Kolb discusses postmodern architectural styles and theories within the context of philosophical ideas about modernism and postmodernism. He focuses on what it means to dwell in a world and within a history and to act from or against a tradition.

Wars and crises worldwide force millions of people to flee and seek refuge, often outside their countries of origin. What moral responsibilities do states have towards refugees? In this Ethical Annotation, Dr Jos Philips and his co-authors zoom in on the responsibilities of EU countries. They consider arguments in favour of and against admitting refugees and argue that EU countries must do at least at much as they can do at little cost, and perhaps even more.

Philosophers have started to theorize the concept of ‘affective injustice’ to make sense of certain ways in which people’s affective lives are significantly marked by injustice. This new research has offered important insights into people’s lived experiences under oppression. But it is not immediately clear how the concept ‘affective injustice’ picks out something different from the closely related phenomenon of ‘psychological oppression.’ This paper considers the question of why we might need new theories of affective injustice in light of the (...) well-established cross-disciplinary literature on psychological oppression. I suggest that, whereas psychological oppression is found in the hearts and minds of people who are oppressed, affective injustice is most fruitfully understood as a structural phenomenon. It operates primarily outside of us: in affective norms, practices, and relationships that are embedded in social conditions of injustice. The account I offer is tentative and incomplete. But my hope is that it will help show how theorizing affective injustice has the potential to enrich existing theories of justice and theories of psychological oppression. (shrink)

This thesis defends utilitarianism: the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being. Utilitarianism is widely rejected by philosophers today, largely because of a number of influential objections. In this thesis I deal with three of them. Each is found in Bernard Williams’s ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ (1973). The first is the Integrity Objection, an intervention that has been influential whilst being subject to a wide variety of (...) interpretations. In Chapter Two I give my interpretation of Williams’s Integrity objection; in Chapter Three I discuss one common response to it, and in Chapters Four and Five I give my own defence of utilitarianism against it. In Chapter Six I discuss a second objection: the problem of pre-emption. This problem is also found in Williams, but has received greater attention through the work of other authors in recent years. It suggests that utilitarianism is unable to deal with some of the modern world’s most pressing moral problems, and raises an internal tension between the twin utilitarian aims of making a difference and achieving the best outcomes. In Chapter Seven I discuss a third objection: that utilitarianism is insufficiently egalitarian. I find this claim to be unwarranted, in light of recent social science and philosophy. My responses to Williams’s objections draw upon resources from the socialist tradition – in particular, that tradition’s emphasis on the importance of social connections between individuals. Socialists have often been hostile to utilitarianism, in part for socialist-inflected versions of Williams’s objections. Thus, in responding to these objections I aim to demonstrate that socialist thought contains the means to defuse not only mainstream philosophy’s rejection of utilitarianism but also its own, and thus to re-open the possibilities for a productive engagement between the two traditions. (shrink)

This article presents the most important strands of the philosophical debate about markets. It offers some distinctions between the concept of markets and related concepts, as well as a brief outline of historical positions vis-à-vis markets. The main focus is on presenting the most common arguments for and against markets, and on analyzing the ways in which markets are related to other social institutions. In the concluding section questions about markets are connected to two related themes, methodological questions in economics (...) and the topics of business ethics and corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

A citizen is a member of a political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of membership. This broad definition is discernible, with minor variations, in the works of contemporary authors as well as in the entry “citoyen” in Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie..

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 .

Within this thesis, I argue for an interpretive approach to bioethics in pediatric intensive care. I begin by outlining the dominant bioethical doctrine that defines standards for ethical care in critically ill children. I critique this doctrine as legalistic and acultural. Drawing largely on the ideas of Charles Taylor, I call for a reconception of bioethics and propose an interpretive framework that is centred on culture and context. Finally, I illustrate this interpretive approach through a comparative study of two cases (...) in pediatric intensive care: the narratives of Marc and Larry. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on recognition respect as a component of Anderson’s democratic equality – specifically, how it places certain requirements on the way political institutions such as states treat both citizens and non-citizens. I argue for two claims: that recognition respect is a plausible political (as well as ethical) value, and that it should be understood in large part as a matter of an agent’s material relational standing rather than as their merely being regarded in a certain way (...) by others. In particular, I argue that the second-personal emphasis of recognition respect, the conceptual requirement that recognising somebody as an agent involves recognising them as somebody to whom you are in principle accountable, requires that agents actually be able to hold you to account rather than merely that you see them as being the right sort of being to do so. In turn, this implies that recognition respect requires non-vulnerability. Together, these claims go some way towards further fleshing out democratic equality as a philosophical ideal, and determining what implications this ideal has for matters of theory and policy. (shrink)

There have been monumental advances in the study of the social dimensions of knowledge in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. But it has been common within a wide variety of fields--including social philosophy, cognitive science, epistemology, and the philosophy of science--to approach the social dimensions of knowledge as simply another resource to be utilized or controlled. I call this view, in which other people's epistemic significance are only of instrumental value, manipulationism. I identify manipulationism, trace its manifestations in (...) the aforementioned fields, and explain how to move beyond it. The principal strategy that I employ for moving beyond manipulationism consists of synthesizing enactivism and neo-Kuhnian social epistemology. Specifically, I expand the enactivist concept of participatory sense-making by linking it to recent conceptual innovations in social epistemology, such as the concept of immanent cogent argumentation. (shrink)

The inclusion of stakeholders in science is one of the core ideas in the field of responsible innovation. Conspiracists, however, are not your garden-variety stakeholders. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, the conflict between conspiracists and science is deep and intractable. In this paper, we ask how the game of responsible innovation can be played with those who believe that the game is rigged. Understanding the relationship between conspiracism and responsible innovation is necessary in order to understand the unvisited corners (...) of the science-society interface in the post-pandemic future. We claim that pluralism, already part of the philosophical background that spurred responsible innovation, can offer insights into how conspiracism can be approached. As a case in point, we develop these insights starting from the policy on conspiracism developed in 2021 by the European Commission. We show that the ideal of inclusion can only be extended to conspiracists by accepting a pluralist framework, and we explain this pluralist response. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin’s interpretivism contains significant elements which might be both regarded as advantages and disadvantages of this legal theory. Among them, the main one is the concept of “theoretical ascent”. He deliberately targets many pragmatist theories, especially in moral and legal philosophy, with the aid of this concept. On the other hand, this concept, overloaded with metaphysical presuppositions, is highly susceptible to well-known pragmatistic criticisms. So, in this essay, I shall follow two main objectives: 1) I would try to remove (...) superfluous, metaphysical assumptions from his legal theory and adjust it finely to everyday practices of judges and lawyers, thereby increasing its practicality; 2) I would try to show that his interpretivism, grounded on the concept of “theoretical ascent”, could better explain the significant contribution of “theorization” to legal practices, compared to pragmatistic explanations, provided it reduces its notorious metaphysical connotations. In other words, I shall argue that an adjustment on both sides in this conflict say, at the parts of legal interpretivism and legal pragmatism, would lead us to a more inclusive legal theory which does better justice to both “theoretical and practical aspects” of legal practices in everyday life. (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)

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)

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)

Can a man be a feminist? If so, what would it mean? I want to participate in a dialogue between women and men on how to accommodate women’s moral concerns. I propose that the fundamental values of justice embodied in the South African constitutional democracy require men to be feminist. These values provide the best safeguard of the important interests and values of both women and men. Men who accept these values can support the main concerns of feminism. The implications (...) of the argument in this article range from public issues to the most private aspects of marriage. (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)

One of the main lessons to be learned from the Greek crisis is that large scale supranational communitarisation is a danger for democracy if mutual obligations between members undermine substantially the possibilities of political choice for the single member states. I argue that a well-balanced relation between responsibility, solidarity, performance incentives and democracy involves taking subsidiarity serious, as well as to admit a certain amount of institutional flexibility. This flexibility is demanded especially in the case of large scale communities which (...) include countries as members, like the EU, and in which the basic ideas of social, economical and financial policy are rather heterogeneous. Democracy, responsibility and solidarity must be in a well balanced relation for any community to function and to be generally acceptable to the citizens. This includes the defence of rather ambitious forms of civil participation and sovereignty of the people against the paternalistic pretensions of experts or of political and cultural elites. And responsibility ―as a basic condition for democracy― requires that the design of the contractual basis of the EU must make possible that voting communities really assume responsibility for their decisions, which includes bearing possible negative consequences of these decision on themselves. Preserving a certain leeway for differing decisions about economical, financial or social questions is necessary for giving democratic substance to the demand of the primacy of politics. This puts serious limits to ambitions for treaty-based supranational communitisations. (shrink)

In this article I present democracy as a distributive system containing two basic principles: to elect and to be elected. I call this distributive track system 'local political justice’. From this, I inquire under what circumstances a citizen adhering to these 'tracks' can be perceived as disadvantaged and as a creditor, in the public arena of modern democracies, who can present a claim. I analyze how to handle the situation of the disadvantaged with the institutionalization of the selection by lots. (...) And finally, try to provide exploratory arguments showing that the institutions of the lottery draw is not inconsistent with the preferences of citizens who do not want it, its adoption does not harm them and finally its adoption improve the condition of those disadvantaged who propose it. (shrink)

The main goal of this thesis is to provide a clear basis for the analysis of alternative currencies, such as Bitcoin, LETS, Local currencies, the WIR or Carbon currencies. It attempts to determine whether alternative currencies might constitute just and workable alternatives, either in the form of small-scale experiments or in the form of more radical reforms. The first chapter proposes a new way to classify currencies. The second examines the case in favour of monetary plurality. The third analyses the (...) claims in favour of restricting the use of money locally, within a community, or to certain goods. The fourth studies the link between money and the market. Finally, a post-scriptum focuses on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. This thesis highlights that these currencies are drivers of several potential conflicts. Their widespread use might conflict with the adequate management of monetary policy, with social justice, and with liberal values. These conflicts are potential, for they would come into existence only if alternative currencies increased in scope. However, there is no reason to disregard potential conflicts when the case in their favour relies mostly on their potential benefits. (shrink)

There is growing concern that decision-making informed by machine learning (ML) algorithms may unfairly discriminate based on personal demographic attributes, such as race and gender. Scholars have responded by introducing numerous mathematical definitions of fairness to test the algorithm, many of which are in conflict with one another. However, these reductionist representations of fairness often bear little resemblance to real-life fairness considerations, which in practice are highly contextual. Moreover, fairness metrics tend to be implemented in narrow and targeted toolkits that (...) are difficult to integrate into an algorithm’s broader ethical assessment. In this paper, we derive lessons from ethical philosophy and welfare economics as they relate to the contextual factors relevant for fairness. In particular we highlight the debate around acceptability of particular inequalities and the inextricable links between fairness, welfare and autonomy. We propose Key Ethics Indicators (KEIs) as a way towards providing a more holistic understanding of whether or not an algorithm is aligned to the decision-maker’s ethical values. (shrink)

This thesis investigates what work ought to be like. The answer it presents consists of an outline of a liberaltheory of justice in the employment contract based on theory developed in the area of political philosophy. Thethesis also examines issues of efficiency—How should measures to improve working conditions be evaluated?—and the ethical implications of the economic theory of employment contracts and the neoclassical theory of themarket. Paper I: A theoretical framework is introduced for the evaluation of workplace inspections with respect (...) totheir effects on working conditions. The choice of a concept of efficiency is discussed, and its relation to criteriafor a good working environment is clarified. It is concluded that in order to obtain reliable information onthe effects of different inspection methods, it is necessary to perform controlled comparative studies in whichdifferent methods are used on different workplaces. Paper II: This article outlines the structure of a Rawlsian theory of justice in the employment relationship. The theory answers three questions about justice and the workplace. What is the relationship between socialjustice and justice at work? How should we conceive of the problem of justice within the economic sphere?And, what is justice in the workplace? Reasons for a specific construction of a local original position are givenand arguments are presented in support of a principle of local justice in the form of a choice egalitarian localdifference principle. Paper III: The political philosophy of John Rawls is applied to the moral dilemma of whistleblowing, andit is shown that that the requirement of loyalty, in the sense that is needed to create this dilemma, is inconsistentwith that theory. In a discussion and rejection of Richard De George’s criteria on permissible whistleblowing,it is pointed out that the mere rejection of loyalty will not lead to an extreme position; harms can still be takeninto account. Paper IV: The case is made that if contemporary economics of the employment contract is correct, thenin order to explain the existence of employment contracts, we must make the assumption that the contractingparties are attempting to deal with decisiontheoreticignorance. It follows that the course of action that theemployer chooses to take when acting from authority cannot be justified by consent, since the informednesscriterion of consent cannot be satisfied under ignorance. It is then suggested that in order to achieve justificationof acts of authority, there must be in place a real possibility to contest employers’ decisions. Paper V: According to Ronald Dworkin’s theory of equality of resources, mimicking the ideal market fromequal starting points is fair. According to Dworkin, the ideal market should be understood as described in GérardDebreu’s influential work, which implies that we should conceive of trade as taking place under certainty. Thereare no choices under risk in such a market. Therefore, there is no such thing as option luck in the ideal market. Consequently, when mimicking this market, we cannot hold people responsible for option luck. Mimicking thismarket also implies that we ought to set up a social safety net, since rational individuals with perfect foresightwould see to it that they always have sufficient resources at each point in life. Furthermore, the idea of insuranceis incompatible with the ideal market. (shrink)

Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system. A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they are perceived by (...) stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed several important areas where the digital twin can produce socio-ethical value but also several important areas of socio-ethical risks. We conclude with a reflection on the employed analytical tool and suggestions for further research. (shrink)

I propose to criticize two strands of argument - contractarian and utilitarian – that liberals have put forth in defense of economic coercion, based on the notion of justifiable paternalism. To illustrate my argument, I appeal to the example of forced labor migration, driven by the exigencies of market forces. In particular, I argue that the forced migration of a special subset of unemployed workers lacking other means of subsistence cannot be redeemed paternalistically as freedom or welfare enhancing in the (...) long run. I further argue that contractarian and utilitarian approaches are normatively incapable of appreciating this fact because the kinds of reasons that they adduce for justifying the long-term freedom-enhancing consequences of forced migration are not ones that would be acceptable to the migrants themselves. I conclude that only a discourse ethical approach, which mandates direct, empathetic communication between would-be migrants and members of potential host communities, captures the full range of reasons that would be acceptable to both migrants and members of these communities. These reasons – appealing both to agency-enhancing communal attachments as well as to agency-enhancing freedom of choice – fully reveals the extent to which a global capitalist system composed of relatively closed national communities coerces the world’s poorest migrants. (shrink)

"Meritocracy" has historically been understood in two ways. The first is as an approach to governance. On this understanding, we seek to put meritorious (somehow defined) people into public office to the benefit of society. This understanding has its roots in Confucius, its scope is political offices, and its justification is consequentialist. The second understanding of "meritocracy" is as a theory of justice. We distribute in accordance with merit in order to give people the things that they deserve, as justice (...) demands. This understanding has its roots in Aristotle, its scope is social goods broadly, and its justification is deontological. In this article, I discuss the differences--especially the conceptual differences--between these two, prima facie distinct, meritocratic traditions. I also argue that despite their differences Eastern Meritocracy and Western Meritocracy are harmonious. In Section I of the article I introduce the two meritocratic traditions through, in part, a highly abbreviated history of talk about "merit" and "meritocracy" in Chinese and Western philosophy. In Section II, I discuss a number of conceptual issues and partition meritocratic theories in accordance with their scopes and normative justifications. I also discuss two scenarios. In one scenario, Eastern Meritocracy appears to deliver the right result and Western Meritocracy, the wrong result. In the other scenario, vice versa. Finally, in Section III, I argue that Eastern Meritocracy and Western Meritocracy are each special cases of a single, compelling notion of "meritocracy.". (shrink)

States cannot legitimately enforce their borders against migrants if dominant conceptions of sovereignty inform enforcement because these conceptions undermine sufficient respect for migrants’ basic human rights. Instead, such conceptions lead states to assert total control over outsiders’ potential cross-border movements to support their in-group’s self-rule. Thus, although legitimacy requires states to prioritize universal respect for basic human rights, sovereign states today generally fail to do so when it comes to border enforcement. I contend that this enforcement could only be rendered (...) legitimate if it was predicated on more desirable conceptions of sovereignty that supported the universal prioritization of basic human rights. Specifically, desirable conceptions would not establish and require absolute state sovereignty over borders as a necessary precondition for true popular self-governance. (shrink)

According to ‘global institutionalism,’ individuals who do not share a state have duties of justice to one another, and this is explained, in part, by the institutional connections that obtain between them. In this chapter, I defend this view against two challenges. First, I consider challenges raised by ‘non-institutionalists,’ who deny that facts about global institutional interaction bear on the nature of duties of justice that arise between particular individuals. Second, I address challenges posed by ‘domestic institutionalists,’ who accept the (...) claim that facts about institutional interaction bear upon the scope of justice but deny that the right sort of interaction necessary to ground duties of justice is found in the global domain. (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 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 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)

In this paper, I outline the cumulative network model of the self. This model articulates the self as relational, recognizing social relations as constitutive of the self. The theory arises out of concerns about the individualistic paradigms of two main frameworks in the analytic philosophical literature on personal identity, namely, the psychological and the animalist approaches to personhood and is explicitly inspired by feminist theories on relational autonomy and self. I argue that “relationality” is not only social, but that the (...) self is relational throughout, psychologically, physically, biologically, culturally, semantically, as well as socially. Hence, the self is a network of relations. The model also aims to recognize that temporality or historicity is constitutive of the self, that the self is a process, not a static three-dimensional thing. Hence, the self is a cumulative network. (shrink)

In an interdependent world of overlapping political memberships and identities, states and democratic citizens face difficult choices in responding to large-scale migration and the related question of who ought to have access to citizenship. In an influential attempt to provide a normative framework for a more just global order, The Law of Peoples , John Rawls is curiously silent regarding what his framework would mean for the politics of migration. In this piece, I consider the complications Rawls’s inattention to these (...) issues creates for his broader vision of global justice. Yet I also attempt to show how these aspects of Rawls’s theory emerge from an underlying tension which confronts all liberal democratic conceptions of justice, both in theory and in practice. In my conclusion, I sketch an alternative rooted in the insights of agonistic pluralism, which “breaks” the Rawlsian silence and actively theorizes the democratic legitimation of political borders. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the problem of particularistic and objective approach to morals in the debate on global justice. The former one is usually defended by the communitarian philosophy and moderate liberal nationalism that claim for moral significance of national borders. Within this approach, patriotism is a fundamental virtue. The latter approach is presented by the cosmopolitans who apply the Rawlsian justice as fairness to the world at large. They reject moral significance of national borders and claim for equal (...) rights and obligations to all human beings regardless of their origin and nationality. This approach to global justice treats patriotism as a vice. The main aim of this essay is to analyse whether the concept of patriotism and the concept of global justice necessarily come into conflict with one other. (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)

Partiendo del desarrollo de los diferentes enfoques sobre derechos humanos, plantearemos que su reactivación pasa por el necesario debate interno de las instituciones, significados y alcance real de la democracia en el seno de las denominadas sociedades democrático-liberales. Por ello analizaremos las crecientes movilizaciones sociales presentes en buena parte de occidente y profundizaremos en el significado de dos acontecimientos: la virtualidad de un antagonismo en el progresismo político y la urgencia de una alternativa no occidental pero, si, desde Occidente.

Christopher Wellman has argued that legitimate states enjoy a right to freedom of association that necessarily includes a right to exclude immigrants. This paper shows that Wellman’s argument for this conclusion is unsound since it is based on a construction of collective rights that is inapplicable to the rights of a state.

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)