Neoclassical and Austrian economic theory lend support to a conception of laissez‐faire capitalism as an ideal scheme of cooperation in which individual decisions are harmonized, and income is distributed according to one's productive contribution. Keynes's critique of this conception has an often‐overlooked moral dimension, according to which the coordination problems that trouble real‐world market economies produce an arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and income.

In this paper, I will argue that Rawls’s duty of assistance offers an incomplete picture of our international social and economic responsibilities. I will start by presenting the two main interpretations of the ‘Rawlsian circumstances of egalitarian distributive justice’ – the first requiring the existence of a ‘certain kind’ of cooperation, the second the existence of a ‘certain kind’ of interaction with the will – and then show that none of them rules out the applicability of international principles of egalitarian (...) distributive justice. My argument will draw on societies’ participation in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). So, in the second section I will show that even though this organization is not endowed with a centralized coercive authority, its participants are asked to accept significant constraints on their behaviour and are therefore owed a special justification for these constraints. I will also suggest that the alleged voluntariness of this organization may not only be contested (especially when developing societies are involved), but may also not be sufficient to rule out requirements of distributive equality. In the third section, I will show that, as any system of cooperation, the WTO gives rise to requirements of fairness and that, given the purpose it claims to serve, not all inequalities that can be traced back to so-called ‘domestic’ factors can be considered justified. More specifically, I will argue that the fairness of the WTO requires that all its participants be given a fair chance of benefiting from global market competitions, and that this is likely to entail significant egalitarian distributive duties among societies. (shrink)

I seek to advance enquiry into the philosophical question of in virtue of what human beings have a dignity of the sort that grounds human rights. I first draw on values salient in sub-Saharan African moral thought to construct two theoretically promising conceptions of human dignity, one grounded on vitality, or liveliness, and the other on our communal nature. I then argue that the vitality conception cannot account for several human rights that we intuitively have, while the community conception can (...) do so. I conclude that, of plausible theories of human dignity with an African pedigree, the field ought to favour a community-based view and critically compare it in future work with the Kantian, autonomy-based view that dominates Western thinking about dignity. (shrink)

Dewey's ethical naturalism has provided an exemplary model for many contemporary naturalistic treatments of morality. However, in some recent work there is an unfortunate tendency to presuppose a moral faculty as the alleged source of what are claimed to be nearly universal moral judgments. Marc Hauser's Moral minds (2006) thus argues that our shared moral intuitions arise from a universal moral organ, which he analogizes to a Chomskyan language faculty. Following Dewey's challenge to the postulation of the idea of universal (...) instincts, I argue that Hauser's moral faculty account is (1) contrary to results from recent cognitive science, (2) unnecessary for explaining our moral understanding and reasoning, and (3) counterproductive to the correct project of a non-transcendent, empirically-grounded theory of moral understanding and problem-solving. I provide a sketch of an alternative account of what such an ethical naturalism would involve. (shrink)

Liberalism generally holds that legitimate political power is limited and is to be impartially exercised, only for the public good. Liberals accordingly assign political priority to maintaining certain basic liberties and equality of opportunities; they advocate an essential role for markets in economic activity, and they recognize government's crucial role in correcting market breakdowns and providing public goods. Classical liberalism and what I call “the high liberal tradition” are two main branches of liberalism. Classical liberalism evolved from the works of (...) Adam Smith and the classical utilitarian economists; its major 20th century representatives include Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The high liberal tradition developed from John Stuart Mill's works, and its major philosophical representatives in the 20th century are John Dewey and, later, John Rawls. This paper discusses the main distinguishing features of the classical and the high liberal traditions and their respective positions regarding capitalism as an economic and social system. Classical liberals, unlike high liberals, regard economic liberties and rights of private property in productive resources to be nearly as important as basic liberties. They conceive of equality of opportunity in more formal terms, and regard capitalist markets and the price system as essential not only to the allocation of production resources, but also as the fundamental criterion for the just distribution of income, wealth, and economic powers. High liberals, by contrast, regard the economic liberties as subordinate to the exercise of personal and civic liberties. They are prepared to regulate and restrict economic liberties to achieve greater equality of opportunities, reduce inequalities of economic powers, and promote a broader conception of the public good. And while high liberals endorse markets and the price system as essential to allocation of productive resources, they do not regard markets as the fundamental criterion for assessing just distributions of income, wealth, and economic powers and positions of responsibility. The paper concludes with some reflections upon the essential role that dissimilar conceptions of persons and society play in grounding the different positions on economic justice that classical and high liberals advocate. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the location of the sources of global poverty and injustice. I take it as granted that the members of the globally lowest income group live in unacceptable conditions and suffer from injustice. Yet the source of this injustice is a debatable question. Often the existing global institutions are seen as major causes behind this injustice. By taking the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations as a practical example, I aim to show that blaming the institutions as (...) such can lead to misguided conclusions. The WTO, in fact, is quite just if one merely analyses its institutional structure. I argue that the major source of injustice are rather the prevailing power structures and the conduct of individual governments within this institutional framework, in other words the metaprocedural unfairness in the trade negotiations. I further argue that applications of Rawlsian theory of justice tend to be misleading at the global institutional level, as they focus disproportionately on the institutional structure, and tend to underestimate the relevance of the conduct of governments and the existing power structures, which allow powerful countries to use the institutional framework unjustly in their favour. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends Kant’s non-voluntarist conception of political obligations. I argue that civil society is not primarily a prudential requirement for justice; it is not merely a necessary evil or moral response to combat our corrupting nature or our tendency to act viciously, thoughtlessly or in a biased manner. Rather, civil society is constitutive of rightful relations because only in civil society can we interact in ways reconcilable with each person’s innate right to freedom. Civil society is the (...) means through which we can rightfully interact even on the ideal assumption that no one ever succumbs to immoral temptation. (shrink)

Suppose that one is at least a minimal realist about a given domain, in that one thinks that that domain contains truths that are not in any interesting sense of our own making. Given such an understanding, what can be said for and against the method of reflective equilibrium as a procedure for investigating the domain? One fact that lends this question some interest is that many philosophers do combine commitments to minimal realism and a reflective equilibrium methodology. Here, for (...) example, is David Lewis on philosophy: Our “intuitions” are simply opinions: our philosophical theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular; some general; some are more firmly held, some less. But they are all opinions, and a reasonable goal for a philosopher is to bring them into equilibrium. Our common task it to find out what equilibria there are that can withstand examination, but it remains for each of us to come to rest at one or another of them… Once the menu of well-worked out theories is before us, philosophy is a matter of opinion. Is that to say that there is no truth to be had? Or that the truth is of our own making, and different ones of us can make it differently? Not at all! If you say flatly that there is no god, and I say that there are countless gods but none of them are our worldmates, then it may be that neither of us is making any mistake of method. We may each be bringing our opinions to equilibrium in the most careful possible way, taking account of all the arguments, distinctions, and counterexamples. But one of us, at least, is making a mistake of fact. Which one is wrong depends on what there is (1983: x-xi). In addition to philosophy in general, the method of reflective equilibrium has also been endorsed as the appropriate procedure for investigating various other subject.. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the political–theoretical triangle between liberalism, communitarianism and conservatism. It shows how these three positions are related to each other and to what extent they are actually incompatible. The substantive outcome is the following thesis: the conservative position poses a challenge to liberalism that communitarianism is unable to offer and that liberalism cannot incorporate as it could with communitarianism. This challenge lies in the conservative’s ideal of a traditionally evolved, purposeless form of civil association, and its associated view (...) on the justification of authority within such forms of association. This ideal cannot be incorporated into liberalism’s overall concern with individual autonomy, in contrast to the communitarian’s ideal of community. This will be shown through an investigation of two key elements of the conservative ideal of civil association: its ‘purposelessness’ and its justification of authority. (shrink)

Kok?Chor Tan argues for a conception of Liberal Cosmopolitanism that seeks to reconcile ideals of global justice and national partiality. I provide two objections to his luck egalitarian model of global justice: first, it fails to provide adequate space for legitimate cultural variation with respect to the understanding of and valuing of natural resources; and second, that its account of ideas of collective responsibility is restricted to a point at which it becomes unrecognizable and inefficacious. I conclude with some reflections (...) on the implications of my analysis for the more general question of whether or how national partiality and global justice can be reconciled. (shrink)

What is the appropriate degree of abstraction from existing social facts when engaging in normative political theory? Through a focus on American Indian and other indigenous claims over historically expropriated lands, this essay argues that highly abstracted forms of normative analysis can often misunderstand the core moral problems at stake in real cases, and that they can pose moral dangers when they do so. As argued, the hard moral issues involved in indigenous land claims within countries such as Canada and (...) the United States often have far more to do with questions about competing uses for public lands than with abstract property theory as such. The essay argues that normative theorists will often do more social good, and pose fewer dangers, when they pay close attention to the real moral challenges that social actors face on the ground than when they become captured by abstract questions with ambiguous practical importance. (shrink)

Virtue and deontological ethics are now commonly contrasted as rival approaches to moral inquiry. However, I argue that neither metaethical party should seek complete, solitary domination of the ethical domain. Reductive treatments of the right or the virtuous, as well as projects that abandon the former or latter, are bound to leave us with a sadly diminished map of the moral territories crucial to our lives. Thus, it is better for the two parties to seek a more cordial and equal (...) relationship, one that permits metaethical pluralism, and acknowledges mutual dependence. I do not seek to prescribe how that relationship should look: this essay offers less a positive metaethical position than a prolegomenon to such a position, one that attempts to head off harmful attempts to reduce the territory of the aretaic to that of the deontic, or that of the deontic to the aretaic. (shrink)

Abstract Susan Moller Okin has criticized Michael Sandel's view that the family is an example of an institution that is sometimes ?above? or ?beyond? justice, and for which justice is not, under the best conditions, a virtue. She argues that he both misses the point of justice as a virtue of social institutions and that he idealizes the family, and after undertaking this ?ground-clearing?, goes on to argue that families should be just. This paper offers a qualified defense of Sandel. (...) I argue, first, that Sandel has not missed the point of justice as a virtue of social institutions. But I go on to argue, more centrally, that if we distinguish between what I call ?internal? and ?social? justice of the family, and look carefully at the conclusions of Okin's own arguments, we see that she has really argued for the social justice of the family, and that this can be maintained alongside Sandel's vision of the family as an institution within which considerations of justice are neither central, nor necessarily appropriate. I try to carve out space both for Sandel's vision of the family, and for Okin's substantive feminist conclusions about family-based gender injustice. (shrink)

This paper argues that the diversity of conflicting comprehensive doctrines in liberal pluralist societies raises a problem of estrangement between citizens and the basic structure of society that Rawls' version of political liberalism does not successfully solve. 'Political estrangement' occurs when someone refuses to accept a political outcome that favors a comprehensive doctrine she rejects, based on what she imagines, correctly or incorrectly, to be true of her fellow citizens' comprehensive doctrines and their effect on political outcomes. Rawls argues that (...) the political conception of justice and the use of public reason ensure the incompatibility of our comprehensive doctrines will not undermine our willingness to to accept political decisions contrary to our own values. However, public reason does not guarantee this result. Imagination can allow us to see that the influence of some reasonable comprehensive doctrines can lead to oppressive political outcomes and public reason restricts us from addressing this fact. Yet, widening public reason to account for this problem is likely to increase the conditions that cause estrangement. The paper concludes that the political conception of justice and public reason may sometimes fail to adequately justify political outcomes in the sense Rawls hopes. (shrink)

Abstract This paper develops an explanationist treatment of the problem of the criterion. Explanationism is the view that all justified reasoning is justified in virtue of the explanatory virtues: simplicity, fruitfulness, testability, scope, and conservativeness. A crucial part of the explanationist framework is achieving wide reflective equilibrium. I argue that explanationism offers a plausible solution to the problem of the criterion. Furthermore, I argue that a key feature of explanationism is the plasticity of epistemic judgments and epistemic methods. The explanationist (...) does not offer any fixed judgments or methods to guide epistemic conduct; even the explanatory virtues themselves are subject to change. This feature of explanationism gives it an advantage over non-explanationist views that offer fixed epistemic judgments and epistemic methods. The final section of this paper responds to objections to explanationism. (shrink)

(2013). On Justice and Other Values: G.A. Cohen's Political Philosophy and the Problem of Trade-offs. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 1-24. doi: 10.1080/05568641.2013.774721.

It is a commonplace that liberalism and religious belief conflict. Liberalism, its proponents and critics maintain, requires the privatization of religious belief, since liberals often argue that citizens of faith must repress their fundamental commitments when participating in public life. Critics of liberalism complain that privatization is objectionable because it requires citizens of faith to violate their integrity. The liberal political tradition has always sought to carve out social space for individuals to live by their own lights. If liberalism requires (...) citizens to violate their integrity, liberals have cause for concern. I seek to rebut this integrity objection to liberalism. I focus on the dominant form of philosophical liberalism: public reason liberalism. I argue that the integrity objection undermines the mainstream conception of public reason liberalism, but not public reason liberalism itself. The paper opens by outlining the structure of public reason liberalism and the integrity objection (§§2 and 3). It then analyses two versions of the objection and argues that the second version is successful against the mainstream conception of public reason (§4). I argue in response that public reason liberalism need not endorse principles of restraint—the civic restrictions on religious expression typically associated with it. I then sketch a conception of public reason liberalism that eschews principles of restraint (§5). This alternative promises to reconcile public reason liberals and their faith-friendly critics by putting the integrity objection to rest. (shrink)

Shame is a painful emotion concerned with failure to live up to certain standards, norms, or ideals. The subject feels that she falls in the regard of others; she feels watched and exposed. As a result, she feels bad about the person that she is. The most popular view of shame is that someone only feels ashamed if she fails to live up to standards, norms, or ideals that she, herself, accepts. In this paper, I provide support for a different (...) view, according to which shame is about failure to live up to public expectations. Such a view of shame has difficulties explaining why an audience is central to shame, why shame concerns the self as a whole, and why the social rank of someone affects their ability to shame others. These features, I argue, are best explained by reference to the descent of shame in the emotion connected with submission in nonhuman animals. The function of submission—to appease relevant social others—also throws light on the sort of emotion that shame is. From the point of view of other people, a subject who experiences shame at her own failing is someone who is committed to living together with others in a socially sanctioned way. The argument is not that we must understand the nature of shame in terms of what it evolved for, but that its heritage is important to understanding the emotion that shame has become. (shrink)

The concept of a society is central to several areas of philosophy, including social and political philosophy, philosophy of social science and moral philosophy. Yet little attention has been paid to the concept and we do not have an adequate philosophical account of it. It is a concept that is difficult to explain systematically, and it is subject to distortion or simple-minded attacks whenever it plays a major role in a philosophical theory. Methodological individualists have raised metaphysical or ontological concerns (...) about the idea that there are such things as societies, and other philosophers have found the concept of a society to be unacceptably vague. For these reasons, I believe it worthwhile to devote this essay to an attempt to explain the concept. (shrink)

Un grand nombre de problèmes dont traite aujourd'hui la théorie de la décision reposent sur des problématiques qui appartiennent à des approches philosophiques, méthodologiques et théoriques fort différentes et dont l'auteur deChoix rationnel et vie publiquedéplore à juste titre l'absence d'unité intrinsèque. En effet, les racines de la théorie contemporaine du choix rationnel ont des ramifications dans trois traditions philosophiques qui ont été maintenues sans entretenir de contacts: théories philosophiques de l'action d'Aristote à Hume, à Kant et à la philosophie (...) analytique de l'action de Davidson; la théorie du conflit de Hobbes à David Gauthier; la théorie de la justice (d'inspiration utilitariste qui a profondément marqué la pensée économique du XXesiècle). Ces branches ont entretenu des interactions sporadiques, mais ces relations n'ont jamais été exploitées systématiquement. Le travail que présente l'auteur est une première tentative dans cette direction, du moins en langue française. (shrink)

Purpose of this article is to assess the validity of the Razian conception of the rule of law by subjecting it to the acid test of Michel Troper's 'realist theory of interpretation'. The author argues that, in light of the Wittgensteinian view of rule-following, a serious indeterminacy can be seen as inherent in both this conception of the rule of law and Troper's theory of interpretation.

It is commonly recognized that not all actions are candidates for moral evaluation. For instance, morality is silent on the issue whether to tie one's right shoe before one's left shoe or the other way around. This shoe-tying action is not a candidate for moral appraisal. The matter is amoral, for neither alternative is morally required nor forbidden, and both are permissible. It is not commonly recognized that not all actions are candidates for prudential evaluation. I shall argue, however, that (...) there are cases of individual action over time, as well, that are aprudent in the sense that none of the alternatives under consideration are required or forbidden by prudence, but all of them are permissible. These are cases in which there is no fact of the matter as to what is the best choice for one. There are at least two such cases: first, cases in which the alternative courses of action open to one are incommensurable; and second, cases in which one's values are not yet determined and one is deciding what values to adopt, what sort of person to become, or what ideals to pursue. In these cases, prudence is silent on the question of what one ought to do. Indeed, I go on to argue prudence can even be silent on the question whether to act according to the values one currently holds or to pursue an entirely different course that will result in changes to one's values, which is the third case of aprudent choice. (shrink)

In recent years, English-language scholars have begun to approach the daunting field of Kant's politics by way of its technical core: the deduction of private right. In this interpretive project, t...

The concept of the public realm is the most fundamental of all political concepts because it is only the shared relationship it constitutes between rulers and ruled that makes government more than mere domination. It is therefore not surprising that the question of how the public realm is to be defined has been a central concern of political thinkers from Plato to more recent philosophers like Hannah Arendt. Although the answers they have given have of course varied greatly, what is (...) relevant in the present context is simply the assumption, for well over two thousand years, that there could be an answer. What is novel today, by contrast, is the increasing realization that political theory cannot in principle provide philosophical guidance of any kind about how the public realm can be finally and definitively identified, in a way which would clearly distinguish it from the private realm and thereby enable an incontestable limit to be set to the proper scope of politics and of state action. The present essay considers how some leading contemporary political thinkers have responded to this situation. (shrink)

Respect is a cardinal virtue in schools and foundational to our common ethical beliefs, yet its meaning is muddled. For philosophers Kant, Mill, and Rawls, whose influential theories span three centuries, respect includes appreciation of universal human dignity, equality, and autonomy. In their view children, possessors of human dignity, but without perspective and reasoning ability, are entitled only to the most minimal respect. While undeserving of mutual respect they are nonetheless expected to show unilateral respect. Dewey and Piaget, scions of (...) the same liberal tradition, grant children a larger degree of autonomy and equality thereby approximating the full respect conditions reserved for adults in the prior theories. In this article, after reviewing the premises of respect, I attempt to blend the divide - between minimal and full respect - by separating respect-due from respect-earned . While the former, premised on human dignity, should be granted unconditionally to all, the latter is contingent upon qualities that one possesses or acquires over time. Adding the notion of respect-due is a constraint on the prevalent school practice of turning respect into demands for deference. The relevance of this distinction is discussed in terms of student-teacher relationships. (shrink)

(1998). Staging the self by performing the other: Global fantasies and the migration of the projective imagination 1. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 288-304.

Suppose you can save only one of two groups of people from harm, with one person in one group, and five persons in the other group. Are you obligated to save the greater number? While common sense seems to say ‘yes’, the numbers skeptic says ‘no’. Numbers Skepticism has been partly motivated by the anti-consequentialist thought that the goods, harms and well-being of individual people do not aggregate in any morally significant way. However, even many non-consequentialists think that Numbers Skepticism (...) goes too far in rejecting the claim that you ought to save the greater number. Besides the prima facie implausibility of Numbers Skepticism, Michael Otsuka has developed an intriguing argument against this position. Otsuka argues that Numbers Skepticism, in conjunction with an independently plausible moral principle, leads to inconsistent choices regarding what ought to be done in certain circumstances. This inconsistency in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Numbers Skepticism. Kirsten Meyer offers a notable challenge to Otsuka’s argument. I argue that Meyer’s challenge can be met, and then offer my own reasons for rejecting Otsuka’s argument. In light of these criticisms, I then develop an improved, yet structurally similar argument to Otsuka’s argument. I argue for the slightly different conclusion that the view proposed by John Taurek that ‘the numbers don’t count’ leads to inconsistent choices, which in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Taurek’s position. (shrink)

In the spring of 1985, 272 upper?class and graduate students from four large journalism schools completed a questionnaire indicating their beliefs on issues relevant to media ethics. Respondents indicated a strong tendency to follow their audiences rather than their personal beliefs, when the two conflict, in making editorial judgments. They also placed high emphasis on audience research rather than on audience needs not fully appreciated by audience members. Contrary to what recent research literature suggests, those inclined to stress audience research (...) most tended to subscribe to a least common denominator mode, rather than an audience segmentation approach, when taking their audiences into account as prospective professional communicators. Results are considered in light of four postulates derived from recent literature on ethics. (shrink)

What does social justice require in contemporary societies? What are the requirements of social democracy? Who and where are the individuals and groups that can carry forward agendas for progressive social transformation? What are we to make of the so-called new social movements of the last thirty years? Is identity politics compatible with egalitarianism? Can cultural misrecognition and economic maldistribution be fought simultaneously? What of the heritage of Western Marxism is alive and dead? And how is current critical social theory (...) to approach these and other questions? Much of the most productive work done in recent social theory has revolved around such issues, in particular, around those concerning the relationship between the politics of recognition and the politics of distribution. After the intense theoretical focus over the last fifteen years or so on the issues of recognition politics—multiculturalism, multi-nationalism, identity politics, group-differentiated rights, the accommodation of difference, and so on—some social theorists have worried that attention has been diverted from important issues of distributive equality—systematic impoverishment, increasing material inequality, ‘structural’ unemployment, the growth of oligarchic power, global economic segmentation, and so on. While some critics seem to have adopted a blunt ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ line of criticism,1 others have attempted to develop an overarching, integrative theoretical framework adequate to the diverse issues concerning both economic and cultural justice. For example, Axel Honneth proposes that a suitably developed and normatively robust theory of intersubjective recognition can adequately integrate an analysis of apparently diverse contemporary struggles: those for a just division of labor and hence, a fair distribution of resources and opportunities, as well as those for a culture free of identity-deforming disrespect and denigration. (shrink)

A conception of the person as a subjective being plays a crucial, though frequently overlooked, role in the justification of unequal property in liberal theories. Unger's ascription of individualism to general liberal legal theory can be concretely defended with respect to liberal theories of property. Identifying a common fundamental structure calls in question the conventional view that the liberal legal theories rest on an ensemble of different moral foundations. So important is subjective personality to the moral basis for highly unequal (...) property that such property looks to be morally untenable if this concept of the person is invalid. The analysis points to social theory of personality as a major direction for research into an alternative theory of egalitarian property right. (shrink)

Zohar applies Talmudic views on communal sin to contemporary political discourse by posing the question "Are we our brothers' keepers?" The essay addresses international responsibility to protect victims of oppression worldwide.

Parmenides as Secret Hero. Gregor Betz’s Theorie Dialektischer Strukturen (Theory of Dialectical Structures) Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s10503-011-9213-z Authors Frank Zenker, Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Lund University, Kungshuset, Lundagård, 222 22 Lund, Sweden Journal Argumentation Online ISSN 1572-8374 Print ISSN 0920-427X.

An influential tradition in moral philosophy attempts to explain an immoral action by reference to the defect in reasoning on the part of an immoral agent. On this view, the requirements of morality are not only sanctioned by the more general requirements of rationality, but the violations of the moral requirements would be indicative of a rational failure. In this article I argue that ascription of irrationality to amoral individuals (e.g., psychopaths) is either empirically false, or else, conceptually problematic. An (...) interpretation of irrationality in its instrumental sense fails to do justice to the results of the research concerning the intelligence of some amoralists, whereas the suggestion that the alleged cognitive deficiency lies at the level of final ends and ultimate values faces serious theoretical difficulties. All attempts to construe the notion of an external reason for action without reference to the agent's actual goals and values bespeak an objectivist's bias, rest on controversial assumptions, and tend to alienate the agent from the proposed set of reasons. The argument is partly based on the analysis of reasoning of Ted Bundy, a notorious serial murderer, who presents a rather sophisticated justification for his criminal behavior. (shrink)

This paper interprets the relation between sovereignty and guilt in Nietzsche's Genealogy. I argue that, contrary to received opinion, Nietzsche was not opposed to the moral concept of guilt. I analyse Nietzsche's account of the emergence of the guilty conscience out of a pre-moral bad conscience. Drawing attention to Nietzsche's references to many different forms of conscience and analogizing to his account of punishment, I propose that we distinguish between the enduring and the fluid elements of a ‘conscience’, defining the (...) enduring element as the practice of forming self-conceptions. I show that for Nietzsche, the moralization of the bad conscience results from mixing it with the material concepts of guilt and duty, a process effected by prehistoric religious institutions by way of the concept of god. This moralization furnishes a new conception of oneself as a responsible agent and holds the promise of sovereignty by giving us a freedom unknown to other creatures, but at the price of our becoming subject to moral guilt. According to Nietzsche, however, the very forces that made it possible have spoiled this promise and, under the pressures of the ascetic ideal, a harmful notion of responsibility understood in terms of sin now dominates our lives. Thus, to fully realize our sovereignty, we must liberate ourselves from this sinful conscience. (shrink)

After a regime-changing war, a state often engages in lustration—condemnation and punishment of dangerous, corrupt, or culpable remnants of the previous system—e.g., de-Nazification or the more recent de-Ba’athification in Iraq. This common practice poses an important moral dilemma for liberals because even thoughtful and nuanced lustration involves condemning groups of people, instead of treating each case individually. It also raises important questions about collective agency, group treatment, and rectifying historical injustices. Liberals often oppose lustration because it denies moral individualism and (...) ignores rule of law, and their only justifications for lustration are consequentialist ones. This article suggests that lustration may not necessarily be a problem for liberals. While group treatment might be justified on grounds of convenience and pragmatism in times of transitional justice, there are also valid moral arguments consistent with moral individualism and due process for wholesale group punishment after a war. This article offers four overlapping moral justifications, in a robust defense of the core concept of lustration that is covered by each argument. (shrink)

Most readers believe that it is difficult, verging on the impossible, to extract concrete prescriptions from the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. Although this view is largely correct, Levinas’ philosophy can, with some assistance, generate specific duties on the part of legal actors. In this paper, I argue that the fundamental premises of Levinas’ theory of justice can be used to construct a prohibition against capital punishment. After analyzing Levinas’ concepts of justice, responsibility, and interruption, I turn toward his scattered remarks (...) on legal institutions, arguing that they enable a sense of interruption specific to the legal domain. It is here that we find the conceptual resources most important to my Levinasian abolition. I argue that the interruption of legal justice by responsibility implies what I call the principle of revisability. The principle of revisability states a necessary condition of just legal institutions: To be just, legal institutions must ensure the possibility of revising any and all of their rules, principles, and judgments. From this, the argument against capital punishment easily follows. Execution is a legal act, perhaps the only legal act, that cannot be undone. An application of the principle of revisability to this fact leads to the conclusion that legal institutions cannot justly impose capital punishment. After defending these points at length, I conclude with some observations on the consequences of the principle of revisability for law more generally. (shrink)

ABSTRACT“How should a person lead her life?” The purpose of this paper is to suggest some principles (not a complete list) which will serve us ‘intellectual instruments’ for assessing forms of life. These principles are utilitarian in nature, and, as I will argue, essential to a reasonably rich account of personal well-being. The principles suggested are not instrumental, that is, they determine the worthiness of a form of life led by an agent irrespective of whether it satisfies her existing desires (...) and meet her actual preferences. Hence, I will argue that a person can be deprived, that is, categorically deprived, even when most of her desires are satisfied. In the last section of the paper I will argue for the role of education in ‘initiating’ the agent into worthy forms of life, and hence evading the charge of categorical deprivation and that of irrationality. (shrink)

The evaluation of whether an animal has a life worth living (LWL) has been suggested as a useful concept for farm animal policymaking. But there are a number of different ways in which the concept could be applied. This paper attempts to identify and evaluate candidate ethical principles based on the concept. It suggests that an appropriate principle by which to apply the concept is one that (1) is framed in terms of preventing an animal having a life worth avoiding (...) (LWA), rather than ensuring they have LWL, (2) is based on a prospective, rather than retrospective, concept of a life’s worth, and (3) relates to both the perpetuation and creation of an animal at all times during its life. The paper concludes by endorsing an overarching principle that no animal should be unreasonably caused to be, or allowed to remain, in a position of having a prospective LWA. (shrink)

Of all the persisting civilizations in the world, Chinese civilization has endured the vicissitudes of history the longest without abrupt collapse. In the formation and development of Chinese civilization, China at some times experienced unity, strength, prosperity, and glory, and at other times experienced disunion, weakness, depression, and even humiliation. In its long continuous history, China has had a peculiar characteristic of recurrence in which an era of political strength and social prosperity would be superseded by an era of political (...) weakness and social chaos, and finally a lively new era would appear to continue the historical cycle. (shrink)

Rawls's recent articulation of his theory of justice in Political Liberalism (1993) carries on the contractarian approach to defining justice, which was first laid out in A Theory of Justice (1971). However, this approach is now characterised as ‘political’, not metaphysical. It is intended to appeal to those who are deeply divided by cultural, religious, and moral beliefs: it is to explain how justice can be stable in a divided society. This ‘political’approach, nevertheless, has narrowed its appeal. Since it relies (...) on the shared ideas in democratic societies, its appeal becomes political and cultural. Morever, this theory's requirement of equal basic liberties for a just society calls for a relatively developed economy and social institutions. It fails to provide guidance to societies that, owing to their lesser development, cannot afford to guarantee the worth of equal basic liberties. The structual insufficiency of Rawls's ‘political’theory explains the failure of his continuing efforts to extend his liberal theory of justice to the international terrain. This essay analyses this insufficiency and the narrow applicability of Rawls's ‘political’theory of justice. (shrink)

The earlier much discussed issue of a society's right to educate the young is the starting point for various observations regarding education itself. A distinction is drawn between additive and transformative conceptions of education, the latter seeking to bring about changes to the learner's subjective self as reflected in a tripartite division of entities intended by the phenomenological self. Despite liberal or progressive educators' intuitive preference for the transformative conception, it may be asked whether this may not infringe the learner's (...) rights, however worthy the educator's motives or benign the intended outcomes. This possibility is rejected, however, on grounds of the learner's residual freedom to criticise the educator's values, the necessity of value assumptions as the essential basis of moral freedom and the unpredictability of human perceptions and responses, given the potential gap between the intentions and perceptions of the emitter of language and the understandings of the receiver. (shrink)

It is standard, both in the philosophical literature and in ordinary parlance, to assume that one can fall short of responding to all one’s moral reasons without being irrational. Yet when we turn to epistemic reasons, the situation could not be more different. Most epistemologists take it as axiomatic that for a belief to be rational is for it to be well-supported by epistemic reasons. We find ourselves with a striking asymmetry, then, between the moral and epistemic domains concerning what (...) is taken for granted about whether failures to respond to reasons are failures of rationality. My aim in this paper is to interrogate this asymmetry, and ultimately to argue that the asymmetry is groundless. Instead, I will offer an error theory to explain the asymmetry in intuitions. This error theory suggests that we should amend the conventional wisdom about the relationship between epistemic reasons and rationality. (shrink)

Punishment involves deliberating harming individuals. How, then, if at all, is it to be justified? This, the first of three papers on the philosophy of punishment (see also 'Punishment: Nonconsequentialism' and 'Punishment: The Future'), examines attempts to justify the practice or institution according to its consequences. One claim is that punishment reduces crime, and hence the resulting harms. Another is that punishment functions to rehabilitate offenders. A third claim is that punishment (or some forms of punishment) can serve to make (...) restitution to victims, and a fourth is that it can strengthen social values. The paper examines these claims, and finally considers pluralist theories which combine retributive and harm-reductive or utilitarian considerations. (Retributive theories are examined in their own right in 'Punishment: Nonconsequentialism'.). (shrink)