Recent literature on the ‘exclusions’ of the modern nation-state has missed a major transformation in the legitimate mode of excluding, from group to individual-based. This transformation is explored in a discussion of universalistic trends in contemporary Western states’ immigration and citizenship policies. Conflicting with the notion of a ‘nation-state’ owned by a particular ethnic group or nation, these trends are better captured in terms of a ‘liberal state’ that has self-limited its sovereign prerogatives by constitutional principles of equality and individual (...) rights. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic requires emergency policies to be put in place in order to avoid a global health catastrophe. At the same time, there has been an increasing preoccupation that argues urgent policies for public health neglect social justice. By looking at Portugal’s successful confinement case during the early stages of the pandemic, I argue that ethically driven social justice policies are not just compatible but also an instrumentally important element in addressing this pandemic in an effective way. The Portuguese (...) case study suggests that enhancing social justice towards socio-economically vulnerable groups correlates with the prevention of the spread of COVID-19; these benefits to public health can be explained by the fact that those policies create social distancing and less exposure to the COVID-19 virus and other contagious diseases and also remove disincentives to the use of healthcare services. (shrink)

I suggest that virtue ethics can learn from Foucault’s critical observations on biopolitics and governmentality, which identify how a good cannot be disassociated from power and freedom. I chart a way through which virtue ethics internalizes this critical point. I argue that this helps address concerns that both virtue ethics and the critical scholarship inspired by Foucault otherwise ignore. I apply virtue ethics to the contexts of refugee arrival, asylum procedure, and immigrant integration in Western Europe; I then see how (...) Foucault’s critical thought provides a counterpoint to virtue ethics; I finally analyze how incorporating that critique allows virtue ethics to make sense of both the context and the stakes involved. (shrink)

This paper firstly distinguishes between principles of “global justice” that apply the same anywhere and everywhere – Tännsjö’s utilitarianism, egalitarianism, prioritarianism and such like – and principles of “local justice” that apply within the specific sphere of health-care. Sometimes the latter might just be a special case of the former – but not always. Secondly, it discusses reasons, many psychological in nature, why physicians might devote excessive resources to prolonging life pointlessly, showing once again that those reasons might themselves be (...) morally significant. (shrink)

Are institutional principles of justice subject to a minimal realism constraint to the effect that, in order to be valid, they must not make wildly unrealistic demands? Most of us say “yes.” David Estlund says, “no.” However, while Estlund holds that 1) institutional principles of justice are not subject to a minimal realism constraint, he accepts that 2) institutional principles of justice are subject to an *attainability constraint* to the effect that, in order to be valid, they must not make (...) demands we are unable to meet; and 3) what he calls “institutional proposals” are subject to a minimal realism constraint. I argue that these three theses do not represent a plausible combination, at least given Estlund’s account of the principle/proposal distinction. Given this account, Estlund is either wrong to reject a minimal realism constraint on institutional principles of justice, or wrong to accept an attainability constraint on institutional principles of justice and/or a minimal realism constraint on institutional proposals. Either way, this has significant implications for the plausibility of his overall case against the minimal realism constraint on institutional principles of justice. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognized the existence of myriad widespread deep disagreements on values, justice, morality, and ethics. In order to come to terms with such deep disagreements, resistant to rational solution, this article asserts the need for developing an ethics of disagreement. The reality that theoretical disagreements often turn into practical conflicts is a major justification for why such an ethics is necessary. This paper outlines an ethics of deep disagreement that is primarily conceived of as a form of virtue (...) ethics. Such an ethics asks opposing parties in moral and intellectual conflicts to acknowledge that (a) deep disagreements exist, (b) opposing positions should be recognized as worthy of respect, and that (c) one should seek dialogue and mutual understanding. This ethical approach conceives of toleration as a moral and political virtue and presents an argument for toleration based on deep disagreements. (shrink)

This article compares the moral significance of two types of immigration, that which is based on the unification of citizens and non-citizens and that which is based on the skilled labor needs of the receiving society. I assess the interests of both citizens and non-citizens affected by each of these types of inflows and argue that unification admissions should be given priority over skilled workers but states retain a qualified moral permission to incentivize skilled worker migration.

We created Justice: The Game, an educational, role-immersion game designed to be used in philosophy courses. We seek to describe Justice in sufficent detail so that it is understandable to readers not already familiar with role-immersion pedagogy. We hope some instructors will be sufficiently interested in using the game. In addition to describing the game we also evaluate it, thereby highlighting the pedagogical potential of role-immersion games designed to teach political philosophy. We analyze the game by drawing on our observations (...) as designers and playtesters of Justice, along with feedback from students obtained in focus-groups conducted shortly after playtesting ended. We present evidence that Justice, compared to conventional instructional methods alone, plausibly enhances student learning of philosophical skills and content by requiring them to practice those skills and put their content-area knowledge to use in a highly-motivating and engaging context. (shrink)

Introduction Conceptual Distinctions: Work, Labor, Employment, Leisure The Value of Work and the ‘Anti-Work’ Critique Work, Meaning, and Dignity Work and Distributive Justice Work and Contributive Justice Work and Productive Justice Work and its Future BIBLIOGRAPHY .

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, governments have turned their attention to digital contact tracing. In many countries, public debate has focused on the risks this technology poses to privacy, with advocates and experts sounding alarm bells about surveillance and mission creep reminiscent of the post 9/11 era. Yet, when Apple and Google launched their contact tracing API in April 2020, some of the world’s leading privacy experts applauded this initiative for its privacy-preserving technical specifications. In an interesting twist, the tech (...) giants came to be portrayed as greater champions of privacy than some democratic governments. This article proposes to view the Apple/Google API in terms of a broader phenomenon whereby tech corporations are encroaching into ever new spheres of social life. From this perspective, the advantage these actors have accrued in the sphere of the production of digital goods provides them with access to the spheres of health and medicine, and more worrisome, to the sphere of politics. These sphere transgressions raise numerous risks that are not captured by the focus on privacy harms. Namely, a crowding out of essential spherical expertise, new dependencies on corporate actors for the delivery of essential, public goods, the shaping of public policy by non-representative, private actors and ultimately, the accumulation of decision-making power across multiple spheres. While privacy is certainly an important value, its centrality in the debate on digital contact tracing may blind us to these broader societal harms and unwittingly pave the way for ever more sphere transgressions. (shrink)

This dissertation undertakes a philosophical analysis of “natural capital” and argues that this concept has prompted economists to view Nature in a radically novel manner. Formerly, economists referred to Nature and natural products as a collection of inert materials to be drawn upon in isolation and then rearranged by human agents to produce commodities. More recently, nature is depicted as a collection of active, modifiable, and economically valuable processes, often construed as ecosystems that produce marketable goods and services gratis. Nature (...) is depicted as consisting of various unproduced mechanisms or “natural machines” that are first discovered and then channeled so as to serve human ends. In short, nature as an ideal is a kind of garden that is characterized by natural objects purposefully arranged by intentional human agents. This dissertation first lays out working definitions of the key terms, such as capital and Nature, and then traces the historical roots of natural capital in the writings of eminent classical political economists, such as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. I then examine the question of substitutes for “critical natural capital”, and argue that the preservation paradox is warranted: no one can restore or preserve a part of Nature without turning it into an artifact. Following the recent work of Debra Satz and Michael Sandel, I finish my dissertation by situating the question of natural capital in the broader context of whether some goods should not be for sale, particularly those I define as Basic Ecological Goods. (shrink)

The debate about justice in immigration seems somehow stagnated given that it seems justice requires both further exclusion and more porous borders. In the face of this, I propose to take a step back and to realize that the general problem of borders—to determine what kind of borders liberal democracies ought to have—gives rise to two particular problems: first, to justify exclusive control over the administration of borders (the problem of legitimacy of borders) and, second, to specify how this control (...) ought to be exercised (the problem of justice of borders). The literature has explored the second but ignored the first. Therefore, I propose a different approach to the ethics of immigration by focusing on concerns of legitimacy in a three-step framework: first, identifying the kind of authority or power that immigration controls exercise; second, redefining borders as international and domestic institutions that issue that kind of power; and finally, considering supranational institutions that redistribute the right to exclude among legitimate borders. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility of a notion of left-wing populism that is conceptually opposed to the identitarian logic of embodiment that characterises right-populist interpellations of ‘th...

Traditional arguments for privacy in public suggest that intentionally public activities, such as political speech, do not deserve privacy protection. In this article, I develop a new argument for the view that surveillance of intentionally public activities should be limited to protect the specific good that this context provides, namely democratic legitimacy. Combining insights from Helen Nissenbaum’s contextualism and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, I argue that strategic surveillance of the public sphere can undermine the capacity of citizens (...) to freely deliberate in public and therefore conflicts with democratic self-determination. (shrink)

This article diagnoses and critiques pervasive forms of teleological thought about basic structures of political organization in modern and contemporary political thought: arguments that the sovereign state, the nation-state, or some variant of a cosmopolis both represents the unfolding of history’s moral logic and offers us full moral personhood, agency, and maturity. Despite the received wisdom that modern political thought broke with teleology, I argue that early modern social contract theory was deeply teleological. The emergence of the normatively self-contained sovereign (...) state from the state of nature represented both decisive historical-moral progress from the medieval European non-state polities and the possibility of true moral personhood, thanks to the unity of will and judgment created by a unified authority structure. The article then argues that this overattachment to unity, both as an historical culmination and as a prerequisite to full personhood, was carried over into subsequent nationalist and cosmopolitan thought, where we see over-moralizations of historical processes, excessive claims for the teleological causal force of moral progress, and critiques of the immaturity of those persons who do not live in the recommended political form. The article closes with a sustained critique of both historical and individual-moral teleologies of these sorts. (shrink)

This article starts off with a historical section showing that deep disagreements among notions of social and political justice are a characteristic feature of the history of political thought. Since no agreement or consensus on distributive justice is possible, the article argues that political philosophers should – instead of continuously proposing new normative theories of justice – focus on analyzing the reasons, significance, and consequences of such kinds of disagreements. The next two sections are analytical. The first sketches five possible (...) reasons for deep disagreements among notions of social and political justice. The second discusses the meta-ethical relevance of the lack of consensus on justice and rejects ethical realism and cognitivism based on the argument from deep disagreements. (shrink)

The current practices of refugee protection refugees largely leave the burdens of the refugee regime to lie where they fall. Those states which are geographically proximate to refugee-producing regions, already amongst the least advantaged, bear the bulk of these burdens. In this paper, I critically assess two proposals which seek to address this maldistribution: a market in asylum services and a principle of comparative advantage. I argue that from the standpoint of justice, these proposals share two objectionable features. First, they (...) enable relations of domination between states, because they ignore the background relations of inequality upon which they depend for their effectiveness. Second, they institute an injustice of ‘misframing,’ in that they preclude consideration of refugees’ legitimate claims to be hosted (or not to be hosted) in a particular state. The failings of these approaches are illuminating and, I argue, provide us with some theoretical desiderata for a positive account of justice in the distribution of responsibilities to refugees. (shrink)

This article develops an intuitive idea of proportionality as a placeholder for a substantive conception of equality, and contrasts it with Ripstein’s ideas, as presented in an annual guest lecture to the Society of Applied Philosophy in 2016. It uses a discussion of racial profiling to illustrate the conceptual and normative differences between the two. The brief conclusion spells out my concern that talk of ‘proportionality’, though often helpful and, sometimes, necessary for moral reasoning, can end up concealing, rather than (...) illuminating, people’s claims to be treated as equals. (shrink)

This inquiry hopes to develop the moral argument for migration rights. It begins with the historical context of world poverty, that is, the unequitable distribution of global resources which is rooted in the economic as well as the structural injustices in the world. While weak internal structures are a determinant in the lack of human development in the Third World, political exclusion and economic domination are actually to be blamed for extreme poverty. The theoretical attempt to solve this problem through (...) Rawls and the Capability Approach is also examined. Gaps are present. It is noted that Thomas Pogge’s argument for a global difference principle is inadequate. The study distinguishes between economic migrants and refugees. The first should be dealt with from an economic point of view and the latter from a political vantage point. It is argued that economic and moral justifications exist in order to accommodate both. Migrant workers contribute to the economies of developed countries. Refugees, in contrast, may be allowed entry as a matter of negative duty to protect them from violence. The fear of the citizens of host countries that migrants are a security concern may be due to the unfair bias against people who are considered as outsiders. Justice, however, is a matter of fair treatment that all human beings deserve. (shrink)

There is a loud and persistent drum beat of support for schools, for citizenship, for diversity and inclusion, and increasingly for labor market readiness with very little critical attention to the assumptions underlying these agendas, let alone to their many internal contradictions. Accordingly, in this book I examine the philosophical, motivational, and practical challenges of education theory, policy, and practice in the twenty-first century. As I proceed, I do not neglect the historical, comparative international context so essential to better understanding (...) where we are, as well as what is attainable in terms of educational justice. I argue that we must constructively critique some of our most cherished beliefs about education if we are to save the hope of real justice from the rhetoric of imagined justice. (shrink)

While many argue investment-based criteria for immigration are wrong or at least problematic, skill-based criteria remain relatively uncontroversial. This is normatively inconsistent. This article assesses three prominent normative objections to investment-based selection criteria for immigrants: that they wrongfully discriminate between prospective immigrants that they are unfair, and that they undermine political equality among citizens. It argues that either skill-based criteria are equally susceptible to these objections, or that investment-based criteria are equally shielded from them. Indeed, in some ways investment-based criteria (...) are less normatively problematic than skill-based criteria. Given this analysis, the resistance to investment-based migration criteria, but not to skill-based criteria, is inconsistent. (shrink)

Workplace democracy is often advocated on two intertwined views. The first is that the authority relation of employee to firm is akin to that of subject to state, such that reasons favoring democracy in the state may likewise apply to the firm. The second is that, when democratic controls are absent in the workplace, employees are liable to objectionable forms of subordination by their bosses, who may then issue arbitrary directives on matters ranging from pay to the allocation of overtime (...) and to relocation and promotion. Daniel Jacob and Christian Neuhäuser have recently submitted these views to careful criticism. They argue that the parallel between firms and states is unwarranted. For, unlike managerial authority, state authority is final. The state grants firms their legal status and subjects their authority to its regulations, which citizens in democracies already control. And they also argue that suitable workplace regulation alongside meaningful exit options may suffice to prevent, with no need for democratization, objectionable forms of workplace subjection. Neither view offers, they resolve, compelling reasons to believe that justice requires that firms be democratic. I here inspect these criticisms in turn, and offer reasons for skepticism. (shrink)

What should be the aim when teaching matters of culture to students in public high schools and universities, at least given an African context? One, parochial approach would focus exclusively on imparting local culture, leaving students unfamiliar with, or perhaps contemptuous of, other cultures around the world. A second, cosmopolitan approach would educate students about a wide variety of cultures in Africa and beyond it, leaving it up to them which interpretations, values, and aesthetics they will adopt. A third way, (...) in between these two, would be to give some priority to understanding and enriching local culture, while being open to and not remaining ignorant of other cultures. In this article, a work of moral philosophy, I argue for this third alternative, by rebutting arguments for the other two approaches and by showing that it uniquely follows from a plausible African ethic informed by indigenous ideals of communion. (shrink)

Starting with one of the last writings by Norberto Bobbio I discuss the origins of the idea of a political “Left”. I trace them back to historical circumstances of the French Revolution and, behind them, to ways of symbolical representation to be located within the wider framework of forms of symbolic spatial organization of the social space. It turns out that “Left” is, more than a concept, a symbol or a metaphor. That Left is connected in its very roots with (...) the idea of equality. That the very idea of democracy is connected in a similar way to both ideas of Equality and Left,. A further implication is that the universally shared normative ideal of democracy and the (to a point) universally shared normative ideal of equality are carried as a matter of course by the very framework of democracy as a set of institutions. Thus it is virtually impossible to defend a consistent rhetoric of a political Right within the framework of a democratic society. The final discussion is whether the concept-metaphor “Left” is still useful, whether it highlights relevant features of society more than obscuring them, and the answer is, not unlike Bobbio’s – is that it is will still be useful, at least for a relevant number of purposes, until human societies will be marked by strong inequalities. (shrink)

Recent work by comparative philosophers, global ethicists, and cross-cultural value theorists indicates that, unlike most Western thinkers, those in many other parts of the globe, such as indigenous Africa, East Asia, and Latin America, tend to prize relationality. These relational values include enjoying a sense of togetherness, participating cooperatively, creating something new together, engaging in mutual aid, and being compassionate. Global economic practices and internationally influential theories pertaining to justice, development, and normative economics over the past 50 years have been (...) principally informed by characteristically Western and individualist values such as utility, autonomy, and capability. In this article I consider what economic appropriation, production, distribution, and consumption would look like if they were more influenced by relational values typical of non-Western worldviews, and especially the sub-Saharan ethic of ubuntu. (shrink)

How does precarious work entail social vulnerabilities and moral complicities? Theorists of precarity pose two challenges for analysing labour conditions in Asia. Their first challenge is to distinguish the new kinds of social vulnerability which constitute precarious work. The second is to assign moral responsibility in the social network that produces vulnerability in depoliticised and morally detached ways. In this article, the social and normative dimensions of precarious work are connected through a conceptual investigation into how Singapore allocates responsibility for (...) managing temporary migrant labour. First, it analyses how various management strategies, driven by globalisation and government deregulation, increase worker vulnerabilities. These strategies intensify relations of dependence, disempowerment and discrimination, which the workers may accommodate or resist in limited ways. Second, it assesses why the strategies leave the state, employers, agents and others complicit in producing the vulnerabilities. These actors enable, collaborate with, or condone the production of precarity. Their complicity is complicated by varying support or resistance to reforms. The result is a novel conceptual scheme for analysing the complicit network behind precarious work, which can be used in other sites of precarity where some are complicit in the vulnerability of others. (shrink)

In any normal population, health is unequally distributed across different age groups. Are such age-based health inequalities unjust? A divide has recently developed within egalitarian theories of...

In this paper, I discuss some of the criteria that liberal states have used to choose between potential immigrants. While overtly racist policies have been widely condemned and abolished, many states have still in the recent past selected immigrants based on their ethnicity and/or language competency. I argue that even apparently more benign examples of ethnic and linguistic selection are unacceptable because they tend to express a morally problematic message that members of certain ethnic groups within the territory—the people who (...) are really from there— occupy a privileged position within the political community. And this means, I argue, that they unjustly exclude members of other ethnic groups. Finally, I address some special features of linguistic selection that are sometimes thought to make it justifiable, including the de facto inevitability of promoting some languages more than others, the fact that languages can be learned voluntarily, and the fragility of minority languages in territories where there is another language that is more universally known. (shrink)

When should binding debt contracts not be repaid? This article argues that whenever the repayment of sovereign debt threatens the human rights of the citizenry, this provides a weighty normative reason to prioritize the fulfilment of the latter over the former. Since there are specific, non-coincidental reasons to fear that a high indebtedness of states may result in the undermining of the socio-economic and the collective human rights of a state’s citizenry, the more specific thesis defended in this article is (...) the following: whenever debt repayment undermines the socio-economic and collective human rights of the state´s citizenry, states have a normatively weighty reason to prioritize the fulfilment of the citizen’s human rights over meeting their contractual debt payment obligations vis-à-vis their creditors. (shrink)

Policy-making must always pay attention to race. That is the central claim of this chapter. Regardless of whether some particular policy debate is ostensibly “racial”, policy-makers must attend to questions of race, because race is a ubiquitous, but frequently unnoticed, feature of our world. I examine the type of philosophical question about race that I think philosophers and policy-makers would do well to examine and consider how the question “What is race?” is pertinent to policy debate. Examples will be drawn (...) from Australia, the United States, and Britain to illustrate these abstract arguments. (shrink)

Most punishment theories acknowledge neither the full extent of the harms which punishment risks, nor the caring practices which punishment entails. Consequently, I shall argue, punishment in most of its current conceptualizations is inconsistent with treating offenders as equals qua persons. The nature of criminal punishment, and of our interactions with offenders in punishment decision-making and delivery, risks causing harm to offenders. Harm is normalized when central to definitions of punishment, desensitizing us to unintended harms and obscuring caring practices. Offenders (...) may be partially silenced and excluded by mainstream criminal justice practices which limit interaction between offenders and practitioners. When we ignore significant harms, or silence and exclude, we treat others as passive non-subjects. This partially objectifies offenders, and is inconsistent with treatment as equals. Penal theories employing harm-centred and harm-normalizing definitions of punishment can provide few resources to help practitioners either avoid, or recognize and respond to, harms. Care ethics, by contrast, motivates the avoidance of harm, ongoing inclusive engagement, and respectful interaction with others. I argue that defining punishment without presupposing harm facilitates the identification of morally problematic harms, and recognition of caring practices. I offer a principled argument, and political and pragmatic supplementary arguments, for responding to offenders without intentional harm and with care. Principles drawn from care ethics can help to strengthen mainstream criminal practices by structuring decision-making and action. Bottom-up alternative criminal justice practices share some values with these proposed guiding principles, allowing a partial test of the principles. I consider examples of restorative justice practices, therapeutic jurisprudence, community justice and other problem-solving court practices, in addition to considering how well mainstream punishment practices measure up to these principles. My analysis illuminates the strengths and weaknesses of the principles, and how they might contribute to securing treatment as equals for offenders in mainstream practices. (shrink)

In the face of the desperate plight of refugees, virtually all moral and political philosophers, regardless of their general position on immigration controls, argue that states have a duty to grant asylum: people must not be turned back to countries where they would face persecution or severe human rights violations. Yet this consensus obscures a number of thorny ethical issues raised by the plight of the displaced. In this piece, I want to draw from recent writing in political and ethical (...) theory to bring some of these issues into view. I start by considering what a refugee is, before turning to the question how the obligations of political communities to the displaced are grounded. I then move to consider what societies owe to refugees and the question of international justice in the allocation of asylum. I conclude with a discussion of the moral responsibilities of refugees themselves. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that luck egalitarianism captures “desert-like” intuitions about justice. Some even think that luck egalitariansm distributes goods in accordance with desert. In this paper, we argue that this is wrong. Desertism conflicts with luck egalitarianism in three important contexts, and, in these contexts, desertism renders the proper moral judgment. First, compared to desertism, luck egalitarianism is sometimes too stingy: it fails to justly compensate people for their socially valuable contributions—when those contributions arose from “option luck”. Second, luck egalitarianism (...) is sometimes too restrictive: it fails to justly compensate people who make a social contribution when that contribution arose from “brute luck”. Third, luck egalitarianism is too limited in scope: it cannot diagnose economic injustice arising independently of comparative levels of justice. The lesson of this paper is that luck egalitarians should consider supplementing their theory with desert considerations. Or, even better, consider desertism as a superior alternative to their theory. (shrink)

In Markets Without Limits and a series of related papers, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue that it is morally permissible to buy and sell anything that it is morally permissible to possess and exchange outside of the market. Accordingly, we should open markets in “contested commodities” including blood, gametes, surrogacy services, and transplantable organs. This paper clarifies some important aspects of the case for market boundaries and in so doing shows why there are in fact moral limits to the (...) market. I argue that the case for restricting the scope of the market does not turn on the idea that some things are constitutively non-market goods; it turns instead on the idea that treating some things according to market norms would threaten the realization of particular kinds of human interests. (shrink)

In today's age of restrictionism, a growing number of countries are closing their gates of admission to most categories of would-be immigrants with one important exception. Governments increasingly seek to lure and attract “high value” migrants, especially those with access to large sums of capital. These individuals are offered golden visa programs that lead to fast-tracked naturalization in exchange for a hefty investment, in some cases without inhabiting or even setting foot in the passport-issuing country to which they now officially (...) belong. In the U.S. context, the contrast between the “Dreamers” and “Parachuters” helps to draw out this distinction between civic ties and credit lines as competing bases for membership acquisition. Drawing attention to these seldom-discussed citizenship-for-sale practices, this essay highlights their global surge and critically evaluates the legal, normative, and distributional quandaries they raise. I further argue that purchased membership goods cannot replicate or substitute the meaningful links to a political community that make citizenship valuable and worth upholding in the first place. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen’s critique of the Rawlsian difference principle points out an inconsistency in its presentation. The initial equality decided by the participants in the original position under the veil of ignorance is not preserved by the inequality sanctioned by the difference principle. Cohen shows how the breakdown of the initial equality of the original position prevents the desired results of the Rawlsian system from being realized. Cohen argues that an egalitarian ethos is required within a society for equality preserving economic (...) distributions and Pareto superior outcomes to occur. Nonetheless, Cohen’s analysis of Rawls misses the ultimate cause of inequality, which is the dynamics of capital accumulation. An egalitarian ethos is only possible if there is a socialist mode of production to facilitate its development. Additionally, Cohen’s critique of Rawlsian constructivism through an argument for intuitionism does not address the natural-material existence of human beings. This existence must be considered for any advantageous social formation. (shrink)

In the midst of rapid transformation and interstate competition within the global village, the effectiveness and prestige of national government should be any priority to measure a good order of constitutional democracy, especially for the nations to be called on service provision and public welfare. The times of ideology and philosophy had waned while the diverse civilizations clash, in which the technological advance and socio-economic environment inflict a tremendous change for the private and public mode of our contemporary livings. In (...) fact, the increasing diversity and volatility of community has brought the crisis and challenge against the constitutional tradition. In this backdrop, the paper examines the relationship of those two values embedded on the states of modern constitutionalism - limited toward the modern administrative state through this new millenium. The law or right and democracy as a political ideals is not futile merely with tweaks, but foundational or inseparably entwined into the value system of modern minds. We can be clear if to imagine of the times for the divinity of monarchy or feudal piety. The civil revolution for modern constitutionalism created a new order of society and nations began or manage to practice their national politics and administration on its basis. The recent tumultus in South Korea, stretching from the candlelight vigil through theimpeachment and incrimination of lady president, actually imprinted a deep wake for the politics of Koreans. In this line of thought alignment, the concept of democratic experimentalism engrafted with the rule of constitution was revisited that could give a lesson as a sedative meliorism for the radicalism or mob politics. Additionally, I presented some of brief evaluation about the Korean ways by gathering my thoughts on the candlelight vigil. Despite both of strengths and weaknesses on the theory of democratic experimentalism, I cordially suggest that it could work as a model to meet the increasing need of national competitiveness, participation, information sharing and learning as well as the protection of civil rights embedded on the constitutional tradition. (shrink)

World Crisis and Underdevelopment examines the impact of poverty and other global crises in generating forms of structural coercion that cause agential and societal underdevelopment. It draws from discourse ethics and recognition theory in criticizing injustices and pathologies associated with underdevelopment. Its scope is comprehensive, encompassing discussions about development science, philosophical anthropology, global migration, global capitalism and economic markets, human rights, international legal institutions, democratic politics and legitimation, world religions and secularization, and moral philosophy in its many varieties.

Extreme inequality of opportunity leads to a number of social tensions, inefficiencies and injustices. One issue of increasing concern is the effect inequality is having on people’s fair chances of attaining meaningful work, thus limiting opportunities to make a significant positive contribution to society and reducing the chances of living a flourishing life and developing their potential. On a global scale we can observe an increasingly uneven provision of meaningful work, raising a series of ethical concerns that need detailed examination. (...) The aim of this article is to explore the potential of a normative framework based upon the idea of contributive justice to defend a fairer provision of meaningful work. (shrink)

This paper undertakes a comparative legal study to analyze the challenges of privacy and personal data protection posed by Artificial Intelligence embedded in Robots, and to offer policy suggestions. After identifying the benefits from various AI usages and the risks posed by AI-related technologies, I then analyze legal frameworks and relevant discussions in the EU, USA, Canada, and Japan, and further consider the efforts of Privacy by Design originating in Ontario, Canada. While various AI usages provide great convenience, many issues, (...) including profiling, discriminatory decisions, lack of transparency, and impeding consent, have emerged. The unpredictability arising from the AI machine learning function poses further difficulties, which have only been partially addressed by legal frameworks in the aforementioned jurisdictions. However, analyzing the relevant discussions yielded several suggestions. The first priority is adopting PbD as the most flexible, soft-legal, and preferable approach toward AI-oriented issues. Implementing PbD will protect individual privacy and personal data without specific efforts, and achieve both the development of AI and the advancement of privacy and personal data protection. Technical measures that can adapt to an individual’s dynamic choices according to the “context” should be further developed. Furthermore, alternative technical measures, including those to solve the “algorithmic black box” or achieve differential privacy, warrant thorough examination. If AI surpasses human intelligence, a terminating function, such as a “kill switch” will be the last resort to preserve individual choice. Despite numerous difficulties, we must prepare for the coming AI-prevalent society by taking a flexible approach. (shrink)

This paper investigates the possibility of what Sally Haslanger calls ‘ideology critique’. It argues that ideology critique cannot rely on epistemological considerations alone but must be based on a normative political theory. Since ideological oppression is denied by those who suffer from it is it is not possible to identify privileged epistemological standpoints in advance.

In this paper, Ayelet Shachar begins by restating the main idea of her important book The Birthright Lottery : Citizenship and Global Inequality and then goes on to address in a constructive spirit the main themes raised by the five preceding comments written by scholars in the fields of law, philosophy and political science.Dans cet article, Ayelet Shachar commence par rappeler l’idée centrale de son livre important The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality avant de répondre de manière constructive aux (...) cinq commentaires qui précèdent, rédigés par des experts dans les domaines du droit, de la philosophie et de la science politique. (shrink)

Temporary workers stand to gain from temporary migration programs, which can also benefit sender and recipient states. Some critics of temporary migration programs, however, argue that failing to extend citizenship rights or a secure pathway to permanent residency to such migrants places them in an unacceptable position of domination with respect to other members of society. We shall argue that access to permanent residency and citizenship rights should not be regarded as a condition for the moral permissibility of such programs. (...) Instead we will focus on the essential protections that must be extended to all migrant workers, irrespective of the length of their migration project. (shrink)

The cardinal role that notions of respect and self-respect play in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has already been abundantly examined in the literature. In contrast, it has hardly been noticed that these notions are also central to Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice. Respect and self-respect are not only central topics of his chapter “Recognition”, but constitute a central aim of a “complex egalitarian society” and of Walzer’s theory of justice. This paper substantiates this thesis and elucidates Walzer’s criticism of (...) Rawls that we need to distinguish between “self-respect” and “self-esteem”. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, the capabilities approach has become an increasingly influential theory of development. It conceptualises human wellbeing in terms of an individual's ability to achieve functionings we have reason to value. In contrast, the African ethic of ubuntu views human flourishing as the propensity to pursue relations of fellowship with others, such that relationships have fundamental value. These two theoretical perspectives seem to be in tension with each other; while the capabilities approach focuses on individuals as the (...) locus of ethical value, an ubuntu ethic concentrates on the relations between individuals. In this article, we ask: to what extent is the capabilities approach compatible with this African ethical theory? We argue that, on reflection, relations play a much stronger role in the capabilities approach than often assumed. There is good reason to believe that relationality is part of the concept of a capability itself, where such relationality has intrinsic ethical value. This understanding of the ethical centrality of relations grounds new normative perspectives on the capabilities approach, and offers a more comprehensive grasp of the relevance of relationships to empirical enquiry. (shrink)