This thesis explores the relationship between the capability approach to justice and liberal philosophy. I argue that the most compelling articulation of the capability approach—one given by Martha Nussbaum—suffers from an unattractive kind of inconsistency. On the one hand, Nussbaum is committed to formulating a robust account of a dignified human life which can give rise to a range of individual entitlements which ought to be guaranteed to all individuals. On the other hand, Nussbaum is committed to political liberalism which (...) requires state institutions to uphold strict neutrality between a variety of reasonable conceptions of the good. Nussbaum’s first commitment results in the formulation of a list of ten central human capabilities. However, I argue that the content and justification of this list cannot be successfully established in a way that is consistent with Nussbaum’s second commitment. Therefore, in this thesis, I propose a novel capability approach: a two-step approach which consists of two principles arranged in lexical priority. First, governments have a moral obligation to secure individuals with a meta-capability of autonomy. That is to say, governments must provide the conditions which are conducive to individuals exercising a range of agentic competencies which are constitutive of autonomous judgement. Second, governments have a moral obligation to provide opportunities for individuals to exercise this meta-capability in six domains of well-being: health, politics, knowledge, relationships, self-expression, and work. I argue that exercising autonomous choice in the pursuit of welfare is necessary for a good life, regardless of the specific choices individuals eventually make, and even if they choose to forgo some supposedly valuable choices altogether. My proposal has two striking features which set it apart from other articulations of the capability approach. First, my proposal is comprehensive in that it relies on a particular view about what is a valuable way of life. In my view, a way of life is valuable if it is pursued autonomously, that is to say, if it involves an individual exercising a set of agentic competencies and standing in appropriate relations with other people. And second, by virtue of being based in this particular comprehensive claim, my account of justice is anti-perfectionist. That is to say, my proposal does not aim to compel people to make valuable choices. Rather, it aims to equip people with the means to live the kind of life they find valuable and worth living. I then apply this capability approach to the domain of education, and I argue it can be useful in formulating an ambitious and transformative approach to education. In particular, I develop a program of civic education aimed at responding to the problems associated with disinformation and ‘post-truth’ trends in politics. (shrink)

Talk of harm reduction has expanded horizontally, to apply to an ever-widening range of policy domains, and vertically, becoming part of official legal and political discourse. This expansion calls for philosophical theorization. What is the best way in which to characterize harm reduction? Does it represent a distinctive ethical position? How is it best morally justified, and what are its moral limits? I distinguish two varieties of harm reduction. One of them, technocratic harm reduction, is premised on the fact of (...) non-enforceability of prohibitionist policies. The second, deliberative harm reduction, is premised on the fact of reasonable disagreement, grounded in the fact that reasonable persons disagree about a range of controversial behaviours. I argue that deliberative harm reduction better accounts for some of harm reduction’s most attractive features, and provides a plausible way of accounting for harm reductions’s justificatory grounds and limits. (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is to specify the feasibility conditions of compromise. More specifically, the goal of this dissertation is to specify the conditions of increasing the feasibility of compromise. The underlying assumption here is that feasibility is a scalar concept, meaning that a socio-political ideal can be feasible to different degrees (Lawford-Smith 2013). In order to specify the conditions of increasing the feasibility of compromise, it is necessary to first identify potential feasibility constraints. The main chapters of this (...) dissertation are devoted to this task. -/- My research identifies two kinds of feasibility constraints that compromise potentially faces: A psychological feasibility constraint on realizing moral compromise (i.e. compromise on moral issues) and a structural feasibility constraint on realizing fair compromise. The psychological feasibility constraint consists in what I call an “affective aversion” to compromise. Affective aversion designates a deep emotional reluctance to compromise on moral values, which, I propose, can be reduced by cultivating an affective attitude of respect for other persons. The structural feasibility constraint refers to the process through which a compromise is achieved. I argue that if a fair compromise is the goal, the process of compromising needs to be based on deliberation rather than on the negotiation or bargaining processes that are commonly associated with compromise. Based on these results, my research indicates a) that an affective cultivation of respect is a condition for increasing the feasibility of moral compromise; and b) that deliberation, not negotiation or bargaining, is a condition for increasing the feasibility of fair compromise. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the process of compromising needs to be deliberative if a fair compromise is the goal. More specifically, I argue that deliberation is structurally necessary in order to achieve a fair compromise. In developing this argument, this paper seeks to overcome a problematic dichotomy that is prevalent in the literature on deliberative democracy, which is the dichotomy between compromise and deliberation. This dichotomy entails the view that the process preceding the achievement of a compromise is (...) essentially a process of negotiating or bargaining, which, I claim, should not be the case if a fair compromise is the goal. The reason for this claim is, in a nutshell, that negotiation or bargaining processes do not provide for an in-depth understanding of the reasons that each party has for holding their respective position. However, an in-depth understanding of each other’s reasons, is, as I will show, a necessary condition for achieving a fair compromise. In contrast to negotiation or bargaining, the deliberative process, by its very structure, provides for mutual understanding and is therefore a necessary condition for achieving a fair compromise. (shrink)

Simon May has argued that the notion of a principled compromise is incoherent. Reasons to compromise are always in his view strategic: though we think that the position we defend is still the right one, we compromise on this view in order to avoid the undesirable consequences that might flow from not compromising. I argue against May that there are indeed often principled reasons to compromise, and that these reasons are in fact multiple. First, compromises evince respect for persons that (...) we have reason to think of as our epistemic peers, and acknowledgement of our own finitudes as moral reasoners. Second, compromises are often made morally necessary by the shortfalls that unavoidably separate democratic institutions from democratic ideals. Third, compromises express a desirable form of democratic community. And fourth, compromises are often justified from a consequentialist point of view, in that they allow for the realization of values that would not be realized as well by the failure to compromise. (shrink)

Abstract: Debates about the possibility of global democracy and justice are plagued by a fallacious assumption made by all parties. That assumption is that there is a "naturalness" to relations among fellow nationals to which a global demos could never aspire. In fact, nation builders employed a great many tools that mobilized the psychological and moral susceptibilities of individuals in order to create a sense of solidarity out of initially heterogeneous elements. Two such tools are described and then applied to (...) the global sphere: first, appeals to prudence through the sometimes artificial engineering of Hobbesian situations, and second, uses of philosophically inferior but motivationally optimal moral argument. The applicability of these strategies to the global sphere suggests that cosmopolitans would be well advised to examine further the nation builder's toolbox for other devices through which a global demos might be motivated. (shrink)

One of the most powerful but elusive motifs in pragmatist philosophy is the idea that a liberal democracy should be understood as a community of inquirers. This paper offers a critical appraisal of a recent attempt to make sense of this intuition in the context of contemporary political theory, in what may be called pragmatist political liberalism . Drawing together ideas from Rawlsian political liberalism, epistemic democracy and pragmatism, proponents of PPL argue that the pragmatist conception of inquiry can provide (...) a satisfying interpretation of the idea of justificatory neutrality as it appears in political liberalism. This is contrasted with Dewey's understanding of the epistemic character of democracy, which is viewed as unacceptably sectarian. This paper identifies and criticizes the two principal lines of argument made in support of PPL: the clarification argument and the fixation argument. Neither of these lines of argument, it is argued, passes the test each sets itself. I argue that the latter closes down the epistemic openness in the justification of democracy that is central to pragmatism. (shrink)