Anthropogenic climate change poses a direct and imminent threat to the stability of modern society. Recent reports of the probable consequences of climate change paint a grim picture; they describe a world environmentally much less stable than the world to which we have become accustomed. As we begin to adapt to our changing climate, we will need to identify new sources for the stability necessary for a flourishing society. I suggest that this stability should come from the ideals of the (...) good life we seek to promote when we focus on capabilities, on the substantial freedoms humans need to flourish. These ideals serve as a stable foundation for well-being in a time of great environmental and social instability; they should serve as guides for our policies, practices and institutions. I conclude by appealing to capabilities as a means of integrating well-being into our adaptation strategies, and show how doing so may well provide a way of formulating a powerful moral justification for adaptation strategies appropriate for both the developed and the developing world. (shrink)

Juliette Roussin | : Cet article a pour objet d’interroger la tendance actuelle des démocraties à s’entourer d’institutions indépendantes au fort degré de compétence en vue de limiter et de corriger les défaillances éventuelles des corps démocratiques élus et représentatifs. La légitimité démocratique de ces institutions contre-majoritaires leur viendrait, selon certains théoriciens de la démocratie, de ce qu’elles offrent la possibilité de contester les décisions collectives lorsque celles-ci sont mauvaises ou injustes, contribuant ainsi à l’amélioration globale des performances du régime (...) démocratique. À partir notamment d’une lecture des travaux de Philip Pettit sur la démocratie contestataire et d’une réflexion sur l’approche épistémique défendue par David Estlund, nous questionnons au contraire le caractère démocratique de ces formes institutionnelles de contestation et montrons que, tant qu’elles ne font pas l’objet d’un contrôle démocratique plus étroit, elles peuvent être interprétées comme des modes de contestation de la démocratie plutôt que comme des instruments de son amélioration. | : This paper investigates a current tendency among democracies to appeal to highly competent independent institutions in order to constrain and amend the potential deficiencies of elected and representative democratic bodies. According to some democratic theorists, these counter-majoritarian institutions enjoy democratic legitimacy because they allow the contestation of ill-devised or unjust collective decisions, and hence contribute to the global improvement of democratic results. Based on a reading of Philip Pettit’s work on contestatory democracy and of David Estlund’s epistemic approach, the paper questions the democratic nature of these institutional forms of contestation and shows that, as long as they are not subjected to tighter democratic control, these institutions can be interpreted as ways of contesting democracy rather than as implements for its improvement. (shrink)

Despite the increasing attention devoted to the theme of political judgment, the question of how to theorize judgment as specifically democratic remains elusive. This article shows the promise of Spinoza for approaching such a vexing issue. Through a combined reading of his major political and metaphysical texts, I develop a new concept of political judgment that I call ‘citizen jurisprudence’. Citizen jurisprudence is at once a right and a power that is internally related to the ‘power of the people’. Put (...) another way, citizen jurisprudence is the figure and effect of democracy understood in an expansive sense: not solely as a state form but as an activity of equally free individuals determining the sense and the scope of common affairs. An account of this concept simultaneously nuances Spinoza’s current profile as a political thinker and contributes to efforts within contemporary political theory to recuperate the radical potential of judgment as a mode of democratic agency. (shrink)