ABSTRACTS
Oliviero Angeli
Economic migration and territorial sovereignty: Is territorial exclusion justifiable?
In contemporary political theory the significance of territory and territoriality has been often either neglected or ?treated superficially. While liberal cosmopolitanism regards territorial boundaries as an unpleasant remnant from a past era, liberal communitarians often treat them as a mere annex of cultural boundaries. Only some version of libertarianism appears to offer a significant account about the relationship between territoriality and immigration. Its proposal is straightforward: state territory ought to be considered as a private space, whose legitimate owners have the right to exclude intruders. Once territory is assigned to individuals, who acquire full property rights over their pieces of land, the right to exclude intruders should be given to private landowners either. I believe, this is provocative and maybe even offensive to egalitarian-minded scholars, who were indeed mainly inclined to abandon the link between property and sovereignty as the “weakest, most confused and confusing option when it comes to liberal justifications for membership controls” (Cole). I think this is going too far. The link between property and (territorial) sovereignty is worth being analyzed and specified. And this will be the main task of my paper. My argument will be that liberal cosmopolitan efforts to improve the position of the globally worse-off are better served if the parallelism between territorial sovereignty and property is developed to a better level of consistency.
Enrico Biale
Some thoughts on a left-libertarian theory of justice
B. H. Fried in her two reviews of Vallentyne and Steiner's works on left-libertarianism criticized the possibility of left-libertarian theories of justice to be complete and autonomous ones. In order to verify that criticism I would like to consider the challenge addressed by Rawls to the nozickian theory of justice (seventh lecture of Political Liberalism). According to Rawls libertarianism cannot be considered a full-blown theory of justice because it does not justify: i) a system of procedural rules complex enough to manage background inequalities and ii) institutions in order to implement those rules. Left-libertarianism is conceptually and institutionally more complex than nozickian theory of justice. It develops a stricter version of the lockean proviso and a not-moralized idea of freedom which justify ideas strongly egalitarian as the equal freedom for all (Steiner), real freedom for all (Van Parijs) or the maximization of freedom (Carter). In order to implement such principles left-libertarians theories need to develop institutions more complex than the minimal State. That complexity is enough to see some of the background inequalities described by Rawls. Left-libertarians seem, however, not be interested to develop procedural rules in order to manage such inequalities. Therefore they cannot answer Rawls' challenge. I think this is a limit of left-libertarianism but I do not think that it is a structural one; left-libertarians theories of justice ought to and can develop such rules in order to show that their theories of justice are different and more promising than the nozickian and rawlsian ones.
Ben Colburn
Anti-perfectionisms and autonomy
I attempt to reconstruct an argument for the value of autonomy based on remarks by Joseph Raz in The Morality of Freedom. Raz states that anti-perfectionism about values, though misguided, is frequently motivated by correct intuitions: that is, by an implicit commitment to autonomy. Frustratingly, Raz only hints at how this claim might be supported, and a first attempt to reconstruct an argument has an unwelcome feature: anti-perfectionism is asserted to in the premisses and denied in the conclusion. I suggest that we solve this problem by drawing a distinction between two types of values, and therefore between two types of perfectionism. The naive reconstruction of Raz's argument involves an equivocation between these two types, and once they are distinguished, the appearance of paradox is avoided.
Elizabeth Cripps
Collectivities v. social groups: a call for a wider focus in political philosophy
The greatest challenges facing political philosophy today are raised by the fact of multi-culturalism on the one hand and, on the other, the incontrovertible evidence of environmental destruction, combined with cosmopolitan calls for global distributive justice. These are problems which political philosophy, on its standard, Rawlsian model, is ill-equipped to tackle. Before we can even attempt the task, it is necessary to re-consider our standard understanding of collectivities and social groups. This paper makes a start on this project. I re-consider the ways in which individuals can find themselves in groups such that it is in the interests of the individuals that certain decisions be made collectively, with some corresponding allocation of rights and duties within the group.
The central problem is to provide an account of circumstances under which individuals find themselves with obligations to each other. Some philosophers have attempted to deploy the concept of a “social group” as a basis for mutual obligation. Against this I argue that if a social group is defined in terms of a shared social property, then membership of a social group is insufficient to generate obligations. If it is defined in terms of mutual acknowledgement (the “intentionalist” theory), this membership is unnecessary to generate obligations. To solve the problem, I introduce the idea of a “collectivity”: a set of individuals constitutes a collectivity if and only if those individuals are mutually dependent through some common or shared interest or goal, on a certain broad reading of “common or shared interest or goal” and regardless of whether those individuals can or do acknowledge it themselves. The notion of membership of collectivities, in generating a broader set of obligations than those suggested by the intentionalist theory, provides political philosophy with a starting point from which to address those “greatest challenges” with which it must deal.
Bart Engelen
Complementing Markets and States:The importance of communities
Most modern political philosophers assume that people act to serve either their own private interests or the public interest. This behavioral dichotomy has led to an institutional dichotomy at the normative level. Whereas the former typically favor markets (which can spontaneously coordinate egoistic actions into socially desirable outcomes), the latter typically favor a more pervasive state (which can realize the public good).
Recent research has shown, however, that a majority of people are motivated by strong reciprocity, which lies beyond this behavioral dichotomy. Strong reciprocators have a disposition to cooperate if others do so as well and to punish those who violate cooperative norm. Such behavior cannot be framed in egoistic terms, since it is personally costly and yields no personal benefits whatsoever. Moreover, it cannot be framed in instrumental terms either, since it is essentially motivated by backward-looking considerations, like the past behavior of others and the fact that one has internalized certain prosocial norms. Stressing the role of norms in social life, strong reciprocity suggests the importance of communities, which provide an alternative scheme of social organization next to markets and states. Whereas the latter are formalized institutions in which interactions are typically anonymous and one-shot, communities consist of groups of people who know each other and interact repeatedly. This paper argues that normative views on ideal institutions and policies should be based on empirically adequate models of real individuals. Political philosophers aiming to improve society should thus take into account the widespread phenomenon of strong reciprocity and the norm-guided behavior in which it results. This paper aims to explore in what ways such a more realistic view of individuals gives rise to reform proposals that diverge from the standard policy recommendations that dominate most modern political philosophy.
Oliver Feeney
Against Genetic Prioritarianism
Various branches of egalitarianism, traditionally understood, have responded to natural inequalities, such as in talent and ability, with one thing broadly in common. In a pre-genetic revolutionary society, natural inequalities themselves were seen as beyond the control of society and thus beyond the demands of justice. The question was how to distribute social resources so as to compensate for this. The question posed now is: if natural inequalities were within the direct control of society, and thus within the demands of justice, should we extend the egalitarian rationale accordingly? Colin Farrelly has argued at length that we should not. Rather, when it comes to genetics, we should be prioritarians. In this paper, I examine how egalitarianism in the field of 'genetics and justice' is getting a bad name particularly with the seemingly more plausible prioritarian approach. Although the equality-priority debate is far wider than genetics, and consequently issues here are traceable to wider disagreements, for present purposes I concentrate on some of its possible genetic implications. I argue that extending the scope of equality into access to speculative genetic intervention is not as implausible as sometimes described, particularly regarding inequalities arising from, or reinforced by this post-genetic setting. I introduce this argument in response to the leading prioritarian approach in this field, namely that of Farrelly. I hope to show that this approach is not unambiguously superior to an egalitarian counterpart.
Simon Hampson
Monism, Dualism and Incentives
In this paper, I discuss Murphy's distinction between 'monist' and 'dualist' conceptions of justice, and how this relates to the on-going philosophical debate over the justice or otherwise of inequalities arising from incentive payments to talented workers. I argue that Murphy's argument for monism- and his rejection of dualism- can be rebutted by two different dualist arguments. However, these two dualist positions are incompatible, and so- if we are dualists- we will have to choose between them.
Volker Kaul
On Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty"
In this paper I would like to analyse the influential claim that holds that personal autonomy is constituted by a person’s identity. For a definition of a person’s identity I largely follow Harry Frankfurt and conceive it in terms of what a person cares about and what she loves. In this theory of autonomy an agent is meant to be autonomous as long as she identifies with and is rationally coherent among her commitments, and under the condition that she is fully informed and her concerns are based upon true beliefs. The particularity of this approach to personal autonomy is that it does not relate self-governance to a distinctive conception of morality which regards every person capable of understanding and acknowledging in practice the reasons for moral constraints. This means that autonomy consists in the form and not the content of personal concerns. The question that arises out of such a conception of autonomy is why what people care about must be inherently respected by others if personal commitments are not meant to be justifiable. For a person to live autonomous, her autonomy must be necessarily recognized by others. My thesis is that personal autonomy understood in terms of an “ethics of identity” can impossibly found a claim to negative freedom, insofar as it does not provide the reasons for respecting the autonomy of others. Hence, a person’s identity cannot be the foundation of her autonomy.
Eszter Kollar
Justifying the Global Scope of Distributive Justice Through the Concept of 'Structural Affectedness'
In this paper I challenge the thesis according to which the nation-state and the people it encompasses constitute the primary context of distributive justice. That is, I question whether partiality towards fellow citizens with regard to distribution of goods and services, is justifiable or not. The theoretical question to be answered is the following: “What is the adequate scope of distributive justice under contemporary circumstances of justice?” In order to answer this, I analyze the divergent normative justifications for fixing the context of justice in the nation-state or extending it to the global community. First, I explain why an inquiry into the scope of justice is a relevant one, and how it is to be carried out (1.). Then, I scrutinize a limited scope (domestic) and an extended scope (global) of distributive justice, by assessing the normative apparatus employed in their justification. Namely, I contrast the contractualist and the cosmopolitan reasons employed in the normative justification of the scope (2. 3.). Finally, I introduce the concept of 'structural affectedness,' and argue that the concept employed in the justification of a global scope carries as considerable moral weight as the reasons employed in the justification of the domestic scope (4.). Finally, I draw the conclusions, according to which, people around the world affecting and affected by global coercive structures of social cooperation owe each other a justification for the distribution of burdens and benefits produced by them. That is, they owe each other the concern of distributive justice.
Shi Li
An Analysis on Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty"
Alessio Lo Giudice
Libera multitudo
This work is meant to study the new possible manifestations of constituent power in a post-national context. In particular, starting from a critical analysis of Hardt and Negri's spontaneist understanding of multitude, the paper focuses on what we could infer from a parallel reading of Hobbes and Spinoza on this topic. In contrast to what Hardt and Negri argue, there seems to be no conceptual opposition between the structural pluralism of multitude and the political unification granted on forms of institutional representation. Indeed, the notions of multitude considered by Hobbes and Spinoza hide some complementary aspects leading us to identify in the concept of “person of multitude” the theoretical expression of the constituent power. The “person of multitude” is a political intermediate stage between multitude and political institution. It entails a mutual relationship with the institutional power: the latter cannot be articulated without the support of the person of multitude; in turn, the person of multitude needs to be expressed through an institutional representation. This relationship frames the dynamic between constituent and constituted powers showing their simultaneous genesis. This seems quite relevant in the framework of the contemporary manifestation of a post-national constituent power, as it forces philosophical thought to focus on institutional devices apt to increase the representative effectiveness of our political systems; in particular, in order to articulate a democratic and effective representative form of the “European person of multitude”.
Michael Moehler
Rawls and the Problem of Stability of Cooperation
In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls identifies two principles of justice for the basic structure of
society. These principles essentially remain the same throughout all of his later, relevant writings.
What changes is their justification, however. Rawls regards his principles of ‘justice as fairness’
first as the most rational ones, then as the most reasonable ones, and finally as justified by public
reason. The move from the rational to public reason is motivated by Rawls’ intention to broaden
the justificatory basis for his principles. The wider the consensus on the principles of justice is,
the more broadly they can secure stability of cooperation. I shall argue, however, that Rawls’
move from the rational to public reason does not widen the scope of his principles. Instead it
narrows their reach by raising the standard of rationality the contractors need to fulfil. The higher
the standard is, the fewer contractors can fulfil it. As a consequence, the principles of justice as
fairness can only secure stability of cooperation locally. In order to derive basic principles of
cooperation that can be agreed upon globally, one has to go back to the notion of the rational, and
then follow a different path to stability. I will do so by first, laying out the basic structure of such
an alternative theory based on instrumental rationality, and second, by discussing its rationale.
Roald Nashi
Reasonable Citizens
This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of Rawls' concept of “reasonable citizen.” The paper has two parts. In the first part I review a recent attempt to elucidate this concept and find it wanting. In the second part I argue that we gain a better understanding of the concept “reasonable citizen” by paying close attention to Rawls' discussion of the original position in A Theory of Justice. I ague that the original position is best described as a hypothetical, reasonable precommitment (in a sense to be specified in the paper), and the hypothetical decision reached in it as one that fully reasonable people would have made under normal conditions. Then I explain how this way of interpreting Rawls' thought experiment in A Theory of Justice gives content to the idea of “reasonable citizen” in his Political Liberalism.
Miriam Ronzoni & Laura Valentini
On the Meta-ethical Status of Constructivism: A Challenge to G.A. Cohen's "Facts and Principles
In “Facts and Principles”, G.A. Cohen advocates what he claims to be a novel meta-ethical thesis, and argues that it poses a serious threat to constructivist approaches to justification. In this paper we show that Cohen overestimates the critical potential of his thesis, because he fails to appreciate that the meta-ethical question tackled by constructivists differs from the one he himself addresses. We suggest that meta-ethical questions can be asked at three different levels: (1) descriptive, (2) ontological, and (3) methodological. (1) Descriptive questions address the issue of how normative thinking actually works; (2) ontological questions deal with the existence and status of moral truths; (3) methodological questions concern how moral principles should be justified. Whilst constructivists operate within the province of methodological meta-ethics and ground their specific methodological stand on a form of ontological agnosticism about the existence of moral truths, Cohen's thesis belongs to the domain of descriptive meta-ethics. In light of this, we put forward the following two claims. First, we contend that a descriptive thesis about the nature of practical reasoning cannot by itself constitute a refutation of a theory about how moral reasoning should be conducted so as to obtain valid substantive conclusions. Second, we show that the additional arguments Cohen needs to deliver for his thesis to have the desired disrupting impact on constructivism, pertain either the domain of ontological meta-ethics, a domain which he admits to wishing to stay clear of, or to the domain of methodological meta-ethics, a domain that his thesis in “Facts and Principles” does not tackle.
Klem Ryan
Comparing Liberal Theories - John Stuart Mill & Joseph Raz
In this paper I explore two versions of an argument for liberalism. I first provide a brief outline of John Stuart Mill's famous defence of liberalism. I then outline Joseph Raz's liberalism pointing to the major distinctions between the two positions. Principally, the dissimilarity between the two lies in Mill's emphasis of fallibalism as a central component of his epistemic argument for providing freedom, the development of knowledge and, through this, his hope for progress. In contrast, Raz combines a pluralist view with a perfectionist version of liberalism, which rests on a different epistemic view than Mill – that we can have certain knowledge and that it is right for societies to acknowledge and build from this fact. Having sketched this background I then proceed to test both theories against two issues that have posed difficulties in liberal societies – the widespread problem of drug use and the specific issue of the application of laïcité and its effect on religious autonomy in France. I illustrate the difficulties that each issue raises for the two liberal theories – specifically the limitation of Mill's theory in coping with drug use in society and the difficulty for Raz in determining when autonomy is rightly restricted. I conclude that Mill's version of liberalism is limited by his view of fallibalism and its relationship to the harm principle, while Raz does not adequately deal with the problem of the absence of convergence that is evident in modern liberal societies, and the impact that this has on the concept of autonomy.
Christian Schemmel
Egalitarian Justice as Just One Value?
Luck egalitarians claim that it is unfair if some people are worse or better off than others due to factors that are beyond their control. Such factors are called “brute luck”. Hence, fairness demands that brute luck be equalised. When challenged that the implementation of the principle of brute luck equalisation would lead to absurd results, luck egalitarians such as G.A. Cohen reply that it is a mistake to think that they recommend the equalisation of brute luck, all things considered. Egalitarian justice is only one value; other values, such as liberty, or efficiency, have to be taken into account in order to arrive at a decision what to do. The luck egalitarian principle of justice is hence intended as a moral principle that delivers only pro tanto moral reasons; reasons which have to be balanced, or weighed, against competing reasons stemming from other moral principles. I argue that we should not conceive of principles of justice as pro tanto moral principles, for several reasons: a) Such a notion of justice as just one value cannot account for the intuitive dimension of justice claims, according to which violations of justice are especially grave moral wrongs that cannot be easily offset by appeal to other values. b) The luck egalitarian notion of fairness as a property of distributive states of affairs and their relation to individual choices does not correspond to the notion of fairness that justice claims are normally taken to appeal to – that is, to adopt Rawls' characterisation, fairness in the adjudication of competing claims. c) According to a notion of justice as morally prior, the function of justice is to identify the moral principles that are fundamental for regulating common life in a society. Against that, a merely pro tanto notion of justice has difficulties to give a plausible explanation of the point of principles of justice.
Julia Skorupska
Finding Space For Politics: The Concept of Politics In Contemporary Political Theory
In the wake of the publication of Rawls' 'Political Liberalism' political theorists including Mouffe, Connolly and Honig have become increasingly interested in the concept of politics. They tend to see being 'political' as a positive attribute of a political theory and argue that we must make our theories more political. This trend raises the questions of why 'politics' has received so much attention from theorists, of what they mean by this term, and of how far they succeed in making their theories more political in the senses that they outline. I will argue that the current interest in politics can be understood as a response to the problem of pluralism and that understanding politics as a concept that fills this role generates a distinctive definition of politics. Pluralism is perceived to be a problem primarily by political theorists who value individual expression, and who worry that both the absence of state action and state action of the wrong sort will undermine the ability of individuals to express themselves. Politics is seen as an answer to the problem of pluralism because it is understood to involve debate about what we should do with those who offer alternative perspectives. It is interesting that this understanding of politics captures only one aspect of what we might call our pre-theoretical understanding of politics. While it is natural to describe using discussion to settle what should be done as political, in ordinary language we also tend to describe as political the use of compromise and negotiation to settle these questions.
I shall further argue that while the participants in the contemporary debate are united in demanding that more space must be made for actual discussion of substantive issues in political theories, none of them succeed in introducing this space. Instead, each redefines the dilemma they face, and argues that on closer examination the situation that we face is revealed to be one in which there is in fact agreement rather than persistent and irreducible disagreement, and therefore they argue that the correct response to pluralism involves making latent agreement explicit and tolerating all remaining disagreement. Thus they are united in the view that if the right perspective is adopted, the appearance of real disagreement on important matters is dissolved, and that actual discussion and engagement are superfluous.
Raffaela Strina
The art of building bridges and portraying constellations
In the western philosophical tradition a gross prejudice has banished imagination from the ambit of knowledge, confining it to the works of poets and visionary artists. So, now it's very difficult for us, not only to think the epistemological function of fantasy in interpreting and giving voice to reality, but also to see its fundamental role in public decisions: imagination and politics together sound like an oxymoron. In my paper I try to rethink this role starting from two points of views. On the one hand, I analyse the effective function of political imaginary in the western thought in the different forms of utopia and dystopia, from Plato's Republic to the works of Orwell, Bradbury, Huxley. On the other hand, I use the not – political and eminently theoretical definition of imagination given by Adorno to rethink a possible application to politics. Fantasy for Adorno is the creative mental power of representing what doesn't exist yet, going beyond conventional and clichéd visions. It acts as a bridge between different time dimensions, allowing us to think today (in the time of irreversibility) what doesn't exist, but tomorrow could come true. Adorno sees imagination also a relational faculty that establishes unsuspected connections between heterogeneous and apparently extraneous or incompatible aspects of world, allowing us to understand the multiplicity of meanings the same reality can assume, linking events, ideas, individuals, in a network of relations, in an articulated and complex picture, which Adorno calls constellation. The double metaphor of building bridges and portraying constellation expresses the new function of fantasy from epistemology to a politics.
Emma Tieffenbach
Invisible-hand justifications: types and worth
Social scientists offer invisible-hand explanations (IHE) when they want to show that a social phenomenon, which seems to have been intended, could as well not to have been intentionally brought about. Conventionally, an IHE explains how a desirable social pattern can be brought about by a large amount of actors who make decision in light of what they think is their best self-interest but who are so embedded in their individual position that they are unaware of their responsibility in the existence of the given social pattern. In addition to their alleged explanatory power, IHE are sometimes enunciated with the view to justify certain institutions or policies. Outcomes that arise by an invisible-hand process are desirable, it is argued. Alternatively, outcomes that can arise by an invisible-hand process should not arise differently, i.e. through deliberate intervention, as others suggest. Although common, these justificatory uses of IHE challenge the distinction between enterprises of explanation and justification. Indeed, a justification is a normative activity that, by definition, an explanation of how a given state of affairs emerges and/or maintains itself can not perform. Our goal is to understand how and whether the appeal to IHE relates the two activities. We call “invisible-hand justification” (IHJ) any arguments which, at one point, appeal to an invisible-hand explanation with the view to reach some normative conclusion about what should be done or praised. Our inquiry into the liberal and libertarian literatures from Adam Smith to Robert Nozick, sorts out five different IHJ. After reconstructing each of these IHE, we assess their respective independent worth and/or consistency within their authors' overall political philosophy.
Gry Wester
Distributive justice and the significance of positional goods
Brighouse and Swift have recently argued that positional goods have a special significance for distributive justice. Positional goods are goods for which it is the case that your standing in the distribution relative to others affects your absolute standing in the distribution of some other good. Therefore, positional goods may provide a reason to endorse an equal distribution, but it is a reason that is not rooted in a concern for equality as such. Furthermore, Brighouse and Swift argue, an unequal distribution of positional goods violates equality of opportunity. Although this may be justified all things considered, this distribution would constitute a particularly severe form of unfairness. I propose that the argument for this special relevance of positional goods turns on an implausible conception of the value of equality of opportunity. Positional goods are not positional in any essential sense; which goods turn out to be positional is contingent on our distributive principles themselves. The 'synthesis' of absolutes and relativities only constitutes a further reason for an equal distribution insofar as we have already decided on distributive principles that dictate that the allocation of certain goods should be based on a fair competition. It is hard to see, then, that positional goods have any special relevance. It might prove more fruitful to pursue questions relating to the meaning and importance of equality of opportunity.
