moderated by the amount of effort the artist had invested. A third experiment confirmed that participants transferred ownership more often if the artist's labor had increased the value of the materials than when it had added no value. These findings suggest that considerations for value underlie ownership transfers following the investment of labor. (shrink)

This essay presents a skeleton of a potential conceptual framework for human flourishing in a free society. Its aim is to present a diagram that illustrates the ways in which its topics relate to one another and why they do. It argues for a plan of conceptualization rather than for the topics themselves. It emphasizes the interconnections among the components of the schema presented. It sees an essential interconnection between objective concepts, arguing that all of the disciplines of human action (...) can be integrated into a paradigm of human flourishing based on the nature of man and the world. (shrink)

This article provides a critique of the IWC's traditional focus on anthropocentric conservation in the governance of whaling. It is argued that this position, which relies on accepting the view that we have no direct moral duties to whales, is out of step with the moral status that now tends, in theory and practice, to be granted to animals. More specifically, anthropocentric conservation conflicts with the widespread acceptance, in theory and practice, that non-human animals such as whales have moral standing, (...) that what we do to them matters to them directly. This does not mean that whaling should necessarily be prohibited on ethical grounds, although the animal welfare analysis of whaling sketched in this article does suggest that, on balance, it is difficult to defend morally. Rather, it is being claimed that it is morally objectionable to deny, as the whaling nations do, that the IWC ought to be mandated to consider the welfare implications of whaling. (shrink)

This work consists of two parts. Part I will be a contribution to a philo- sophical discussion of the nature of causal explanation. It will present my contrastive counterfactual theory of causal explanation and show how it can be used to deal with a number of problems facing theories of causal explanation. Part II is a contribution to a discussion of the na- ture of interest explanation in social studies of science. The aim is to help to resolve some controversies (...) concerning interest explanation by explicating the concept of interest and its explanatory uses by using the account of explanation developed in Part I. (shrink)

(1999). Difference as an occasion for rights: A feminist rethinking of rights, liberalism, and difference. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 2, Feminism, Identity and Difference, pp. 27-55.

In recent years, there has been a great deal of philosophical discussion about the alleged moral right to die. If there is such a moral right, then it would seem to imply a moral duty on others to not interfere with the exercise of the right. And this might have important implications for public policy insofar as public policy ought to track what is morally right.

While many countries are following the lead of the United States in making insider trading illegal, its moral status is still controversial. I summarise the scholarly debate over the fairness of insider trading and lay bare the assumptions about fairness implicit in that debate. I focus on the question whether those assumptions can be defended independently of a more comprehensive theory of social justice. Current analyses presuppose that we can intelligently discuss what the social rules regarding insider trading should be (...) while ignoring questions about the broader principles of justice that should be adopted and the extent to which existing institutions realise those principles. I argue that such questions must be addressed. I then employ an egalitarian conception of social justice to analyse insider trading. I thereby illustrate how a more systematic approach, grounded in a comprehensive theory of justice, transforms the debate about the fairness of insider trading. (shrink)

In the recent literature on confirmation there are two leading approaches to the provision of a probabilistic measure of the degree to which a hypothesis is confirmed by evidence. The first is to construe the degree to which evidence E confirms hypothesis H as a function that is directly proportional to p and inversely proportional to p . I shall refer to this as the probability approach. The second approach construes the notion as a function that is directly proportional to (...) the true-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is true, p – and inversely proportional to the false-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is false, p . These reverse conditional probabilities – of the evidence on the truth or falsehood of the hypothesis – are sometimes known as likelihoods. I shall refer to the approach to confirmation that uses them as the likelihood approach.For each of these approaches, there are two obvious options as to how to define the confirmation function. The first is to define it as the difference between the magnitude that is treated as increasing confirmation or p ) and the magnitude that is treated as decreasing confirmation or p ). The second is to define confirmation as the quotient of these two magnitudes.This yields four different measures of confirmation, represented in the following table: Differences RatiosProbabilities PD = p – p1 PR = Graphic2Likelihoods LD = p – p3 LR = Graphic4All these measures agree on whether or not E provides some support for H. Intuitively, we want to say that E provides some support for H just in case learning that E is true would make us assign a higher probability to H, i.e. when p(H …. (shrink)

This paper offers a few elements of an answer to the question to what extent drug patents can be morally justified. Justifications based on natural rights, distributive justice and utilitarian arguments are discussed and criticized. The author recognizes the potential of the patents to benefit society but argues that the system is currently evolving in the wrong direction, particularly in the field of drugs. More than a third of the world’s population has no access to essential drugs. The working of (...) the patent system is an important determinant of access to drugs. This paper argues that drug patents are not easily justified and that the ‘architecture’ of the patent system should be rethought in view of its mission of benefiting society. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the distinction between classical liberalism and libertarianism and in particular with the claim of the latter to offer a theory of the good society which is independent of, and different from, that offered by classical liberalism. My argument is naturalistic in the following sense. A good society is one which delivers whatever is good for people, so that a theory of the good society (to ~ a theory of the good society) must say something about (...) what people are like and what is good for them. That is to say, it must be capable of making such judgments coherently and on its own terms. I shall argue that libertarianism is incapable of making such judgments because it rests on a Hobbesian radical individualism in which, by analogy with classical physics, people exist only as particulars, as individuals. If there are no general classes we cannot say what people have in common; if we cannot say what they have in common, the only "general" good is the negative liberty which enables them to pursue their own goals in their own way. Radical individualism leads by the shortest of routes to moral subjectivism. Thus libertarianism derives such plausibility as it has by drawing illicitly on aspects of classical liberalism which do not depend on radical individualism. In doing so it undermines not only its claim to be a distinct theory with its own foundations, but most of its own claims about what is good for people. (shrink)

Argues that truth, moral right, political right, and aesthetic value may be understood as arising out of a naturalist account of humanity, if naturalism is rightly conceived.