Krebs (philosophy, U. of Frankfurt, Germany) provides a systematic study of whether nature has intrinsic value or is only valuable for human beings, with an ...

Previous edition, 1st, published in 1971.

And in this book the distinguished scholar Amartya Sen offers a powerful critique of the theory of social justice that, in its grip on social and political ...

erster Teilband. Grundlegung -- zweiter Teilband. Tragweite und Aktualität einer Zukunftsethik.

Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...) that most of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)

In this revised edition of his 1979 classic Political Theory and International Relations, Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international politics (...) should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice of a state’s domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

Consisting of two essays, this work by a Harvard professor offers his thoughts on the idea of a social contract regulating people's behavior toward one another.

The Law of Peoples, with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”. john rawls. William James and the Metaphysics of Experience. david c. lamberth.

Critical response to John Rawls's The Law of Peopleshas been surprisingly harsh) Most of the complaints centre on Rawls's claim that there are no obligations of distributive justice among nations. Many of Rawls's critics evidently had been hoping for a global application of the difference principle, so that wealthier nations would be bound to assign lexical priority to the development of the poorest nations, or perhaps the primary goods endowment of the poorest citizens of any nation. Their subsequent disappointment reveals (...) that, while the reception of Rawls's political philosophy has been very broad, it has not been especially deep. Rawls has very good reason for denying that there are obligations of distributive justice in an international context. (shrink)

The principle of sustainability contains two objectives of justice regarding the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services : global justice between different people of the present generation ; justice between people of different generations. Three hypotheses about their relationship — independency, facilitation and rivalry — are held in the political and scientific sustainability discourse. Applying the method of qualitative content analysis to important political documents and the scientific literature, we reveal six determinants underlying the different hypotheses: quantity and (...) quality of ecosystem services, population development, substitutability of ecosystem services, technological progress, institutions and political restrictions. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans argue that the account of human rights and distributive justice in John Rawls's The Law of Peoples is incompatible with his argument for liberal justice. Rawls should extend his account of liberal basic liberties and the guarantees of distributive justice to apply to the world at large. This essay defends Rawls's grounding of political justice in social cooperation. The Law of Peoples is drawn up to provide principles of foreign policy for liberal peoples. Human rights are among the necessary (...) conditions for social cooperation, and so long as a decent people respect human rights, a common good, and the Law of Peoples, it is not the role of liberal peoples to impose upon well-ordered decent peoples liberal liberties they cannot endorse. Moreover, the difference principle is not an allocative or alleviatory principle, but applies to design property and other basic social institutions necessary to economic production, exchange and consumption. It presupposes political cooperation—a legislative body to actively apply it, and a legal system to apply it to. There is no feasible global state or global legal system that could serve these roles. Finally, the difference principle embodies a conception of democratic reciprocity that is only appropriate to cooperation among free and equal citizens who are socially productive and politically autonomous. a Footnotesa I am grateful to K. C. Tan for many helpful discussions and criticisms of this essay. I am also grateful to the other contributors to this volume for their comments, and to Ellen Paul for her many helpful suggestions in preparing the final version of this essay. (shrink)

The first comprehensive philosophical examination of our duties to future generations, Dr de-Shalit argues that they are a matter of justice, not charity or supererogation.

The basic task of this book is to explore what, exactly, is meant by 'justice' in definitions of environmental and ecological justice. It examines how the term is used in both self-described environmental justice movements and in theories of environmental and ecological justice. The central argument is that a theory and practice of environmental justice necessarily includes distributive conceptions of justice, but must also embrace notions of justice based in recognition, capabilities, and participation. Throughout, the goal is the development of (...) a broad, multi-faceted, yet integrated notion of justice that can be applied to both relations regarding environmental risks in human populations and relations between human communities and non-human nature. (shrink)

Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice of (...) a state's domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

Since the publication of _A Theory of Justice _, John Rawls has been viewed as one of the most important political theorists of the twentieth century. In _John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order_, Patrick Hayden discusses Rawls's views regarding the nature of social justice among states. He examines Rawls's most important writings in order to assess how adequately his theory of justice is able to accommodate claims to universal human rights and shows how Rawls's work can contribute to the (...) construction of a cosmopolitan approach to issues of international justice. Beginning with Rawls's attempt to develop an account of international justice and human rights that is consistent with his earlier theory of justice as fairness, Hayden then offers a critical examination of Rawls's political philosophy and international thought which argues for a cosmopolitan variation on Rawls's 'law of peoples'. _John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order_ is a concise and detailed analysis of one of the foremost political philosophers of our time that demonstrates the importance of Rawls's work for contemporary debates regarding international relations, world politics and human rights. (shrink)

The first comprehensive philosophical examination of our duties to future generations, Dr de-Shalit argues that they are a matter of justice, not charity or supererogation.

The book uses both environmental movements and political theory to help define what is meant by environmental and ecological justice. It will be attractive to anyone interested in environmental politics, environmental movements, and justice theory.

The article is devoted to the problem of moral motivation. Author presents a view which, as he argues, is able to bridge the gap between acceptance of a moral rule and an action according to this rule. The main issue here is the future ethics that could possibly become a part of environmental ethics if it takes into consideration future goods and condition of nature. The author discusses rationality of moral norms in future ethics from a perspective of a universalistic (...) paradigm. Drawing from Hare and Sidgwick he maintains that temporal position of someone harmed by a present action cannot be relevant to the moral evaluation of the action in question. He also emphasizes that in case when moral agent is a future and abstract one, there is an important factor involved which could have an influence on our moral identity. It plays a crucial role because our,,natural” motivation to act according to a rule concerns, first of all, moral subjects within a moral community. Birnbacher claims that taking non-moral motivations into account makes the prospects of future-oriented action appear much less gloomy. Therefore, in his project of future ethics, he fuses together levels of moral theory and of emotional basis of our motivation. He illustrates the point by demonstrating that the course of psychological factors has an impact on our motivation for action by the data drawn from empirical social research conducted in Europe and USA. Key words MORAL MOTIVATION, FUTURE. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of moral motivation. Author presents a view which, as he argues, is able to bridge the gap between acceptance of a moral rule and an action according to this rule. The main issue here is the future ethics that could possibly become a part of environmental ethics if it takes into consideration future goods and condition of nature. The author discusses rationality of moral norms in future ethics from a perspective of a universalistic (...) paradigm. Drawing from Hare and Sidgwick he maintains that temporal position of someone harmed by a present action cannot be relevant to the moral evaluation of the action in question. He also emphasizes that in case when moral agent is a future and abstract one, there is an important factor involved which could have an influence on our moral identity. It plays a crucial role because our ,,natural” motivation to act according to a rule concerns, first of all, moral subjects within a moral community. Birnbacher claims that taking non-moral motivations into account makes the prospects of future-oriented action appear much less gloomy. Therefore, in his project of future ethics, he fuses together levels of moral theory and of emotional basis of our motivation. He illustrates the point by demonstrating that the course of psychological factors has an impact on our motivation for action by the data drawn from empirical social research conducted in Europe and USA. Key words MORAL MOTIVATION, FUTURE. (shrink)