Equality

This paper argues that an equal distribution of the right to free speech is democratically valuable because it contributes to the perceived legitimacy of democratic institutions. I first argue that an equal right to free speech inherently encompasses citizens’ ability to engage in discussions about how ideas should be expressed. I then argue that frequent and systemic interactions on how ideas should be expressed can give citizens a practical grasp of what it means to make decisions between equally entitled parties. (...) The regularity of such interactions helps establish a shared set of presuppositions that democratic institutions can draw upon when communicating with a diverse citizenry. Taken together, the analysis supports the view that an equal right to free speech contributes to the formation of a communicative environment conducive to the bottom-up legitimation of democratic institutions and their public directives. (shrink)

Bureaucracy is everywhere. We experience its burdens when we access (or attempt to access) many essential public goods and services, from healthcare and social welfare to visas and driving licences. I argue that not only can bureaucracy be burdensome, but it can also be unjust. When bureaucratic burdens unduly impair our ability to access our rights or disproportionately impact certain groups (such as disabled citizens or those from poorer backgrounds), they are unjust. This phenomenon is what I shall call bureaucratic (...) injustice – an intermediate obstacle to a fundamental good, which gives rise to a second-order injustice. This article provides a normative conceptualisation of bureaucratic injustice aimed at those working within the liberal egalitarian framework of distributive justice and draws our attention to the kinds of burdens experienced by citizens attempting to access public services. I show that bureaucratic injustice ought to be a concern even for those working within a purely distributive justice framework (and who may not care directly about the impact of power structures on institutional design). Ultimately, through my conceptualisation of bureaucratic injustice, I aim to show that distributive justice is not merely about having the right institutions and policies in place, but also about how individuals experience these institutions and policies in their day-to-day lives. (shrink)

After 2025 saw failed attempts at economic `liberation', i.e. projecting internal inequality onto the world by essentially shifting the burden of re-distribution from the US rich to everyone else, 2026 is now bound for an accelerating death spiral of attempts at political `liberation', i.e. the capture of non-US resources to gloss over mounting failures within. As the underlying economic causes of discontent remain unaddressed, culture war talking points have to be radicalized into Carl Schmitt-style decisionist arguments; unsurprisingly, `great' men still (...) think that (their) might makes right. After economical `liberation' has largely failed, political `liberation' is basically the admission that economic competition with autocratic socialism has become really hard: Giving up on directly competing with China, frantically grabbing other nation's resources has become a strategy now. But the basic problems are not solvable through a revival of imperialist and fascist ideas; western democracies have to learn how to use and distribute limited resources more efficiently themselves. Capitalism's core strength, the ultra-flexible assignment of labor, becomes less and less relevant for demographically stagnating and highly automated economies. For such economies, the ultra-efficient assignment of natural resources become key -- with nations like China already well on their way to develop the tools for AI-planned autocratic socialism. The problem is thus not that well-managed democracies could not learn to live with low-growth, 'cold' economies; it's that they might be no match for autocracies with AI-driven socialist resource use and distribution. (shrink)

This paper deals with the ethics of gender affirmation – or, as I frame it, the ethics of responding to gender identity claims. Drawing on Stephen Darwall’s concept of recognition respect, I make the case for a moral duty of affirmation: conceived of as a duty to affirm a person’s standing to self-theorise. In this I break from other philosophical treatments of the issue, separating the ethics of affirmation from the ethics of assent. In a social world characterised by uncertainty (...) and reasonable disagreement about the metaphysics of sex and gender, we can all expect others to respect our standing to self-theorise. But because of that disagreement, I argue, this rarely (if ever) entails that others are under a duty to acquire the belief (or to aspire to acquire the belief) that we actually are a member of the gender category with which we have claimed identification. Recognising that affirmation and assent come apart in this way, I go on to demonstrate, can help us in navigating a number of fraught contemporary disputes. (shrink)

This book offers a moral and political analysis of the social position of people living with dementia. It takes a relational egalitarian view on the demands of justice, reflecting on what would be required for our society to become one in which we relate to members of this group as equals. By making several contributions to the legal and political philosophy of dementia care, the author uses a novel framework to underpin several public policy recommendations, aimed at remedying the injustices (...) those living with the condition face. Whilst doing so, she takes care not to overlook the legislative and economic barriers to achieving an ideal, dementia-inclusive society, and considers ways in which they might be overcome. Providing public policy insights while furthering scholarship on justice, equality, and capability, this is a timely and novel book that speaks to some of the most urgent questions facing contemporary ageing societies. (shrink)

Reparative justice for historical injustice concerns what present agents and societies must do to remedy past wrongs. Examples of historical injustice include the Holocaust, colonial violence and land expropriations, and chattel slavery in the United States. There is widespread intuition that these kinds of past wrongs require some form of reparation. However, because of the time that has passed between past wrongs and the present, explaining why reparative justice for these wrongs is possible encounters philosophical issues, including the nonidentity problem, (...) the supersession thesis, issues of causal indeterminacy, question of personal identity, and questions of group responsibility. These issues have created many debates among philosophers about the ideal account that can best explain how reparative justice for historical injustice is possible. In this paper, I carve up the conceptual terrain of these debates. I present the different positions one could take for each major philosophical issue in concerning historical injustice, and I discuss their merits and drawbacks. To conclude, I sketch an account that offers what I take to be the most promising way forward for an account of reparations for historical injustice that best incorporates the insights from these debates. (shrink)

This thesis is on the topic of discrimination. In the sense relevant to moral inquiry, discrimination refers to a wrongful sort of differential treatment. Agents discriminate in treating some differently to others, and in ways that require restitution. My main aim is to develop a moralised conception of discrimination with an eye on rational decision-making. On the view presented in this thesis, an agent discriminates in engaging in differential treatment on the basis of considerations that are not sufficiently relevant to (...) their legitimate goals. Agents can do so by misconstruing their evidence or by adopting goals that prescribe wrongful differential treatment. At first glance, this view runs counter to intuition. A greater focus on rationality dilutes discrimination's putative moral content. I show that the view presented allows that some cases of discrimination—as marked by socially salient attributes, for instance—warrant particular moral concern or are especially wrong. In the course of this work, I pursue two subsidiary aims. One, to analyse discrimination in a way that is neutral between moral theories. And two, to develop an account of discrimination that extends to a broad range of inequalities, including ones not precipitated by background injustice. The upshot is a theory of discrimination capable of guiding moral inquiry under a range of variable contextual factors. (shrink)

Within democracies, the capacity to influence political outcomes through speech depends not only on the right to express oneself, but also on the opportunity to reach relevant audiences. In this paper, I argue that the unequal distribution of algorithmic reach on social media platforms undermines equality of opportunity for political influence (EOPI), which is a central democratic ideal. Drawing on Niko Kolodny’s work, I contend that current recommendation algorithms create and perpetuate informal inequalities by concentrating attention among a small minority (...) of already-amplified speakers while systematically marginalizing others. To address this problem, I propose recommendation floors as a mechanism for equalizing political speech. To help users achieve meaningful participation, each verified account would receive guaranteed minimum recommendation for up to a limited number of political posts per week. Although this measure represents one component of the structural reforms needed to move the digital public sphere closer to democratic ideals, it offers a feasible pathway to reducing informal inequalities in political influence online. (shrink)

Drawing on an analysis of the semantic ambiguities of pity and the pitiful, this paper seeks to highlight the tensions inherent in the concept as it appears in Rousseau’s work. The sentiment that inclines one to assist the destitute, akin to the Christian virtue of charity, cannot easily be transposed into terms of obligation. Furthermore, active beneficence presupposes the power of the helper and is therefore incompatible with the equality of beings that compassionate identification expresses. Finally, when pity takes the (...) form of distributive justice, it distinguishes among those to whom it is addressed according to ambivalent criteria. The hypothesis is thus advanced of a rupture with the logic of pity in favour of equality of rights. Following Wollstonecraft (and opposing Rousseau), such a rupture with respect to women’s rights entails a critique of the contempt inherent in pity, as well as an adherence to an ideal of independence which is not without its own difficulties. -/- . (shrink)

In a recent article, Alexander Motchoulski offers a novel relational egalitarian view of reparations for historical injustice. Motchoulski argues that we ought to prefer the relational egalitarian view to available harm and inheritance theories because it avoids epistemic uncertainty. I argue that Motchoulski’s theory involves ambiguity that limits it in avoiding this epistemic uncertainty. I offer an amendment to Motchoulski’s theory that insulates it from this ambiguity and epistemic uncertainty.

En The Temporal Dimension of Justice analizo si la reparación de injusticias históricas puede conciliarse con las demandas prospectivas de justicia distributiva. A partir de la tesis de Jeremy Waldron sobre la superación de injusticias históricas mediante cambios en las circunstancias, propongo una versión modificada que, aunque exige dar prioridad a quienes están por debajo de un umbral de bienestar, acepta que las injusticias históricas se deben reparar incluso en condiciones de necesidad. Guillermo Lariguet examina esta tesis nueva y se (...) pregunta si implica la ausencia de dilemas morales genuinos. Adriana Vercellone analiza la aplicación de la tesis en asuntos de legitimidad política y se pregunta si el argumento según el cual los pueblos indígenas deben tener derechos políticos diferenciados en Argentina no debería extenderse a otras minorías, como los migrantes. Aquí intento responder a estas cuestiones mostrando que el pasado tiene peso tanto en lo que la justicia requiere en el presente como en lo relativo al diseño de instituciones públicas. (shrink)

In this stimulating work of political philosophy, acclaimed philosopher G. A. Cohen sets out to rescue the egalitarian thesis that in a society in which distributive justice prevails, people’s material prospects are roughly equal. Arguing against the Rawlsian version of a just society, Cohen demonstrates that distributive justice does not tolerate deep inequality. In the course of providing a deep and sophisticated critique of Rawls’s theory of justice, Cohen demonstrates that questions of distributive justice arise not only for the state (...) but also for people in their daily lives. The right rules for the macro scale of public institutions and policies also apply, with suitable adjustments, to the micro level of individual decision-making. Cohen also charges Rawls’s constructivism with systematically conflating the concept of justice with other concepts. Within the Rawlsian architectonic, justice is not distinguished either from other values or from optimal rules of social regulation. The elimination of those conflations brings justice closer to equality. (shrink)

The chapter is dedicated to the power-sharing political system functioning in Indonesia. This system, thanks to employing specific institutions, allows the members of various segments (including ethnic groups and religious communities) and sub-segments, defined especially on ascriptive, cultural, and ideological foundations, to be part of the decision-making processes at different power levels.

Many countries in Asia are inhabited by multi-segment societies diversified in terms of race, religion, language and economic status. They have repeatedly provided the basis for analysis of the search for consensus in the construction of a political scene that would ensure the participation in power of each group. Regardless of the chosen model, the distribution of power in multi-segment societies has always been characterized by a state of "unstable equilibrium". Practical solutions constantly evolved between consociationalism, centripetalism, federalism. In extreme (...) cases they led to political disintegration of states or to permanent domination of one of the segments, most often based on authoritarian solutions. In this volume, a group of scholars specializing in countries of the region, in addition to characterizing the basic social divisions, try to point out the dynamics of the "unstable equilibrium" of power sharing in particular Asian countries and analyze the trends occurring in them in the 21st century. (shrink)

Many societies are strongly divided, especially in ethnic, religious, racial, and ideological terms. Such divisions are usually related to the existence of divergent interests that may lead to serious conflicts between groups and/or between them and state authorities. In order to limit them, participation in decision-making processes by members of different groups is needed. However, it is extremely difficult to establish and maintain effective power-sharing arrangements. This book examines the cases of Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Burundi, where hybrid models of (...) power-sharing have emerged, combining specific elements of consociational and centripetal types. It also explains the specificity, life cycle, and performance of different hybrid systems. In 2000, Donald L. Horowitz and Philippe Van Parijs began the discussion on the possibility of merging consociational and centripetal settlements within the same political system. The monograph, a quarter of a century later, demonstrates real-world examples of such hybridity. “It is clearly a formidable work of scholarship, incisive and comprehensive.” - Donald L. Horowitz, “A persuasive thesis backed up by a wealth of careful case studies.” - Philippe Van Parijs. (shrink)

Contemporary power-sharing theory is characterized by an impasse between consociationalism and centripetalism. This article proposes the concept of hybrid power-sharing (HPS) as a possible solution. HPS political systems not only combine institutional features from the different power-sharing models but HPS’s “own” institutions may also be shaped. The article conceptualizes such hybrid institutions within HPS, demonstrates empirical examples and proves how specific centripetal and consociational components meet in each of them. The article’s main purpose is to present the new, deepened HPS (...) conceptual assumptions defined and systematized based on the cases of Nigeria, Indonesia, Kenya, and Burundi. (shrink)

The paper deals with the role of religious parties in the Indonesian political system. It demonstrates the importance of Islamic parties and explains the declining significance of Christian parties in the last dozen or so years. In the conditions of deep religiosity in Indonesian society, religious parties are understood as political parties that meet the following criteria: 1) are created by and for the followers of Islam or Christianity, respectively, 2) serve to pursue their interests (specifically the interests articulated by (...) the political and religious elites of religious communities) and 3) build their programs based on the principles and values of faith, and also promote and protect them. (shrink)

In this dissertation I defend the claim that not only was Marx not an anti-black racist, he was an anti-anti-black racist, despite sometimes employing racist language and epithets. I prove this claim by adducing massive amounts of textual evidence from Marx and Engels’ writings, spanning their entire careers as writers and revolutionaries, where time and again they condemn black slavery and the slave-trade, look forward to and call for their abolition, and aim at a future of racial justice and equality (...) for black people, as a component part of communist justice for all working people, under a communist mode of production. I thus show that Marx had a conception of communist justice, from which followed as a matter of course his endorsement of racial justice and equality for black workers. -/- In carrying out this project, I am contributing to the subfield of philosophy of race that has been engaged in a historical reexamination of Western canonical philosophers for their views on race and black people in particular. Much has been written about Kant in this connection, and some on Locke, Hume, Hegel, and others. But Marx has received scant attention. The most prominent philosopher to treat the topic of Marx and race was undoubtedly Charles Mills. But, I claim, Mills got Marx wrong. He wrote as if the only time Marx ever spoke about black people was when he was making racist remarks. Mills does not canvass the material I present here. I also demonstrate that outside of philosophy – in history, political science, anthropology, sociology, and so on – reading Marx as an anti-black racist and/or as one who ignored or misunderstood the relationship between black slavery and capitalism is also widespread. Thus, I also refute the claims of various non-philosophers who, like Mills, get Marx wrong on this issue. -/- Finally, by using Mills’ work as a foil, I seek to re-orient the sympathies of his many disciples. Mills was and is justly famous in philosophy and academia more broadly, and his work has reached and continues to reach a wide audience. Thus his characterization of Marx and Marxism as racist must have wide currency amongst those interested in race and racism, critical race theory, racial justice, black liberation and so on who rightly read and cite his work regularly. My secondary aim, then, is to bring to the attention of Mills’ followers this other – and in my view, correct – reading of Marx, so that they may reconsider the usefulness of Marx and Marxism for tackling issues of race, racism, and racial justice. Despite, as Mills has shown, liberalism’s ‘racial’ (i.e., racist) history, many may follow Mills in embracing a black radical version of liberalism that does not fundamentally challenge capitalist social relations, once they think Marx and Marxism are dumb on race and/or are sources of anti-black racism. Thus it is my hope that the claims I defend in this dissertation will go some way towards remedying this potential misperception on the part of Mills’ followers, and encouraging them to explore the Marxian paradigm in good faith, before they embrace a version of liberalism that inevitably must fail to challenge the capitalist world-order: a world-order that instituted and perpetuates global white supremacy (what Mills called ‘The Racial Contract’) under the guise of ‘liberalism.’. (shrink)

This article considers how political actors committed to a moral value like equality can cause havoc with our lives if they choose to apply those values in ways that are temporally absurd or arbitrary. The central claim is that without considering the temporal structures of our political commitments our political theorising will remain indeterminate with respect to social practice. This claim is developed in two steps. First, debates on ‘indeterminacy’ in normative theorising are examined to develop a sceptical argument showing (...) that a lack of temporal reference points can lead to a lack of certainty in the meaning of normative principles. Second, debates on time and social justice are used to illustrate how temporal reference points can link normative principles to the existential time of human lives in meaningful and important ways. To ignore these lessons about the place of temporality in normative reasoning is to ignore the indeterminacy of many of our political commitments and misunderstand the extent of our normative disagreements with others. (shrink)

As accelerating inequality careens into plutocracy, and America tilts toward autocracy, Karl Polanyi and Thomas Piketty have become key resources for understanding the link between the social exclusions of capitalism and democracy in crisis. This and its companion article (Somers 2022a) explore each of these thinkers and put them into dialogue to generate the outlines of a democratic political economy that I dub a predistributive democracy. Deconstructing capitalism’s moral economy of market justice, building on legal and economic institutionalism, and advocating (...) a movement of countervailing power against escalating commodification and dedemocratization are central components of the project. The first article focused on Polanyi’s contribution to a predistributive democracy. This one engages Piketty’s work as it evolves from a bent toward economic naturalism to a robust institutionalism and an agenda for a participatory democratic socialism. Neither Polanyi nor Piketty is a legal theorist, yet both thinkers are indispensable to the new Law and Political Economy (LPE) and the movement for a predistributive democracy. (shrink)

The ideal of equality has led a double existence in modern society. In one guise the ideal has been at least very popular if not uncontroversial and in its other guise the ideal has been attractive to some and repulsive to others. These two aspects of equality are equality of democratic citizenship and equality of condition.

The message of both Ethicists and Economists is a “universalizing” or “globalizing” one. But if the evolutionary moral Psychologists are correct, our instincts in the relevant regards are primarily “localizing” or “tribalizing.” Where, then, does this fundamental tension leave (the theory and practice of) Politics? This is the question that animates this introduction to Philosophy, Politics, and Economics--popularly abbreviated as "PPE." Because this book incorporates a healthy dose of psychological theory, though, it is more aptly described as a treatise on (...) the "Moral Sciences," as this (formerly unified) subject matter was once upon a time called. (shrink)

On Exit provides fresh, new perspectiveson the debates on the rights of individuals against their own cultural or religious groups. It brings together scholars from different disciplines to discuss some of thekey questions concerning the relations of cultural and religious groups, group members, citizens, and the state within Western liberal democracies. The volume revisits some of the theoretical controversiesrevolving aroundthe right of exit, and provides insights into the more practical problems of cultural accommodation.

There is an “underrepresentation problem” in philosophy departments and journals. Empirical data suggest that while we have seen some improvements since the 1990s, the rate of change has slowed down. Some posit that philosophy has disciplinary norms making it uniquely resistant to change. We present results from an empirical case study of a philosophy department that achieved and maintained male-female gender parity among its faculty as early as 2014. Our analysis extends beyond matters of gender parity because that is only (...) one, albeit important, dimension of inclusion. We build from the study to reflect on strategies that may catalyze change. (shrink)

The newly elected Labour Government in the United Kingdom promised change. However, the first 10 months have been disappointing, characterized by misjudged announcements regarding the Winter Fuel Allowance and Employers' National Insurance contributions. Yet, there is still time to get back on track with welfare reform and create a new welfare state that other countries can replicate. To this end, this commentary argues for a shift from means-testing to universalism across welfare provision. It further contends that a basic income should (...) be gradually introduced based on affordability and public support. Additionally, it proposes that these changes be funded through taxation on wealth, particularly targeting online billionaires profiting from automation. Welfare reform represents an opportunity for Labour to make a difference and regain public trust and support, as evidence indicates public backing for restoring our public services. With the election of a Labour Government in the United Kingdom, there is a once-in-a-generation chance to address welfare reform and establish a new welfare state that other countries can admire. So far, the Labour Government's rhetoric and actions have been aligned with dampening expectations. The new government has experienced a disappointing first 10 months, marked by controversy after controversy stemming from inexperience and incompetence. Moreover, they have begun using antiwelfare rhetoric, such as the threat to remove driving licenses from benefit fraudsters. Therefore, we argue that Labour needs to be reminded of its mission to restore public services. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to maintain that “justice” represents an objective and impersonal recognition of the nature of moral personality, and as such should retain its identity at all levels of human relationship. It is not, as certain idealist philosophers, and notably Bosanquet, have maintained, inappropriate at the deeper levels, at which it is said to be superseded by love.

Historically, as well as more recently, women's emancipation has been seen in two ways: sometimes as the `right to be equal' and sometimes as the `right to be different'. These views have often overlapped and interacted: in a variety of guises they have played an important role in both the development of ideas about women and feminism, and the works of political thinkers by no means primarily concerned with women's liberation. The chapters of this book deal primarily with the meaning (...) and use of these two concepts in the context of gender relations (past and present), but also draw attention to their place in the understanding and analysis of other human relationships. (shrink)

An unquestioned assumption of contemporary politics is that the left owns minority groups, in the sense that the left, exclusively, champions the interests of minorities and is for that reason owed the allegiance of minorities. This, in turn, gives rise to the sense of dissonance created by right-wing dissenters—the black social conservative, the gay ultra-nationalist, the female libertarian, the poor pro-capitalist. This same dissonance exists for women and feminism, creating a default assumption that a feminist is a left-wing woman. We (...) don’t make a distinction between left-wing feminists and feminists; we don’t need to. -/- There’s nothing a philosopher loves more than an unquestioned assumption, and in this book political philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith systematically dismantles the assumption that feminism is an exclusively left-wing project. Once dismantled, the path is clear to a new set of questions. Who counts as a feminist in the first place? If women from anywhere on the political spectrum can be feminists, who is it that feminists should—or shouldn't—be working with? And what can be said, more generally, about the ethics of alliances and coalitions? -/- In Feminism Beyond Left and Right Lawford-Smith makes the case for non-partisan feminism, feminism outside the constraints of the left-right political spectrum, a feminism for and about all women as women. (shrink)

Essert (2024) develops a novel argument for the striking conclusion that we have a moral obligation to create and maintain an institution of property. This paper examines the argument’s prospects, and brings out its limits.

Illegal migration has become a critical and ongoing challenge for India, affecting the country’s national security, economic stability, and social harmony. This paper focuses specifically on individuals who enter or remain in India without legal authorization and engage in criminal activities, misuse public resources, or violate laws. Unlike legal migrants or refugees who seek protection and contribute positively, these unauthorized migrants often strain India’s infrastructure and public services, creating challenges for law enforcement and governance. This study analyzes the risks posed (...) by illegal migration, including threats to internal security, involvement in crime, and socio-economic pressures on local communities. It highlights the shortcomings in India’s current legal and administrative systems, which largely rely on outdated laws and fragmented policies that vary across states. To address these gaps, the paper proposes a comprehensive, technology-driven national framework that integrates advanced digital identity verification, artificial intelligence-based document authentication, and smart border surveillance systems. Key technological solutions include enhancing the Aadhaar system with a citizenship verification layer, deploying AI to detect forged documents, using satellite imagery to monitor illegal settlements, and implementing a centralized migrant tracking database. Alongside technology, the paper recommends legal reforms, improved coordination between central and state authorities, and ethical enforcement practices that respect humanitarian principles. By adopting this structured approach, India can better protect its borders, uphold its sovereignty, and maintain social cohesion without compromising on democratic values or international humanitarian commitments. This paper aims to provide a clear roadmap for policymakers and security agencies to tackle illegal migration effectively while ensuring fairness and justice for all residents. Keywords: Illegal Migration, India, National Security, Socioeconomic Stability, Strategic Solutions, Border Management, Immigration Policy, Demographic Impact, Internal Security, Technology in Border Control, Human Trafficking, Policy Framework, Refugee Crisis, Migration Governance, National Integration. (shrink)

Rights to petition occupy an unusual position in political theory. Legally speaking, few political rights are as long-established or ubiquitous. Yet, philosophers have rarely, if ever, engaged in a sustained analysis of their contents or justification. On the rare occasions when such rights have been discussed, they are also often treated with a degree of quietism, if not outright scepticism. If there is a right to petition, so the thinking goes, then it must be a relatively minimal right, which is (...) to say, one that secures for its holder no more than that to which they are already entitled under, say, their right to free speech. In this article, I reject this view. Instead, I argue that, unlike rights to free speech, citizens’ rights to petition secure a duty on public officials to engage in a certain decision-making process with regards to petitioners’ petitions. In short: they have a duty to listen. In this way, I claim citizens enjoy a far more ‘robust’ right to petition than many polities currently recognise. (shrink)

A leading international expert on environmental issues, Shrader-Frechette brings a new standard of rigor to philosophical discussions of environmental justice in her latest work. Observing that environmental activists often value environmental concerns over basic human rights, she points out the importance of recognising that minority groups and the poor in general are frequently the biggest victims of environmental degradation, a phenomenon with serious social and political implications that the environmental movement has failed to adequately address. She argues for their equal (...) rights to 'environmental justice' and maintains that they should not have to bear most of the weight of the burdens of pollution and resource depletion. Advocating a greater awareness on the part of professionals in a position to help these victims, Shrader-Frechette proposes a more equitable distribution of environmental resources and, in doing so, makes an important contribution to the fields of environmental ethics and applied philosophy. (shrink)

Normative debates on migration control, while characterised by profound disagreement, do appear to agree that the state has at least a prima facie right to prevent the entry of security threats. While concern is sometimes raised that this ‘security exception’ can be abused, there has been little focus by normative theorists on concrete practices of security, and how we can determine what a ‘principled’ use of the security exception would be. I argue that even if states have a right to (...) prevent migrants from entering on grounds of security, the practices required to implement this right will likely compromise core liberal democratic values in ways that have not been sufficiently appreciated. I draw on literature from Science and Technology Studies and Critical Security Studies to examine the proliferation of digital border control technologies which are increasingly dominating state security practices, and explain the challenges these technologies pose to non-discrimination, liberty and equality. I also highlight the difficulties of taking these principles as presumptive limitations on the operation of the security exception. A more sustained conversation among ethical theorists is needed to address the profound ethical challenges that the ever-increasing use of these technologies poses, particularly in pursuit of security. (shrink)

Serene Khader’s first book for a public audience packs philosophical rigor into a compulsive read. The book is primarily a call to action. In Khader’s view, the Dobbs decision’s final blow to abortion rights was unsurprising—not only because she was watching closely political developments but also because she was paying attention to how mainstream feminism had failed to evolve into an emancipatory movement. If mainstream feminists had seen their flaws, she tells her readers, they too would have seen that, in (...) a sense, the Dobbs decision was inevitable. (shrink)

Humans use narratives to make sense of historical developments as well as to guide their future actions, and these narratives can in turn have great impact on their lives, societies and the world overall. Here I would like to put forward such a narrative to rationalize the increasingly forceful changes of our current decade. Arguing for the existence of three ongoing waves of emancipation of the individual in society, it is proposed that we are currently approaching the high-point of conflict (...) of the second, economic emancipation process. After the outgoing first wave made (at least some) people fully aware of the importance of political equality and lead to the formation of (at least some) democratic states on the basis of national constitutions, we now have to fully accept the importance of economic fairness to enable us to continue our venture into the third wave of cultural fairness as diversity, which in my opinion puts the philosophy of economics under the pressure to tackle an increasingly important task, namely to develop ideas for better working constitutional principles for economic communities. A failure to do so would mean to not only fail to implement fair and sustainable markets, but as a result to fall back behind even political equality, with strongmen – banally driven by childhood wounds and riding on waves of public discontent – capturing democratic states with badly informed narratives about western civilization, for instance in the form of ‘Christian Nationalism’. Intentionally obscuring the facts that liberal democracies and free markets do in fact not underperform in comparison to the existing alternatives, and that extreme inequality is instead most often to a large part driven by the greed and ruthlessness of individuals who misuse their power to distort economic and political frameworks, these strongmen could then roll-back important civilizational advances while trying to satisfy their insatiable ego: What ‘great’ men want is still so boring. (shrink)

Extended Abstract After the onslaught of some Enlightenment thinkers on religion, Tocqueville was one of the most impressive philosophers who tried to reconcile modern democracy with religion. He believes liberty cannot be established without morality, and morality cannot be established without faith. For Tocqueville, religious belief is an essential bulwark of freedom. He wanted to persuade French liberals that the Catholic Church was not necessarily the enemy of freedom and French Catholics that democracy was not necessarily the enemy of the (...) Catholic Church. In his last years, Tocqueville’s pessimism about the future of liberty in France directly resulted from the stormy relationship between religion and democratic society in France. Tocqueville’s vision of religion’s enduring significance in democratic societies aligns him with those associated with “post-secular society” theories today. This article analyzes Tocqueville’s personal beliefs, the causes of his attention to religion, the relationship between religion and the doctrine of “self-interest properly understood,” the relationship between religion and materialism, the relationship between religion and freedom, and the relationship between religion and state in Tocqueville’s philosophy. As Kahan says, moral issues (concerns about human character and its development) in a democratic society were at the heart of Tocqueville’s project. In putting the question of moral character at the center of his work, Tocqueville was placing himself within a long and distinguished French tradition that reached back to writers including La Bruyère, Pascal and Corneille and continued through figures such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Chateaubriand. If Tocqueville invented a “new political science,” it was in the service of his new moral science, a science intended to encourage democratic grandeur and preserve democratic souls from degradation. For Tocqueville, democratic societies faced a choice between despotism and freedom. His new political science was intended to help them choose freedom. His new moral science was designed to help them face a parallel and related choice between moral degradation and moral greatness. As a moralist, Tocqueville aspired to be not merely democracy’s political guru but its spiritual director. Tocqueville is going to discover a road between two paths. The first path is materialism. It is concerned only with satisfying the needs of the body. The second path is spiritualism, i.e. to inflict suffering and privations on ourselves to live the life of the soul. He notices at the one end of this tendency, Heliogabalus, and at the other, St. Jerome, and he believes that the middle road (a path between Heliogabalus and St. Jerome) is the only one that can be suitable for humanity. Tocqueville believes that man can never simultaneously bear complete religious independence and full political liberty. So, he thinks that man must have faith for freedom; if he does not, he must serve, and if he is free, he must believe. As Zuckert says, in democratic times, religion can be preserved and exercise a salutary effect on morals - individual and social - only by combining it with economic calculation in public opinion, as in America. Democratic circumstances are not antagonistic to all tenets of faith. On the contrary, similar and equal people can easily understand the notion of a single God, imposing on each one of them the same rules and granting them future happiness at the same cost. However, as Zuckert says, if religious beliefs were to be propagated and preserved by such a public consensus, the doctrinaire and formal aspects antagonistic to democratic tastes would have to be minimized. It would not suffice merely to separate church and state. The content and form of religious services had to be adapted to democratic conditions. Religious leaders would also have to work to synthesize secular and sacred beliefs. Rather than stressing how concern for their eternal salvation stands in opposition to the material interests of their congregations, preachers need to recognize the dominance of public opinion and explicitly align themselves with it in an emphatically nonpartisan way. Tocqueville says Americans combat individualism with the doctrine of “self-interest properly understood.” Zuckert says this doctrine serves precisely the two functions for which Tocqueville had praised religion. Although it does not destroy the materialist desires of democratic people, it does make them pursue those interests honestly. It also works to overcome the “individualism” or isolation that economic pursuits tended to foster. The philosophers who teach this doctrine say to men that, to be happy in life, you must watch over your passions and carefully repress their excesses; that you cannot gain lasting happiness except by denying yourself a thousand passing enjoyments, and that finally, you must triumph over yourself constantly to serve yourself better. Tocqueville is not afraid to say that, of all philosophical theories, the doctrine of “self-interest properly understood” seems the most appropriate to the needs of his contemporaries. He sees it as the most powerful tool they have left to protect them from themselves. It should, therefore, be the primary focus of today’s moralists. He does not believe that the doctrine of self-interest as preached in America is self-evidently true in all respects, but it does contain many truths so evident that enlightened men cannot fail to see them. Enlighten them, therefore, regardless of the cost, for the century of blind self-sacrifice and instinctive virtue is fast receding into the past, and what he sees approaching is an age in which liberty, public peace, and social order itself will be unable to do without enlightenment. Zuckert says that if religion survived in modern egalitarian societies, Tocqueville concluded that it would result from self-interested calculations that were generally effective through the force of public opinion. The specifically religious content of “self-interest properly understood” was minimal, but irreplaceable. To convince individuals to risk their lives for the common good, beliefs in God and judgment in the afterlife are beneficial, if not indispensable. The necessary beliefs are few, simple, and, we should note, not distinctively Christian. Indeed, when Tocqueville turned to discuss the basis of individual morality, he suggested that even belief in divine retribution or punishment was not essential. Tocqueville thus minimizes the necessary content of a “civil religion” even more than Jean Jacques Rousseau did in Social Contract. He believes that most religions are only general, simple and practical means to teach men the immortality of the soul. In this respect, Tocqueville follows Montesquieu, who characterized Stoicism as a religion. Last but not least, like Montesquieu, Tocqueville also had serious doubts about the compatibility of some religions with human liberty, if for no other reason than that they do not allow for the necessary separation of religion and politics. -/- . (shrink)

Relational egalitarianism holds that people should live together as equals. We argue against the received wisdom amongst both friends and foes of relational egalitarianism that it fails to provide a theory of intergenerational justice. Instead, we argue that relational egalitarianism is concerned with social equality amongst future contemporaries, and that this commitment gives rise to duties of justice for current generations that can be grounded in the idea of generational overlap. In doing so, we argue that that the scope of (...) relational egalitarian concerns extends beyond generations amongst whom social relations exist. (shrink)

In these transformative times of interrupted lives, humanity has had to take a step back and subject its frantic, rushed existence to a profound analytical glance. The COVID pandemic has caused millions to suffer and the elderly are more vulnerable than ever; moreover, many families are left to mourn alone, not always able to gather around their departed loved ones at the time of grief. This has led many to believe that humanity has lost control of its environment and its (...) destiny. Yet, if recent predictions by sociologists come true, the current, seemingly never-ending pandemic might have some positive results. The anguish it causes may be, in fact, teaching us to appreciate the value of the natural world that we are depleting, to understand “the other”, and to recognise the planet-saving significance of the phrase “less is more”. And while the world’s populations slowly realise that their social environment has changed permanently, the pandemic’s beneficial upshot might be that people will be mindful of things beyond their immediate concerns and will begin to see the “bigger picture”. In view of the speculative disarray inherent to our present condition, this paper proposes existentialism as a system of thought with the intrinsic power to guide individual and social awareness; it thus analyses our present in an interpretive and pragmatic light while it draws on the existentialist theories of Søren Kierkegaard and Simone de Beauvoir. Both philosophers are querying and inquisitive and both timelessly relevant, sensible and direct about what they see is at the core of human existence. (shrink)

This chapter aims to make analytical political philosophy part of existing discussions about the role of numbers in the workings of political institutions that already cut across many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. To do that, it will first explore the prominent ‘capability approach’ to justice, which is characterised by scepticism towards excessive precision in law- and policy-making. Given the close link between precision and quantification, the loudest voice from political philosophy will therefore turn out to be (...) one of warning against the use of numbers in political decision-making. However, the chapter will also discuss powerful objections to the capability approach that, building on the work of John Rawls, stress the importance of public justification and, in turn, simplifying devices in political decision-making. Those objections will be used to demonstrate that quantification can play functions that are very important from a normative perspective. To further support its claim that under certain circumstances, numerical tools might well be the best way of making political decisions, the chapter will use as a case study the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, an administrative body in charge of appraising health technology for use in the British National Health Service. (shrink)

Com uma história que ultrapassa cem anos, a ciência da mensuração da pobreza foi impulsionada pela necessidade de critérios mais sistemáticos para determinar tanto a extensão do fenômeno quanto aquelas pessoas com direito à assistência social. Discuto dois dos principais produtos dessa história: as linhas de pobreza e as abordagens para sua mensuração. As linhas separam as pessoas em pobreza ― aquelas cujo nível de carência está abaixo da linha ― daquelas fora dela ― aquelas cujo nível está acima. E (...) se pobreza é uma carência, nem todas as carências caracterizam pobreza. Não por acaso, cada abordagem se distingue por definir que tipo de carência faz da pobreza o que ela é. Aqui, apresento seis abordagens: monetária, subsistência, privação relativa, necessidades básicas, capacidades e direitos humanos. Mas entre pesquisadores, persiste a falta de consenso, seja sobre como traçar a linha de pobreza ou sobre qual abordagem é mais adequada. Relacionado a isso, concluo que diagnósticos sobre a pobreza de uma sociedade exigem o emprego não de uma, mas de diferentes medidas. (shrink)

Este libro reúne una serie de contribuciones que abordan, desde distintas disciplinas y enfoques, el diseño, la implementación y la evaluación de las políticas de protección social en América Latina. Los capítulos son reformulaciones de los problemas y respuestas presentados en el Workshop Internacional “Protección social y pobreza: abordando la multidimensionalidad del problema”, llevado a cabo en mayo de 2024. Durante el evento, se presentaron estudios sobre el impacto de los programas de transferencia de ingresos en países del Cono Sur, (...) como Argentina, Uruguay, Brasil y México. La obra refleja la multidimensionalidad del problema, integrando análisis normativos, económicos y políticos, así como perspectivas etnográficas y jurídicas. A través del estudio de casos como el Programa Prospera (México), el Programa Bolsa Família (Brasil) y el programa Acompañamientos de Familia (Argentina), el libro ofrece una mirada crítica sobre los alcances y desafíos de estos programas en el contexto de la pobreza y la exclusión social en la región. A partir de estas experiencias, no solo se busca evaluar las políticas actuales, sino también reflexionar sobre estrategias futuras para enfrentar estos desafíos. (shrink)

The income gap between women and men expands with age, culminating in a gender pension gap in old age that is much larger than pay gaps earlier in life. In this article, I question two attempts to justify gender pension gaps. One insists that lower financial contribution justifies women's lower overall pensions. The second states that women must receive less monthly because they live longer. I argue that neither of these reasons is fair in a gender-unjust world. Rather than justifying (...) pension gaps, female longevity is an opportunity to promote gender justice: by subsidizing longer lives, old-age redistribution attenuates lifetime gender inequality. In the case of retirement pensions, the use of age to promote gender equality may be preferable to explicit gender differentiation. There is, then, a feminist case for old-age redistribution. (shrink)

In the context of nonstandard analysis, the somewhat vague equality relation of near-equality allows us to relate objects that are indistinguishable but not necessarily equal. This relation appears to enable us to better understand certain paradoxes, such as the paradox of Theseus’s ship, by identifying identity at a time with identity over a short period of time. With this view in mind, I propose and discuss two mathematical models for this paradox.