Online research in philosophy

: Justice is widely thought to consist in equality. For many theorists, the central question has been: Equality of what? The author argues that the ideal of equality distorts practical reasoning and has deeply counterintuitive implications. Moreover, an alternative view of distributive justice can give a better account of what egalitarians should care about than can any of the competing ideals of equality.

Philosophical disagreement about justice ranges over at least two questions. The most immediate is a substantial question, concerning the conditions under which particular distributive arrangements can be said to be just or unjust. The second, deeper, question concerns the nature of justice itself. What is justice? Here we can distinguish three views. First, justice as mutual advantage sees justice as essentially a matter of the outcome of a bargain. There are times when two parties can both be better off by making some sort of agreement. Justice, on this view, concerns the distribution of the benefits and burdens of the agreement. Second, justice as reciprocity takes a different approach, looking not at bargaining but at the idea of a fair return or just price, attempting to capture the idea of justice as equal exchange. Finally justice as impartiality sees justice as ‘taking the other person’s point of view’ asking ‘how would you like it if it happened to you?’ Each model has significantly different consequences for the question of when issues of justice arise and how they should be settled. It is interesting to consider whether any of these models of justice could regulate behaviour between non-human animals.

Justice is a key guiding ethical principle in bioethics. When justice is addressed in bioethics the focus is primarily on the fair distribution of resources, that is, distributive justice. In this thesis, I argue that a distributive conception of justice is unable to adequately address many of the relevant issues of justice within bioethics. These issues are better understood and addressed using a social conception of justice. Social justice is concerned with ensuring that the norms and rules of social structures are fair and equitable. I argue that social and distributive justice are not only compatible, but also complementary. As a result, both conceptions of justice need to be applied to bioethical issues if we are to achieve a truly just outcome. As a case study, I apply this analysis to the controversial issue of the inclusion of pregnant women in clinical research trial.

Does justice require that individuals get what they deserve? Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers examining the relation between desert and justice; they also illuminate the nature of distributive justice, and the relationship between desert and other values, such as equality and responsibility.

What is the appropriate criterion to use for distributive justice? Is it efficiency, need, contribution, entitlement, equality, effort, or ability? Globalization and Economic Ethics maintains that far from being rival principles of distributive justice, efficiency and need satisfaction are, in fact, complementary norms in our emerging knowledge economy. After all, human capital plays the central role in effecting and sustaining long-term efficiency in the Digital Age. This book explores the vital link between human capital formation and allocative efficiency using the properties of the market and the knowledge economy as analytical tools.

This paper suggests a strategy for constructing a contemporary Humean theory of distributive justice which would serve to ground what I call an entrepreneurial welfare state. It is argued that blending David Hume's insights about the origins and purposes of justice with Ronald Dworkin's insurance-based reasoning supporting his equality of resources model of distributive justice will yield a state which, as a matter of justice, encourages its members to engage in entrepreneurial activities and which protects them from the worst extremes of market economies.

Why is it that we think today so very differently about distributive and retributive justice? Why is the notion of desert so neglected in our thinking about distributive justice, while it remains fundamental in almost every account of retributive justice? I wish to take up this relatively neglected issue, and put forth two proposals of my own, based upon the way control functions in the two spheres.

This is a constructive response to a 2008 article by Kok-Chor Tan. It outlines a version of democratic egalitarianism to complement, rather than compete against, luck egalitarianism. The concepts of autonomy and domination are used to elaborate democratic equality, and I suggest a broadening in the understandings of distributive justice; of why distributive justice matters; and of the concepts of grounding and substantive principles (in relation to distributive justice).

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the recent debate about responsibility and distributive justice. It traces the recent philosophical focus on distributive justice to John Rawls and examines two arguments in his work which might be taken to contain the seeds of the focus on responsibility in later theories of distributive justice. It examines Ronald Dworkin's ‘equality of resources’, the ‘luck egalitarianism’ of Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen, as well as the criticisms of their work put forward by Elizabeth Anderson, Marc Fleurbaey, Susan Hurley, and Jonathan Wolff. Key concepts such as responsibility (individual and collective), luck (thin and thick; brute and option), control, desert, and equality of opportunity are delineated, and the implementation of responsibility-sensitive accounts of justice is considered. The chapters of this book are positioned in relation to the wider literature on responsibility and distributive justice, and a brief outline of the chapters is provided.

In today’s society, a peculiar understanding of distributive justice has developed which holds that “social justice must be distributed by the coercive force of government.” However, this is a perversion of the ideal of distributive justice. The perspective of distributive justice which should be considered is one with its roots [...].