The Shadow of God combines history and philosophy in a way that is, unlike Hegel, fundamentally pluralistic. It presents the period of German Idealism as a time when philosophers aimed to bring faith and reason together through the idea of autonomy. At the same time, the tensions endemic in that process led to a transfer of individual hope from an afterlife of reward or punishment to participation in a collective, historical process. This article responds to a series of critical questions: (...) Does the book assimilate consolation and reconciliation? Does it sufficiently distinguish knowledge and justification? Does it open the possibility for a reaffirmation of the individual? Does it underestimate the potential for a secularized Kantian philosophy to bring together equality, justification, and community? Does its interpretation of Kant give a place for his account of historical progress? Is awareness of the way in which theodicy came to be historicized helpful in understanding contemporary democracy and its discontents? (shrink)

In response to the democratic boundary problem, two principles have been seen as competitors: the all-affected interests principle and the all-subjected principle. This article claims that these principles are in fact compatible, being justified vis-à-vis different functions, accommodating different values and drawing on different sources of normativity. I call this a ‘function-sensitive’ view. More specifically, I argue that the boundary problem draws attention to the decision functions of democracy and that two values are indispensable when theorizing how to regulate these (...) functions: procedural fairness and political autonomy. While the value of procedural fairness is best promoted through a version of the all-affected interests principle, applied to decision making generally, it is argued that political autonomy is best promoted through a version of the all-subjected principle, applied to coercive decision making specifically. The article concludes by drawing out some practical implications of the function-sensitive view for the case of immigration and border controls. (shrink)

International and domestic law offer a study in contrasts: States' legal obligations often depend on their consent to specific international legal norms, whereas domestic law applies to individuals with or without their consent; enforcement in international law is weak and, for many international treaties, non‐existent, whereas states spend considerable resources to create centralized coercive enforcement mechanisms; and international law is characterized by much less institutional differentiation and specialization of functions than domestic legal systems are. These differences have invited a number (...) of skeptical challenges to international law, 3 of which we explore in this essay. The first points to 1 or more of the deviations of international law's institutional structure from that of a modern state's legal system as a basis for denying that international law is really “law.” Central to the debates over international law's status as law are concerns about whether and why the concepts of law inherited from domestic legal systems should serve as the blueprint for theorizing law in general and international law in particular. The second skeptical challenge targets international law's legitimacy. It claims that we lack reasons to treat international legal norms or the exercise of political power by international institutions, as anything other than an attempt by states to advance their national interests. If this challenge succeeds, states and other subjects of international law have merely prudential reasons to comply with it rather than a moral duty to obey it. Following a brief description of recent debates over how we ought to understand the concept of legitimacy when used to assess international political practices or global governance, we survey several possible bases for a moral duty to obey or respect international law. These include state consent, instrumental accounts of legitimate authority, and global democracy. The third set of challenges focuses on the relationship between state sovereignty and international law. International rules and institutions often make demands for reform affecting the domestic law of a state in order to elicit compliance with international law. Skeptics argue that the rule of international law is incompatible with states' political self‐determination. Regardless of whether their defense of this claim ultimately succeeds, thoughtful engagement with it may well require us to rethink some of the fundamental concepts and normative ideals in political philosophy, including state sovereignty, democracy, individual rights, political authority, and political obligation. (shrink)

Political philosophy should focus not on uplifting ideals, but rather, so I argue, on minimizing serious suffering. This is so not because other things do not ultimately matter (they do), but rather because in the political context, the stakes in terms of suffering are usually extremely high, so that any other considerations are almost always outweighed. Put in moderately deontological terms: the high stakes carry most political decisions across the thresholds of the relevant deontological constraints. While the argument is substantive (...) rather than exegetical, I engage in detail Judith Shklar's “Liberalism of Fear”. I share with Shklar her pessimistic starting point, but I also show how a focus on suffering (rather than cruelty and fear) is what plausibly follows from such a starting point. I then pursue the implications of this difference—they are theoretically profound, but perhaps less significant practically. (shrink)

The starting point regarding consent has to be that it is both extremely important, and that it is often suspicious. In this article, the author tries to make sense of both of these claims, from a largely liberal perspective, tying consent, predictably, to the value of autonomy and distinguishing between autonomy as sovereignty and autonomy as nonalienation. The author then discusses adaptive preferences, claiming that they suffer from a rationality flaw but that it's not clear that this flaw matters morally (...) or politically. What matters is whether they suffer from an autonomy flaw. To answer this question, the author develops an account of autonomy failure, according to which a preference is nonautonomous if an injustice played an appropriate role in its causal history. The author then discusses the moral implications—and in an initial way, the political ones as well—of proclaiming a preference, or consent based on it, nonautonomous in this way. (shrink)

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

A central debate in the philosophy of love is whether people can love one another for good reasons. Reasons for love seem to help us sympathetically understand and evaluate love or even count as loving at all. But it can seem that if reasons for love existed, they could require forms of love that are presumably illicit. It might seem that only some form of wishful thinking would lead us to believe reasons for love could never do this. However, if (...) we focus on why reasons for love as such motivate us to love, we find evidence that reasons for love as such do not require or even justify it: all they do is favor it. This result is fine, however, since love never stands in need of justification. We would think otherwise only if we somehow conflate reasons and justifications, or value and permissibility. We must give up such background assumptions if we are to appreciate reasons for love. (shrink)

Do we have a legal and moral right to health care against others? There are international conventions and institutions that say emphatically yes, and they summarize this in the expression of “the right to health,” which is an established part of the international human rights canon. The International Covenant on Social and Economic Rights outlines this as “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” but declarations such as this remain tragically (...) unfulfilled. According to recent figures, roughly two billion people lack access to essential drugs or to primary health care. Millions are afflicted by infections and illnesses that are easily avoidable or treatable. In the developing world many children die or grow stunted and damaged for lack of available treatments. Tropical diseases receive little or no attention by the major pharmaceutical companies’ research departments. Is this a massive violation of the right to health? And if so, why does it attract so little attention? Is it because our supposed commitment to human rights and the rule of law is hypocritical and hollow? Or is it because the right to health is a special case of a right, so that these tragedies are no violation at all? Jennifer Prah Ruger summarized this puzzle when she wrote: “one would be hard pressed to find a more controversial or nebulous human right than the right to health.” In this essay I discuss three different theories of a right to health care. I conclude by offering my own reconstruction of one such theory. (shrink)

With the recent advancements in scientific comprehension of genetics and the decipherment of complex techniques for editing human genomes, liberal eugenics—eugenic ideal premised on the liberal values of autonomy and pluralism that leaves reproductive choices to parents rather than anachronistic statist authoritarian interventions—has inevitably become a polarising conundrum in contemporary liberal societies as to its utility and destructiveness. Focusing on one species of liberal eugenics—namely, genome editing interventions—I contend that liberal eugenics could be harmful—harm herein construed as that which undermines (...) the salient liberal values of equality, autonomy, and pluralism—since it is itself antithetical to the bases of the liberal society. This contention is based upon three premises: first, that individuals are rather seldom rational decision-makers such that leaving all reproductive choices to the whims of individual parents would be immensely counterproductive to future offspring’s right to open future; second, that liberal eugenics—much like its authoritarian antecedent—could intersect with myriad identities, including race, class, sex, disability, and sexual orientation in ways that might exacerbate social divisions, marginalise different groups, and engender homogeneity; and third, that it undermines individual autonomy of the future person as a member of the liberal community, particularly if their capacities and abilities are tailored to fit parents’ specific life projects and putatively reasonable conceptions of the good. The underscored potential malaises of liberal eugenics should, I argue, be discursively negotiated between parents and the state via the development of robust general laws that regulate heritable genome editing interventions to ensure that the welfare of the future persons is prioritised and that the liberal commitment to autonomy is immune to antiliberal perversions. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s theory of authority has become influential among moral, political, and legal philosophers. This article will provide an overview and accessible explanation of the theory, guiding those coming to it for the first time as to its theoretical ambitions within the wider issues of authority, and through its intricacies. I first situate the theory among philosophical examinations of authority, and then explain the theory itself in detail.

This is a canvass to the critical reaction to Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority, as well as actual or possible replies by Raz. Familiarity is assumed with the theory itself, covered in a previous article. The article focuses primarily on direct criticisms of Raz’s theory, rather than replies developed in the context of a theorist’s wider project.

The recent “Windrush” scandal in the United Kingdom involved the application of law by Home Office officials in a manner that demonstrated gross lack of concern and humanity for its impact on many individuals. In an endeavour to reach some understanding of how ordinary individuals could have inflicted such hardships on others, this article considers the possible effect that acting within a legal environment might have on the actors’ response to moral norms. The inquiry leads to reconsideration of established theories (...) on the relationship between law and morality, concluding that the main theories ignore important aspects of that relationship. (shrink)

Philosophy, despite its typical attitude of detachment and abstraction, has for most of its long history been engaged with the practical and mundane-seeming question of whether there is a duty to obey the law. As Matthew Kramer has recently summarized: “For centuries, political and legal theorists have pondered whether each person is under a general obligation of obedience to the legal norms of the society wherein he or she lives. The obligation at issue in those theorists' discussions is usually taken (...) to be prima-facie, comprehensively applicable, universally borne, and content-independent.” This essay is a commentary on the current state of discussion of this perennial philosophical topic. (shrink)

Ratio Juris, Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 356-385, December 2021.

Ronald Dworkin is one of the most frequently cited legal philosophers. His work, notably his attack on H. L. A. Hart's positivist theory of law, has received considerable attention, earning him praise as well as trenchant criticism. Instead of discussing the analytical validity of Dworkin's claims, though, we propose an alternative reading of his jurisprudential writings that emphasises their rhetorical nature. After delineating the rhetorical context of his work, we provide several illustrations of his use of rhetorical strategies and, with (...) the help of sentiment‐analysis techniques, emotional language. While resorting to classical rhetorical tactics, Dworkin's rhetoric, we argue, appealed to the emotional power of rights talk at a time when the notion of rights enjoyed greater resonance with his audience. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between distributive injustice and political obligation within the confines of the fair-play theory of political obligation. More specifically, it asks ho...

This article investigates the relationship between distributive injustice and political obligation within the confines of the fair-play theory of political obligation. More specifically, it asks how the distribution of benefits and burdens of a cooperative scheme affects people’s fair-play obligations to that scheme. It argues that neither a sufficiency-based nor a proportionality-based approach is capable of answering that question singlehandedly. However, the two approaches can be combined in a plausible way. Noting that some of the duties that go into our (...) fair-play obligations are ‘gradual’ and others are ‘non-gradual’, the article argues that the sufficiency-based approach explains non-gradual duties such as the duty to obey the law, and that the proportionality-based approach explains gradual duties like political participation and civic responsibility. Thus, the article contends that the fair-play theory should be extended beyond the question of legal compliance and be applied to the duties of good citizenship more generally. (shrink)

A growing number of political and legal theorists deny that there is a widespread duty to obey the law. This has lent a sense of urgency to recent disagreements about whether a state’s legitimacy depends upon its ‘subjects” having a duty to obey the law. On one side of the disagreement, John Simmons, Robert Paul Wolff, David Copp, Hannah Pitkin, Leslie Green, George Klosko, and Joseph Raz hold that a state could only be legitimate if the vast majority of its (...) subjects have a duty to obey the law. On the other side, M.B.E. Smith, Jeffrey Reiman, Kent Greenawalt. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle” has been popular in the limitation of freedoms within human rights jurisprudence. It has been used formally in court cases and also informally in legal argumentation and conversation. Shortly, it is described as a very simple principle that amounts to the notion that persons are at liberty to do what they want as long as their actions do not harm any other person or society in general. This article questions whether it is legitimate to (...) use the harm principle in cases concerning the limitation of religious freedom within education. For example, can the exemption of a learner from sex education be denied based on the argument that such an exemption will cause harm? In order to answer this question, the meaning, origin and use of the harm principle are investigated. This article also discusses four main criticisms against the use of this principle in general and in cases of religious freedom of learners in education. (shrink)

This paper seeks to elucidate the role played by the common good in John Finnis's arguments for a generic and presumptive moral obligation to obey the law.1 Finnis's appeal to the common good constitutes a direct challenge to liberal and philosophical anarchist denials of a generic and presumptive obligation to obey the law.2 It is questionable, however, whether Finnis has presented the strongest possible case for his position. In the first section I outline Finnis's account of the relationship between basic (...) goods, the common good, and the authority of law. Section II demonstrates how Finnis's emphasis upon the instrumental nature of the common good leaves his position vulnerable to Joseph Raz's objections3 that not all cases of law make a moral difference and that governmental authority is often unnecessary to resolve coordination problems. I argue that Raz's critique nonetheless fails adequately to address an alternative defense of the existence of a generic and presumptive obligation to obey the law, suggested by some passages in Finnis's work, according to which the common good is integral, rather than merely instrumental, to the good of individuals. In the final section I consider whether Finnis could strengthen his case for a generic and presumptive obligation to obey the law by adopting a more consistently robustaccount of the common good. (shrink)

Principles of procreative beneficence (PPBs) hold that parents have good reasons to select the child with the best life prospects. Sparrow (2010) claims that PPBs imply that we should select only female children, unlesswe attach normative significance to “normal” human capacities. We argue that this claim fails on both empirical and logical grounds. Empirically, Sparrow’s argument for greater female wellbeing rests on a selective reading of the evidence and the incorrect assumption that an advantage for females would persist even when (...) a serious gender imbalance is obtained. Logically, PPBs cite only pro tanto reasons and allow that the good of an individual child could be outweighed by other morally relevant considerations, such as those which take collectively suboptimal outcomes into account. There is thus no need to attach value to the “normal.”. (shrink)

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

According to the brain drain argument, there are good reasons for states to limit the exit of their skilled workers (more specifically, healthcare workers), because of the negative impacts this type of migration has for other members of the community from which they migrate. Some theorists criticise this argument as illiberal, while others support it and ground a duty to stay of the skilled workers on rather vague concepts like patriotic virtue, or the legitimate expectations of their state and co-citizens. (...) In this article, on the contrary, we suggest that the liberal conception of states’ legitimate political authority demands, and not just permits, that developing states from which migration of skilled workers occurs set up contractual mechanisms. These mechanisms will ensure that state-funded training in the health sector is provided against a commitment on the part of future professionals to reciprocate with their services for the benefits obtained. If one of the conditions for the state to maintain legitimate political authority is to provide basic services such as healthcare to its subjects (while respecting at the same time their autonomy and freedom), then this is what developing states affected by the brain drain ought to do. What we call the authority-based approach to the brain drain also helps to clarify the obligations that other states have not to interfere with these contractual mechanisms when they exist, and not to profit from their absence. Inspired by FIFA’s legal instruments of training compensation and solidarity mechanism for the transfer of players, we conclude by suggesting a plausible global policy to complement this authority-based approach. (shrink)

The concept of autonomy plays a central role in bioethics,1 but there is no consensus as to how we should understand it beyond a general notion of self-determination. The conception of autonomy deployed in applied ethics2 can have crucial ramifications when it is applied in real-world scenarios, so it is important to be clear. However, this clarity is often lacking when autonomy is discussed in the bioethics literature. In this paper we outline three different conceptions of autonomy, and argue that (...) a substantive, perfectionist approach meets the theoretical requirements for an account of autonomy and also provides practical guidance. As Rebecca Walker argues, bioethics requires a more conceptually adequate account... (shrink)

The “right not to know” has generated significant discussion, especially regarding genetic information. In this paper, I argue that this purported right is better understood as a preference and that treating it as a substantive right has led to confusion. To support this claim, I present three critiques of the way the right not to know has been characterized. First, I demonstrate that the many conceptualizations of this right have hampered debate. Second, I show that the way autonomy is conceptualized (...) in this literature is also problematic. Third, I examine the notion of a right in more detail, to support my third critique: that the right to know and the right not to know genetic information are often erroneously treated as having equivalent status. On my understanding, the claim being made is better thought of as a preference, not a right, and a preference not to know certain information becomes only one of several considerations relevant to medical decision making. (shrink)

The child’s right to an open future aims at protecting the autonomy of the mature person into which a child will normally develop. The justification of state interventions into parental decisions which unduly restrict the options of the prospective adult has to address the problem that the value of autonomy is highly contested in modern pluralist societies. The article argues that the modern majority culture provides young adults with many more options than traditionalist religious communities. However, the options that can (...) be chosen in faith groups, such as the Amish, do not constitute a subset of the options available in the wider society. Therefore, state policies which pursue the goal of providing every child with the greatest possible set of options cannot be based on a neutralist version of political liberalism. The advocates of a child’s right to an open future must rely on a perfectionist version of liberalism which draws on the ideal of leading an autonomous life. Since liberal perfectionism has problematic implications, the article defends a neutralist position that largely refrains from state interference with the educational authority of fundamentalist religious communities. (shrink)

We argue in this essay that (1) the embryo is an irredeemably ambiguous entity and its ambiguity casts serious doubt on the arguments claiming its full protection or, at least, its protection against its use as a means fo research, (2) those who claim the embryo should be protected as "one of us" are committed to a position even they do not uphold in their practices, (3) views that defend the protection of the embryo in virtue of its potentiality to (...) become a person fail, and (4) the embryo does not have any rights or interests to be protected. Given that many are willing to treat the embryo as a means in other practices, and that human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research holds the potential to benefit many people, one cannot but conclude that hESC research is permissible and, because of its immense promise for alleviating human even obligatory. (shrink)

Estudio y guía didáctica sobre una ética aplicada: Ética para Psicología. -/- Applied Ethics study: Psychoethics .

An e-book devoted to 13 critical discussions of Thaddeus Metz's book "Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study", with a lengthy reply from the author. -/- Preface Masahiro Morioka i -/- Précis of Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study Thaddeus Metz ii-vi -/- Source and Bearer: Metz on the Pure Part-Life View of Meaning Hasko von Kriegstein 1-18 -/- Fundamentality and Extradimensional Final Value David Matheson 19-32 -/- Meaningful and More Meaningful: A Modest Measure Peter Baumann 33-49 -/- Is Meaning in (...) Life Comparable?: From the Viewpoint of ‘The Heart of Meaning in Life’ Masahiro Morioka 50-65 -/- Agreement and Sympathy: On Metz’s Meaning in Life Sho Yamaguchi 66-89 -/- Metz’s Quest for the Holy Grail James Tartaglia 90-111 -/- Meaning without Ego Christopher Ketcham 112-133 -/- Death and the Meaning of Life: A Critical Study of Metz’s Meaning in Life Fumitake Yoshizawa 134-149 -/- Metz’ Incoherence Objection: Some Epistemological Considerations Nicholas Waghorn 150-168 -/- Meaning in Consequences Mark Wells 169-179 -/- Defending the Purpose Theory of Meaning in Life Jason Poettcker 180-207 -/- Review of Thaddeus Metz’s Meaning in Life Minao Kukita 208-214 -/- A Psychological Model to Determine Meaning in Life and Meaning of Life Yu Urata 215-227 -/- Assessing Lives, Giving Supernaturalism Its Due, and Capturing Naturalism: Reply to 13 Critics of Meaning in Life Thaddeus Metz 228-278 . (shrink)

We often describe lives (or parts of lives) as meaningful or as not meaningful. It is also common to characterize them as more or less meaningful. Some lives, we tend to think, are more meaningful than others. But how then can one compare lives with respect to how much meaning they contain? Can one? This paper argues that (i) only a notion of rough equality can be used when comparing different lives with respect to their meaning, and that (ii) the (...) relation of being more meaningful is not transitive. It follows that all attempts to rank different lives in terms of meaning can at best lead to partially indeterminate and incomplete rankings. One should also give up on the idea of “maximizing” meaning. I will use Thaddeus Metz’s important recent book “Meaning in Life. An Analytic Study” as a foil for my discussion. (shrink)

Pour contrer le scepticisme au sujet de la connaissance des valeurs, la plupart soutiennent avec John Rawls qu’une croyance comme celle qu’une action est bonne est justifiée dans la mesure où elle appartient à un ensemble de croyances cohérent, ayant atteint un équilibre réfléchi. Christine Tappolet s’inspire des travaux de Max Scheler et d’Alexius von Meinong pour défendre une conception opposée au cohérentisme. La connaissance des valeurs est affirmée dépendre de nos émotions, ces dernières étant conçues comme des perceptions des (...) valeurs. (shrink)

Hegel's influence on post-Hegelian philosophy is as profound as it is ambiguous. Modern philosophy is philosophy after Hegel. Taking leave of Hegel's system appears to be a common feature of modern and post-modern thought. One could even argue that giving up Hegel's claim of totality defines philosophy after Hegel. Modern and post-modern philosophies are philosophies of finitude: Hegel's philosophy cannot be repeated. However, its status as a negative backdrop for modern and post-modern thought already shows its pervasive influence. Precisely in (...) its criticism of Hegel, modern thought is bound up with his thinking. (shrink)

A prominent way of justifying civil disobedience is to postulate a pro tanto duty to obey the law and to argue that the considerations that ground this duty sometimes justify forms of civil disobedience. However, this view entails that certain kinds of uncivil disobedience are also justified. Thus, either a) civil disobedience is never justified or b) uncivil disobedience is sometimes justified. Since a) is implausible, we should accept b). I respond to the objection that this ignores the fact that (...) civil disobedience enjoys a special normative status on account of instantiating certain special features: nonviolence, publicity, the acceptance of legal consequences, and conscientiousness. I then show that my view is superior to two rivals: the view that we should expand the notion of civility and that civil disobedience, expansively construed, is uniquely appropriate; and the view that uncivil disobedience is justifiable in but only in unfavorable conditions. (shrink)

Resumen: Este texto se concentra en el valor de las relaciones de cuidado y en la política pública que debe adoptarse en relación con ellas. Defiendo que, en consonancia con lo que argumenta Elizabeth Brake, debido a que las RC son una de las bases sociales del respeto propio, el mismo marco de apoyo que las leyes maritales ofrecen actualmente a las relaciones biamorosas debe ser accesible a otras RC consensuadas entre adultos -como las amistades a largo plazo, las relaciones (...) entre cohabitantes y las poliamorosas-. Sin embargo, a diferencia de lo que sostiene Brake, argumento que debemos evitar usar el término "matrimonio" para referirnos legalmente a cualquier RC. En concreto, mi propuesta es extender los derechos asociados con el matrimonio a otras RC entre adultos y suprimir dicho término por completo en la legislación.: This paper focuses on the value of caring relationships and the public policy that should be adopted regarding them. I defend that, as Elizabeth Brake has argued, considering that such relationships are one of the social bases of self-respect, the same legal protective framework that it is now accessible to bi-amorous relationships under marriage law should be available to other caring relationships between adults -such as long-term friendships, long-term cohabitations and poli-amorous relationships. However, unlike Brake, I hold that we should avoid referring legally by the term 'marriage' to any caring relationship. In short, my proposal is to extend the rights associated to marriage to other caring relationships between adults and to eliminate such term from legislation all together. (shrink)

This thesis explores whether the three standard value relations, “better than”, “worse than” and “equally as good”, exhaust the possibilities in which things can relate with respect to their value. Or more precisely, whether there are examples in which one of these relations is not instantiated. There are cases in which it is not obvious that one of these relations does obtain; these are referred to as “hard cases of comparison”. These hard cases of comparison become interesting, since if it (...) not the case that the standard three value relations obtains in these cases then the three standard relations do not exhaust the possibility of instantiated value relations. It is argued that for some of the hard cases of comparison, the standard relations determinately obtain. For some it is indeterminate, due to vagueness, which of the three relations obtains, but it is determinate that one of them obtains. Thereafter it is argued that the influential Collapsing Argument fails in ruling out other accounts of the hard cases of comparison. Since one cannot depend on the Collapsing Argument in order to conclude that all items are related by the standard three relations, the investigation continues. It is argued that none of the hard cases of comparison are cases of incomparability. Furthermore, none of them are cases of a fourth basic positive value relation such as “parity”. Consequently, for all the hard cases of comparison one of the standard value relations holds, although sometimes we do not know which one and sometimes it is indeterminate which one holds. This means that there is no reason to assume that one of the standard three value relations does not hold between items we are comparing. This is followed by a brief discussion about the normative consequences of this result. The thesis ends with four different appendices in which related topics are discussed. (shrink)

This thesis consists of a series of papers in population ethics: a subfield of normative ethics concerned with the distinctive issues that arise in cases where our actions can affect the identities or number of people of who ever exist. Each paper can be read independently of the others. In Chapter 1, I present a dilemma for Archimedean views in population axiology: roughly, those views on which adding enough good lives to a population can make that population better than any (...) other. In Chapter 2, I extend Gustaf Arrhenius’s famous impossibility theorems in population axiology into the domain of choices under risk. My risky impossibility theorems dispense with the assumption that welfare levels are finitely fine-grained, and so tell against lexical views in population axiology. In Chapter 3, I present objections to critical-level and critical-range views in population axiology. I then sketch out what I call the ‘Imprecise Exchange Rates View’ and argue that it is an attractive alternative. In Chapter 4, I address critical-level and critical-range views again. This time, I note that they are vulnerable to objections from biographical identity: identity between lives. I suggest that these objections give us reason to reject critical-level and critical-range views and embrace the Total View. In Chapter 5, I argue that objections of the same form – objections from personal identity – tell against person-affecting views in population ethics. In Chapter 6, I draw out some counterintuitive implications of two recent complaints-based theories of the procreation asymmetry. (shrink)

The core idea of 'becoming major', as it can be found in Kant's famous essay about the Enlightenment, is the concept of self-legislation or self-governance. Minority is described as a state of dependency on some heteronomous guidance (i.e. church, doctor, or the state), whereas majority is defined by Kant as the ability to guide oneself, using one's own understanding ('Verstand'). These definitions display a deep affinity to central concepts of Kant's philosophy: the autonomy of rational ethics, as it is defended (...) in the second Critique, and the copernican revolution in epistemology, which is the topic of the first Critique. Picking up on these similarities, the text isolates some of the essential conditions for Kant's understanding of an enlightened state of majority. Kant's theoretical works spell out conceptual preconditions for his radical account of self-guidance and gives it a more detailed form. This allows to articulate some of the historical assumptions and theoretical implications of majority which we might have lost out of sight in a time where 'self-management' is a ubiquitous demand. (shrink)

En este trabajo critico la interpretación moralizada de la obligación política en Hobbes que defiende Luciano Venezia. Exploro una lectura diferente que evita una dicotomía tajante entre las razones prudenciales y las razones morales y subraya en cambio la discontinuidad entre la normatividad subjetiva de la ley natural y la normatividad objetiva de la ley positiva. Sostengo que el contrato de sujeción política establece obligaciones objetivas recién cuando el soberano exige el cumplimiento de los contratos. La obligación política es entonces (...) una forma de obligación jurídica. Además, enfatizo que la comunidad moral de Hobbes solo es posible dentro del Estado. In this paper, I criticize Luciano Venezia's moralized interpretation of the Hobbesian concept of political obligation. I explore a different reading that avoids a clear-cut dichotomy between prudential and moral reasons and underscores instead the discontinuity between natural law's subjective normativity and civil law's objective normativity. I contend that the pact of political subjection establishes objective obligations only when the sovereign requires the fulfillment of contracts. Political obligation is then a form of legal obligation. In addition, I emphasize that Hobbes's moral community is only possible within the State. (shrink)

Le principe de neutralité libéral est l’idée selon laquelle l’autorité publique d’une société libérale doit permettre à tous ses membres politiques de suivre leur conception personnelle, individuelle de la vie bonne. Cet article vise à démontrer la non neutralité morale du PNL et les limites politiques que celle-ci implique – considérée dans le cadre du PNL – au niveau environnemental. Dans cet objectif, les trois aspects de neutralité engagés par le PNL seront exposés, puis critiqués. Cette analyse en trois temps (...) visera à défendre la thèse selon laquelle le PNL ne permet pas au libéralisme politique de mettre en place des politiques environnementales qui seraient satisfaisantes d’un point de vue non- anthropocentré ni pour le moins « viables » écologiquement. (shrink)

This thesis is the first step in a research project which aims to develop an accurate and robust theory of global justice. The thesis concerns the content of our duties of global justice, under strict compliance theory. It begins by discussing the basic framework of my theory of global justice, which consists in two aspects: duties of minimal wellbeing, which are universal, and duties of fairness and equality, which are associative and not universal. With that in place, it briefly discusses (...) the nature of duties of fairness and equality. I shall argue that they are associative, because they are derived from the form of cooperation at hand; and that there are three kinds of them in our contemporary world: states, local cooperation and trans-state cooperation. It is from their forms of cooperation that these duties are derived. After that, the thesis focuses exclusively on duties of minimal wellbeing. Against the usual account of these duties - the human-flourishing account - I argue for my human-life account. This account argues that the function of these duties is to secure a human life for individuals; and it begins with a Razian conception of wellbeing, which states that the wellbeing of an individual is fundamentally constituted by: (a) the satisfaction of his biological needs, and (b) his success in whole-heartedly pursuing socially defined and determined goals and activities which are in fact valuable. An account of what constitutes a human life is then derived from this conception of wellbeing – it is a life that consists in having a level of wellbeing that is higher than the satisfaction of biological needs, where this is constituted by the pursuit of goals and activities with a sense of what is worth doing; and this in turn consists in: (a) being able to forms ideas of what is worth doing, (b) being able to revise them in light of further reasons, and (c) being able to coordinate one's actions according to them. I then determine the specific objects of duties of minimal wellbeing (means for the satisfaction of biological needs, education, physical security, freedom of belief, association and expression, freedom of non-harmful conduct, and minimal resources), by determining what is involved in securing such a human life for individuals. (shrink)

This paper discusses Rawls’s thesis that the social basis of self-respect is one of the primarysocial goods. While the central element of the social basis consists in the attitudes of others(e.g. respect or esteem) the social basis may include also possession of various goods. Further,one may distinguish, following Honneth, universalistic basic respect from differential esteem andfrom loving care. This paper focuses on esteem, and further distinguishes three importantvarieties thereof (anti-stigmatization; contributions to societal goods, projects of self-realization),which all differ from recognition (...) of cultural identity. The normative implications will differ in these different contexts. (shrink)