The relevance of different concepts of computer software (henceforth SW) rights is analysed from the viewpoint of divergent sociopolitical doctrines. The question of software rights is considered from the ontological assumptions, on one extreme, to the relevance of current practical applications of SW rights (such as copyright and patent), on the other extreme. It will be argued (from a non-descriptive/non-cognitive account) that the current expression of SW rights in Western societies (namely copyright, excluding patent) can be seen to be fair (...) from the viewpoint of the theses of agreed rights and universalisability. Finally, given that such practice is neither immoral, nor irrelevant-but fair (based on the ad ignorantiam argument)-we have good reason to respect it rather than violate or demolish it. (shrink)

How should we assess the burden of moral demands? A predominant assessment is provided by what Murphy calls the baseline of factual status-quo (FSQ): A moral theory is demanding if the level of agents’ well-being is reduced from the time they begin to comply perfectly with the theory. The aims of my paper are threefold. I will first discuss the limits of the FSQ baseline. Second, I suggest a different assessment, which examines moral demands from a whole-life perspective. My view (...) is that even if agents’ compliance with a moral theory will not cause a substantial reduction to their existing level of well-being, the total quality of life that they may obtain from complying with this theory may still be lower than what they could have obtained by following some other moral theories. The third aim of this paper is that, through this investigation, I hope to explicate the relation between agents’ acceptance of a moral theory and the burden of demands that is created by it. I believe that we can achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of moral demands by paying attention to the psychological development of agents as they accept and internalize a moral theory. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to overlooked similarities between John Rawls’s and Emmanuel Levinas’s understandings of justice. Its first part provides a synopsis of each philosopher’s ideas as well t...

Artikkel käsitleb kriitiliselt üht viimaste kümnendite vastandust poliitilises filosoofias — ‘poliitilise liberalismi’ (Rawls) ja ‘radikaalse demokraatia’ (Laclau ja Mouffe) vahel. Artikkel püüab käivitada potentsiaalset dialoogi nende kahe näiliselt lahkneva lähenemise vahel. Kokkuvõttes näitab artikkel, et vastandus on möödarääkimine vähemalt ühes fundamentaalses mõttes: mõlemad lähenemised jagavad ühiskonnastmõtlemisel sama aluseetost. Artiklis nimetatakse seda ‘sattumuslikkuse eetoseks’ ning väidetakse, et see on kõige fundamentaalsem alusveendumus nii Laclau ja Mouffe’i ‘radikaalse demokraatia’ kui ka Rawlsi ‘õigluse kui ausameelsuse’ idee jaoks. Artikkel osutab ka ühele kesksele kitsaskohale (...) Laclau ja Mouffe’i lähenemises: nende suutmatusele kontseptualiseerida institutsioonilisi korraldusi tulenevalt nende ülemäärasest rõhuasetust demokraatia dekonstruktiivsele potentsiaalile. Selles suhtes osutatakse ka Rawlsi käsitluse ilmselgetele eelistele, kuna see pakub juhiseid organiseerimaks demokraatlikke institutsioone. The paper concentrates on a controversy in recent decades’ political thought between ‘political liberalism’ of Rawls and ‘radical democracy’ (represented in this paper by Laclau and Mouffe). The article tries to initiate a potential dialogue between these seemingly divisive approaches. In conclusion the paper maintains that the whole controversy is misguided in one fundamental respect: both approaches share the same underlying ethos in envisioning society—‘the ethos of contingency’. It is argued that it is the most fundamental tenet informing both Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony with its complementary idea of ‘radical democracy’, and justice as fairness conceived in terms of reciprocity with its accompanying idea of public justification and reflective equilibrium. _e article points to a central impasse in Laclau and Mouffe’s approach: its incapability to conceptualize institutional arrangements due to their overemphasis on the deconstructive potential of democracy. In this respect the obvious merits of Rawls’ conception are highlighted in view of his proposals for organizing democratic institutions. (shrink)

Neste artigo pretende-se discutir a dimensão política presente na origem da teoria do reconhecimento de Axel Honneth, partindo da constatação de que durante a reelaboração de sua tese de habilitação, publicada em 1992 com o título de Luta por reconhecimento, o autor se posiciona pela primeira vez diante do debate entre liberais e comunitaristas e elabora seu conceito formal de eticidade como uma resposta às limitações de cada uma dessas correntes da teoria política contemporânea.

The point of departure in this article is the Danish debate about democracyin schools. This article presents a first step in a study of how the relationshipbetween democracy and education can be understood. A juxtaposition of thetwo concepts requires, first of all, an analysis of how the concept of democracyis used in the educational debate. In this article three models of democracy areapplied as an analytical framework: a liberal model (Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rawls,Dworkin), a communitarian model (MacIntyre, Sandel, Nussbaum) and (...) a communicative/deliberativemodel (Walzer, Benhabib, Taylor, Habermas). Numerous contradictions and tensionsbetween concepts of democracy and education can be found in such a juxtaposition,depending on which conception of democracy one chooses to apply. In this articleI discuss which conception affords us the most meaningful concept of democraticteaching. As an introduction, a brief historical overview of the interplay betweendemocracy and education in Danish school is provided. (shrink)

This article critically examines the competitive, adversarial nature of the Western neoliberal style of democracy. Specifically, this article focuses on Amartya Sen’s notion of a “universal democracy” as a means of addressing socio-economic inequalities through Sen’s capability approach. Sen’s capability theory has become an acclaimed and widely used theory to evaluate and understand development and inequalities. However, we employ a distinctive critique by engaging Amartya Sen through Herbert Marcuse’s analysis of one dimensionality and the adversarial nature of Western democracy. We (...) further highlight how contemporary neoliberal society employ a particular, adversarial form of public participation. Through this, we underline the various neoliberal problemata, such as Western idealism, political passivity, and a “flattening of choice,” within contemporary democracies and locate how their competitive, winner-take-all nature has become essential to contemporary, Western democratic models. Consequently, we argue that democracy, as a functional concept and form of public engagement, should be fundamentally re-examined in order to address inequalities. (shrink)

This article examines the role of context in the development and deployment of standards of medical decision-making. First, it demonstrates that bioethics, and our dominant standards of medical decision-making, developed out of a specific historical and philosophical environment that prioritized technology over the person, standardization over particularity, individuality over relationship and rationality over other forms of knowing. These forces de-contextualize the patient and encourage decision-making that conforms to the unnatural and contrived environment of the hospital. The article then explores several (...) important differences between the home health care and acute care settings. Finally, it argues that the personalized, embedded, relational and idiosyncratic nature of the home is actually a much more accurate reflection of the context in which real people make real decisions. Thus, we should work to “re-contextualize” patients, in order that they might be better equipped to make decisions that harmonize with their real lives. (shrink)

During the last half of the twentieth century, legal philosophy (or legal theory or jurisprudence) has grown significantly. It is no longer the domain of a few isolated scholars in law and philosophy. Hundreds of scholars from diverse fields attend international meetings on the subject. In some universities, large lecture courses of five hundred students or more study it. The primary aim of the Law and Philosophy Library is to present some of the best original work on legal philosophy from (...) both the Anglo-American and European traditions. Not only does it help make some of the best work avail able to an international audience, but it also encourages increased awareness of, and interaction between, the two major traditions. The primary focus is on full-length scholarly monographs, although some edited volumes of original papers are also included. The Library editors are assisted by an Editorial Advisory Board of internationally renowed scholars. Legal philosophy should not be considered a narrowly circumscribed field. (shrink)

Las relaciones que pueden establecerse entre azar, igualdad y biotecnología suscitan un debatebien prolijo en el campo de la filosofía moral, generando dudas y numerosas discusiones. La reflexión sobre el alcance moral de ciertas hipotéticas posibilidades que podría brindar la biotecnología, permite iluminar el debate sobre la suerte bruta en materia de justicia distributiva.

El presente trabajo discute el concepto de comunidad en la obra del teórico italiano Roberto Esposito y su relación con literatura reciente en la teoría de los derechos de los animales. Se argumenta que la communitas teorizada por Esposito constituye un aporte a la configuración de una comunidad más allá de lo humano, de un modo que al mismo tiempo enriquece y problematiza la idea de comunidad presupuesta, pero no teorizada explícitamente, por Sue Donaldson y Will Kymlicka en la noción (...) de zoopolis. (shrink)

The paper analyses Rawls's teleology/deontology distinction, and his concept of priority of the right. The first part of the paper aims both 1) to clarify what is distinctive about Rawls's deontology/teleology distinction (thus sorting out some existing confusion in the literature, especially regarding the conflation of such distinction with that between consequentialism and nonconsequentialism); and 2) to cash out the rich taxonomy of moral theories that such a distinction helpfully allows us to develop. The second part of the paper examines (...) the concept of priority of the right. It argues that such a concept should not be identified with that of deontology— indeed, deontological theories do not necessarily assign priority to the right over the good. However, it contends that the concept of priority of the right is essential to explaining what specific kind of deontological theory "justice as fairness" is. Justice as fairness is a deontological theory which assigns priority to the right as a consequence of its commitment to a neutral position with respect to different accounts of what is ultimately valuable and good. (shrink)

Ethical principles are fundamental for the exercise of any profession. Portuguese psychologists have waited for 30 years for professional validation. This paper will define the Portuguese psychologists’ ethical principles, with a universal view as a starting point and then an adaptation to the cultural and professional reality in Portugal. The level of acceptability of these principles will be ascertained in a later paper.

The main objective of Micheal Sandel’s Liberalism and the Limits of Justice was to attack the concept of deontology, as formulated by John Rawls. In this article, I argue that Sandel interpreted the concept of deontology in a misleading way. There is a difference between how Rawls defined this concept and how it was interpreted by Sandel. Given this, the first part of this article will analyze the way Sandel interpreted the Rawlsian concept of deontology. The second part presents an (...) assessment of the clash between the two authors in light of the differences in the way both of them understood the meaning of deontology in political liberalism. (shrink)

I focus on some of Peter McHugh’s most recent papers. This is work that is not yet widely known, some of which has not even been published as yet. I try to show that while the work does not in any way contradict his life-long commitments, it still has the capacity to be not at all predictable.

The article addresses the problem of how to theorize generosity. It argues that generosity is a matter of social actors orienting to standards and suggests, drawing on an analysis by Derrida, that while he too sees the necessity of standards, for him this leads to certain dilemmas as to how actors can actually accomplish generosity. How can actors display the fulsomeness generosity requires while still respecting standards or limits? An attempt is made to resolve this problem by proposing, in line (...) with certain work by Blum and McHugh, and by Taylor, a distinction between merely calculating generosity and reflecting on it. Finally, the communal value of the version of generosity that the article develops is alluded to with the help of a Levinas-inspired version of self-other relations. (shrink)

This paper defends a distinctly liberal approach to public health ethics and replies to possible objections. In particular, I look at a set of recent proposals aiming to revise and expand liberalism in light of public health's rationale and epidemiological findings. I argue that they fail to provide a sociologically informed version of liberalism. Instead, they rest on an implicit normative premise about the value of health, which I show to be invalid. I then make explicit the unobvious, republican background (...) of these proposals. Finally, I expand on the liberal understanding of freedom as non-interference and show its advantages over the republican alternative of freedom as non-domination within the context of public health. The views of freedom I discuss in the paper do not overlap with the classical distinction between negative and positive freedom. In addition, my account differentiates the concepts of freedom and autonomy and does not rule out substantive accounts of the latter. Nor does it confine political liberalism to an essentially procedural form. (shrink)

Recent writers in the libertarian tradition have suggested a natural affinity between hermeneutics and libertarian politics. This case is not persuasive. We look at two different ways the link has been attempted. In one, markets themselves are seen as constituting a hermeneutic conversation of sorts. A second approach uses hermeneutics to underpin the traditional liberal confinement of the state to setting the rules of the game—to matters of the right as opposed to the good. But the conception of the self (...) that emerges from hermeneutic thought leads to a communitarian rather than a liberal politics. (shrink)

This article starts from two observations. The first is that some of the most prominent debates in social and political philosophy over the last few decades have been deeply obscured by the confusion of ontological/methodological and normative questions. And the second is that the renewed interest in Hegel's social philosophy has not yet yielded anything like a widely shared view as to whether it should be banned as a totalitarian or reappraised as a liberal account. The aim of this article (...) is first to specify systematically the ontological/methodological and normative dimensions of social philosophy by giving precise definitions of core concepts and paramount positions. Secondly, it is argued that Hegel's social philosophy can be characterized as combining what is called vertical holism with liberal communitarianism. This, thirdly, sheds new light both on the nature of fundamental questions in social philosophy and on the systematic relevance of Hegel's social philosophy. (shrink)

This paper makes an attempt to philosophically re-construct what I have termed as a fundamental paradox at the heart of deontological liberalism. It is argued that liberalism attempts to create the possibilities of rational consensus and of bringing people together socially and politically by developing methodologies which overcome the divisive nature of essentially parochial substantive conceptions of the good. Such methodologies relying on the supposed universally valid dictates of reason and notions of procedural rationality proceed by disengaging men from the (...) divisive particularities of their plural value contexts. That disengagement is sought to be achieved by conceptualizing the individual as self sufficient in her moral and epistemic being thereby conceptually isolating individual man from the other. The liberal effort to create rational consensus which can bring people together then gets off the ground by isolating the individual from the other. This I have termed as the paradox of the self and the other or alternatively the paradox of social atomism and universalism. As a possible philosophical alternative this paper makes an attempt to re-construct Gandhi’s conceptualization of the relationship between swaraj as self rule and Satyagraha as non-violent resistance. This Gandhian connection, it is argued, has the potential to transform the moral psychology of our response to the other, thereby posing a challenge to the modern, predominantly liberal, conceptualization of such a response. (shrink)

This essay discusses Rawls distinction between the reasonable and the rational in the context of the liberal effort to establish the priority of the right over the good. It argues that inarticulacy about the good makes it difficult for Rawls to find arguments in support of a minimal conception of the reasonable overlapping consensus. The essay examines Rawls’ arguments in support of the distinction between the rational and the reasonable. The paper suggests that in terms of these arguments, the term (...) reasonable seems to be a derivative of the rational. However, this does not stop Rawls from employing that term as if the distinction has been satisfactorily made. Therefore, the philosophical work expected from the term reasonable in Rawls is more than that term is legitimately able to do. Rawls’ arguments explaining reasonable and his arguments employing the term reasonable as a virtue of citizens begin to turn on an equivocation on the use of that term. The conclusion suggests that it is possible to reconstruct Rawls so that the term reasonable can be used in a substantive normative sense without endangering the stability of the overlapping consensus. This is possible if Rawls’ conception of the moral powers of citizens can be philosophically reconstructed as forming part of the basic moral potential of citizens as persons. Such moral potential can be conceived, as prior to and independent of, a complete/partial conception of the good in terms of which that potential might find a complete or partial articulation. (shrink)

This paper explores the problem of universalism and particularism in contemporary ethics, and its relationship to Christian bioethics in particular. An ethic of human dignity is outlined, which, it is argued, constrains moral discourse in the broad sense – thus meeting the demands of universalism – but which is at the same time amenable to a variety of particularist interpretations – thus acknowledging the current shift toward historicism, traditionalism, and culture. The particularist interpretations that are of central concern here are (...) those provided by historic Christianity. The eventual goal is to indicate how a Christian conception of human dignity can have universal normative relevance both as a standard against which to assess competing particularist conceptions, and as a practical guide for everyday living. A Christian conception of dignity will in turn have significant implications when addressing contemporary issues in bioethics. These are ambitious goals, and a full explication of the ideas presented will not be possible in this context. Nevertheless, there is value in getting a bird's-eye view of the landscape before one goes about scaling the mountains and exploring the valleys. The present essay is intended as a general geography of the moral terrain in which an ethic of dignity in general, and a Christian perspective on dignity in particular, can provide normative guidance. (shrink)

This volume - the joint effort of the research groups on practical philosophy and the history of political thought of the Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences - brings together scholarly essays that attempt to face the challenges of the contemporary situation. The authors come from rather divergent disciplinary backgrounds, including philosophy, law, history, literature and the social sciences, from different cultural and political contexts, including Central, Eastern and Western Europe, (...) and belong to different generations. But they all share an interest to bravely answer the large topical issues concerning universal morality, here and now. (shrink)

This article examines the issues raised by religious adherents’ wish to express their beliefs in the public domain through, for example, their modes of dress, their performance of public roles, and their response to homosexuality. It considers on what grounds religion might merit special treatment and how special that treatment should be. A common approach to these issues is through the notion of religious identity, but both the idea of religious identity and its use to ground claims against others prove (...) deeply problematic. An alternative and more productive approach is through the notion of harm. People should enjoy the freedom to express their religious convictions subject to the harm principle, but harm should include the undermining of people’s status as free and equal citizens. The article concludes by considering the grounds upon which this alternative approach might recognize religion as special and might justify giving an overriding status to civic equality. (shrink)

One of the central theses of egalitarian liberals in the domain of distributive justice is that talented individuals should not be allowed to keep their entire market-income even if it flows solely from their greater abilities. This claim is usually supported by one of several arguments or some mixture of them, but in the present paper, I want to concentrate on the version that invokes equality of opportunity as its starting point. Namely, it is claimed that every human being should (...) enjoy an equal starting point in the life-race but that this is not secured insofar as some have greater natural talents than others. Therefore, egalitarians hold that results that arise from such an unfair situation are unjust and should be corrected by a redistributive taxation. I want to criticize this argument by hoping to show that it presupposes an untenable view about identity of persons. (shrink)

Ha llegado a ser un lugar común aseverar la influencia de Kant en la obra de Rawls; sin embargo, el constructivismo político significó un rechazo del universalismo que es imposible explicar en términos kantianos. Lo que sigue es un intento de evaluar la tesis del consenso superpuesto a la luz de la concepción general de la filosofía política y la razón práctica en Hegel.

The conviction that political recognition is accomplished through the extension and completion of the Enlightenment project of toleration is shared by some of the most influential political theorists of our time. John Rawls, Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka all formulate the issue of recognition as if it were a corollary of the principle of toleration based in equal liberty or dignity. This raises important issues which political thought must confront and engage with. Above all, it means reconsidering the primacy of (...) Enlightenment critique for our understanding of ourselves, our world and our encounter with others. In this article I examine the liberal conviction that tolerance (in the sense of a commitment to individual autonomy) best promotes recognition of cultural diversity. I argue that two weaknesses haunt the liberal project and undermine this belief. They prevail because of a failure adequately to address the question of recognition in its normative, ontological and symbolic aspects. In contrast, I argue that philosophical hermeneutics affords a critical perspective on democratic theory and practice that must be taken up and extended following the experience of identity politics. Key Words: hermeneutics • Kymlicka • multicultural democracy • normativity • Rawls • ontology • symbolic • Taylor. (shrink)

El presente texto es una indagación teórica sobre un tema que a pesar de su antigüedad mantiene plena vigencia: la «meritocracia», definida por el Diccionario de la lengua española como: «Sistema de gobierno en que los puestos de responsabilidad se adjudican en función de los méritos personales». El objetivo esencial de este abordaje es mostrar el surgimiento y evolución de este término, sus variaciones a lo largo de su desarrollo conceptual, su estrecha vinculación con determinadas teorías jurídicas y sus actuales (...) repercusiones sociales y políticas. Tratándose de una indagación teórica, el método básico asumido fue la recopilación bibliográfica y documental. Entre los resultados más destacables cabe precisar que el concepto de «meritocracia» ha sido objeto a lo largo de su evolución histórica de diversos y hasta contradictorios enfoques. En lo que respecta a las principales conclusiones hay que señalar que la meritocracia puede ser utilizada para enmascarar procesos excluyentes. (shrink)

Anti-commodification theorists condemn liberal political philosophers for not being able to justify restricting a market transaction on the basis of what is sold, but only on the basis of how it is sold. The anti-commodification theorist is correct that if this were all the liberal had to say in the face of noxious markets, it would be inadequate: even if everyone has equal bargaining power and no one is misled, there are some goods that should not go to the highest (...) bidder. In this paper, I respond to the anti-commodification critique of liberalism by arguing that the political liberal has the wherewithal to account not only for the conditions under which goods should not be sold, but also for what kinds of goods should not be for sale in a market economy. The political liberal can appeal to a principle of equal basic rights, and to one of sufficiency in basic needs and the social bases of self-respect, I argue, to account for what’s problematic about markets in civic goods, necessary goods, and physical goods including body parts and intimate services. (shrink)

Abstract In his critique of modern libertarian thinking, Jeffrey Friedman (1997) argues that libertarian moral theory makes social science irrelevant. However, if its moral claims are hypothetical rather than categorical imperatives, then economics, history, sociology, and other disciplines play a central role in libertarian thought. Limitations on human knowledge necessitate abstractly formulated rules, among which are claims of rights. Further, Friedman's remarks on freedom rest on an erroneous understanding of the role of definitions in philosophy, and his characterization of the (...) ?right to do wrong? as a ?logical contradiction? reveals a misunderstanding of logic. (shrink)

ResumenEl objetivo del presente trabajo es mostrar que en circunstancias de ilegitimidad política utilizar la herramienta de la renta básica como un medio para satisfacer deberes humanitarios o de justicia distributiva se encuentra injustificado. La hipótesis que defenderé es que, en tales circunstancias, la renta básica debe ser utilizada para garantizar la posibilidad efectiva de participación política. Adicionalmente, esta justificación de la renta básica nos permite enfrentar una de las objeciones más poderosa que ha recibido, su aparente violación del principio (...) de reciprocidad.Palabras ClaveComunidad Política, reciprocidad, deber de asistenciaAbstractThe objective of the present work is to show that in circumstances of political illegitimacy using the basic income device as a means to satisfy humanitarian or distributive justice duties is unjustified. The hypothesis I shall defend is that, in such circumstances, the basic income should be used to guarantee the effective possibility of political participation. Additionally, that justification of the basic income enables us to face one of the most powerful objections the basic income has received, its apparent violation of the reciprocity principle.KeywordsPolitical Community, reciprocity, duty of assistance. (shrink)

Neo-liberal economics is built upon the claim that the freedom to pursue one's self-interest and rational choice leads to economic growth and development. Against this background neo-liberal economists and policymakers endeavoured to universalise this claim, and insistently argue that appropriate economic policies produce the same results regardless of cultural values. Accordingly, developing countries are often advised to embrace the neo-liberal economic credo for them to escape from the trap of underdevelopment. However, the economic success of South East Asia on the (...) one hand and the failure of economic development in sub-Saharan Africa on the other, are increasingly proving that the 'economic' argument cannot be taken dogmatically: self-interest and rationality do not seem to be the sufficient explanations for economic development. One other avenue to be taken seriously is the link between cultural values and economic development. After viewing the principle of self-interest against its historico-cultural background, I consider this link in the African context, and argue that, although they cannot be taken as the sole factor, people's cultural beliefs and values are crucial for economic development. Economic growth and development need to be a substantiation of a people's beliefs and values. In African value system, this substantiation could lead to what one would call 'ubuntu economy' in which the state, the markets and the people are all agents, and not patients, in the process of economic growth and development. (shrink)

The local food movement is, increasingly, becoming a part of the modern American landscape. However, while it appears that the local food movement is gaining momentum, one could question whether or not this trend is, in fact, politically and socially sustainable. Is local food just another trend that will fade away or is it here to stay? One way to begin addressing this question is to ascertain whether or not it is compatible with liberalism, a set of influential political theories (...) that have shaped and continue to shape our political system. In this paper, I argue that the local food movement is partially compatible with forms of liberalism that accept the limited application of the principle of neutrality, as there are two directions or trends within local food: (1) The systems based direction and (2) the individual focused direction. The systems based direction is not compatible while the individual focused movement is largely compatible with liberalism. I go on to argue that the two directions form a dialectic that increases the political and social sustainability of the movement as a whole. Conceiving of the individual focused and the systems focused directions as in opposition to one another is, itself, a mistake. (shrink)

Desert plays a central role in most contemporary theories of retributive justice, but little or no role in most contemporary theories of distributive justice. This asymmetric treatment of desert is prima facie strange. I consider several popular arguments against the use of desert in distributive justice, and argue that none of them can be used to justify the asymmetry.

This essay demonstrates, and critiques, the pervasiveness of economic assumptions in the jurisprudence of privacy in US constitutional law as it extends from birth control and abortion rights to the so-called right to die. Finding in these cases metaphors of neoliberal productive practices and the assumption of the self as human capital, the self understood as a site of investment rather than a repository of worth, the essay brings privacy law into conversation with Kristin Luker's empirical work on abortion politics (...) and teenage pregnancy. The essay does not treat the right to die as a moral or political problem to be resolved, but is instead interested in the revelatory character of the jurisprudence of privacy — namely, in what it can tell us about the contemporary political economic order. Are recent developments in contemporary political economy, in the emerging neoliberal order, potentially illiberal? (shrink)

Multiculturalism has become a central theme in many academic disciplines from philosophy to education, social work and psychology, ultimately reaching political science and law. What seems to be unique in current studies on multiculturalism is not merely the observance and display of societies that happen to be diverse in terms of the religious, cultural, national and ethnic affiliation of their members. Rather, it is the central argument that such divergence is legitimate and should be accommodated. Accepting other groups in society (...) and the legitimacy of accommodating them has become a virtue of tolerance.This paper argues that we must first look into multicultural theory itself to discover what can be called ‘multicultural qualifications’. These are in essence pre-conditions without the presence of which group accommodations, even if granted based on group membership, should not be considered as multicultural in nature. With multicultural theory as a backdrop, this article intends to identify such multicultural qualifications. The Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel is studied in its constellation as both a national minority group and as a religiously diverse group as an object for testing the application of the identified multicultural qualifications. (shrink)

In a globalizing world, governments are not always able or willing to regulate the social and environmental externalities of global business activities. Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI), defined as global institutions involving mainly corporations and civil society organizations, are one type of regulatory mechanism that tries to fill this gap by issuing soft law regulation. This conceptual paper examines the conditions of a legitimate transfer of regulatory power from traditional democratic nation-state processes to private regulatory schemes, such as MSIs. Democratic legitimacy is (...) typically concerned with input legitimacy (rule credibility, or the extent to which the regulations are perceived as justified) and output legitimacy (rule effectiveness, or the extent to which the rules effectively solve the issues). In this study, we identify MSI input legitimacy criteria (inclusion, procedural fairness, consensual orientation, and transparency) and those of MSI output legitimacy (rule coverage, efficacy, and enforcement), and discuss their implications for MSI democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine Rorty's contention that literary narrative, not political philosophy, is best able to address the problems of the West. It argues that although Rorty's conception of the novel as a valu able and informative medium is credible, he does not establish it as a valid alternative to political philosophy. Moreover Rorty retains the sort of reasoning that is characteristic of political philosophy, despite his assertions to the contrary.

This article looks at how various political cultures and imaginaries occlude the public’s deeply democratic political role, especially the currently reigning anti-political culture of neo-liberalism. Even in an era when millions of people the world over take to the streets in protest, dominant political imaginaries position most of the world’s people as largely powerless. What is needed is a radical political imaginary along the lines that Cornelius Castoriadis suggests. This imaginary foregrounds the ways in which all social and political formations (...) are already constituted by human beings’ ability to create new formations in the absence of foundations. But ignorant of this power, people are trapped in imaginaries where it seems that power resides elsewhere, only in halls of state or corporate boardrooms. This article offers an account that identifies where power originates and how it can be reclaimed through a more radical democratic political imaginary. The article proceeds as follows: the first two sec... (shrink)

The existence of a plurality of communities, a diversity of norms, and the ultimate contingency of all decisions in modern societies complicates the task of academics and practitioners who wish to be ethical. In this paper, we envisage and articulate a dialogical, communitarian approach to embedding business ethics that requires business ethicists to more reflexively engage with practitioners in working on and representing the normative criteria that people in organisations use to deal with moral dilemmas in business. We promote the (...) idea that business ethicists should not only cross the divide between normative ethics and empirical research, but also take a step beyond the empirical to become more active change agents. As potential exemplars of this approach in practice, we explore how self-critique and cross-disciplinary collaboration in education and teaching might be used by academics to engage current and future business ethicists, as well as managers, in dialogic partnership. In an organisational context, we also propose a three-part approach to embedding reflexive ethics in practice, through dialogic research, debate, and re-presentation of ideas. We contend that our approach has more efficacy than the traditional grand theories of ethics or more focused theories of business ethics, such as Integrated Social Contract Theory; it has the potential to provide more grounded, and therefore more practical, advice to academics, current and future business ethicists, and business practitioners. (shrink)

Sigmund Freud famously described three existential insults to humanity stemming from heliocentrism, evolution, and psychoanalysis. In recent years we are, perhaps, beginning to see the emergence of a fourth: interdependency. Over the last several centuries, Anglo-American culture has modelled itself on a vision of the independent individual – strong, autonomous, and self-sufficient. Yet from feminist theory, communitarianism, disability theory, institutionalist economics, and elsewhere, the evidence mounts that independence is, in most contexts, a myth. We are, in fact, fundamentally social beings: (...) fragile, vulnerable, variously disabled, and intrinsically dependent. In their time, each of the existential insults had profound effects; they forced a re-examination of the self, which rippled throughout the culture and uprooted old practices. This article argues that taking interdependency seriously would similarly lead to profound changes in our culture, our central political concepts, and even our major institutions. (shrink)

I takt med sekulariseringen av Norge har den kristne bioetikken mistet innflytelse. For klassisk kristen etikk har det vært mange nederlag de siste tiårene. Men det har skjedd noe mer enn at klassiske kristne posisjoner har mistet tilslutning. De kristnes argumenter har også mistet appell og gjennomslagskraft i det offentlige rom, i en grad som ikke alene kan forklares med at antallet kristne synker. Artikkelen identifiserer fem hovedgrunner til at kristne argumenter i bioetikken ikke får gjennomslag i offentligheten: politisk liberalisme, (...) avvisningen av religiøs argumentasjon, avvisningen av unntaksløse moralske forbud, moralsk subjektivisme og relativisme, og avvisning av handlingers symbolverdi. Grunnene drøftes med eksempler fra offentlig debatt.Nøkkelord: bioetikk, kristen etikk, naturrett, politisk liberalismeEnglish summary: Christian bioethics on the defensiveIn Norway, Christian bioethics has lost influence in step with secularization. For classical Christian ethics there have been numerous defeats in recent decades. However, something more than a simple decline in support for classical Christian positions has taken place. Christian arguments have also lost appeal and impact in the public square, to a degree that cannot be explained merely by the falling rate of adherence to Christianity. The article identifies five major reasons why Christian arguments in the sphere of bioethics fail to have an impact in the public square: political liberalism, the rejection of religious argumentation, the rejection of moral absolutes, moral subjectivism and relativism, and the rejection of the symbolic value of actions. The reasons are discussed with examples from the public debate. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to the tendency of a range of technologies to reduce pedagogical interactions to a series of datafied transactions of information. This is problematic because such transactions are always by definition reducible to finite possibilities. As the ability to gather and analyse data becomes increasingly fine-grained, the threat that these datafied approaches over-determine the pedagogical space increases. Drawing on the work of Hegel, as interpreted by twentieth century French radical philosopher Alexandre Kojève, this paper develops a model (...) of relational pedagogy which highlights three points of incompatibility with a datafied learning environment reduced to finite measures. Firstly: Kojève’s accont of authority in Hegel posits two aspects to the mimetic relation between teacher and student: recognition and realisation, which belong to the ipseity or about-self-ness of the subject, and are incompatible with a general definition of data. Secondly, the Hegelian approach to human historical time, in particular the assertion that time and desire are begun in the future, not the past, renders it incompatible with mathematical time as used in data processing. Finally, from these it is possible to derive a distinctive notion of the work of pedagogy, grounded in Kojève’s realist reading of Hegel, irreducible to information processing. In consequence of this threefold irreducibility, the paper draws attention to a need for relations of human pedagogical work to be inherent in the design of educational technologies and highlights the dangers of presuming a machine intelligence model in the design of learning environments. (shrink)

For many, the idea that people should be rewarded in proportion to what they deserve is the very essence of distributive justice. However, while the notion of moral desert is otherwise widely accepted, Rawls rejects it entirely in his A Theory of Justice. Many authors have argued that Rawls’s claims about desert have serious and unappealing consequences for his conception of justice as fairness, and also that they deny the possibility of autonomous choice to the very agents whose decisions are (...) supposed to underlie Rawls’s approach to justice. In this paper, I analyze the arguments of those who believe that Rawls can be interpreted in a way that doesn’t in fact deny either desert or the possibility of autonomous action. I conclude by allowing for the interpretation that Rawls does not necessarily deny autonomous action, but I contend that he nevertheless finds the idea of preinstitutional desert entirely off the mark. (shrink)

O artigo apresenta algumas estratégias recorrentes para justificar os direitos culturais (tais como comunidade justificativa, o valor da diversidade, as teorias do reconhecimento da diferença cultural, o valor da autonomia, a justificação de igualdade) e as examina criticamente à luz de seus próprios méritos, a partir da perspectiva do liberalismo enquanto doutrina política. De acordo com o artigo, todas essas justificativas são fadadas ao fracasso.

In the article texts by John Dewey, JürgenHabermas and Richard Rorty are discussed in thelight of different meanings of the Public. Thisis done by discussing foundational andnon-foundational claims on a philosophy ofpragmatism and democracy, and by looking atdifferent meanings of intersubjectivity. Onecrucial difference I am pointing at, is thatwhile Dewey's intersubjectivity is stemmingfrom philosophical arguments as well aspolitical, Habermas's intersubjectivity isrestricted to the level of (an almostscientific) philosophical abstractargumentation without any concrete language ofpolitics. When it comes to Rorty I stress (...) thathe is far closer than Habermas to Dewey'spragmatism, especially his ambition to includethe specific individuals and to stressindividuality in a philosophy of communicationand public conduct. (shrink)