Some societies tolerate or encourage high levels of chickenpox infection among children to reduce rates of shingles among older adults. This tradeoff is unethical. The varicella zoster virus (VZV) causes both chickenpox and shingles. After people recover from chickenpox, VZV remains in their nerve cells. If their immune systems become unable to suppress the virus, they develop shingles. According to the Exogenous Boosting Hypothesis (EBH), a person’s ability to keep VZV suppressed can be ‘boosted’ through exposure to active chickenpox infections. (...) We argue that even if this hypothesis were true, immunization policies that discourage routine childhood varicella vaccination in order to prevent shingles for other people are unethical. Such policies harm children and treat them as mere means for the benefit of others, and are inconsistent with how parents should treat their children and physicians should treat their patients. These policies also seem incompatible with institutional transparency. (shrink)

A background assumption in much contemporary political philosophy is that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, taking priority over other values such as beneficence. This assumption is typically treated as a methodological starting point, rather than as following from any particular moral or political theory. In this paper, I challenge this assumption. To frame my discussion, I argue, first, that justice doesn’t in principle override beneficence, and second, that justice doesn’t typically outweigh beneficence, since, in institutional contexts, the (...) stakes of beneficence are often extremely high. While there are various ways one might resist this argument, none challenge the core methodological point that political philosophy should abandon its preoccupation with justice and begin to pay considerably more attention to social beneficence—that is, to beneficence understood as a virtue of social institutions. Along the way, I also highlight areas where focusing on social beneficence would lead political philosophers in new and fruitful directions, and where normative ethicists focused on personal beneficence might scale up their thinking to the institutional case. GPI Working Paper No. 11-2022. (shrink)

In this article, I shall contend that Rawlsian public reason liberalism (PRL) is in tension with non-anthropocentric environmentalism. I will argue that many reasonable citizens reject non-anthropocentric values, and PRL cannot allow them to be used as the justification for ecological policies. I will analyse attempts to argue that PRL can incorporate non-anthropocentric ideas. I shall consider the view, deployed by theorists such as Derek Bell and Mark A. Michael, that PRL can make a distinction between constitutional essentials and non-essentials, (...) and therefore ecocentric values can be employed when only non-essentials are at stake. I will also consider Simon Hailwood’s argument that PRL can incorporate concern for nature based on its ‘otherness’. I shall conclude that both positions fail to rebut the claim that PRL excludes non-anthropocentric viewpoints. I will consider the question of whether PRL’s exclusion of non-anthropocentric ethics is a problem, and I shall show that appealing to purely anthropocentric arguments leads to a variety of unpalatable conclusions. I will suggest that comprehensive liberalism can include non-anthropocentric concerns, and hence is superior from an environmental perspective. (shrink)

The techniques that some large multinational corporations use to reduce their tax liability have come under increasing public scrutiny in recent years, alongside governmental investigations and international commitments aimed at curbing opportunities for tax avoidance. Although discussion of tax avoidance activities, and their regulatory responses, is often conducted with reference to moral concepts, philosophical analysis of the ethics of multinational tax avoidance remains limited. In particular, the virtue ethics tradition that emphasises the agent and the performance of specific roles has (...) not been considered in detail. This paper examines how the contemporary virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre can be applied to the issue of multinational tax avoidance, and considers the role that accountants play in these activities. It argues, firstly, that MacIntyre’s approach provides a more useful philosophical analysis of the issue and, secondly, that the main parties involved are likely to agree with the main tenets of this approach. The paper also contributes by reconceptualising, using MacIntyre’s scheme, the issue of tax avoidance in relation to Donald Cressey’s ‘fraud triangle’. (shrink)

This article presents a conceptual investigation into the value impacts and relations of algorithms in the domain of justice and security. As a conceptual investigation, it represents one step in a value sensitive design based methodology. Here, we explicate and analyse the expression of values of accuracy, privacy, fairness and equality, property and ownership, and accountability and transparency in this context. We find that values are sensitive to disvalue if algorithms are designed, implemented or deployed inappropriately or without sufficient consideration (...) for their value impacts, potentially resulting in problems including discrimination and constrained autonomy. Furthermore, we outline a framework of conceptual relations of values indicated by our analysis, and potential value tensions in their implementation and deployment with a view towards supporting future research, and supporting the value sensitive design of algorithms in justice and security. (shrink)

The likely adverse effects of climate change call for political action. In this paper, we argue that the public reason framework—with its insistence on justifiability to all reasonable citizens, in spite of their profound disagreements—despite initial misgivings recommends itself as a framework for debate and decisions pertaining to climate change. We address two possible stumbling blocks: the exclusion of non-anthropocentric points of view, and the controversy over intergenerational justice. We argue that public reason can deal with these problems. Moreover, we (...) argue that both strongly idealized and moderately idealized versions are able to address these issues. Moreover, public reason, as a family of views emphasizing disagreement and justifiability to all reasonable citizens, can help secure the stability of political orders, and hence contribute to sustained and demanding efforts to combat the adverse effects of climate change. (shrink)

One important trend in political philosophy is to hold that non-human animals don't directly place demands of justice on us. Another important trend is to give considerations of justice normative priority in our general normative theorising about social/political institutions. This situation is problematic, given the actual ethical standing of non-human animals. Either we need a theory of justice that gives facts about non-human animals a non-derivative explanatory role in the determination of facts about what justice involves, or else we should (...) be wary of the default normative priority that considerations of justice have in much of contemporary political philosophy. This discussion brings out important general methodological points tied to the role of concept and word choice in normative theorising about our social/political institutions. These methodological points, I argue, matter for a range of discussions in contemporary political philosophy, including those about global justice. (shrink)

Charity, as a social construct, is considered in various interpretative contexts, in a subjectively manner, social progress. The meta-narration about charity as Christian duty, by passing through the secular interpretive and atomizer context of postmodernity, becomes a narrative about social responsibility and equity in ethical dimension, and is translated into restorative community practices in social action plan. We will pursue the constructive interpretive contexts that generated the idea of social policies and social work practice as a contemporary deconstruction of charity. (...) The thesis of the article is that the process of deconstruction of charity, as a religious value which regulates in a Christian manner the reference to the other, is the foundation of restorative social policies and professionalized social work as a social action. We will analyze the deconstruction of Christian idea of charity from two perspectives, namely the secularization of charitable practices and constructive foundation of a particular meta-story of our times which we call secular society and/or knowledge society. (shrink)

"Ethical Explorations: Moral Dilemmas in a Universe of Possibilities" by Brendan Shea is an open access textbook that provides a comprehensive study of ethical philosophy. Shea makes it his task to chart the sprawling landscape of moral thought from ancient times to the present, employing a straightforward, easily accessible style. -/- In the book, each chapter addresses a distinct ethical theory. Shea discusses everything from Plato's allegorical Cave to contemporary issues in bioethics. The text features relatable narratives, clear explanations of (...) core concepts, thought-provoking questions, and handy glossaries to help readers grasp the subject matter. -/- Among the topics, you'll find the principles of utilitarianism through the adventures of a princess, an exploration of duty via a story about a golem, and a look at natural law theory through an engaging science-fiction tale. Contemporary themes also make an appearance, including discussions on Marxism, Nietzsche's radical ideas, Simone de Beauvoir's intersection of feminism and existentialism, and racial theories from W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King. -/- As an open access (CC-BY) textbook, "Ethical Explorations" is freely available to everyone, making the study of moral philosophy accessible to all. It's a tool that gives its readers the means to wrestle with ethical questions in an ever-changing world. (shrink)

The problem of fair machine learning has drawn much attention over the last few years and the bulk of offered solutions are, in principle, empirical. However, algorithmic fairness also raises important conceptual issues that would fail to be addressed if one relies entirely on empirical considerations. Herein, I will argue that the current debate has developed an empirical framework that has brought important contributions to the development of algorithmic decision-making, such as new techniques to discover and prevent discrimination, additional assessment (...) criteria, and analyses of the interaction between fairness and predictive accuracy. However, the same framework has also suggested higher-order issues regarding the translation of fairness into metrics and quantifiable trade-offs. Although the tools which have been developed so far are essential to address discrimination encoded in data and algorithms, their integration into society elicits key questions such as: What kind of assumptions and decisions underlies the empirical framework? How do the results of the empirical approach penetrate public debate? What kind of reflection and deliberation should stakeholders have over available fairness metrics? I will outline the empirical approach to fair machine learning, i.e. how the problem is framed and addressed, and suggest that there are important non-empirical issues that should be tackled. While this work will focus on the problem of algorithmic fairness, the lesson can extend to other conceptual problems in the analysis of algorithmic decision-making such as privacy and explainability. (shrink)

Although ethical and justice arguments operate in two distinct levels—justice being a more specific concept—they can easily be conflated. A robust justification of ecological justice requires starting at the roots of justice, rather than merely giving, for example, an argument for why certain non-human beings have moral standing of some kind. Thus, I propose that a theory of ecological justice can benefit from a four-step justification for the inclusion of non-human beings into the community of justice, starting with Hume’s circumstances (...) of justice. I will further argue that the resulting theory of ecological justice should be biocentric—meaning that all living beings should be included into the community of justice, as they constitute a ‘community of fate’. (shrink)

This paper shows how most modern theories of justice could require or at least condone international aid aimed at alleviating the ill effects of disability. Seen from the general viewpoint of liberal egalitarianism, this is moderately encouraging, since according to the creed people in bad positions should be aided, and disability tends to put people in such positions. The actual responses of many theories, including John Rawls's famous view of justice, remain, however, unclear. Communitarian, liberal egalitarian, and luck egalitarian thinkers (...) alike have to consider their attitude towards cosmopolitan ideals before they can extend their theories across national borders. The only view of justice that automatically rejects the obligation of international aid based on disability is libertarianism. This is significant for two reasons. Libertarianism is arguably the economic doctrine of globalisation; and its moral appeal to voluntary charity draws attention to the foundations of voluntary corporate social res.. (shrink)

Liberalism is often claimed to be at odds with feminism and critical race theory (CRT). This article argues, to the contrary, that Rawlsian liberalism supports the central commitments of both. Section 1 argues that Rawlsian liberalism supports intersectional feminism. Section 2 argues that the same is true of CRT. Section 3 then uses Young’s ‘Five Faces of Oppression’—a classic work widely utilized in feminism and CRT to understand and contest many varieties of oppression—to illustrate how Rawlsian liberalism supports diverse feminist (...) and CRT projects, and why it may be critical to achieve solidarity between feminism, CRT, and Rawlsian liberalism. Finally, Section 4 responds to five objections. (shrink)

Some people are multi-billionaires; others die because they are too poor to afford food or medications. In many countries, people are denied rights to free speech, to participate in political life, or to pursue a career, because of their gender, religion, race or other factors, while their fellow citizens enjoy these rights. In many societies, what best predicts your future income, or whether you will attend college, is your parents’ income. -/- To many, these facts seem unjust. Others disagree: even (...) if these facts are regrettable, they aren’t issues of justice. A successful theory of justice must explain why clear injustices are unjust and help us resolve current disputes. -/- John Rawls (1921-2002) was a Harvard philosopher best known for his A Theory of Justice (1971), which attempted to define a just society. Nearly every contemporary scholarly discussion of justice references A Theory of Justice. This essay reviews its main themes. (shrink)

Over the last decade, Robert Talisse has developed a devastating argument against reviving John Dewey’s democratic ideal. In his book, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy, and in other essays, Talisse has argued that Deweyan democracy fails to accommodate Rawls’ conception of “the fact of reasonable pluralism” because it is committed to a perfectionist conception of the good. In response, this article offers a Rawlsian rebuttal to Talisse by drawing on Rawls’ own characterisation of perfectionism to show that Dewey’s conception of (...) the good is not perfectionist on Rawls’ account and thus can reasonably accommodate the fact of reasonable pluralism. is article thus begins by exposing and explaining Talisse’s argument, before articulating Shane Ralston’s rejection of the Berlinian and Rawlsian fillters presupposed by Talisse’s argument. Then, it develops its central argument by showing that, even if we accept the Rawlsian filter, Deweyan democracy does not fail to accommodate the fact of reasonable pluralism, because it only relies on a thin (not a full) theory of the good, before considering some foreseeable Talissean objections. Ultimately, the article concludes by showing that these objections fail because Deweyan democracy does not rely on a ‘full’ theory of the good. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to analyze some of the epistemically pernicious effects of the use of the internet and social media. In light of this analysis, it introduces the concept of epistemic pornography and argues that epistemic agents both can and should avoid consuming and sharing epistemic pornography. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on research on epistemic virtue, cognitive biases, social media use and its epistemic consequences, fake news, paternalistic nudging, pornography, moral philosophy, moral elevation and moral exemplar theory to analyze (...) the epistemically pernicious effects of the internet and social media. Findings There is a growing consensus that the internet and social media activate and enable human cognitive biases leading to what are here called “failures of epistemic virtue.” Common formulations of this problem involve the concept of “fake news,” and strategies for responding to the problem often have much in common with paternalistic “nudging.” While fake news is a problem and the nudging approach holds out promise, the paper concludes that both place insufficient emphasis on the agency and responsibility of users on the internet and social media, and that nudging represents a necessary but not sufficient response. Originality/value The essay offers the concept of epistemic pornography as a concept distinct from but related to “fake news” – distinct precisely because it places greater emphasis on personal agency and responsibility, and following recent literature on moral elevation and moral exemplars, as a heuristic that agents might use to economize their efforts at resisting irrational cognitive biases and attempting to live up to their epistemic duties. (shrink)

Political philosophers sometimes write of liberal democracies, but which societies, if any, are liberal democracies? John Rawls says that in the public political culture of a liberal democracy, we find the principle that this society should be a fair system of cooperation between free and equal individuals. In this paper, I draw attention to how, if we grant Rawls’s definition, a society can easily be mistaken for a liberal democracy when it is not. I then argue that Andrew March, Gabrielle (...) Badano and Alasia Nuti have not given sufficient evidence for treating various European societies as Rawlsian liberal democracies. (shrink)

The article responds to previous work, by Martin O’Neill, about the Rawlsian case for an entitlement to an element of workplace democracy. Of the three arguments for such an entitlement that O’Neill discusses, this article focuses mainly on the one he rejects (on the grounds of its having an implausible premise): the Fundamental Liberties Argument, according to which the right to an element of workplace democracy is a basic liberty. This article argues that while the argument can be improved to (...) withstand O’Neill’s objection, it is invalid. The article sets out a new argument, the Argument from Risk to the Moral Powers. While inspired by the Fundamental Liberties Argument, it is valid. Moreover, its premises are at least as plausible as those of one of the two arguments upon which O’Neill builds his Rawlsian case for an entitlement to an element of workplace democracy. (shrink)

Cet article explore les conséquences pour le libéralisme politique de considérer l’existence d’un pluralisme raisonnable au sujet des différentes conceptions du juste. Comment une conception publique de la justice peut se développer malgré un désaccord raisonnable et profond sur les termes mêmes de cette justice ? En comparant le libertarisme, la justice comme équité et l’égalitarisme strict, il sera montré que les concepts fondamentaux de ces conceptions du juste sont essentiellement contestés. En guise de solution, deux conditions seront suggérées afin (...) de faire en sorte que la conception publique de la justice en soit une de tolérance politique : premièrement, elle devra se baser sur une liste de droits minimaux reconnus par les différentes conceptions raisonnables du juste; et deuxièmement, si la conception publique de la justice a pour ambition de se développer au-delà du dénominateur commun, elle devra offrir des mesures compensatoires à ceux supportant des conceptions du juste plus restrictives. À certains égards, cette problématique et ces accommodements s’apparentent à ce qui est déjà proposé au sujet de multiculturalisme. (shrink)

John Tomasi argues that aggressively pro-market, capitalist regimes can secure fair equality of opportunity—a level playing field—even as they honor people's thick economic liberties. The trick is to rely on markets to spread prosperity and high-quality healthcare and education to all. That done, each person will have fair opportunity. Or will she? In truth, Tomasi's “market-democratic” plan cannot bring genuinely fair opportunity to all, even at the level of ideal theory. Nor can it plausibly promise to increase the “quality” of (...) opportunity: the supply, that is, of intrinsically desirable work. (shrink)

1. In this article, I will use a case study to explore the broader question of how to assess socioeconomic development from a normative perspective, especially in relation to indigenous peoples.1 T...

If it can be argued that companies should engage with social justice advocacy, what factors might deter them from doing so? This question is pursued in a qualitative research study with participants from corporate and social justice organisations. Six inhibiting factors are identified: a lack of understanding of social justice concepts; fear of reputational risk; short-term profit orientation; a compliance mindset; disconnectedness from operating environment; and recognition that business purpose will determine its societal engagement. This research extends the theoretical and (...) practice boundaries of corporate social responsibility, while also advocating for an intensified engagement of management education with social justice in practice. (shrink)

This article addresses the use of foreign law in constitutional adjudication. We draw on the ideas of wide reflective equilibrium and public reason in order to defend an engagement model of comparative adjudication. According to this model, the judicial use of foreign law is justified if it proceeds by testing and mutually adjusting the principles and rulings of our constitutional doctrines against reasonable alternatives, as represented by the principles and rulings of other reasonable doctrines. By this, a court points to (...) a wide reflective equilibrium, justifying its own interpretations with reasonable arguments, i.e. arguments that are acceptable from the perspectives defined by other constitutional doctrines, as endorsed by other courts. The point of a judicial engagement of this sort is to work out an overlap between different, reasonable, doctrines in the judicial forum, as part of a liberal forum of public reason. Here, the exercise of public reason filters out the premises of comprehensive doctrines so as to leave us in the region of an overlapping consensus: a region of mid-level principles that can be shared, notwithstanding the fact of legal pluralism. (shrink)

Gender greatly impacts access to opportunities, potential, and success in corporate leadership roles. We begin with a general presentation of why such discussion is necessary for basic considerations of justice and fairness in gender equality and how the issues we raise must impact any ethical perspective on gender in the corporate workplace. We continue with a breakdown of the central categories affecting the success of women in corporate leadership roles. The first of these includes gender-influenced behavioral factors, such as the (...) requirements and expectations of gendered verbal and nonverbal communication styles as well as appearance. We move on to address the impact of family on corporate leadership opportunities and success, discussing the asymmetrical evaluation of an individual’s potential, authority, and competence based on gender stereotypes of familial obligations and expectations. Finally, we address how gender impacts access to networking and sponsorship opportunities and the long-term effects of systematic limitations on women’s inclusion in the upper echelons of corporate leadership. We conclude with a summary of the questions and issues raised by our discussion and direct individuals to consider how different ethical systems and moral requirements might influence their interpretations of gender and leadership in the corporate workplace. (shrink)

This paper challenges one of the main contributions of Political Liberalism (PL), namely the burdens of judgment (BoJ), on the grounds that it is superfluous to the project of excluding matters of the good from politics and it makes PL susceptible to a scepticism objection. From Rawls’s PL, we can extract two arguments for epistemic restraint in the public realm. The first is a moral argument based on the principles of fairness and reciprocity. The second is an epistemic argument derived (...) from the idea of the insurmountability of BoJ. The second of these arguments, I contend, is superfluous for two reasons: (i) BoJ, as a descriptive claim cannot itself explain why citizens should uphold a form of toleration that requires them to honor their epistemic restraint in politics. (ii) The moral argument alone is sufficient to justify epistemic constraint in the public realm through the reasonable exercise of political power. -/- Moreover, acceptance of the BoJ is incompatible with subscribing to a reasonable comprehensive doctrine (RCD) with a degree of certainty that is required to be convinced of any such doctrine. The relation between BoJ and scepticism has been addressed before but these thinkers assume that it is the implication of BoJ namely, reasonable disagreement that entails scepticism. This paper lays new sceptical challenges at the doorstep of PL and these new challenges focus on the very idea of the insurmountability of BoJ. Furthermore, it argues that scepticism is not an appropriate epistemic commitment for PL as it is incompatible with the aim of freestanding political conception of justice. Also, it is subversive of the purpose of an overlapping consensus because the idea underpinning an overlapping consensus is that citizens should not only appreciate liberal political principles as reasonable but they should also accept them as true on the basis of their own religious or philosophical reasons. Provided that BoJ entails scepticism, BoJ makes citizens’ religious and philosophical truth claims utterly irrelevant to the stability of society. Accordingly, I argue that the Rawlsian account of reasonableness must relinquish the epistemic component, BoJ; instead it should articulate how the moral component of reasonableness entails the principles of epistemic restraint in politics and acting from public reasons. (shrink)

The paper critically discusses the dualism in the interpretation of the moral basis of public reason. We argue that in order to maintain the complementarity of both liberal and democratic values within the debate on public reason, the arguments from liberty and from civic friendship cannot be considered in isolation. With regard to the argument from liberty, we contend that because the idea of natural liberty is an indispensable starting point of liberal theory, no explanation of the justification of political (...) power can do without it. In particular, we focus on the requirement of reasonableness and show that we should retain the epistemic aspect of the reasonableness of persons. The main reason for this is to be found in the criterion of reciprocity which provides the deepest justification of the respect for people’s liberty – that is, the liberal aspect of liberal democracy. At the same time, however, we argue that reciprocity also provides the grounds for responding to the criticism that the essentially liberal approach fails to adequately take into consideration the role of political community. Because reciprocity may also be interpreted as being based on civic friendship, it provides the resources to respond to such criticism. It thus supplies the normative background also for the second, democratic pillar of public reason. We then critically examine the newly emerging approach built predominantly on the argument from civic friendship, arguing that by prioritising the civic friendship interpretation and, at times, tending to completely abandon the liberty-based one, it overlooks the indispensability of liberty-based considerations for the criterion of reciprocity. We conclude that in order to adequately capture the common liberal-democratic basis of public reason, both interpretations of reciprocity must be linked within a comprehensive account. (shrink)

Rawls, in A Theory of Justice, aims at distributive justice,which would be applied to the basic structure and institutions in a society. He argues, based on a thought experience called “The original position,” for his theory of justice as fairness. In what follows, first, I will elaborate on “the original position” as an argument for Rawls’ theory of justice. Secondly, I will talk about Rawls' ideal methodology. And finally, I shall explain three considerations about Rawls' argument of the original position, (...) to see whether or not this methodologically ideal argument works for justice and fairness in our non-ideal situations? (shrink)

Inventing Knowledge: A Global & Historical Introduction to Philosophy is an open educational resource (OER) textbook designed for a cross-cultural historical-survey style Introduction to Philosophy course. While it was written with an undergraduate academic audience in mind, it should also be suitable for self-guided readers interested in philosophy. It covers ‘western' philosophy from the Presocratics of Ancient Greece through to the present day (and including the Islamic world). It also contains additional chapters on philosophy in India, China, Mesoamerica, and Africa. (...) The text touches on issues concerning, but not limited to, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics. Upon working through the material covered here, students should be able to identify and discuss many of the central figures, concepts, problems, theories, and schools of philosophy across history and across the world. (shrink)

Leprosy has taken on many names throughout human history. But none of its nomenclature has adequately captured the essence of what it has historically meant to live with the disease like the Hawaiian term ma`i ho`oka`awale, or “the separating sickness.” The appropriateness of this term is twofold: on the one hand, it accurately reflects the physical isolation imposed on leprosy patients as a result of stigmatization and quarantine policies; on the other, it seems fitting to use the language of the (...) culture and race that leprosy so disproportionately affected in nineteenth and twentieth century Hawai`i. This essay offers an ethical analysis of the treatment of leprosy patients in Hawai`i to identify mistakes made in the sphere of public health to better guide the management of infectious diseases today. It provides an historical overview of leprosy in order to contextualize its journey to the Hawaiian Islands, with a particular focus on the horrific century-long isolation of leprosy patients to the remote Kalaupapa settlement. It then presents two contrasting normative claims about the banishment and isolation practices by using two different theories of justice: utilitarianism and Rawls’ justice as fairness. In doing so, this essay illustrates the ways in which stigmatization and racism could likely affect the abhorrent treatment of leprosy patients by disproportionately appealing to the “greater good.” However, I contend that this dichotomization of justice brings us to a moral impasse in the context of public health. Rather, considering infectious diseases with a “patient as victim and vector” approach may prove more beneficial, especially in tandem with a schema of justice that promotes self-respect as a primary good to combat the deleterious effects of stigma. This historical reflection may thus allow medical professionals and policy makers alike to draw upon valuable ethical lessons for contemporary initiatives in public health. (shrink)

The following essay argues that Transnational Civil Disobedience may be justified when it is applied to questions relating to global climate change. Civil Disobedience as a politically motivated form of lawbreaking posits questions regarding political obligation and citizenship and such questions are amplified when applied to the transnational level.Furthermore, this essay focuses on the influential account of Civil Disobedience as it has been formulated by John Rawls. The writer argues that there are potential issues with this formulation when it is (...) applied outside of the greater scope of Rawls’s work. Instead, the essay argues for a formulation of Civil Disobedience that includes a politicizing feature, and to view it as an extra institutional form of political discourse that is detached from notions of state belonging.Finally, it is argued that the All Affected Principle may be used as a necessary condition for justifying acts of Transnational Civil Disobedience. The nature of Global Climate change as an event that affects the human race as a whole, gives rise to the potential for non-citizens to claim a level of political agency in matters that affect them despite lacking formal representation. (shrink)

Kevin Vallier defends a theory of the normative limits of the use of coercion by the state known as convergence liberalism. Central to this theory is a principle of public justification according to which the coercive power of the state is justified and legitimate if and only if each member of the public has sufficient reason to endorse the coercion. I argue that this principle is too demanding. Certain epistemological limitations render cost-benefit analyses of many, if not all, laws and (...) policies inconclusive. This, together with the fact of evaluative pluralism, make it the case that very few coercive laws and regulations will be publicly justified. The result is that convergence liberalism threatens to obstruct the state’s capacity to protect the environment and address preventable forms of injustice. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the institution of journalism plays a vital role in informing citizens of a deliberative democratic society, and that to effectively fulfill this role, journalists must report the news objectively. I first examine the historical evolution of objectivity as it pertains to journalism. Then, I elaborate on some of the philosophical concepts that provide the foundation for objectivity. Next, I introduce John Rawls’ idea of public reason, which provides an improved understanding of the role of (...) journalism within a democratic society. I claim from this that journalism must re-envision its role as guardian of the public political forum. Finally, I bring these various discussions together by drawing in the requirements that Stephen Ward lays out in his theory of pragmatic objectivity, and argue that these are necessary to help journalism legitimize its authority to safeguard this forum. In doing so, journalism can ensure both that citizens are objectively informed and that the public forum offers them a sphere in which they can effectively participate in the governance of their democracy. (shrink)

During the 2007–2008 global food crisis, the prices of primary foods, in particular, peaked. Subsequently, governments concerned about food security and investors keen to capitalize on profit-maximizing opportunities undertook large-scale land acquisitions (LASLA) in, predominantly, least developed countries (LDCs). Economically speaking, this market reaction is highly welcome, as it should (1) improve food security and lower prices through more efficient food production while (2) host countries benefit from development opportunities. However, our assessment of the debate on the issues indicates critical (...) voices in both the media and academic discourse. This article aims to provide a philosophical law and economics analysis. We draw on John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, focusing on Rawls’s background institutions for distributive justice (§43) to evaluate LASLA form an ethical angle. Approaching LASLA into Sub Saharan LDCs as a socio-economic reform redistributing land from the local population of LDCs to investors, we acknowledge that they bear a highly desirable potential. Often, though, they cannot be regarded as ethically correct in practice as the insignificant improvements for local populations and sometimes even human rights violations contradict Rawls’s principles of justice. Then investigating whether and how international law can help overcome the shortcomings, we conclude that even though respective mechanisms exist in the current state of international law, it is hardly possible that it will produce more just outcomes in the near future. (shrink)