Previous edition, 1st, published in 1971.

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

This article explores the ethical architecture of the ‘beneficiary pays’ principle, which holds that agents can come to possess remedial obligations of corrective justice to others through the involuntary receipt of benefits stemming from injustice. Advocates of the principle face challenges of both persuasion and limitation in seeking to convince those unmoved of its normative force, and to explain in which cases of benefiting from injustice it does and does not give rise to rectificatory obligations. The article considers ways in (...) which advocates of the principle might seek to win over those sceptical of its merits by employing a modified principle which sidesteps the issue of enforceability, before considering the question of whether the argument can be expanded from cases of benefiting from wrongdoing specifically to other sorts of situation where one agent involuntarily benefits from another's loss. (shrink)

Our aim in this essay is to critically examine Iris Young’s arguments in her important posthumously published book against what she calls the liability model for attributing responsibility, as well as the arguments that she marshals in support of what she calls the social connection model of political responsibility. We contend that her arguments against the liability model of conceiving responsibility are not convincing, and that her alternative to it is vulnerable to damaging objections.

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the “Role-Ideal Model” is (...) that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles as parents, colleagues, employers, citizens, etc., because roles are the site where structure meets agency. In short, the Role-Ideal Model explains how individual action contributes to structural change, justifies demands for action from each particular agent, specifies what kinds of acts should be undertaken, moderates between demanding too much and too little of individual agents, and provides an account of the critical responses appropriate for holding individuals accountable for structural injustice. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young’s influential Social Connections Model of responsibility offers a compelling approach to theorizing structural injustice. However, the precise nature of the kind of responsibility modelled by the SCM, along with its relationship to the liability model, has remained unclear. I offer a reading of Young that takes the difference between the liability model and the SCM to be an instance of a more longstanding distinction in the literature on moral responsibility: attributability vs. accountability. I show that interpreting the (...) SCM as a conception of accountability resolves a number of objections, while also highlighting the SCM’s distinctive stance on the relationship between ethics and politics. (shrink)

Recognising and responding to injustices that benefit us is a pervasive problem of contemporary life, and arguably a mark of moral seriousness in anyone who presumes to take moral stands at all. In response, a number of authors have defended the view that such benefits normally bring with them prima facie obligations of compensation. This ‘wrongful-benefits’ approach has considerable intuitive plausibility, much of it founded in the financial metaphor that gives it an appearance of precision. Yet while the compensation scenario (...) works reasonably well in one-off cases such as receiving stolen property, it yields incoherent results when facing ongoing structural injustices. In such cases ‘innocence’ is ambiguous and our status as beneficiaries and victims is complex. In contrast, solidarity — understood as a principle of equity requiring that we side with the least well off — provides a better account of duties to respond to structural injustice. In solidarity the agent follows the lead of organised out-groups and defers to their judgment about collective actions to overcome injustice. Solidarity leads us to support the organised group that suffers from the greatest inequity. Solidarity does not use a financial metaphor and thus it neither requires full disgorgement, nor absolves us of further action when we reach the point of net-zero benefit. Rather, solidarity is a principal means for ordinary citizens to promote equity by affirming the equal status of the victims, and to atone for having benefited from injustice, whether they did so willingly or otherwise. (shrink)

Steady progress toward justice is not evident within extant political systems. A good-faith commitment to justice therefore requires oppositional collective action. This paper articulates and defends a moral principle of “progressive solidarity” that guides oppositional political action. Solidarity requires us to work alongside others according to their choice of action, even if this requires doing what we believe unwise or immoral. Progressive solidarity requires deference to the decisions of the least well-off group. Although individual judgment is by no means suspended, (...) solidarity nonetheless challenges moral autonomy. The paper argues that working to alleviate others’ misery is neither necessary nor sufficient for solidarity; rather, solidarity accepts others’ own account of their interests – whether or not their analysis is correct – and contributes to their pursuit of their aims. After explicating the concept of progressive solidarity and contrasting it with sympathy, loyalty, generosity, and identification, the paper defends progressive solidarity in moral, epistemic, and strategic contexts. The final section responds to objections and suggests that the case for solidarity is strengthened by application to the contemporary world. (shrink)

Solidarity is a significant but poorly understood feature of political life. It is typically conceived, in “associative and teleological” terms, as working together for common political aims. But this conception misses the fact that solidarity requires individuals to will collective ends despite incompletely shared interests. Careful consideration of these elements reveals four “dynamics of solidarity”: its characteristic duties, the durability of commitments made in solidarity, the deference it involves, and its effects over time on agents’ habits and capacities. In this (...) article I describe these dynamics, first contrasting solidarity-given duties with duties of beneficence, justice, and loyalty. These contrasts lay bare the distinctive durability of solidarity, which differs from both the liberal’s commitment to justice and the loyalist’s commitment to the group. I then discuss deference, a feature of solidarity that has implications for individual engagement in political life more generally. Finally, I discuss the effects of solidarity on agents’ intellectual and physical capacities. I conclude by drawing out implications of these dynamics, challenging Tommie Shelby’s influential conception and justification of black solidarity and buttressing Philip Soper’s rejection of the Principle of Autonomy. (shrink)

This book is vigorous in its arguments, displays an impressive historical sweep, and on several occasions gets in the perfect skewering criticism.