Online research in philosophy

This paper argues that the independence from intercultural disagreement, that Peter Jones attributes to human rights, implies that those rights are best understood as modelled on the Will Theory of rights and are derived from each person?s foundational right to equal (negative) freedom.

The Global Fund is a mechanism for the global application of the Left Libertarian conception of distributive justice. As a form of luck egalitarianism, this conception confers upon each person an entitlement to an equal share of all natural resource values, since natural resources - broadly, geographical sites - are objects for the production of which no person is responsible. Owners of these sites, i.e. states, are liable to a 100% Global Fund tax on their unimproved value: that is, their (...) gross market value minus the value of the improvements added to them by human effort. It is argued that the revenue yielded by this tax would be correspondingly reduced by a further tax on the use of natural resources. (shrink)

Justice and Libertarianism The term ‘justice’ is commonly used in several different ways. Sometimes it designates the moral permissibility of political structures (such as legal systems). Sometimes it designates moral fairness (as opposed to efficiency or other considerations that are relevant to moral permissibility). Sometimes it designates legitimacy in the sense of it being morally impermissible for others to interfere forcibly with the act or omission (e.g., my failing to go to dinner with my mother may be wrong but nonetheless (...) legitimate). Finally, sometimes it designates what we owe each other in the sense of respecting everyone’s rights. Of course, these notions are closely related. What we owe each other may, but need not, be partly based on issues of fairness. Legitimacy and permissibility of political structures are largely, but perhaps not entirely, determined by what rights of non-interference individuals have. Nonetheless, these are distinct notions and we shall focus only on what we owe each other. Justice as what we owe each other is not concerned with impersonal duties (duties owed to no one, i.e., that do not correspond to anyone’s rights). If there are impersonal duties, then something can be just but nonetheless morally impermissible. For brevity, we shall often write of actions being permissible or agents having a moral liberty, but this should always be understood in the interpersonal sense of violating no one’s rights. Libertarianism is sometimes advocated as a derivative set of rules (e.g., derived from rule utilitarian or contractarian doctrines). Here, however, we reserve the term for the natural rights doctrine that agents initially fully own themselves. Agents are full self-owners just in case they own themselves in precisely the same way that they can fully own inanimate objects. Stated slightly differently, full self-owners own themselves in the same way that a full chattel-slaveowner owns a slave. Throughout, we are concerned with moral ownership and not legal ownership.. (shrink)

I shall formulate and motivate a left-libertarian theory of justice. Like the more familiar rightlibertarianism, it holds that agents initially fully own themselves. Unlike right-libertarianism, it holds that natural resources belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner. Left-libertarianism is, I claim, a plausible version of liberal egalitarianism because it is suitably sensitive to considerations of liberty, security, and equality.

Edited by leading contributors to the literature, Freedom: An Anthology is the most complete anthology on social, political and economic freedom ever compiled. Offers a broad guide to the vast literature on social, political and economic freedom. Contains selections from the best scholarship of recent decades as well as classic writings from Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant among others. General and sectional introductions help to orient the reader. Compiled and edited by three important contributors to the field.

In a paper published in this journal we proposed a method for resolving disputed land claims between two parties (Steiner and Wolff: 2003). In essence the proposal is to hold an auction between the disputants in which the land is given to the higher bidder, but the receipts of the auction to the under-bidder. We claimed that under such circumstances both parties can walk away happy: the higher bidder happy to pay the price bid for the land; the under-bidder happier (...) to have the receipts of the auction when the alternative is to pay for the land at a higher price. (shrink)

In a recent review essay of a two volume anthology on left-libertarianism (edited by two of us), Barbara Fried has insightfully laid out most of the core issues that confront left-libertarianism. We are each left-libertarians, and we would like to take this opportunity to address some of the general issues that she raises. We shall focus, as Fried does much of the time, on the question of whether left-libertarianism is a well-defined and distinct alternative to existing forms of liberal egalitarianism. (...) More specifically, we shall address the following fundamental issues raised by Fried (and others): (1) Does the notion self-ownership have any determinate content? (2) What is the relation between self-ownership and world ownership? (3) How is left-libertarianism different from other forms of liberal egalitarianism (e.g., those of Rawls and Dworkin)? (shrink)

Over the past few decades, there has been increasing interest in left-libertarianism, which holds (roughly) that agents fully own themselves and that natural resources (land, minerals, air, etc.) belong to everyone in some egalitarian sense. Left-libertarianism agrees with the more familiar right-libertarianism about self-ownership, but radically disagrees with it about the power to acquire ownership of natural resources. Merely being the first person to claim, discover, or mix labor with an unappropriated natural resource does not—left-libertarianism insists—generate a full private property (...) right in that natural resource. (shrink)

This essay challenges the coherence of arguments brought in support of prohibiting the sale of human body parts. Considerations of neither social utility nor individual rights nor avoidance of exploitation seem sufficient to ground such a prohibition. Indeed, they may be sufficient to invalidate it.

Philippe Van Parijs has argued that, in a globalizing economy, acquiring a second language, additional to one's native language, is more necessary for some persons than others — and that this asymmetric bilingualism is a form of injustice which should be rectified by a more equitable global sharing of the costs of second-language acquisition. This article responds by suggesting that (1) since native languages have geographic locations, and (2) since locations with less globally useful native languages thereby sustain lowered living (...) costs, then (3) the costs which persons incur, in acquiring a second, more globally useful language, may already be offset by the lower costs they incur by virtue of their living in a location with a less globally useful native language. Hence, theories of justice (such as Van Parijs's) that require the egalitarian redistribution of locational values would impose, rather than remedy, an injustice by redistributing second-language-acquisition costs. Key Words: distributive justice • global redistribution • linguistic assets • locational values • Philippe Van Parijs. (shrink)

This book contains a collection of important recent writing on left-liberalism, a political philosophy that recognizes both strong liberty rights and strong ...

François Huet (1814-1869), a French philosopher, sought to reconcile the principles of Christianity with those of socialism. He argues that each person is entitled to the wealth he/she produces and to an equal share of the wealth from natural resources and from artifacts inherited from previous generations. Unlike Colins, Huet holds that agents have the right to give and bequeath wealth that they have created, but no such right with respect to wealth they inherited or received as a gift. (This (...) view was later endorsed and modified by Rignano.). (shrink)

This book addresses the perennial question: What is justice?

Jean-Guillaume-César-Alexandre-Hippolyte de Colins (1783-1859), a Belgian baron who lived mainly in Paris, sought to develop a position—rational socialism—intermediate between the extremes of full capitalism (with only private property) and full communism (with only collective property). All persons fully own themselves and the artifactual wealth that they produce, and they are entitled to an equal share of the natural resources and of the assets inherited from previous generations. Gifts and bequests are to be subject to heavy taxation (although at less than (...) 100% of their value, for efficiency reasons). Natural resources are subject to a rent-tax. A warning about the following reading: Colins writes in many places as if he held that an unrestricted right to make gifts and bequests is both necessary for efficient social functioning and required by justice. His ultimate view, however, is that efficient social functioning requires only some kind of weak (partially restricted) right to make gifts and bequest, and that justice does not require any such right. More specifically, he holds that justice requires that gifts and bequests be taxed as much as compatible with efficient social functioning. (shrink)

Léon Walras (1834-1910), a French-born economist working in Switzerland, was one of the founders of mathematical economics (and of marginal utility theory and equilibrium analysis in particular). He here defends self-ownership and collective ownership of the rent from natural resources.