This article focuses on the challenge of determining the relative weight of domestic and global justice demands. This problem concerns a variety of views that differ on the metric, function, scope, grounds and fundamental interpretation of justice norms. I argue that domestic and global economic justice are irreducibly interdependent. In order to address their exact relation, I discuss and compare three theoretical models: (i) the bottom-up-approach, which prioritizes domestic justice; (ii) the top-down-approach, which prioritizes global justice; and (iii) the horizontal (...) framework, according to which both domestic and global principles pose equally stringent demands that are to be implemented horizontally, without attributing a simple priority to one over the other. I argue that the third model represents the best overall framework, although more complex normative criteria need to be elaborated on the basis of this approach, affecting issues such as justice in climate change mitigation and adaption, development cooperation, trade, finance, taxation and immigration. (shrink)

This article focuses on the challenge of determining the relative weight of domestic and global justice demands. This problem concerns a variety of views that differ on the metric, function, scope, grounds and fundamental interpretation of justice norms. I argue that domestic and global economic justice are irreducibly interdependent. In order to address their exact relation, I discuss and compare three theoretical models: (i) the bottom-up-approach, which prioritizes domestic justice; (ii) the top-down-approach, which prioritizes global justice; and (iii) the horizontal (...) framework, according to which both domestic and global principles pose equally stringent demands that are to be implemented horizontally, without attributing a simple priority to one over the other. I argue that the third model represents the best overall framework, although more complex normative criteria need to be elaborated on the basis of this approach, affecting issues such as justice in climate change mitigation and adaption, development cooperation, trade, finance, taxation and immigration. (shrink)

The article argues that the possibility of an unlimited gap in income and wealth between the top and bottom segments of society is incompatible with a democratic commitment to political equality. T...

This article argues that all-affected principle needs to be reconceptualized to account for the differences in the historical and current social position of those who are or who should be making legitimacy claims. Drawing on Butler’s theory of vulnerability, this article advances a new and more robust all-affected principle that affords a stronger claim to legitimacy to those most-deeply affected by both the current decision in question and the historical process and practices shaping the choices available. In particular, this article (...) identifies three sets of exclusions of groups and claims that drive this reformulation: first, cases of historical injustice such as indigenous peoples; second, cases of current processes of minoritization which silence or render some groups and opinions as marginal such as women, ethnic minorities or even people in lower economic classes; and third, cases of state establishment of boundaries and ‘worthy’ citizenship such as refugees making claims for relocation and asylum. (shrink)

Este libro promete ser una contribución para el estudio de la teoría crítica en general y para el análisis de la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt en particular. Todos los trabajos que están contenidos en este volumen hacen parte del amplio marco teórico de la teoría crítica de la sociedad. Muchos siguen las huellas de los fundadores de esta tendencia, mientras que otros se presentan como críticos de la misma y unos cuantos más tratan de vincular problemas y contextos (...) de relevancia a los conceptos más destacados que se empezaron a construir hace cien años en Frankfurt. Encontramos como buena excusa para su publicación precisamente el año centenario del Instituto de Investigación Social. Además, hemos creído conveniente organizar los materiales en secciones que van desde la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt hasta la consideración de algunos interrogantes de actualidad motivados por el desarrollo de la teoría crítica. No obstante, con esto no pretendemos establecer límites absolutos de clasificación. Confesamos que nuestra forma de organizar los ensayos responde simplemente a criterios editoriales más que a cuestiones teóricas y conceptuales. Claramente las intersecciones entre los estudios aquí presentados son amplias y hacen que cada una de las propuestas pueda dialogar con las otras en función de sus evidentes parecidos de familia. (shrink)

This article critically engages with Rainer Forst’s recent book Justification and Critique: Towards a Critical Theory of Politics, focusing in particular on his account of utopia in the last part of it.

Storm surges, flooding, heatwaves, and prolonged drought, as ever more regular features of life under deteriorating climate conditions, are unmistakably violent. Their effects on the lives of vulnerable human populations and ecosystems across the world are widely known to be devastating. Yet a legal order that denies the victims of such ecological persecution safe haven, no matter how great its use of force (e.g., detention, arrest, forced return) cannot, by definition, be violent. The power of law, used to protect states’ (...) rights to exclude from their jurisdictions growing numbers displaced involuntarily by global climate harms, in being a source of ‘legitimate right’, is never the same as violence. This article challenges the ongoing validity of this assumption. It points to some of the ways in which legal instruments are used today to deny those displaced by climatic conditions sufficient normative status to guarantee their safety. What is needed instead is a new critical normative understanding of the evolving relationship between climate change, violence, justice, and law, one that re-assesses the democratic justificatory grounds for the current positions of non-responsibility for the climate displaced whilst re-affirming such people’s legal and political status as equal co-members of the politically constituted international community of humanity. (shrink)

Over the last decade, scholars across the wide spectrum of the discipline of sociology have started to reengage with questions on morality and moral phenomena. The continued wave of research in this field, which has come to be known as the new sociology of morality, is a lively research program that has several common grounds with scholarship in the field of business ethics. The aim of this thematic symposium is to open constructive dialogues between these two areas of study. In (...) this introductory essay, we briefly present the project of the new sociology of morality and discuss its relevance for business ethics. We also review the contributions to this thematic symposium and identify four specific domains where future research can contribute to fruitful dialogues between the two fields. (shrink)

This article tackles the theories of global justice whose “Chinese-style” cosmopolitanism is espoused by the notion of tianxia 天下. Specifically, I first examine the Chinese-style cosmopolitanism driven by the reinterpretation of tianxia. In doing so, I claim that it retains the very fallacy that can be found in liberal cosmopolitanism in failing to provide us with a regulative principle through which different justifications for justice can be steered toward a democratic deliberation between states. Second, through analyzing Dialogue on Mount Uisan (...) by Hong Daeyong 洪大容, I explore an alternative conception of tianxia in which all countries are placed on an equal footing rather than in a hierarchy. Finally, putting forward the ethics of differences in Dialogue on Mount Uisan, I will suggest a principle of reciprocity in which non-domination as a regulative principle can help better establish a discursive stance between states without a central hegemon. (shrink)

From a tradition of discourse ethics, human dignity can be defined as “being an equal member in the realm of subjects and authorities of justification.” Additionally, “to act with dignity means being able to justify oneself to others; to be treated in accordance with this dignity means being respected as such an equal member.” Conversely, “to treat others in ways that violate their dignity means regarding them as lacking any justification authority”. The guidelines found in Habermas’s “ideal speech situation” are (...) essential to guarantee this notion of human dignity. Based on aspects of Habermas’s, as well as Rainer Forst’s theory of justice, this study analyzes efforts made by the late speaker of Deutsche Bank, Dr. Alfred Herrhausen, and the former CEO of Alcoa and United States Secretary of the Treasury, Paul H. O’Neill, to challenge the way debt crises in the developing world were handled. Both leaders understood indebted countries, the livelihoods and dignity of its citizens, not as an external entity but as an integral part of their agendas. The two agents included underrepresented groups in their considerations and discussions through a proxy or surrogate participation, giving them a greater voice and acknowledging their dignity. (shrink)