In recent years, the free market position has been gaining strength. In this book, Radin provides a nuanced response to its sweeping generalization.

In this book, Michael Sandel takes up some of the hotly contested moral and political issues of our time, including affirmative action, assisted suicide, ...

In contemporary philosophy, substantive moral theories are typically classified as either consequentialist or deontological. Standard consequentialist theories insist, roughly, that agents must always act so as to produce the best available outcomes overall. Standard deontological theories, by contrast, maintain that there are some circumstances where one is permitted but not required to produce the best overall results, and still other circumstances in which one is positively forbidden to to do. Classical utilitarianism is the most familiar consequentialist view, but it is (...) widely regarded as an inadequate account of morality. Although Professor Scheffler agrees with this assessment, he also believes that consequentialism seems initially plausible, and that there is a persistent air of paradox surrounding typical deontological views. In this book, therefore, he undertakes to reconsider the rejection of consequentialism. He argues that it is possible to provide a rationale for the view that agents need not always produce the best possible overall outcomes, and this motivates one departure from consequentialism; but he shows that it is surprisingly difficult to provide a satisfactory rationale for the view that there are times when agents must not produce the best possible overall outcomes. He goes on to argue for a hitherto neglected type of moral conception, according to which agents are always permitted, but not always required, to produce the best outcomes. (shrink)

Are market norms and intrinsic valuation mutually exclusive? Many philosophers have endorsed the thought that market institutions necessarily evacuate non-instrumental value and hence the market and the realm of intrinsic worth are mutually exclusive. Indeed the evacuation of value by the market has been a recurrent theme of much moral and political thinking about the morality of commercial exchange. Consider the following passage from Marx: "Money debases all the gods of man and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal, (...) self-constituted value of all things. It has therefore robbed the whole world, human as well as natural, of its own values." In a similar vein Hannah Arendt writes: "The much deplored devaluation of all things, that is, the loss of all intrinsic worth, begins with their transformation into values or commodities, for from this moment on they exist only in relation to some other things which can be acquired in their stead." Perhaps most famously of all Kant suggests that the market institution of price evacuates value: "In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. If it has a price, something can be put in its place as an equivalent; if it is exalted above all price, then it has a dignity". Evidently for Kant, as for Marx and Arendt, the process of commodification evacuates value as a matter of logical necessity. (shrink)

A global target of stabilizing greenhouse-gas concentrations at between 450 and 550 parts per million carbon-dioxide equivalent has proven robust to recent developments in the science and economics of climate change. Retrospective analysis of the Stern Review suggests that the risks were underestimated, indicating a stabilization target closer to 450 ppm CO2e. Climate policy at the international level is now moving rapidly towards agreeing an emissions pathway, and distributing responsibilities between countries. A feasible framework can be constructed in which each (...) country takes on its own responsibilities and targets, based on a shared understanding of the risks and the need for action and collaboration on climate change. The global deal should contain six key features: a pathway to achieve the world target of 50 per cent reductions by 2050, where rich countries contribute at least 75 per cent of the reductions; global emissions trading to reduce costs; reform of the clean development mechanism to scale up emission reductions on a sectoral or benchmark level; scaling up of R&D funding for low-carbon energy; an agreement on deforestation; and adaptation finance. (shrink)