In recent years the concepts of individual autonomy and political liberalism have been the subjects of intense debate, but these discussions have occurred largely within separate academic disciplines. Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism contains essays devoted to foundational questions regarding both the notion of the autonomous self and the nature and justification of liberalism. Written by leading figures in moral, legal and political theory, the volume covers inter alia the following topics: the nature of the self and its relation (...) to autonomy, the social dimensions of autonomy and the political dynamics of respect and recognition, and the concept of autonomy underlying the principles of liberalism. (shrink)

The concept of individual autonomy is one of the most frequently utilized--and perhaps least understood--terms of current moral, political, and legal debate. The first anthology devoted entirely to this philosophical concept, The Inner Citadel includes both extensive discussions of autonomy itself and theoretical applications of autonomy to various areas of philosophical inquiry. John Christman has assembled essays, many appearing in print for the first time, by such eminent philosophers as Gerald Dworkin, Joel Feinberg, Harry Frankfurt, and David A. (...) J. Richards. Together, these essays provide the necessary foundation for the myriad debates and controversies in areas such as bioethics, feminism, and paternalism whose resolution turns on the nature and value of individual autonomy. As the idea of autonomy is central to such a wide range of philosophical issues and impinges on other disciplines as well, The Inner Citadel will be essential for courses in moral, political, social, and legal philosophy, as well as a valuable resource for students of law, political science, and psychology. (shrink)

This accessible and user-friendly text will prove invaluable to any student coming to social and political philosophy for the first time. It provides a broad survey of fundamental social and political questions in modern society, as well as clear, accessible discussions of the philosophical issues central to political thought. Topics covered include: the foundations of political authority, the nature and grounds of economic justice, the limits of tolerance, considerations of community, race, gender, and culture in questions of justice, and radical (...) critiques of current political theories. (shrink)

This accessible book is invaluable to anyone coming to social and political philosophy for the first time. It provides a broad survey of key social and political questions in modern society, as well as clear discussions of the philosophical issues central to those questions and to political thought more generally. Unique among books of this kind is a sustained treatment of specifically social philosophy, including topics such as epistemic injustice, pornography, marriage, sexuality and the family. The relation between such social (...) questions and specifically political topics is discussed, topics which include: political authority, economic justice, the limits of tolerance, considerations of community, race, gender, and culture in questions of justice, and radical critiques of current political theories. Updates to the Second Edition emphasize the non-statist areas of the subject and include two brand new chapters on social philosophy and transnational justice. This Second Edition also includes revisions throughout and coverage of recent theoretical discussions and world events. (shrink)

This collection of 24 essays, written by eminent philosophers and political theorists, brings together fresh debates on some of the most fundamental questions in contemporary political philosophy, including human rights, equality, constitutionalism, the value of democracy, identity and political neutrality. Presents fresh debates on six of the fundamental questions in contemporary political philosophy Each question is treated by a pair of opposing essays written by eminent scholars Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, invites the reader to participate in the (...) exchange of arguments and paves the way for further discussion Will serve as an accessible introduction to the major topics in political philosophy, whilst also capturing the imagination of professional philosophers Offers the unique opportunity to observe leading philosophers engaging in head-to-head debate. (shrink)

We present several new studies focusing on “salience effects”—the decreased tendency to attribute knowledge to someone when an unrealized possibility of error has been made salient in a given conversational context. These studies suggest a complicated picture of epistemic universalism: there may be structural universals, universal epistemic parameters that influence epistemic intuitions, but that these parameters vary in such a way that epistemic intuitions, in either their strength or propositional content, can display patterns of genuine cross-cultural diversity.

Most explanations of the rational authority of testimony provide little guidance when evaluating individual pieces of testimony. In practice, however, we are remarkably sensitive to the varying epistemic credentials of testimony: extending trust when it is deserved, and withholding it when it is not. A complete account of the epistemology of testimony should, then, have something to say about when it is that testimony is trustworthy. In the typical case, to judge someone trustworthy requires judging them to be competent and (...) sincere. In this essay we develop an exchange-based account of testimony that shows how those who receive testimony are in a position to evaluate the sincerity of speakers. (shrink)

Departing from most studies of property, this book focuses directly on the concept of ownership, on the complex structure of property rights, and the relation between that structure and distributive justice. The traditional view that ownership must amount to full sovereignty over what is owned is abandoned. A new theory of property is put forward, one which more accurately reflects the various social values that property ownership protects, but which also makes egalitarian economic principles more compelling and powerful.

Disagreement is a hot topic right now in epistemology, where there is spirited debate between epistemologists who argue that we should be moved by the fact that we disagree and those who argue that we need not. Both sides to this debate often use what is commonly called “the method of cases,” designing hypothetical cases involving peer disagreement and using what we think about those cases as evidence that specific normative theories are true or false, and as reasons for believing (...) as such. With so much weight being given in the epistemology of disagreement to what people think about cases of peer disagreement, our goal in this paper is to examine what kinds of things might shape how people think about these kinds of cases. We will show that two different kinds of framing effect shape how people think about cases of peer disagreement, and examine both what this means for how the method of cases is used in the epistemology of disagreement and what this might tell us about the role that motivated cognition is playing in debates about which normative positions about peer disagreement are right and wrong. (shrink)

In numerous accounts of both autonomy and freedom, social or relational elements have been offered as conceptual requirements in addition to purely procedural conditions. In addition, it is claimed that social recognition of the normative authority or self-trust of the agent is conceptually required for autonomy. In this paper I argue that in cases where people find themselves completely dislocated from the social and cultural homes that had provided them with the language in which to formulate and express their values, (...) it is clear that social recognition of the sort defended in relational models is causally but not conceptually required for agency to be (re-)established. This is shown by noting that often victims of human tracking or smuggling find themselves in foreign settings where it is quite up for grabs where and how they will attempt to reconstruct a life narrative which they can generally embrace. Therefore, seeing social recognition as conceptually required for autonomous agency or freedom would ignore the variability in the ways that such recognition must be expressed. (shrink)

Freedom is widely regarded as a basic social and political value that is deeply connected to the ideals of democracy, equality, liberation, and social recognition. Many insist that freedom must include conditions that go beyond simple “negative” liberty understood as the absence of constraints; only if freedom includes other conditions such as the capability to act, mental and physical control of oneself, and social recognition by others will it deserve its place in the pantheon of basic social values. Positive Freedom (...) is the first volume to examine the idea of positive liberty in detail and from multiple perspectives. With contributions from leading scholars in ethics and political theory, this collection includes both historical studies of the idea of positive freedom and discussions of its connection to important contemporary issues in social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Are humans free, or are we determined by our genes and the world around us? The question of freedom is not only one of philosophy’s greatest conundrums, but also one of the most fundamental questions of human existence. It’s particularly pressing in societies like ours, where our core institutions of law, ethics, and religion are built around the belief in individual freedom. Can one still affirm human freedom in an age of science? And if free will doesn’t exist, does it (...) make sense to act as though it does? These are the issues that are presented, probed, and debated in the following chapters. A dozen experts―specialists in medicine, psychology, ethics, theology, and philosophy—grapple with the multiple and often profound challenges presented by today’s brain science. After examining the arguments against traditional notions of free will, several of the authors champion the idea of a chastened but robust free will for today, one that allows us still to affirm the value of first-person experience. (shrink)

This is an appendix containing the stimulus materials for the experiments reported in the paper ‘Salient Alternatives in Perspective.’.

This book is an introduction to twentieth-century Catholic thinker Erich Przywara, retrieving and extending Przywara's vision of the analogy of being as the metaphysical touchstone of a specifically Christian understanding of being. The author offers a detailed exploration of Przywara's thought in conversation with Edith Stein, the Nouvelle Théologie, and leading figures in contemporary postmodern theology.

What should Christian discourse look like after philosophical modernity? In one manner or another the essays in this volume seek to confront and intellectually exorcise the prevailing elements of philosophical modernity, which are inherently transgressive disfigurations and refigurations of the Christian story of creation, sin, and redemption. To enact these various forms and styles of Christian intellectual exorcism these essays make appeal to, and converse with the magisterial corpus of Cyril O'Regan. The themes of the essays center around the Gnostic (...) return in modenity, apocalyptic theology, and the question of the bounds and borders of Christian orthodoxy. Along the way diverse figures are treated such as: Hegel, Shakespeare, von Balthasar, Przywara, Ricouer, Deleuse, Merleau-Ponty, and Kristeva."--Back cover. (shrink)

It is both an ideal and an assumption of traditional conceptions of justice for liberal democracies that citizens are autonomous, self-governing persons. Yet standard accounts of the self and of self-government at work in such theories are hotly disputed and often roundly criticized in most of their guises. John Christman offers a sustained critical analysis of both the idea of the 'self' and of autonomy as these ideas function in political theory, offering interpretations of these ideas which avoid (...) such disputes and withstand such criticisms. Christman's model of individual autonomy takes into account the socially constructed nature of persons and their complex cultural and social identities, and he shows how this model can provide a foundation for principles of justice for complex democracies marked by radical difference among citizens. His book will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics, and the social sciences. (shrink)

It is both an ideal and an assumption of traditional conceptions of justice for liberal democracies that citizens are autonomous, self-governing persons. Yet standard accounts of the self and of self-government at work in such theories are hotly disputed and often roundly criticized in most of their guises. John Christman offers a sustained critical analysis of both the idea of the 'self' and of autonomy as these ideas function in political theory, offering interpretations of these ideas which avoid (...) such disputes and withstand such criticisms. Christman's model of individual autonomy takes into account the socially constructed nature of persons and their complex cultural and social identities, and he shows how this model can provide a foundation for principles of justice for complex democracies marked by radical difference among citizens. His book will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics, and the social sciences. (shrink)

Virtually any appraisal of a person’s welfare, integrity, or moral status, as well as the moral and political theories built on such appraisals, will rely crucially on the presumption that her preferences and values are in some important sense her own. In particular, the nature and value of political freedom is intimately connected with the presupposition that actions one is left free to do flow from desires and values that are truly an expression of the ‘self-government’ of the agent. However, (...) we all know that no person is self-made in the sense of being a fully formed and intact ‘will’ blossoming out of nowhere. Our values and preferences are explained by essential reference to a variety of influences that have come to bear on our development throughout our personal histories. What is needed, then, is to establish an account of self-determination or autonomy that would help determine just when and if the values and preferences we find ourselves with deserve the centrality that moral and political theories place on them. (shrink)

This book represents a major new statement on the issue of property rights. It argues for the justification of some rights of private property while showing why unequal distributions of private property are indefensible. Three features of the book are especially salient: it offers a challenging new pluralist theory of justification; the argument integrates perceptive analyses of the great classical theorists Aristotle, Locke, Hegel and Marx with a discussion of contemporary philosophers such as Nozick and Rawls; and the author moves (...) with assurance among philosophy, law and economics to present a very broad, interdisciplinary study. (shrink)

In this paper I look at various ways that interpersonal and social relations can be seen as required for autonomy. I then consider cases where those dynamics might play out or not in potentially paternalistic situations. In particular, I consider cases of especially vulnerable persons who are attempting to reconstruct a sense of practical identity required for their autonomy and need the potential paternalist’s aid in doing so. I then draw out the implications for standard liberal principles of paternalism, specifically (...) in clinical or therapeutic situations. The picture of potential paternalism that emerges here is much more of a dynamic, interpersonal scenario rather than a case of two separate individuals making decisions independent of each other. (shrink)

In this article I critically discuss a claim made by several writers in philosophy and the social sciences that for an individual to count as a person, a single personality, or the subject of a life, the experiences of the subject in question must take a narrative form. I argue that narrativity is a misleading and, in some ways of understanding it, implausible condition of what it is that adds unity to personhood and personality. I pursue this critique by considering (...) canonical accounts of narrativity in philosophy and literary studies. I consider those connections between events that must hold for the sequence to be considered a narrative: causal, teleological, and thematic connections. I argue that for each of these, the condition that experiential sequences (for a given subject) must have this structure is empty: any life sequence that is reflected upon in an interpretive spirit can meet it. What the condition of narrativity amounts to, then, is the more basic requirement that the person must be able to look upon the factors and events of her life with a certain interpretive reflection, whether or not those factors and events have any particular narrative unity in a traditional sense. (shrink)

This paper undertakes a critical examination of recent philosophical discussions of the concept of individual autonomy. The paper is divided into two parts. Part I focusses on the work of joel feinberg, Gerald dworkin, Harry frankfurt and others, As well as their critics, In the development of the concept of autonomy itself (or its analogues). The suggestion defended is that autonomy is an important complement to freedom when the latter is construed only as the absence of restraints. Also considered is (...) the relation between autonomy and reason or rationality. In part ii, I examine various recent attempts to utilize the property of autonomy in moral and political theory. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to Eric Nelson’s claim that the most prominent versions of a positive concept of freedom all reduce to negative notions. I argue that in his otherwise scholarly and well-argued article, Nelson confuses a conceptual dispute with a normative one based on moral or political principle. Further, I point out that the traditional critique of positive conceptions of liberty, which rests on skepticism about perfectionist conceptions of political value, is lost if we see the debate in (...) the way Nelson lays it out. When these issues are disentangled, I suggest that there is indeed conceptual space for uniquely “positive” conceptions of freedom, and I suggest that the idea of “autonomy” can be taken for such a notion and indeed represents a value worth taking seriously in current discussions of justice. (shrink)

Political perfectionism, by its nature, is a political morality that is always in danger of being taken as parochial, if not exclusionary, in pluralist societies. In their rejection of the traditional liberal insistence on the priority of the right over the good, defenders of perfectionist theories walk a tightrope between defending substantive moral ideals that are elitist and denigrating to reasonable dissenters, on the one hand, and resting on values that render the view indistinguishable from traditional liberal conceptions from which (...) they want to depart, on the other. Steven Wall, in this painstaking defense of liberal perfectionism, avoids the second pitfall but, insofar as he succeeds, arguably falls into the first. (shrink)

To be autonomous is to be governed in one's actions by values, principles, or reflections that are truly one's own, to be one's own person, as opposed to being guided by external, manipulative, or alien forces. This chapter examines the concept of autonomy in western moral philosophy, beginning with a discussion of ancient philosophy to illustrate how autonomy is in many ways a modern idea. It then reviews contemporary debates about autonomy set against a backdrop of historical traditions that do (...) not always place self-government at the centre of moral value, and considers some controversies in the more recent literature on autonomy in moral philosophy. The chapter concludes with a consideration of how that notion functions in social and political thought. (shrink)

Respecting the autonomy of agents grounds various obligations to others such as non-interference, deference to her authority over self-regarding decisions, limitations on paternalism, and so on. According to a broadly liberal moral sensibility, respecting others in this way implies accepting the valuesValue they autonomously hold even if they are judged problematic, immoral, self-destructive, or otherwise non-ideal. In discussions of such respect, it is generally assumed that persons expressing that respect have no direct bearing on whether the subject of that respect (...) is herself autonomous. However, in many situations, persons interact in a way that helps establish or re-establish the autonomy of one or both of these agents themselves.For example, the would-be paternalist may be a therapist whose professional obligationObligations is to facilitate the process of re-establishing autonomy for vulnerable victims of traumaTrauma. In such scenarios, the usual lines between hardPaternalismhard and softPaternalismsoft paternalism, as well as the standard liberal rejection of the former, do not apply. Still, it would be wrong for the aid workerAid workers to simply impose her views of a decent life on the struggling person. How, then, do we reformulate restrictions on paternalism and other such normative strictures grounded in respect forAutonomyrespect for autonomy in scenarios where the relationshipRelationships between client and aid workerAid workers is itself a crucial part of the process that results in the self-governingSelf-governing agency of the client?This paper explores these issues and argues that such scenarios indicate that conceptions of autonomy must view the self as diachronic as well as socially constituted but also must be sensitive to the ways that autonomy can sometimes be established only with others’ help. In particular, the obligationObligations to remain relatively neutralNeutral toward the content of others’ values in showing respect forPersonsrespect for their autonomy must be reformulated to take into account the way interpersonal dynamics themselves help establish the autonomy with which persons hold the values that they hold. These observations are applied to certain cases of aid and care where such questions are central. (shrink)