In this article I argue for two closely related conclusions: one concerned more narrowly with the internal consistency of G. A. Cohen's theorizing about justice and the unique rhetoric in which it is couched, the other connected to a more sweeping set of recommendations about how theorizing on justice is most promisingly undertaken. First, drawing on a famous insight of G. E. Moore, I argue that although the purity of Cohenian justice provides Cohen a platform from which to put some (...) extremely challenging criticisms to Rawls and Rawlsian liberals, at the same time it generates a sort of self-referential paradox for many of the theses about the concept of justice to which Cohen himself is committed. I go on to conclude, using Rawls's theory of justice as a model, that it would serve political philosophy well to conceive of justice with less purity than Cohen conceives of it. (shrink)

John Rawls’s case for a duty of assistance is partially premised on the assumption that liberal societies have an interest in assisting burdened societies to become well-ordered: Not only are well-...

In his recent book, National responsibility and global justice, David Miller conceptualizes and justifies a model of national responsibility. His conceptualization proceeds in two steps: he starts by developing two models of collective responsibility, the like?minded group model and the cooperative practice model. He then proceeds to discuss national responsibility, a species of collective responsibility, and argues that nations have features such that the two models of collective responsibility also apply to them. In this article I focus on the question (...) whether Miller?s like?minded group model and the cooperative practice model are plausible and convincing models of collective responsibility. I will argue that the like?minded model does not provide a plausible conceptualization of collective responsibility, while the collective practice model provides a good model for collective responsibility but is not particularly helpful in conceptualizing national responsibility. (shrink)

This article shows that the theory of justice and liberty developed by Axel Honneth in Freedom´s Right, has a wider range and depth than those theories of justice and de­mocracy developed in contemporary liberalism by Rawls and Habermas. Nevertheless, its normative model of recognition has a serious limitation, which consists in circum­scribing the reach of its conception of freedom to the most developed western societies. This limitation affects the proposal in a negative way; it produces an important loss of its (...) critical potential and determines that its normative and reconstructive approach of freedom’s history may be insufficient in front of other critical visions of society. First, the author does a presentation of the tension between the negative and positive dimensions of freedom. Then, he reconstructs the way in which Honneth exposes the historical process of the fight for freedom and thus structures a definition of this fight, which includes three dimensions of freedom: juridical, moral and social. Finally, the author develops some critical considerations dealing with Honneth’s recognition model, as it does not acknowledge other historical experiences of the fight for freedom. (shrink)

This chapter describes a philosophical approach to theorizing justice, mapping out some main strands of the tradition leading up to contemporary political philosophy. We first briefly discuss what distinguishes a philosophical approach to justice from other possible approaches to justice, by explaining the normative focus of philosophical theories of justice – that is, a focus on questions not about how things actually are, but about how things ought to be. Next, we explain what sorts of methods philosophers use to justify (...) theories of justice. Following this, in the longest section, we highlight major questions about justice that have drawn the attention of philosophers, and indicate how competing conceptions of justice have arisen from differing answers to these questions. The goal here is not to answer but to elucidate some of the larger questions about justice, as well as to establish a framework for understanding and distinguishing different kinds of claims about justice and some of the relations between them. (shrink)

John Rawls claims that “benevolent absolutisms” honor human rights without honoring political participation rights. Critics argue that he is mistaken. One objection appeals to the instrumental value of political participation rights. This objection holds that without political participation rights, individuals cannot secure the content of their rights against encroachment. Given this, individuals without political participation rights cannot be said to have rights at all. Here, I evaluate this instrumental objection. I identify three ways of relating political participation rights to human (...) rights and show that one makes sense of Rawls’s claim. I then defend this view from instrumental objections. This has implications beyond the realm of Rawls scholarship. Many societies are not democratic and are not democratizing. We must determine whether any of these societies can secure at least the content of human rights and, if so, what shape their social and political institutions must take to do so. (shrink)

This review essay on three recent books on John Rawls’s theory of justice, by Catherine Audard, Samuel Freeman, and Thomas Pogge, describes the great boon they offer serious students of Rawls. They form a united front in firmly and definitively rebuffing Robert Nozick’s libertarian critique, Michael Sandel’s communitarian critique, and more generally critiques of “neutralist liberalism,” as well as in affirming the basic unity of Rawls’s position. At a deeper level, however, they diverge, and in ways that, this essay suggests, (...) go astray on subtle questions of interpretation: Freeman overemphasizes reciprocity, Pogge miscasts Rawls as a consequentialist, and Audard exaggerates the Kantian aspect of Rawls’s core, continuing commitment to “doctrinal autonomy.”. (shrink)

The use of organs obtained from executed prisoners in China has recently been condemned by every major transplant organization. The government of the People's Republic of China has also recently made it illegal to provide transplant organs from executed prisoners to foreigners transplant tourists. Nevertheless, the extreme shortage of transplant organs in the U.S. continues to make organ transplantation in China an appealing option for some patients with end-stage disease. Their choice of traveling to China for an organ leaves U.S. (...) transplant programs with decisions about how to respond to the needs of patients who return after transplantation. By discussing two cases that raised this dilemma, we argue for upholding medicine's commitments to traditional principles of beneficence and nonjudgmental regard in sorting out the policies that a transplant program should adopt. We also explain how position statements that aim for the high ground of moral purity fail to give appropriate weight to the needs and suffering of present and future patients in the U.S. and in China. (shrink)

:The main point of contention between “naturalistic” and “political” theories of human rights concerns the need to invoke the notion of moral human rights in justifying the system of human rights included in the international practice. Political theories argue that we should bypass the question of the justification of moral human rights and start with the question of which norms and principles should be adopted to regulate the practice. Naturalistic theories, by contrast, claim that a convincing answer to the latter (...) question will have to presuppose some answer to the former. An adequate justification of the system of human rights included in the international practice, according to naturalistic approaches, will ultimately have to rely on some appeal to moral human rights. I call this view the “Priority of the Moral over the Political.” In this essay, I argue that the Priority of the Moral is harder to dismiss than political theories of human rights suggest, and that before we can assess the plausibility of these theories, they need to say more in defense of their claim that they can do without this view. I then consider the two main objections that seem to have motivated many philosophers to abandon the naturalistic approach to the justification of human rights in favor of the political one. I conclude by suggesting that a variant of naturalistic justification, the basic-needs account, has the resources to address these objections. (shrink)

In the debate on global justice, proposals to tax natural resources in order to reduce global poverty and fund other worthwhile objectives have attracted scholarly attention and controversy. In thi...

In Globalization and Justice, Kai Nielsen brings his distinctive and passionate voice and considerable philosophical abilities to one of the pressing issues of our time: Is justice possible in our increasingly globalized world? Nielsen argues that it is, though the demands of justice are great, the challenges substantial, and the odds very long. Without a clear philosophical understanding of justice and a firm and focused political will, Nielsen maintains, we are likely to have globalization without justice. This is surely correct.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Proponents of practice-dependent egalitarianism argue that egalitarian duties and entitlements only apply among participants in morally relevant practices. In this paper, I argue that these views are implausible because they allow for objectionable treatment of non-participants. I show that it is impossible, on the basis of practice-internal considerations alone, to determine the extent to which the pursuit of practices can permissibly limit the opportunities of non-participants. There are opportunities beyond the current holdings of practices to which no one has a (...) privileged claim (such as unowned natural resources), and the distribution of which is a matter of justice. A just distribution of such unowned distributive goods, though, requires a practice-independent distributive baseline. I further show that such a baseline can only be egalitarian because all alternative baselines face serious objections. From this I conclude that any plausible theory of distributive justice must accept some form of equal practice-independent distributive entitlements. (shrink)

This article pursues two questions: Can one use Foucault’s later writings on parrhesia and Kant to create a Foucaldian approach to public reason? If so, what lessons might those attracted to John Rawls’ well-known model of public reason draw from a Foucaldian orientation? By putting Foucault into a competitive yet productive relationship with Rawls, this article addresses some of the latter’s shortcomings. In doing so it also makes a larger argument about the need to develop approaches to democratic deliberation that (...) involve engagement with – rather than simple toleration and/or accommodation of – the various ‘reasonable’ ethical commitments deliberators, on some fundamental level, reason in light of. The justificatory aims of public reason are best achieved when participants’ most-cherished beliefs are opened to critical dialogue rather than banished to the realm of the ‘non-political’. The article begins by briefly illuminating the salient features of Rawls’ model of public reasoning as well as three problems that ensue with the limitations it places on discourses regulated by public reason. It then attempts to distill a Foucaldian approach to public reason by briefly discussing 4 elements of Foucault’s later work on Rawls’ philosophical godfather Kant together with several features of the antiquarian studies of parrhesia that Foucault was conducting at the time these Kantian works were written. Third, Jeffrey Stout’s recent account of theistic democratic actors in some of the most economically disadvantaged US localities demonstrates how many of the ideals integral to this Foucaldian approach to public reasoning built on engaging (rather than simply tolerating and/or accommodating) contrasting ethical perspectives are central to some concrete practices of public reasoning. It concludes with some thoughts on the necessity of publicly reasoning through rather than independently of our deepest commitments. (shrink)

This article pursues two questions: Can one use Foucault’s later writings on parrhesia and Kant to create a Foucaldian approach to public reason? If so, what lessons might those attracted to John Rawls’ well-known model of public reason draw from a Foucaldian orientation? By putting Foucault into a competitive yet productive relationship with Rawls, this article addresses some of the latter’s shortcomings. In doing so it also makes a larger argument about the need to develop approaches to democratic deliberation that (...) involve engagement with – rather than simple toleration and/or accommodation of – the various ‘reasonable’ ethical commitments deliberators, on some fundamental level, reason in light of. The justificatory aims of public reason are best achieved when participants’ most-cherished beliefs are opened to critical dialogue rather than banished to the realm of the ‘non-political’. The article begins by briefly illuminating the salient features of Rawls’ model of public reasoning as well as three problems that ensue with the limitations it places on discourses regulated by public reason. It then attempts to distill a Foucaldian approach to public reason by briefly discussing 4 elements of Foucault’s later work on Rawls’ philosophical godfather Kant together with several features of the antiquarian studies of parrhesia that Foucault was conducting at the time these Kantian works were written. Third, Jeffrey Stout’s recent account of theistic democratic actors in some of the most economically disadvantaged US localities demonstrates how many of the ideals integral to this Foucaldian approach to public reasoning built on engaging contrasting ethical perspectives are central to some concrete practices of public reasoning. It concludes with some thoughts on the necessity of publicly reasoning through rather than independently of our deepest commitments. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that cosmopolitanism prohibits war and requires a global approach to criminal justice. My argument proceeds by drawing out some implications of the core cosmopolitan intuition that every human being has a moral status which constrains how they may be treated. In the first part of this paper, I describe cosmopolitanism. In the second part, Cosmopolitanism and War, I analyse violence, consider the standards cosmopolitanism sets for its justification, and argue that war fails to meet them. (...) In the third part, Cosmopolitanism and Criminal Justice, I argue that cosmopolitanism implies a moral obligation to deal justly with human wrongdoing wherever it occurs. Cosmopolitan pacifism follows: war is prohibited, and a consistent global criminal justice system is required. In the fourth part, Why No Cosmopolitan Pacifists?, I consider why cosmopolitans tend not to identify as pacifists, and in the final part, Objections, I discuss some objections. (shrink)

The recognition of conflict puts an end to the idea that cosmopolitanism may be legitimized by a comprehensive doctrine. The article argues that within the limits of a post-secular society, toleration must be conceived as a principle of justice, based on regard for the law, within a society in which not only others’ rights but also other cultures must be respected.

Although Kant argues that a world republic with coercive public law is the only rational way to secure a lawful cosmopolitan condition, he states that it is an unachievable ideal, and he proposes a voluntary, non-coercive federation of states as a substitute. While some scholars have criticized Kant for moving away from this ideal due merely to pragmatic considerations, I argue that his rejection of a coercive world republic is based on his conception of state sovereignty and what is required (...) for a lawful condition. I consider how we can institutionalize a lawful condition between states without a coercive world republic in ways that go beyond Kant’s voluntary federation. I also consider how we can resolve this dilemma in Kant’s account to support a federal world republic. (Published online first on June 16, 2014). (shrink)

I argue that recognizing a human right to adequate food and enforcing it as a legal right is an important way to promote and ensure sustainable food security. I consider objections that have been raised against subsistence rights and socio-economic rights, including the argument that such rights are not feasible, that they are not justiciable, and that they are too amorphous—that it is not clear what is required to fulfill these rights and by whom. I defend the right to adequate (...) food against these objections by considering how this right has been interpreted and applied in international law and how it has been protected in other domestic legal systems. I analyze different dimensions of the right to adequate food and I apply these to recent issues concerning sustainable food security in the United States, such as food deserts. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

What is pragmatism's contribution, actual or potential, to contemporary International Relations theory and practice? Is there hope for constructing a pragmatist theory of International Relations? The author of this article takes up these questions by considering whether Barack Obama is a pragmatist in his handling of issues in international affairs. By examining a series of Obama speeches, the author teases out the raw material for a pragmatist theory of International Relations, demonstrating how the pragmatic practice of international diplomacy can inform (...) a pragmatist theory of International Relations. (shrink)

Most accounts of immigration ethics implicitly rely upon neoclassical migration theory, which understands migration as the result of poverty and unemployment in sending countries. This paper argues that neoclassical migration theory assumes an account of the human person as solely an autonomous rational agent which then leads to ethics of migration which overemphasize freedom and self-determination. This tendency to assume that migration works as neoclassical migration theory describes is shared by political philosophers, such as Joseph Carens, Michael Walzer, and David (...) Miller. This paper argues that all three philosophers incorrectly frame migration as a contest between the freedom of the migrant and the communal self-determination of the political community. Migration systems theory is presented as a theory that draws upon a relationally embedded understanding of autonomy in order to begin to develop a migration systems ethics. This paper concludes by arguing that the central ethical category for an ethics of migration is not freedom or self-determination, but justice-in-relation. (shrink)

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

This paper develops a full account of Rawls's notion of a well-ordered society and uses it to address two luck egalitarian objections to his principles of justice. The first is an internal criticism which claims that Rawls's account of justice is better captured by a responsibility-sensitive egalitarian account. The second is an external objection according to which, regardless of the alleged inconsistency between Rawls's principles and his account of justice, we should reject those principles in favour of a responsibility-sensitive criterion (...) because it better captures our moral intuitions about distributive justice. The argument presented answers both objections by defending the value of well-orderedness and showing the difficulties of responsibility-sensitive egalitarian conceptions in realizing this ideal. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Rawls’s account of international toleration in The Law of Peoples has been the subject of vigorous critiques by critics who believe that he unacceptably dilutes the principles of his Law of Peoples in order to accommodate non-liberal societies. One important component in these critiques takes issue specifically with Rawls’s inclusion of certain non-liberal societies (‘decent peoples’) in the constituency of justification for the Law of Peoples. In Rawls’s defence, I argue that the explanation for the inclusion of decent peoples in (...) the constituency of justification is not, as is standardly assumed, that they are the kind of societies that ought to be tolerated in that way on some prior conception of which kinds of societies ought to be tolerated in that way. The real explanation appeals to a methodological principle underlying Rawls’s approach to political justification, according to which liberals owe justification, as a matter of liberal principle, to those who comply with liberal principles for political institutions that apply to them. If such liberal principles can be complied with by agents who nevertheless cannot accept fully liberal justifications for those principles, then liberalism itself requires liberals to seek justifications which they can accept. This approach gives us a new way to view decent peoples: as just such agents, who are therefore owed a justification for the Law of Peoples that they can accept. Decency is thus a concept that is internal to liberal political justification at the international level. Reading Rawls in this way permits a coherent and attractive defence of his strategy of toleration and of his international theory as a whole. (shrink)

This article explores the shift in Rawls’ just savings principle away from an initial iteration that was indifferent to previous generational savings, to one in which past historical savings are the cornerstone of the motivation to save for future generations. Attention is given to the practical application of the revised principle in the field of the environment. The revised principle is argued to be an improvement on the initial one, because previous generations have an existence and identity that is more (...) tangible than yet-to-be future ones. (shrink)

Nationalism is generally associated with sentiments, ideologies, and social movements that involve strong commitments to a nation, conceived as a potentially self-sustaining community of persons bound together by a shared history and culture. Recent empirical and normative discussions have been concentrated on revisionist instances of nationalism, that is, on sentiments, ideologies, and social movements that aim to gain power, political autonomy, or territory for a particular nation. I will here take a somewhat broader view of nationalism, focusing on persons who (...) have a bland and conservative commitment to their own country. Quite content with thestatus quo,these persons view it as legitimate and even admirable that they and their political leaders should show a pre-eminent concern for preserving and enlarging their own collective advantage. Most citizens of the affluent countries – however condescendingly they may regard the revisionist nationalisms of the Serbs, Kurds, Tamils, Irish, and Québécois – are nationalists in this sense, and extreme ones at that. (shrink)

In a democratic society, the social rules are imposed by all upon each. As “recipients” of the rules, we tend to think that they should be designed to engender the best attainable distribution of goods and ills or quality of life. We are inclined to assess social institutions by how they affect their participants. But there is another, oft-neglected perspective which the topic of health equity raises with special clarity: As imposers of the rules, we are inclined to think that (...) harms we inflict through the rules have greater moral weight than like harms we merely fail to prevent or to mitigate. What matters morally is not merely how we affect people, but how we treat them through the rules we impose. While current (consequentialist and Rawlsian) theorizing is dominated by the first perspective and thus supports purely recipient-oriented moral conceptions, an adequate approach to social justice requires a balancing of both. Such balancing results in a relational conception of justice, which distinguishes various ways in which an institutional scheme may causally affect the quality of life of its participants.This essay argues that the strength of our moral reason to prevent or mitigate particular medical conditions depends not only on what one might call distributional factors, such as how badly off the people affected by these conditions are in absolute and relative terms, how costly prevention or treatment would be, and how much patients would benefit from given treatment. Rather, it depends also on relational factors, that is, on how we are related to the medical conditions they suffer. It then discusses some implications of this view for understanding responsibilities for international health outcomes. (shrink)

Offering the first developed account of political liberal education, this book combines a thorough analysis of the theoretical groundwork of political liberal education with application-oriented approaches to contemporary educational challenges. Following in depth engagement with the shortcomings of Rawls’ theory and addressing some key objections to neutrality-based restrictions in education, the volume moves on to provide an insightful discussion of topics such as same-sex relations in sex-education, the position of migrant children and the rights of religious parents to determine the (...) education of their children. This book outlines a political liberal account of education which provides a useful contribution to the current debates about liberalism and education in a way unprecedented in the literature on political liberalism so far. It is of interest to anyone working at the intersection of political philosophy and philosophy of education as well as for scholars with a broader interest in how liberalism can respond to the challenges of value pluralism. (shrink)

Violence, poverty, and illness are all too prevalent in our world. In order to alleviate their hold systematically, we need normative schemes with a global reach and with definite responsibilities. Martha Nussbaum’s human capabilities theory (Martha Nussbaum 2006) provides us with an insightful example. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (The United Nations 1948), however, already includes most of the human capabilities central to Nussbaum’s theory, and violence, poverty, and illness usually appear as objectionable enough without any additional reference to (...) capabilities. In the current article, the author argues that the primary global responsibilities can mainly be established without Nussbaum’s account of capabilities. The human rights-based approach is more promising for this purpose (Jack Donnelly 2007; Abigail Gosselin, Human Rights Review 8:35–52, 2006; Ivar Kolstad, Human Rights Review, doi:10.1007/s12142-008-0103-1, 2008). However, the author also contends that Nussbaum’s theory may be very instructive as a relatively comprehensive moral approach that supplements the human rights view and inspires its adherents to assume secondary responsibilities in addition to the primary ones. Once we learn to see Nussbaum’s agenda in this way, not as the global program, but as one of the many reasonable and relatively comprehensive views in the global background culture, we can also learn to cultivate the responsibilities it implies in a duly dialogical way. (shrink)

This paper develops an understanding of the nature of sport fans that helps rebut the charge of nihilism leveled against identity anti-essentialism as represented in the work of Butler, Appiah, and...

This paper addresses the justice of national self-determination claims and defends a right to self-determination rendered as both a primary right, meaning that it does not require grievances or injustices, and a prima facie right, meaning that it is defeasible by the presence of injustices or the prospect of baneful consequences. The paper’s distinct contribution lies in the ground of this right, arguing that autonomy is not alone sufficient and that a better grounding can be found in a common civic (...) life, understood as a species of the basic good of interpersonal harmony. This basic good, and the norm of self-determination that protects it, rest on the foundation of natural law. The paper manifests the collection’s focus on liberty and security by exploring the claims for liberty proffered by a group desiring collective political autonomy, claims that bear upon the security of the group’s members, the security and liberty of minorities and of people liable to be subjected to illiberal practices, and the security of all who would experience war and violence in conflicts over self-determination. (shrink)

In recent developments in political and legal philosophy, there is a tendency to endorse minimalist lists of human rights which do not include a right to political participation. Against such tendencies, I shall argue that the right to political participation, understood as distinct from a right to democracy, should have a place even on minimalist lists. In addition, I shall defend the need to extend the right to political participation to include participation not just in national, but also in international (...) and global governance processes. The argument will be based on a cosmopolitan conception of political legitimacy and on a political conception of human rights that is normatively anchored in legitimacy. The central claim of my paper is that a right to political participation is necessary – but not sufficient – for political legitimacy in the global realm. (shrink)

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

My paper consists of two parts. The first part deals with the fundamental normative standards of domestic social justice on the one hand and global justice on the other, standards that are requisite in order to identify injustices on both levels. On this basis, the second part focuses on the interrelations between domestic social justice and global justice with particular attention to the interdependencies between domestic and global injustices.

The paper questions the scientific rather than ideological problem of an eventual biological successor of the mankind. The concept of superhumans is usually linked to Nietzsche or to Heidegger’s criticism or even to the ideology of Nazism. However, the superhuman can be also viewed as that biological species who will originate from humans eventually in the course of evolution.While the society is reached a natural limitation of globalism, technics depends on the amount of utilized energy, and the mind is restricted (...) by its carrier, i.e. by the brain, it is language which seems to be the frontier of any future development of humans or superhumans. Language is a symbolization of the world and thus doubling in an ideal or virtual world fruitful for creativity and the modeling of the former. Consequently, the gap between the material and the ideal world is both produced by and productive for language. (shrink)

The ethics of immigration is currently marked by a division between realists and idealists. The idealists generally focus on formulating morally ideal immigration policies. The realists, however, tend to dismiss these ideals as far-fetched and infeasible. In contrast to the idealists, the realists seek to resolve pressing practical issues relating to immigration, principally by advancing what they consider to be actionable policy recommendations. In this article, I take issue with this conception of realism. I begin by surveying the way in (...) which it exemplifies what certain political theorists have recently called ‘problem-solving’ realism – a species of realism which they reject as incoherent. These theorists demonstrate that what counts as a ‘feasible’ solution is far harder to establish than most problem-solving realists would have us believe. Applying this general critique to the specific domain of immigration ethics turns out to radically undermine the notion of realism that prevails in this sphere of applied ethics. I conclude that we should therefore revise our conception of what constitutes a genuinely realist approach to the problem of immigration. (shrink)

The debate over the nature of egalitarianism has come to dominate political philosophy. As ever more sophisticated attempts are made to describe the principles of an egalitarian distribution or to specify the good or goods that should be distributed equally, little is said about the fundamental basis of equality. In virtue of what should people be regarded as equal? Egalitarians have tended to dismiss this question of fundamental equality. In the first part of the paper I will examine some of (...) these strategies of marginalisation and assess whether the issue of fundamental equality matters. Jeremy Waldron has criticised this strategy of avoidance in his recent book God, Locke and equality. He argues that Locke’s turn to a theistic grounding for fundamental equality provides a better approach to the problem than the approach taken by contemporary liberals such as John Rawls. I will examine Waldron’s critique of Rawls and show that it is wanting. I will conclude by suggesting that Rawls’s approach to the issue has a bearing on the way in which equality should be understood as a political value. This argument for the primacy of a political conception of egalitarianism has a bearing on the interconnection between core liberal values and the idea of the state that has been emphasised by Rawls, Dworkin and Nagel. (shrink)

(2006). The Social Theory of Anti‐Liberalism. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, The Political Theory of John Gray, pp. 137-154.

In this paper, we critique the emergent international normative framework of growth – the knowledge economy. We point out that the standardized character of knowledge economy's flagship – intellectual property rights (IPRs) – has an adverse impact on women in emerging economies, such as India. Conversely, this impact on women, a significant consumer segment, has a feedback effect in terms of market growth. Conceptually, we analyze the consequences of knowledge economy and standardized IPR through a feminist lens. We extend the (...) analyses by pointing to various contradictions surrounding growth norms; for example, there are inherent contradictions between established "formal" legalistic interpretation ofIPR, "soft law" norms of corporate social responsibility, a fluid situation of moral claims of human rights, and different institutional capabilities at the international and domestic level. Consequently, we are able to demonstrate how standard IPR laws fail to deliver equity for all. We argue our case through exploring the growth aspects of the agricultural sector in India and the adverse impact of standard biopatenting on women farmers' rights (as producers and consumers) and preservation of environment. We suggest that desired gendered equity is better achieved when there is a constellation of actors – private–sector business, the state, and civil-society leaders – working together to ensure a balanced development through tailoring of IPR to local needs. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that when democratic states act wrongly, they should bear the costs of the harm they cause. However, since states are collective agents, their financial burdens pass on to their individual citizens. This fact raises important questions about the proper distribution of the state’s collective responsibility for its unjust policies. This article identifies two opposing models for sharing this collective responsibility in democracies: first, in proportion to citizens’ personal association with the unjust policy; second, by giving each (...) citizen an equal share of the costs. Proportional distribution is compatible with the principle of fairness. And yet, both in the literature and in political praxis we find many supporters for the equal sharing of the costs of unjust policies in democracies. How can equal distribution be defended on normative grounds? This article develops a defense that is grounded in citizens’ associative obligations. I argue that, at least in some democracies, one of the intrinsic values of the civic bond revolves around the joint formation and execution of worthy political goals. This social good generates the political associative obligation to accept an equal distribution of the costs of unjust policies. (shrink)