Justice, Misc

This paper is a direct continuation of 'Civilization's Debt' (2026), in which three claims were advanced: that civilization's ameliorative premise entails a positive subsistence obligation toward every person subject to its arrangements; that diminished agency undermines the foundations of retributive punishment; and that retributive justice and authoritarian paternalism share a logical structure that commits any framework endorsing one to endorsing the other. The original paper left four identifiable vulnerabilities. First, the ameliorative premise was asserted rather than derived from the minimum (...) commitments that even hostile theories must accept. Second, the painters illustration assumed what it needed to show about the arbitrariness of civilizational standards. Third, the engagement with compatibilism was insufficient — the mainstream of contemporary philosophy of action is compatibilist, and Pereboom's hard incompatibilism, on which the original paper leaned, is a minority position. Fourth, the temporal asymmetry between retrospective punishment and preemptive suppression was addressed but not fully dissolved. This continuation takes each vulnerability in turn, closes it, and leaves the three original claims more nearly inescapable than before. The footnotes in this paper continue the numbering of the original, beginning at note 16. (shrink)

Over the years a few authors have argued that Rawls’s ideal theory of justice is useless for the real world. This criticism has been largely ignored by Rawlsians, but in the light of a recent accumulation of such criticisms, some authors (in particular Holly Lawford-Smith, A. John Simmons, Zofia Stemplowska and Laura Valentini) have tried to defend ideal theory. In this article I will recapitulate the precise problem with Rawls’s ideal theory, argue that some of Rawls’s defenders misconceive it, and (...) show that recent attempts to rescue Rawls’s ideal theory from the charge of being useless fail. While there are useful kinds of ideal theory, Rawls’s is not one of them. In addition, Rawls’s very tentative suggestions for some kind of bridge between ideal and non-ideal theory are contradictory insofar as they implicitly presuppose the non-existence of the problem they are meant to solve. Thus, Rawls’s “non-ideal theory” too, is useless, and not so much a theory at all but a set of ad hoc stipulations. Finally, I will show that certain attempts within the global justice debate to use some variation of the original position to directly derive guidelines for the real world are misguided and yield no useful results. (shrink)

We sometimes evaluate things—clocks and universities, hearts and kidneys, assertions and promises, plays and novels—not merely as good or bad, but as good or bad instances of their kind. Legal philosophers often evaluate law similarly, claiming that justice is a virtue of law qua law. I argue, first, that leading defenses of this claim fail because their explanatory schemas do not generalize across less controversial cases of kind-relative evaluation, even as they illuminate important aspects of the phenomenon. Second, I develop (...) a general account of kind-relative virtue based on three models, appealing respectively to agentive, etiological, and systemic functions. On each model, claims about the virtues of law qua law can be reformulated as an empirical research program. The framework also suggests new readings of Hart and Dworkin, clarifies how historical and social-scientific findings bear on law’s nature, and provides abductive support for understanding law as a goodness-fixing kind. (shrink)

In May 2021, Royal Dutch Shell was ordered by the Hague District Court to significantly reduce its CO2 emissions. This ruling is unprecedented in that it attributes the responsibility for mitigating climate change directly to a specific corporate emitter. Shell neither directly causes climate change alone nor can alleviate it by itself; therefore, what grounds this responsibility attribution? I maintain that this question can be answered via Young’s social connection model of responsibility for justice. I defend two claims: First, I (...) argue that the model explains Shell’s connection to climate change and that this relationship grounds Shell’s responsibility. Second, by identifying a way in which the social connection model could be applied to corporations in legal practice, I further develop Young’s model. I question Young’s distinction between political and legal responsibility for justice and propose that courts could mediate citizens’ actions regarding political responsibilities. (shrink)

Presentazione del curatore italiano (C.Corradetti): È possibile conciliare il pluralismo culturale con la dimensione pubblica della deliberazione? Partendo dall’analisi critica di Rawls e Habermas, James Bohman offre una risposta innovativa alla questione dell’accordo democratico. In tale proposta, parallelamente al rigetto di soluzioni meramente strategiche, viene riabilitata la nozione di compromesso morale nel quadro di un accordo normativo. Mantenendo fede ad una prospettiva composta da elementi normativi e fattuali, l’autore si propone di ampliare le opportunità democratiche nella riconciliazione tra conflitti culturali (...) profondi propri delle società contemporanee. L’elemento civico partecipativo risulta essere dunque una componente essenziale per la produzione di una sfera pubblica vibrante. Ne emerge una ricostruzione convincente volta non solo a respingere le critiche degli scettici sulle reali possibilità d’inclusività democratica, ma diretta soprattutto a suggerire un più efficace modello deliberativo per la garanzia della stabilità sociale. Questo testo è diventato ormai un riferimento internazionale classico nella discussione sul tema della deliberazione pubblica. L’autore ha inoltre sviluppato in ambito post-nazionale il suo modello deliberativo senza tuttavia ridiscutere i fondamenti concettuali della sua proposta teorica qui enunciati.Vista la rilevanza del tema e considerata la centralità del testo proposto, sembrerebbe dunque auspicabile rendere il testo disponibile anche al lettore italiano. (shrink)

In the present article, the first section recapitulates my “figuration” philosophy of dance, the “dancing-with” interpretive method derived therefrom, and my previous application of figuration to salsa dance as a decolonizing gestural discourse. The second section deepens and modifies this analysis through a reinterpretation of Argentinian philosopher Ernesto Laclau’s concept of hegemony and his dance-resonant interpretations of Derrida. And the final section offers a template for this hegemonic dancing-with in the Birmingham, Alabama Latin dance troupe, Corazon de Alabama (Heart of (...) Alabama), as a new strategy for decolonizing and reconstructing social justice. (shrink)

There are two conceptions of ‘inclusion’ in play in this debate. 1. The traditional conception in sport: How does sport provide inclusion/exclusion? Through eligibility criteria. 2. The social justice conception: trans people must be included in all social endeavours/institutions, one of these being sport. In the latter ‘inclusion’ facilitates affirmation and validation of their gender identity. The question is: should sport take on this ‘social justice’ task?

This paper has two aims. The first is to describe several sources of the moral responsibility to remedy or alleviate global poverty—reasons why an agent might have such a responsibility. The second is to consider what sorts of agents bear the responsibilities associated with each source—in particular, whether they are collective agents like states, societies, or corporations, on the one hand, or individual human beings on the other. We often talk about our responsibilities to the poorest people in the world, (...) or what we owe them. So the question is who this we is. I shall argue that the answer depends on the source of the responsibility. Some responsibilities—one species of causal responsibilities—belong in the first instance to collectives, although they will also trickle down to at least some individuals within the collective. Other responsibilities—humanitarian responsibilities, and a different species of causal responsibilities—belong in the first instance to individuals, but can, I shall argue, “trickle up” to collectives of which individuals are members. (shrink)

This paper explores Nils Holtug’s attempt in his recent book to show that shared liberal egalitarian values contribute significantly to achieving or maintaining the social cohesion that is necessary for egalitarian distributive policies to be politically sustainable. If successful, this attempt would constitute a powerful answer to the so-called Progressive’s Dilemma, which in effect holds that egalitarians must sacrifice one of two normative positions that they hold dear: egalitarian welfare state policies and permissive immigration regimes. If Holtug is right, no (...) such sacrifice is necessary. This paper accepts Holtug’s empirical premises as true, and investigates instead the normative recommendation that appears to follow from them: that the liberal state ought to promote liberal egalitarian values. The paper argues that there is an apparent tension between Rawlsian political liberalism’s commitment to take reasonable normative pluralism seriously, on the one hand, and state promotion of liberal values, on the other hand. The public reason constraint on the uses of state power appears to rule out state promotion of such views that, even if correct, some reasonable citizens have reason to reject. This paper finds, however, that the challenge is ultimately unsuccessful. When certain constraints are honored, there is no incompatibility between taking evaluative diversity seriously and state attempts to persuade citizens of the correctness of a particular normative outlook. (shrink)

In Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience, Sophie Grace Chappell offers a phenomenology of epiphanies—those high points in experience when values most vividly reveal themselves to us. Yet Chappell’s method of using phenomenological descriptions to show that we live by our epiphanies leaves open the question of their authority. Why should the epiphanic carry more authority than more sober experiences? The answer, I argue, had better be sensitive to our explanatory understanding of epiphanies. Moreover, it should be sensitive to how the (...) very power of epiphanies threatens to distort our experience of other values. We must beware of what Lichtenberg called transcendent ventriloquism, whereby subjective experience is made to sound like something more than what it is—an eternal truth to be enacted at any cost. I then turn to the politics of epiphanic experience: how to live together given that we live by different epiphanies. I raise several problems for Chappell’s proposal that the normativity inherent in conversation both imposes transcendental constraints on epiphanic ethics and is determinate enough to prescribe specific political arrangements. These constraints determine either too little or too much; they come too late not to beg crucial questions; they cannot offer an independent check on epiphanic ethics; and they introduce a tension at the heart of the book between the romantic openness to experience, emotion, and enthusiasm and the rationalist aspiration to exclude non-rational influences. This threatens to cast as an illicit intrusion precisely the experiential dimension that epiphanies were to introduce into the conversation. (shrink)

Some of the most philosophical aspects of Orwell’s early writings concern the nature and significance of work. While Orwell sometimes identifies as apolitical in the 1920s and early 1930s, his views about work reveal a form of proto-democratic socialism as far back as the publication of his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, in 1933. This paper first looks at some of Orwell’s early views about the significance of work for human life. It then offers arguments that (...) these early views chart a natural path to Orwell’s democratic socialism, which he developed and defended in later works, including his famous dystopias. The paper focuses on three periods in Orwell’s career as a writer: (1) his early career, focusing on Down and Out, (2) his mid-career, focusing on The Road to Wigan Pier, and (3) his late career, focusing on Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. (shrink)

Economic change can bring many benefits, but it can also upset the economic positions and prospects of individuals and communities by dramatically curtailing access to decent employment. This paper explores the question of how a society ought to address those left behind by economic change. The paper's first goal is to defend the claim that the best way to frame the issue of access to decent employment is not just as an issue of economic policy but also as a public (...) health issue, a framing that it justifies, in part, through the case study of “deaths of despair,” a phenomenon famously explored by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. This framing clarifies the moral urgency of expanding access to decent employment. The paper's second goal is to discuss the values at stake in the problem and in the possible solutions. I argue that (1) the state should implement policies friendlier to private sector employment and (2) the state should serve as an employer of last resort, at least when the work created is productive and doesn't create out-of-control inflationary pressures. (shrink)

Taylor Swift often engages with the themes of resentment and revenge. This chapter focuses more narrowly on the violent revenge fantasy, which Swift explores in “no body, no crime.” Swift’s character in the song kills the husband of her friend, Este, after he murders Este for accusing him of cheating. The violent revenge fantasy raises an issue of moral psychology. On the one hand, extrajudicial, vigilante killing is morally wrong. We rightly disapprove of such behavior. But on the other hand, (...) we approve of indulging in fantasies about such morally objectionable behavior. If you doubt that, listen to “no body, no crime” and think about which character(s) you are rooting for. But why would we disapprove of the behavior but approve of fantasies about engaging in the behavior? This chapter defends an account of these attitudes that shows not just why they are consistent, but why they are exactly the attitudes we should have. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation of Hume's accounts of the obligation and value of justice. According to my interpretation, Hume takes the obligation of justice to depend (in part) on the conventions that define the rules of justice realizing a distinctive form of value, which I call functional value. Properly understanding Hume's accounts, I argue, requires revisionary understandings of his accounts of both the set of things susceptible to fundamental moral evaluation and his view of the nature of utility.

The Tollgate Principles (‘TGPs’) aim to represent ‘the price that must be paid’ by anyone claiming to be ethically serious about pursuing solar geoengineering (Gardiner and Fragnière, Ethic Policy Environ 221(2):143–174, 2018). The TGPs are influential but, like other governance principles, have also provoked criticism. This paper clarifies the Tollgate approach by responding to objections and dissolving some perceived tensions. It argues that, while not the final word, the TGPs are an important step in the evolution of geoengineering governance and (...) should continue to be taken seriously at all levels. It concludes that rather than “beware the Toll Keepers” (Briggle, Ethic Policy Environ 21(2):187–189, 2018) we should instead “beware the Toll Dodgers”: those who would brush aside the TGPs and other ethics-centered approaches. As well as defending the Tollgate approach specifically, the discussion provides broader lessons for governing geoengineering and other controversial technological interventions. (shrink)

There is broad egalitarian agreement that inheritance results in distributive injustice and indirectly delegitimises the political process; we should abolish it. But until we do this, and put in place public safety nets, parents do no wrong in insuring their children against destitution. Both procreative liability and parental love generate duties that justify some bequests, limited in size and form. In the aggregate, however, the bequests are likely to be substantial, impeding egalitarian reforms. The stringency and demandingness of procreative and (...) parental duties provide (would-be) parents with special and powerful reason to support justice and, in particular, public safety nets. (shrink)

This paper responds to the dilemma of affective injustice by distinguishing between three forms of anger and recommending a model of virtuous anger the expression of which is consistent with the productive pursuit of justice. It argues that anger may in the first instance be either passive or active, that is, a passive affective register and morally inert experience, or something that is manifest in action towards other agents. Active anger may then be grounded in moral norms, or not. Anger (...) that is properly grounded and guided by morality is consistent with virtuous agency and the productive pursuit of moral ends. In constructing this model of anger we draw inspiration from the Kantian account of virtue. We argue that this model provides a sound structure for morally productive anger while remaining vigilant towards anger’s darker possibilities. To demonstrate the comparative strength of this model, we outline some challenges with the idea of apt anger, arguing that moral norms and constraints are better suited to guide our evaluation of anger. We apply this model to educational settings, where we argue that it is beneficial to channel anger through moral norms, rather than attempt to calibrate its proper magnitude. All things considered, the moral status of anger is equivocal: it can both aid and hinder the pursuit of justice, so it is best to take a cautious while permissive stance towards its use in our common life. (shrink)

This paper discusses two main types of refusal to engage with teams or individuals in sports competitions on the grounds of (1) association with actions of governments or organisations that are deemed by the objector to be unacceptable, as in demands for boycotts or expulsions of specific groups, and (2) where an apparently inappropriate inclusion threatens the coherence of sport or the rights of other participants. The primary concern in this paper is the underlying moral stance of the subject who (...) engages in such actions (rather than those actions themselves), specifically, their understanding of themselves and of others as moral subjects. It is argued that whether we think such actions are morally justified depends to large extent on whether we also think that those whom we boycott, exclude, or include are moral subjects with the right to claim consideration from us, and from whom we too can claim consideration. That is, whether recognition functions as a reciprocal action between moral subjects. This is discussed with particular reference to Darwall's second-person standpoint and de Beauvoir's criticism of abstract ideals as inadequate for an existentialist ethic that respects the autonomy of humans beings as such. It is argued that all participants in sport, as in society, have the same fundamental authority to make claims and to be accountable, and that we commit an important wrong by claiming a superior moral authority to determine action that fails to take into account the subjectivity and authority of others. Yet, at the same time, we also need to take account of the logic of sport as a particular kind of voluntary practice that incorporates critical ethical principles of equal respect through fairness. (shrink)

In recent years, the field of animal ethics has taken a political turn, with scholars arguing that sentient nonhuman animals should be included in the political sphere. This article explores two key challenges arising from this turn towards the political inclusion of animals: the Conflict Problem and the Numbers Problem. The Conflict Problem highlights the difficulty of resolving conflicts between humans and animals, and amongst individual animals, who often have competing interests (such as predators and prey). The Numbers Problem arises (...) because animals vastly outnumber humans: if animals were to be fully included in political decision-making processes, their representatives would form majorities that would likely predominate, potentially to the detriment of human interests. We assess four potential responses to these two problems: (i) discounting animal interests; (ii) revisiting principles of political inclusion; (iii) granting group-differentiated rights; and (iv) adopting a bicameral system. Each response, we argue, involves significant ethical trade-offs. Ultimately, we conclude that proponents of sentientist political equality may need to bite the bullet with respect to the Conflict Problem and Numbers Problem. For those who think otherwise, we claim that the onus is on them to develop more viable solutions. (shrink)

The major innovation of liberalism, now the world's dominant form of political regime, was this: cooperation amid difference. Foundational to liberal systems is toleration of diversity, which safeguards citizens' freedoms to pursue disparate views of the good life. Manuel Rodeiro is the first philosopher to think through what this commitment to toleration means for the environment. Liberalism's Environmental Promise puts forward terms of social cooperation between parties with differences in how they value and relate to the natural world. This changes (...) the tack of environmental political theory. Rather than claiming the state should become green, Rodeiro urges it to remain neutral. He exposes state-authorized industrial expansion as unfairly elevating a single way of life over all others. What would it look like if the government were to cease promoting and favoring economic growth? How can states reckon with histories of environmental destruction that oppressively quashed so many cultures in the name of progress? Rodeiro offers an optimistic, yet practical, vision of how ecologically sustainable lifestyles might finally be allowed equal opportunity to flourish. (shrink)

The most established approach to legitimizing animal research worldwide is through Harm-Benefit Analyses (HBAs), which require that the expected benefits of research be compared to and outweigh the harms done to animals. For this process to be ethically sound, all relevant harms must be considered. However, HBAs leave one fundamental harm insufficiently considered: killing, i.e., the deliberate termination of animals’ lives as part of the research project. This article argues that the law’s ignorance of the harm of killing leads to (...) its trivialization in practice and, consequently, undermines the ethical legitimacy of deadly animal research projects. While our argument applies broadly, we use Switzerland as an illustrative case example. We first disentangle, from an ethical standpoint, the harms that killings inflict on animals in research. Second, we show that most harms of killing, both to the inherent worth and wellbeing of animals, are not accounted for in law, allowing killings to be trivialized. Third, we propose that killing should always (a) be subject to ethical and legal scrutiny by animal research commissions, (b) have to pass the necessity test (i.e., killing should be permitted if, and only if, it is necessary to achieve the purpose of the experiment), and (c) be included in HBAs. Fourth, we consider common objections to our arguments, and, in concluding, show why recognizing the harm of killing is essential to upholding the ethical legitimacy of animal research. (shrink)

Este artículo desarrolla la noción composicionista de justicia como propiedad estructural de las composiciones políticas, proponiendo una reconstrucción materialista de la normatividad que evita tanto la trascendencia metafísica como el formalismo jurídico y el relativismo contemporáneo. En primer lugar, se analizan las principales concepciones clásicas de la justicia —como armonía ideal, como virtud distributiva o como procedimiento equitativo— mostrando sus límites en un marco materialista. En segundo lugar, se introduce la inversión composicionista: la justicia no es un principio externo ni (...) una norma abstracta, sino una propiedad de las composiciones sociales en la medida en que logran articular sus partes sin destrucción estructural. En tercer lugar, se desarrolla el concepto de justicia como composición no destructiva, en conexión con la noción de symploké material. Finalmente, se examinan sus implicaciones para la subjetividad, la política y el mundo común, así como sus principales dificultades teóricas. (shrink)

How might people be wronged in relation to fear? Recently philosophers have begun to investigate the idea that there may be distinctly affective forms of injustice (Archer & Mills 2019; Archer & Matheson 2022; Gallegos 2022; Srinivasan 2018; Whitney 2018). Until now, though, the literature on affective injustice has mostly focused on the emotion of anger. Similarly, while philosophers have investigated both ethical (Döring 2020; Harbin 2023) and political (Ahmed 2004; Nussbaum 2019) questions related to fear, this literature has not (...) yet drawn on the literature of affective injustice to investigate these issues. We will investigate how fear can be a site of affective injustice. We will outline three forms of affective injustice involving fear. We begin by providing an overview of the existing literature on affective injustice. We will then argue that the unfair dismissal of people’s fears can constitute a form of affective injustice. Next, we will argue that being made to live in fear can also constitute a form of affective injustice. Finally, we will outline the last form of fear-related affective injustice, which is being the target of unwarranted fear. In exploring these various forms of fear-related affective injustice we will highlight more general features of affective injustice that have hitherto been underacknowledged. (shrink)

AMARTYA SEN, o economista-filósofo indiano, já foi descrito como um polímata. De forma singular, seus interesses e domínios intelectuais são tão espantosamente diversificados que parece difícil estabelecer entre eles uma conexão sistemática, ou enxergar neles um fio condutor geral, uma filosofia. Nas disciplinas para as quais fez contribuições — quase sempre rompendo fronteiras.

This chapter reviews John Rawls’s argument that justice is comprised by principles that rational individuals would agree upon in a situation of radical ignorance. Unjust inequalities are shown to be grounded in people’s knowledge of how to unfairly take advantage of their situation. Thus, Rawls argues, principles of justice can be identified by imagining people in a hypothetical situation where they are made ignorant of their own identity by a “veil of ignorance.” If no one knew who they were—and hence, (...) couldn’t unfairly privilege themselves—which principles of justice would rational people agree upon? While some argue that they would agree upon a utilitarian principle of maximizing happiness—which can justify sacrificing the few for the good of the many—Rawls instead argues that it would be more rational to agree upon an egalitarian distribution of rights, opportunities, and wealth that advantages everyone, particularly society’s worst-off group. Societies that conform to Rawls’s principles relatively well are identified as comparatively happy, stable, and non-corrupt. However, criticisms of Rawls’s theory are identified, as are debates on deeper moral and prudential justifications of the theory, and how to extend it to international/global justice, gender and family, and the rectification of injustice. (shrink)

Conservatives and progressives rarely agree on much—but one thing many agree upon is that it’s not OK to be a moderate. This book shows they are wrong. In Why It’s OK to be a Moderate, Marcus Arvan shows how many of history’s worst evils have resulted from far-right and far-left radicalism, how escalating conflicts between conservatives and progressives are undermining democracy, and how many widely hailed social and political achievements have been achieved by moderates and radicals working in constructive tension (...) with each other. Using philosophy, science, and historical analysis, Arvan shows that critics of moderates tend to equate them with spineless centrists, but that most moderates aren’t centrists, falling into diverse categories across the political spectrum. Arvan then shows that although radicals tend to be popular in their era, many of them have gone down in infamy, while many moderates, like Abraham Lincoln or Clement Attlee, have endured short-term unpopularity to “make history.” Arvan shows that it’s OK to be a moderate precisely because not everyone should be one. He makes this case to you, showing that whatever your reasonable political ideology may be, things tend to go best politically when radicals and moderates effectively complement each other’s virtues while counterbalancing the other’s vices. (shrink)

Accusations of hypocrisy are a recurring theme in the public debate on climate change, but their significance remains poorly understood. Different motivations are associated with this accusation, which is leveled by proponents and opponents of climate action. In this article, I undertake a systematic assessment of climate hypocrisy, with a focus on lifestyle and political hypocrisy. I contextualize the corresponding accusation, introduce criteria for the conceptual analysis of climate hypocrisy, and develop an evaluative framework that allows us to determine its (...) moral significance. I argue that different instances of climate hypocrisy are problematic to different degrees, depending on how detrimental they are to an agent's attainment of environmental integrity. The resulting framework helps clear the confusion caused by disinformation campaigners, by distinguishing objectionable uses of the climate hypocrisy charge from constructive ones motivated by genuine concern for integrity. (shrink)

This paper explores the significance of dignity for our understanding of the rights of workers. It surveys important uses of the idea of dignity in several discursive contexts, and offers an interpretation that illuminates the content, scope, and normative force of labor rights. The discursive contexts considered include human rights, socialism, Kantian practical philosophy, and Christian social thought. The interpretation of dignity offered illuminates basic rights to decent conditions in which workers for example choose their occupation, receive adequate remuneration, and (...) are able to form unions to defend their interests. It is also illuminates more ambitious rights to work in ways that fully further workers’ interests in flourishing and involve avoidance or minimization of their domination, exploitation, and alienation. (shrink)

Eco-socialists argue that capitalism is incompatible with environmental sustainability and democratic egalitarian values. They argue that capitalist reforms, including ‘green growth’ and ‘degrowth,’ fail to take capitalism’s growth imperative seriously. I argue that Rawls’s justice as fairness offers a reasonable alternative to eco-socialism. Rawls rejects capitalism as incompatible with democratic egalitarian values. I argue further that Rawls’s distributive principles do not require growth, and his account of intergenerational justice requires controlling growth. Justice as fairness, however, offers two ways to realize (...) justice. First, a property-owning democracy (POD) broadly disperses control and ownership of productive means. Second, liberal socialism socializes ownership and disperses control of productive means. Socialists respond that POD keeps capital intact and therefore cannot control growth. I argue that the empirical literature on growth shows that the capital process is insufficient to explain growth. I contend that POD should implement degrowth policies to address the other growth imperatives. My arguments show further that the sustainability debate is wrongly focused on the capital process and ownership. Instead of trying to pinpoint some process or mechanism in capitalism as the culprit, my arguments show that we should focus on the underlying values of regimes and how to effectively realize environmental values in institutions. (shrink)

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has intensified the global tension between digital inclusion, which advocates for equitable access to technology, and digital sovereignty, emphasizing national control over data and infrastructure. This article exam ines how Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) can reconcile these competing im peratives by embedding ethical principles, such as inclusivity, sustainability, precaution, and reflexivity, into technology governance. Through qualitative case studies in educa tion (e.g., Kenya’s eLimu and India’s DIKSHA platforms) and healthcare (e.g., WHO’s pandemic (...) data-sharing protocols), the study demonstrates that RRI fosters participatory design, balances sovereignty with global collaboration, and mitigates systemic biases. Findings reveal that rigid sovereignty policies often exacerbate inequalities, while RRI driven frameworks enable marginalized communities to co-create solutions, ensuring culturally relevant and ethically aligned technologies. The analysis highlights RRI’s po tential to transform geopolitical competition into equitable governance, advocating for its institutionalization through international mechanisms such as the UN’s Global Digital Compact. By prioritizing social justice, RRI redefines sovereignty as a stewardship obli gation, ensuring AI development uplifts, rather than undermines, vulnerable populations. The article concludes that integrating RRI principles into both global and local agendas is crucial for dismantling digital hierarchies and promoting inclusive innovation. (shrink)

Questions of fair allocation arise regularly throughout our lives, ranging from the trivial to the significant, for governments, private companies, associations, families, and friends. This article discusses the nature of allocative fairness, which is focused on the fair distribution of divisible and indivisible goods. The recent literature on allocative fairness takes John Broome's discussion of fairness as the proportional treatment of claims as its starting point. On this view, a claim is a reason why an individual ought to receive a (...) good. This article discusses the nature of allocative fairness, claims, and goods. The most prominent allocative procedures in the literature are discussed, including equal allocation, equitable allocation, markets, lotteries, and queues. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of the public discussion and research on just transition implies the risk of watering down either justice or the (eco-)socio-technical transition itself. We create a theoretical notion of just transition boundaries and propose it to help consider non-negotiable limits to just transition discourse and make sense of negotiations within such limits. Just transition boundaries are comprised of ecological and social boundaries. They determine that just transition-processes must bring societies effectively within the safety thresholds of the two most (...) critical planetary boundaries, climate change and biodiversity loss, and must do that by means and supportive measures that protect vulnerable groups from falling or getting stuck below social minimums in those processes. Boundaries leave room for plural values and visions for realizing transitions and remaining within safe thresholds in community-specific conditions. Context-specific additions to what just transition should cover are possible insofar as they do not contradict or risk just transition boundaries. In addition to justifying and conceptualizing just transition boundaries, we reflect on its implications for policymaking and research. (shrink)

Global climate change poses an urgent crisis that requires immediate action. However, conceptualizing human responsibility for mitigating the harm caused by climate change has proved challenging. I assess traditional concepts of moral responsibility and political responsibility for structural injustice and demonstrate that both have notable shortcomings. Building upon the limitations of these concepts, I establish five criteria that a responsibility concept must fulfill to be both effective and fair in mitigating the harm of climate change. Guided by these criteria, I (...) propose remedial responsibility as a more appropriate concept that better meets these requirements. (shrink)

From Plato to the present day, political theorists have used models of idealistic societies to think about politics. How can these idealistic models inform our thinking about political life in our non-ideal world? Not, as many political theorists have hoped, by providing normative guidance -- by showing us how things should be or where we should go. Even still, we can use these models to interpret the concepts we depend on to explain and evaluate political behavior and institutions, thereby sharpening (...) our explanations of how things work and our estimations of how to make things better. Seeing idealistic models in this light reveals a promising route to a form of political inquiry that integrates our explanatory aims and our normative aspirations. -/- (I have uploaded proofs for the table of contents, chapter 1, and the bibliography. A note on appendix corrections is available on Wiens's PhilPeople page under "Teaching Materials".). (shrink)

Political theorists have found themselves embroiled in numerous methodological debates, many of which concern the merits of ideal theory. While existing literature surveys expose the varied meanings of "ideal theory," the current situation makes it hard to see what's at stake in these debates or how to make progress. To address this situation, I survey ideal theory debates to highlight their *modularity*: they cover a range of issues that should be analyzed separately, and the results of these analyses can be (...) combined in various ways according to one's theoretical purposes. I then propose that theorists can make progress by disaggregating these debates into component tasks and tools. This "tasks-and-tools framework" clarifies the broader significance of ideal theory debates: they compose a family of debates about whether core theoretical tasks should adopt an idealistic orientation and about the proper uses of a familiar kind of theoretical tool I call "idealistic model scenarios." This framework also fosters a pluralistic approach to political theory that emphasizes choosing tools based on their effectiveness for pursuing particular tasks. (shrink)

The access-to-justice movement broadly concerns the extent to which people have the ability to resolve legally actionable problems. To the extent that individuals seek resolution through civil litigation, they can be disadvantaged by their unmet need for legal services, particularly in high-stakes cases and complicated areas of law. I propose an innovative legal intervention to this problem called “compensatory preliminary damages,” which builds from the work of Gideon Parchomovsky and Alex Stein. I argue that preliminary damages should function as compensatory (...) awards for harm to a plaintiff’s ability to access justice, rather than a contingency loan that might make indigent plaintiffs worse off than before if they lose. By awarding such damages, courts make plaintiffs whole for harm to their access to justice that is not conditional on a decision after the merits or their final recovery for the injuries alleged. As such, the award would not need to be repaid. (shrink)

The task that Hume explicitly sets himself in 3.2 of the Treatise is to identify the motive that renders just actions virtuous and constitutes justice as a virtue. But surprisingly, he never provides a clear account of what this motive is. This is the problem of the missing motive. The goal of this paper is to explain this problem and offer a novel solution. To set up my solution, I analyze a recent proposal from Geoffrey Sayre-McCord and illustrate what it (...) gets right and what it gets wrong. I develop a solution that retains the benefits of his proposal while addressing its defects. The result is a significant advancement in our understanding of Hume’s theory of justice. (shrink)

To formulate a plan of action for bringing about a decisive and reasonably stable end to an injustice, it is helpful to understand the factors and conditions that critically make the difference in causing that injustice. This intuitively seems correct regarding active and ongoing problems. But what precisely is involved in this kind of explanatory endeavor, and what is its role in practical efforts to confront existing wrongs? This paper offers an introduction to etiology of injustice, which is the study (...) and explanation of the operative causation of injustices. Drawing on insights from the philosophy of social transformation, causation, and remedial justice, I sketch a conceptual framework for understanding and undertaking the task of etiology of injustice and outline the contours of the etiological tradition of thought. (shrink)

This introduction presents the field of experimental moral and political philosophy as a confluence between different disciplines and research traditions. This chapter begins by highlighting the importance of several historical currents and presenting the scope and nature of a diverse and rich research agenda within the contours of a broad research area. The development of behavioural economics, the revisiting of John Rawls’ psychological assumptions in his Theory of Justice, the framework of bounded ethicality, the rebirth of philosophical naturalism, and the (...) burgeoning movement of experimental philosophy are given credit in the convergence leading to the current state of the field. This chapter ends by presenting a few active subfields that, in addition to their social relevance, may strengthen the hybrid enterprise of experimental moral and political philosophy by producing new and interesting results in the coming years. (shrink)

What would the institution of the family look like, if it were reformed according to republican desiderata? Would it even survive such re-shaping?

Whataboutism is een strategie waarbij op een beschuldiging wordt gereageerd met een wedervraag die eveneens een beschuldiging impliceert, waardoor de oorspronkelijke vraag eerder wordt ontweken dan beantwoord. Het is een effectieve methode om de aandacht te verplaatsen naar een andere situatie door een vergelijkbaar, dan wel onvergelijkbaar, contrast te bieden, waardoor de beschuldigde het eigen gedrag probeert te rechtvaardigen en verantwoordelijkheid probeert te ontlopen. Maar niet alle vormen van whataboutism impliceren echter een drogredenering, noch worden ze altijd verkeerd toegepast. Het (...) contrast dat voortkomt uit de vraag ‘what about’ kan dan een cruciale bijdrage leveren aan een situatie die een verdere kritische analyse vereist, en daarmee de geloofwaardigheid van de argumentatie versterken. (shrink)

Research on the role of values in science and objectivity has typically approached trust through its epistemic aspects. Yet, recent work on public trust in science has emphasized the role of non-epistemic values in building and maintaining trust. This paper will use a concept of trust that adds concerns about justice to epistemic conditions to investigate this problem in relation to public health. I will argue that trust-conducive values, particularly justice, are relevant in deciding which value influences are legitimate in (...) scientific decision-making. Drawing on public health ethics, I will provide a consequentialist justification for employing trust-conducive values. While several concepts of justice have been explored in the context of public health, I will further draw on public health ethics, focusing on a view that brings together both distributive and procedural aspects. For illustration, I will use the case of cardiovascular disease prevention, particularly how concerns about justice apply when choosing between population-based and individual-based approaches. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to the emerging field of the philosophy of money and finance. The field addresses philosophical issues about the nature of money and the normative foundations of financial systems. Although philosophical theorizing about money and finance dates back to Antiquity, the topic has only recently emerged as a central research focus. The chapter also introduces the present anthology and locates its parts and chapters in the broader field. More specifically, the anthology is divided into four main (...) parts: Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, and Political Philosophy. Each part contains four chapters on different but interrelated topics, which are all introduced here. (shrink)

I argue that if we claim colonialism is per se wrong, then we face a dilemma that stems from the fact that many states today are a result of past colonialism. We believe that postcolonial states have a right to self-determination such that it is wrong to colonize them. But this entails that there is a process that can turn a colonial state into a rightful state, and so we admit that there is a way to carry out colonialism that (...) is not wrongful. To avoid this conclusion, we must accept that the wrongness of colonialism has been superseded or remedied. These options either entail instrumentalism, which admits that colonialism is not per se wrong, or they are implausible. (shrink)