The duty to help our fellows is not the same,and not stringent in the same way as thefamiliar duties to refrain from violence toothers, and to be honest. In general, beinghelpful to others is commendable, and to beheld up as a virtue. Only in cases wherereciprocity is possible and likely may we speakof anything stronger along this line. Moreover,the case of AIDS in Africa is furthercomplicated by the fact that it is easilypreventable by readily understandable behavioralterations. However, there are certainpossible (...) spin-offs, especially from mutation,which can happen when, as with AIDS, there aremillions of cases. So we in the west have somefurther, reason for concern and action thansheer good will. What can be done is especiallydifficult because of cultural factors of majororder. Serious investigation of how,nevertheless, to get the message across isclearly in order. Otherwise, we cannot and, asa nation, should not, try to do much more. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen’s Rescuing Justice and Equality proposes that both concepts need rescuing from the work of John Rawls. Especially, it is concerned with Rawls’ famous second principle of justice according to which social primary goods should be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution is to the benefit of the worst off. The question is why this would ever be necessary if all parties are just. Cohen and I agree that Rawls cannot really justify inequalities on the basis given. But (...) he also thinks equality is the correct analysis of justice, though he provides no actual direct arguments for this. He does, however, provide a striking analytical argument claiming that fundamental principles of justice must be fact insensitive, and that Rawls’s view of justice violates this requirement. I argue that the requirement is itself misconceived and that principles of justice cannot possibly be fact insensitive in the sense developed by Cohen. Few philosophers share this view of Cohen’s—which I argue is due to several conceptual mistakes. With these ironed out, the contractarian view, broadly speaking, is seen to be plausible and powerful. Meanwhile Cohen appears to embrace intuitionism, a stance that cannot possibly be acceptable in social philosophy. In the end, Cohen is successful in arguing that Rawls cannot have what he wants, but neither is Cohen successful in claiming that justice is equality. (shrink)

Does it make sense, and is it at all plausible, to view the moral obligation to keep particular promises and do what is called for by particular agreements such as contracts as being founded on a general "Social Contract" -- i.e., to give a contractarian account of promise-keeping? This paper argues that it does. Borrowing from Hume, David Lewis, Gilbert Harman, and David Gauthier, I provide a sketch of what the "social contract" is (not, e.g., either a real or a (...) hypothetical meeting of all with all) -- namely, a form of commitment, makable by any individual, but with commitment likewise to social reinforcement. Then it is argued that Searle's familiar thesis is in error in that it leaves out the latter factor as well as implicitly calling for a version of the former. Then it is argued that this general understanding of morality can reasonably issue in a specific rule about agreements that would be one among others in a contractarian moral platform. (shrink)

Our topic asks for a/the “normative outlook” on “the cultural edifice of the moral mind.” In this essay, I shall attempt to fix a fairly definite meaning for each of these notions, and then argue that our normative outlook insofar as this cultural edifice is moral is very strong approval. By the (or a) “cultural edifice,” I take it, we mean pretty much the whole of society insofar as it is a product of human effort, which in turn is affected, (...) no doubt, by luck – good and bad – and shot through, informed, and constrained by the moralities of the various societies that make it up. But in order to talk coherently of “the moral mind,” we need a clear and strong moral theory, one that presents a basic set of moral principles or ideas, ones which ought, therefore, to impose a coherent shape on the whole. This is vague, to be sure, and will be thought in a basic way to be implausible. I shall try at least briefly to affirm the idea and to insist that it is not after all so implausible. Is there, then, a supreme, overriding morality? Yes, I claim (in the wake, to be sure, of many others, including Aristotle, Kant, David Gauthier, and Nicholas Rescher). It has one supreme idea that nobody is to make their way in the world by imposing costs on other innocent people. (That formulation is a generalization of the ideas of Kant, Hobbes, Socrates, and perhaps that of mankind generally.) The cultural world as we know it includes the accomplishments of the original and the brilliant, plus even more the communal and cooperative efforts of innumerable people, including symphony orchestras and art museums on and on, down to a gathering of friends playing cricket. On the other hand, of course, it contains much violence and evil. What our world would look like in the absence of that evil is very hard to say – but, surely, it would be better. (shrink)

I take issue with the view that libertarian theory does not imply any particular stand on abortion. Liberty is the absence of interference with people’s wills—interests, wishes, and desires. Only entities that have such are eligible for the direct rights of libertarian theory. Foetuses do not; and if aborted, there is then no future person whose rights are violated. Hence the “liberal” view of abortion: women (especially) may decide whether to bear the children they have conceived. Birth is a good (...) dividing line between the freedom to abort and the point at which society is permitted to take an interest. Once born, children detach from their mothers; no invasion of their bodies is necessary to separate them. Yet some ways of bringing them up can have a negative impact on society. There is a thus legitimate interest in protecting ourselves from the results of truly bad parenting. (shrink)

Brettschneider argues that the granting of property rights to all entails a right of exclusion by acquirer/owners against all others, that this exclusionary right entails a loss on their part, and that to make up for this, property owners owe any nonowners welfare rights. Against this, I argue that exclusion is not in fact a cost. Everyone is to have liberty rights, which are negative: what people are excluded from is the liberty to attack and despoil others. Everyone, whether an (...) owner of external property or not, benefits from this and thus rationally exchanges that liberty in exchange for a like abandonment of it by others. The proper social contract trade is thus liberty for liberty—not liberty for owners and positive welfare rights for nonowners (though the latter in fact benefit greatly from the property rights of owners). (shrink)

The argument in this paper is that although rationality and morality are distinguishable concepts, there is nevertheless a rational morality, a set of principles, namely, which it is rational of all to require of all. The argument of this paper is that such a morality would certainly issue in a general condemnation of aggressive war. (Whether this also makes it irrational for States to engage in such activities is another, and not entirely settled, matter). Correlatively, it would issue in a (...) strong right of defense. Would this right be sufficient to include resort to nuclear deterrence, if need be? It is argued that the answer must be in the affirmative - although the question of ‘need’ is by no means settled in current circumstances. (shrink)

Abstract: The gist of Welsclie’s argument seems to be to pick up on an idea he attributes to Rawls, that in a true property-owning democracy, productive wealth would be distributed more broadly ‘ex ante’ rather than, as now, ‘ex post.’, the point of demarcation being the use of capital to generate wealth and income. As against this, I argue that ex ante distribution of capital is impossible, because business activity creates wealth, and thus we don’t know what there is to (...) distribute ex ante. Moreover, the prospect of greater wealth for the producers ex post is what especially motivates them to produce, and without production we are poor. It is also noted that Rawls’s ‘difference principle’ does not in fact have the egalitarian implications he supposes, nor really any distributive implications, despite Rawls’s intentions. (shrink)

James Sterba advances several arguments designed to show that libertarianism, contrary to what this author and other libertarians think, actually implies support for welfarism and even egalitarianism. This discussion shows why his arguments do not work. There is preliminary discussion of our parameters: how much is Sterba claiming we have a minimum right to in the way of welfare? It is argued that if this is set very low, a libertarian society would easily eliminate the poverty he is concerned about, (...) and if it is set very high, then the standard could be unmeetable and certainly could not have been met until very recently at the least. More abstractly, it is argue that Sterba is in error about the normative assumptions required for libertarianism’s strong distinction between nonharm and outright help. Once these are cleared up, it is seen that his case depends on equivocation. The duty not to harm simply does not imply a duty to help. In the closing pages, a contractarian framework is advanced to explain the libertarian’s disaffection for the kind of ‘strong’ rights Sterba wants to uphold. (shrink)

The basic bearer of responsibility is individuals, because that isall there are – nothing else can literally be the bearer of fullresponsibility. Claims about group responsibility therefore needanalysis. This would be impossible if all actions must be understoodas ones that could be performed whether or not anyone else exists.Individuals often act by virtue of membership in certain groups;often such membership bears a causal role in our behavior, andsometimes people act deliberately in order to promote the prospectsof members of a given (...) group. Nevertheless, it is rational to awardproportionally to individual contributions to those actions andindividual shares in the production of the consequences of thoseactions. (shrink)

The discovery that people far away are in bad shape seems to generate a sense of guilt on the part of many articulate people in our part of the world, even though they are no worse off now that we’ve heard about them than they had been before. I will take it as given that we are certainly responsible for evils we inflict on others, no matter where, and that we owe those people compensation. Not all similarly agree that it (...) is not in general our duty to make other people better off, and therefore not in general our fault when people are not better off than they happen to be, even if perhaps we could have made them so by efforts of our own. Nev ertheless, I have seen no plausible argument that we owe something, as a matter of general duty, to those to whom we have done nothing wrong. Still, morally commendable motives of humanity and sympathy support beneficence, and if we wish to call those “duties,” there is something to be said for that, too. I shall, in fact, try to say it later in this essay. (shrink)

Of all the attitudes and theories associated with or identified as "pacifism," only the doctrine that everyone ought not to resist violence with force is of philosophical interest, And it is logically incoherent. Pacifism's popularity rests on confusions about what the doctrine really is. If we have rights, We have the right to prevent infringements upon them. We have the right to use force to protect our rights, And in the degree necessary to accomplish that end. (staff).

What do we owe to the lower animals, if anything? The issues raised by this question are among the most fascinating and fundamental in ethical theory. They provide a real watershed for the moral philosopher and, on perhaps the most widely professed view, a trenchant test of consistency in ethical practice. Among the virtues of these two challenging books is that they make painfully clear that there has been a paucity of clear and plausible argument in support of the nearly (...) universal tendency of humans to eat animal flesh, and to visit varying degrees of pain, discomfort, and unfreedom on the animals in question in the process.When we are asked why it is all right to do this, given our strong belief that it is not all right for us to eat other humans, we tend to give answers that won't readily wash. We may say, for example, that animals are stupid; but we don't think it all right to eat stupid people, including people less apparently competent than many of the higher animals. Or we may say things that are patently untrue, such as that the other animals don't really feel pain anyway. (shrink)

Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice is a collection of essays of the moral and political philosophy of Jan Narveson. The essays in this collection share a consistent theme running through much of Narveson's moral and political philosophy, namely that politics and morals stem from the interests of individual people, and have no antecedent authority over us. The essays in this collection, in various ways and as applied to various aspects of the scene, argue that the ultimate and (...) true point of politics and morals is to enable us to make our lives better, according to our varied senses of what that might mean. (shrink)

This book is a general account of utilitarianism. It claims to provide a justification of the theses in Mill's On Liberty in utilitarian terms. There are several innovations relative to prevailing utilitarian literature of the day.

This brief paper is a general treatment of war – its morality and its political and social effects. Accordingly, we discuss primarily those armed interactions between nations, or, in “civil” wars, those aimed at securing the reins of government. These must, we contend, be inherently immoral on one side – the one which “starts” the war in question – and inherently moral on the other, who after all are defending their lives against the first. To say this requires a moral (...) theory, which we briefly develop. It proceeds on Hobbesian-contractarian lines: if mankind occupies a “state of nature,” then we will all be worse off than if we join with each other in adopting the restrictions of morality – fundamentally, and primarily, of nonviolence, of living at peace with each other. This raises a question about the very rationality of war, to be sure. And yet, war we have, in considerable and unfortunate abundance. How can this be? Some tentative answers are suggested. (shrink)

Are the political ideals of liberty and equality compatible? This question is of central and continuing importance in political philosophy, moral philosophy, and welfare economics. In this book, two distinguished philosophers take up the debate. Jan Narveson argues that a political ideal of negative liberty is incompatible with any substantive ideal of equality, while James P. Sterba argues that Narveson's own ideal of negative liberty is compatible, and in fact leads to the requirements of a substantive ideal of (...) equality. Of course, they cannot both be right. Thus, the details of their arguments about the political ideal of negative liberty and its requirements will determine which of them is right. Engagingly and accessibly written, their debate will be of value to all who are interested in the central issue of what are the practical requirements of a political ideal of liberty. (shrink)

We have long been accustomed to thinking of democracy as a major selling point of Western institutions. That a set of political institutions should be democratic is widely regarded as the sine qua non of their legitimacy. So widespread is this belief that even those whose institutions do not look very democratic to us nevertheless insist on proclaiming them to be such. Meanwhile, an adulatory attitude toward democracy has arisen in many quarters, and many theorists have taken up anew the (...) idea that if democracy is the way to go in political institutions, then it must also be the way to go in “other” areas, notably in economic and social institutions. So there has arisen a call for “economic democracy” — which is taken to mean, especially, that the “means of production” should be managed by their constituent workers in concert rather than by some few who own, or act for the owners of, those enterprises. Robert Dahl, in his influential Preface to Economic Democracy, sums it up nicely when he proclaims a “stronger justification” for worker participation: “ If democracy is justified in governing the state, then it must also be justified in governing economic enterprises; and to say that it is not justified in governing economic enterprises is to imply that it is not justified in governing the state.”. (shrink)

This article argues that there is no sound basis for thinking that we have a general and strong duty to rectify disparities of wealth around the world, apart from the special case where some become wealthy by theft or fraud. The nearest thing we have to a rational morality for all has to be built on the interests of all, and they include substantial freedoms, but not substantial entitlements to others' assistance. It is also pointed out that the situation of (...) the world's poor is not that of victims of disasters, but simply of less-developed technology, which can be repaired by full and free trade relations with others. The true savior of the world's poor is the businessman, not the missionary. What we do need to do is strike down barriers to commerce, rather than requisition "aid.". (shrink)

Down through the past decade and more, no philosophical writer has taken a greater interest in the issues of how we ought to act in relation to animals, nor pressed more strongly the case for according them rights, than Tom Regan, in many articles, reviews, and exchanges at scholarly conferences and in print. Now, in The Case for Animal Rights we have a substantial volume in which Regan most fully and systematically presents his case for a strong panoply of rights (...) for animals. The argument is direct and cumulative, leading up to a final chapter in which Regan draws his conclusions: vegetarianism is obligatory, hunting and trapping wrong, and virtually no use of animals permissible in scientific experimentation. These are radical conclusions; few of us would be unaffected by them, and most of us, indeed, would be in for a terrific alteration in various aspects of our lifestyles. It certainly behooves us, then, to follow his arguments with care. In the present essay, my main concern will be to examine the arguments in this book. But I shall also be concerned to develop an alternative viewpoint, though at lesser length than the subject merits. (shrink)

The discovery that people far away are in bad shape seems to generate a sense of guilt on the part of many articulate people in our part of the world, even though they are no worse off now that we’ve heard about them than they had been before. I will take it as given that we are certainly responsible for evils we inflict on others, no matter where, and that we owe those people compensation. Not all similarly agree that it (...) is not in general our duty to make other people better off, and therefore not in general our fault when people are not better off than they happen to be, even if perhaps we could have made them so by efforts of our own. Nev ertheless, I have seen no plausible argument that we owe something, as a matter of general duty, to those to whom we have done nothing wrong. Still, morally commendable motives of humanity and sympathy support beneficence, and if we wish to call those “duties,” there is something to be said for that, too. I shall, in fact, try to say it later in this essay. (shrink)

Chapter One Moral Issues and Moral Theory The Subject Matter of This Inquiry Until about thirty years ago, courses in ethics were devoted almost exclusively ...

I present what I take to be the approach to property rights, in which property is basically a unitary concept: owners are the ones with the right to do, and prohibit others from doing, whatever there is to do with the thing owned, within the limits imposed by the rights of others to their things. I expound and defend the idea of in more or less Lockean mode. I also point to the many difficulties of application of the general idea, (...) leading to the need to negotiate at many points. For example, the vagueness of land ownership as we consider what goes on in the earth below or the sky above; to consideration of not just possible physical damages to others by virtue of ownership, but also aesthetic ones; and to the increasingly important area of intellectual property. I argue that the original idea continues to hold, though it underdetermines any number of specific issues. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall be concerned to explore the utilitarian account of promising, which for some time has had, in many circles, the status of a dead horse. My aim is not to flog it, however, but to show that perhaps it yet lives. At least, I hope to show that some prominent and apparently powerful objections to this account do not find their mark. In the course of this, several subjects of wider interest will come in for review (...) as well, and it is hoped that some further light on the utilitarian position in general, as well as the concepts of expectation and obligation, may glimmer forth.At the outset, some clarification of the question at issue about promising is essential. Briefly, the question is: why ought we to keep our promises? Less question-beggingly put: why, if at all, should we keep promises, and to what extent?; where by talk of ‘extent’ it is meant that the question of whether we sometimes should not keep them, of its being a matter of attaching a “degree of stringency” to the obligation, is to be kept open. (shrink)

Justin Holt argues that the Rawlsian requirements for justice are, contrary to Rawls’ own pronouncements, better met by socialism than ‘property owning democracy’, both of them preferring both to just plain capitalism, even with a welfare state tacked on. I suggest that Rawls’s ‘requirements’ are far less clear than most think, and that the only clarified version prefers the capitalist welfare state.

This collection addresses the central issue of political philosophy or, in a couple of cases, issues very close to the heart of that question: Is government justified? This ancient question has never been more alive than at the present time, in the midst of continuing political and social upheaval in virtually every part of the world. Only two of the pieces collected here have been published previously. All the other contributions were, at the time of the inception of the volume, (...) fresh from the pens, or still to emerge from the pens, of their authors. (shrink)

Jeffrey Friedman broaches a number of criticisms of Libertarianism as a conceptual basis for opposing the extensive modern welfare state, examining several variants and concluding that they are fundamentally unsupported. He opts for a “consequentialist” view of foundations. Nevertheless, he thinks that the modem welfare state is subject to effective critique along such lines. But rational contractarian individualism works and does provide foundations for libertarianism, while “consequentialism” is an ill‐defined theory.that is quite unpromising for the proposed critique; nevertheless, Friedman's empirical (...) and economic critique of the welfare state is valid. (shrink)

This article discusses the question of poverty and wealth in light of several theses put forward by Larry Temkin. The claim that there is a sort of cosmic injustice involved when great disparities of ability or of wealth are found. He is concerned especially about disparities that are undeserved. It is agreed that this is unfortunate, but not agreed that they are unjust in a sense that supports the imposition of rectification on anyone else. Nor is poverty typically undeserved in (...) the only really relevant sense: the poor simply do not produce enough to earn them high incomes, and probably correct incomes they derive are indeed what such efforts are worth in the circumstances. That persons with very low incomes may merit our sympathy is accepted, but sympathy leads to charity, rather than to the involuntary exploitation of the better off. The essay concludes with further observations about the relevance of free markets, and points to the iniquities of the restrictions on commerce that are the most potent source of perpetuated poverty today. (shrink)