This book explores the various aspects of social justice--to each according to his rights, to each acording to his desert, and to each according to his need--comparing the writings of Hume, Spencer, and Kropotkin. Miller demonstrates that there are radical differences in outlook on social justice between societies, and that these differences can be explained by reference to features of the social structure.

In bioethics, discussions of justice have tended to focus on questions of fairness in access to health care: is there a right to medical treatment, and how should priorities be set when medical resources are scarce. But health care is only one of many factors that determine the extent to which people live healthy lives, and fairness is not the only consideration in determining whether a health policy is just. In this pathbreaking book, senior bioethicists Powers and Faden confront (...) foundational issues about health and justice. How much inequality in health can a just society tolerate. The audience for the book is scholars and students of bioethics and moral and political philosophy, as well as anyone interested in public health and health policy. (shrink)

Offers a compelling vision of how to achieve and conduct a liberal but democratic society through the ideal of Neutrality--between people and ideas of the good--and using the tool of Neutral dialogue.

This article asserts that traditionally dominant models of health promotion in the US are fairly characterized by methodological individualism. This schema produces a focus on the individual as the node of intervention. Such emphasis results in a number of scientific and ethical problems. I identify three principal ethical deficiencies: first, the health promotions used are generally ineffective, which violates canons of distributive justice because scarce health resources are expended on interventions that are unlikely to produce health benefits. Second, the (...) health promotions used tend to expand health inequalities between the affluent and the least well-off. Third, the health promotions used are likely to intensify stigma against the least well-off, a deficiency that itself may exacerbate the ‘densely-woven patterns of disadvantage’ that characterize life on the tail of the social gradient. Because Powers and Faden’s health sufficiency model of social justice argues that the amelioration of such clusters of disadvantage should be the primary ethical goal of public health policy, methodologically individualist models of health promotion are ethically deficient and should not stand as primary approaches for health promotion in a just social order. (shrink)

Employing a social justice framework, this book examines the effects of innovation incentives and policies in agriculture. It addresses access to the objects of innovation, the direction of science and the type of innovations that are available, opportunities to participate in research and development, as well as effects on future generations. The book examines the potential value of preventive and reconciliatory measures, drawing on concepts from procedural and restorative justice. As such it offers a comprehensive analysis of (...) the main social justice dimensions affected by agricultural innovation. It gives academics and policy analysts an extensive overview of the deep impact of innovation on society and the environment, and the expectations the general public has from the scientific community. (shrink)

The convergence of computing, sensing, and communication technology will soon permit large-scale deployment of self-driving vehicles. This will in turn permit a radical transformation of traffic control technology. This paper makes a case for the importance of addressing questions of social justice in this transformation, and sketches a preliminary framework for doing so. We explain how new forms of traffic control technology have potential implications for several dimensions of social justice, including safety, sustainability, privacy, efficiency, and (...) equal access. Our central focus is on efficiency and equal access as desiderata for traffic control design. We explain the limitations of conventional traffic control in meeting these desiderata, and sketch a preliminary vision for a next-generation traffic control tailored to address better the demands of social justice. One component of this vision is cooperative, hierarchically distributed self-organization among vehicles. Another component of this vision is a priority system enabling selection of priority levels by the user for each vehicle trip in the network, based on the supporting structure of non-monetary credits. (shrink)

While Powers and Faden do not consider possible anti-paternalism objections to their view, there are two variants of this objection that a social justice perspective is susceptible to. It is worth exploring which responses to such objections may be less promising than others. It is argued that for most public health measures targeting the disadvantaged, theorists and practitioners taking a social justice perspective should bite the paternalist bullet. Insofar as the government has the ability to reduce (...) mortality and morbidity within the population in a way that is fair and in everyone’s interests, then the use of paternalistic means or resultant paternalistic effects should be thought to be the lesser evil. (shrink)

John Harsanyi and John Rawls both used the veil of ignorance thought experiment to study the problem of choosing between alternative social arrangements. With his ‘impartial observer theorem’, Harsanyi tried to show that the veil of ignorance argument leads inevitably to utilitarianism, an argument criticized by Sen, Weymark and others. A quite different use of the veil-of-ignorance concept is found in evolutionary biology. In the cell-division process called meiosis, in which sexually reproducing organisms produce gametes, the chromosome number is (...) halved; when meiosis is fair, each gene has only a fifty percent chance of making it into any gamete. This creates a Mendelian veil of ignorance, which has the effect of aligning the interests of all the genes in an organism. This paper shows how Harsanyi's version of the veil-of-ignorance argument can shed light on Mendelian genetics. There turns out to be an intriguing biological analogue of the impartial observer theorem that is immune from the Sen/Weymark objections to Harsanyi's original. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.SOCIAL JUSTICE, GENOMIC JUSTICE AND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE: HARSANYI MEETS MENDELVolume 28, Issue 1Samir Okasha DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267112000119Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. SOCIAL JUSTICE, GENOMIC JUSTICE AND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE: HARSANYI MEETS MENDELVolume 28, Issue 1Samir Okasha DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267112000119Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. SOCIAL JUSTICE, GENOMIC JUSTICE AND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE: HARSANYI MEETS MENDELVolume 28, Issue 1Samir Okasha DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267112000119Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Defends a theory of social justice for education from within an egalitarian version of liberalism. The theory involves a strong commitment to educational equality, and to the idea that children's rights include a right to personal autonomy. The book argues that school reform must always be evaluated from the perspective of social justice and applies the theory, in particular, to school choice proposals. It looks at the parental choice schemes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in England and (...) Wales, and argues that they fall short of the requirements of justice, but that not all such schemes must do so. It elaborates an abstract voucher scheme that would combine choice with justice, and offers ways by which actual choice‐based reform can be modified to meet the requirements of justice. (shrink)

This article unfolds in three stages. First, it locates the emergence of modern conceptions of social justice in industrializing Europe, and especially in the discovery of the “social,” which provided a particular idiom for the liberal democratic politics for most of the twentieth century. Second, the article links this particular conception of the social to the political rationalities of the postwar welfare state and the identity of the social citizen. Finally, the article discusses the myriad (...) ways in which this legacy of the social and social justice has been disrupted, although not yet fully displaced, by the economic orthodoxies and individualization that inform the contemporary neoliberal governing project in Canada. The result, the article concludes, has been the institutionalization of insecurity, which demands the renewal of a social way of seeing and a politics of social justice on local and global scales. (shrink)

This article draws on two studies that have used an ethic of care analysis to explore lay, nursing and social work care for people with dementia. It discusses the political as well as the practice application of ethic of care principles and highlights the necessity to understand both what people do and the meanings with which such practices are imbued in order to identify `good care' and the relationship between this and social justice. Examples of care for (...) people with dementia are discussed by reference to core principles of an ethic of care: attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust. These illustrate the potential for the development of a shared language within which different disciplines, lay carers and people with dementia can communicate about how needs could best be met in complex and difficult circumstances. (shrink)

In this essay Krassimir Stojanov attempts first to reconstruct the “heart” of Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics, namely the so-called “principle of universalization” of ethical norms. This principle grounds Habermas's proceduralist account of social justice via equal access of all concerned to the practices of deliberative validation of norms. Stojanov claims with regard to this account that it could only be implemented if the social actors are involved in a process of education as discursive initiation. After using R. (...) S. Peters's educational theory to distinguish discursive initiation from a traditionalist understanding of educative initiation, he discusses some central social prerequisites for the development of discursive skills in growing individuals; to identify these prerequisites, he draws on Axel Honneth's conception of the intersubjective origins of individuals' development of rational autonomy. In the final part of the essay, Stojanov briefly explores some implications of his elaborated account of discursive initiation and its social preconditions for schooling and pedagogy. (shrink)

Smoking is disproportionately common among the disadvantaged, both within many countries and globally; the burden associated with smoking is, therefore, borne to a great extent by the disadvantaged. In this paper, I argue that this should be regarded as a problem of social justice. Even though smokers do, in a sense, ‘choose’ to smoke, the extent to which these choices can legitimise the resulting inequalities is limited by the unequal circumstances in which they are made. An analysis of (...) the empirical literature reveals a variety of factors—such as targeted advertising, unequal dissemination of information about the health risks of smoking and inequalities in smoking norms—that make the disadvantaged more likely to become smokers and less likely to quit successfully. The paper then considers a range of common tobacco control policies from the perspective of social justice. The social justice perspective developed here poses a challenge for policy-makers: on the one hand, social justice concerns strengthen the case for tobacco control policies because such policies disproportionately benefit the health of the disadvantaged. At the same time, however, we must be particularly sensitive to any harms associated with such policies because such burdens, too, will fall largely on the disadvantaged. (shrink)

Department of Medical Education, Flinders University of South Australia, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide SA 5001. Tel. : +61-8-7225-1111; Fax: +61-8-8204-5675; Email: lee0359{at}flinders.edu.au ' + u + '@ ' + d + ' '/ /- ->.This paper analyses the role of communication strategies in pandemic influenza planning. Our central concern is with the extent to which nations are using communication to address issues of social justice. Issues associated with disadvantage and vulnerability to infection in the event of an influenza (...) pandemic raise distinct questions about how well less well off groups will be protected. The potential for a public health emergency of this type to exacerbate existing inequalities, making those in less well off positions worse off, makes social justice an important consideration for pandemic planners. National PI plans offer insights into the ways that nations may use communication to address issues of disadvantage, thereby providing a way of examining how communication strategies are presented and their potential to mitigate inequities. Our research reviewed 12 national PI plans and assessed the extent to which nations are using communication to assist and limit possible harms to less well off groups. We outline in this paper some important issues and considerations associated with social justice and flu planning, in particular if and how plans are addressing inequalities. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

A republican theory of social justice specifies how republican freedom should be distributed. The goal of this paper is to assess the plausibility of two recently proposed principles of republican social justice: an aggregative maximizing principle defended by Philip Pettit in Republicanism and a sufficiency principle of republican social justice offered by Pettit in On the People’s Terms. The maximizing principle must be rejected because it permits under-protecting vulnerable members of society in favor of (...) increasing the freedom of the powerful. The sufficiency principle avoids the most basic objection to the maximizing principle, but it is at best an incomplete theory of social justice. Social justice requires principle(s) for determining the justice of distributions above the sufficiency threshold and republican theory does not determine which principle(s) should govern distributions above the threshold. Republicans must decide whether they will incorporate an independent commitment to equality within their theory of social justice. (shrink)

Social justice is a key concept in current education policy and practice. It is, however, a problematic one in its application to schooling. This paper begins with a critique of the account of social justice offered by Gewirtz followed by an alternative philosophical notion based on the perfect world argument and the just society where equality is to the fore. This leads on to an exploration of what it is to be an educated citizen, consideration of (...) the just school and discussion of the place of the school as an instrument for attaining social justice. The conclusion draws attention to the importance of the policy web as a way of developing coherent and unified policy designed to achieve social justice for all. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to explore how a social justice framework can help illuminate the role that consent should play in health and science policy. In the first section, we set the stage for our inquiry with the important case of Henrietta Lacks. Without her knowledge or consent, or that of her family, Mrs. Lacks’s cells gave rise to an enormous advance in biomedical science—the first immortal human cell line, or HeLa cells.

Older minority Americans experience worse health outcomes than their white counterparts, exhibiting the need for social justice in all areas of their health care. Justice, fairness, and equity are crucial to minimizing conditions that adversely affect the health of individuals and communities. In this paper, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is used as an example of a health care disparity among elderly Americans that requires social justice interventions. Cultural factors play a crucial role in AD screening, diagnosis, (...) and access to care, and are often a barrier to support and equality for minority communities. The “conundrum of health disparities” refers to the interplay between disparity, social justice, and cultural interpretation, and encourages researchers to understand both (1) disparity caused by economic and structural barriers to access, treatment, and diagnosis, and (2) disparity due to cultural interpretation of disease, in order to effectively address health care issues and concerns among elderly Americans. (shrink)

Classrooms and schools represent a "culture of power" to the extent that they mirror unjust social relations that exist in the larger society. Progressive educators committed to social justice seek to disrupt those social relations in the classroom that function to silence marginalised students, but neutralising those who attempt to reassert power is problematic. This paper investigates the questions: is it ever justified to use power to interrupt power? Does all silencing subjugate? Arguments for and against (...) the censorship of teachers who believe that portraying homosexual lifestyles in a positive light undermines their integrity are outlined. I highlight and explain two crucial considerations absent in the aforementioned debate. Finally, the implications of the debate for social justice educators are explicated. (shrink)

Cultural values influence how people understand illness and dying, and impact their responses to diagnosis and treatment, yet end-of-life care is rooted in white, middle class values. Faith, hope, and belief in God’s healing power are central to most African Americans, yet life-preserving care is considered “aggressive” by the healthcare system, and families are pressured to cease it.

This book offers a much-needed critical overview of the concept of social justice and its application in professional social work practice. Social justice has a rich conceptual genealogy in critical theory and political philosophy. For students, teachers and social workers concerned with empowerment, social change and human rights, this book provides a guide to the key ideas and thinkers, crucial historical developments and contemporary debates about social justice. It synthesises interdisciplinary knowledge (...) and offers a new framework for practice, including a clear and practical exposition of four domains of skills and knowledge important for social justice informed social work. The book also contributes to social work pedagogy by offering a comprehensive set of learning outcomes that can be used to design curriculum, teaching and learning, and further research into social justice praxis. This book provides a range of philosophical and critical perspectives to support and inform social work professional knowledge and skills. In its tight knitting together of theory and practice this book links philosophical and moral principles with an understanding of how to engage with social justice in a way that is relevant to social work. (shrink)

A societal goal to which more and more people in the United States appear to be committed--at least officially--is the assurance of comprehensive health services for every person irrespective of income or geographic location. This paper offers one possible moral justification of the goal. It does so by attempting to apply various standard conceptions of social justice to considerations about health care and to reflect about the reasons why some of the conceptions seem more relevant than others. Several (...) institutional implications are also identified. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 51, Issue 5, Page 51-53, September‐October 2021.

There is an odd proximity between Hayek, hero of the libertarian right, and Rawls, theorist of social justice, because, at the level of principle, Hayek was in some important respects a Rawlsian. Although Hayek said that the idea of social justice was nonsense, he argued against only a particular principle of social justice, one that Rawls too rejected, namely distribution according to individual merit. Any attempt to make reward and merit coincide, Hayek argued, would (...) undermine the market's price system, leaving us all poorer and less free. Like Rawls, Hayek held that we should assess social institutions from behind a veil of ignorance, and he thought that doing so pushed us toward egalitarianism. Most of the distance between Hayek and Rawls at the level of policy stems from Hayek's optimism about the operation of markets, his equivocation about the meaning of central concepts, and his appeal to under-argued slippery slopes. Hayek wavered, however, between claiming that private property and markets benefit everyone, compared to the feasible alternatives, and the principle that they maximize the opportunities of a randomly selected member of society, i.e., aggregate opportunity. Contemporary Hayekians claim that capitalism raises the position of the worst off in the long run, in future generations, whereas Rawlsians insist that inequalities between social positions should benefit the worst off now. (shrink)

It will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of political economy come the rich human being and rich human need. The rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of totality of human life-activities — the man in whom his own realization exists as an inner necessity, as need. Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Svetaketu abstained from food for fifteen days. Then he came to his father and said, `What shall I say?' (...) The father said: `Repeat the Rik, Yagus, and Saman verses.' He replied, `They do not occur to me, Sir.' The father said to him... `Go and eat! Then wilt thou understand me.' Then Svetaketu ate, and afterwards approached his father. And whatever his father asked him, he knew it all by heart.... After that, he understood what his father meant when he said: `Mind, my son, comes from food, breath from water, speech from fire.' He understood what he said, yea, he understood it. Chandogya-Upanishad, VI Prapathaka, 7 Kanda When you love a man you want him to live and when you hate him you want him to die. If, having wanted him to live, you then want him to die, this is a misguided judgment. `If you did not do so for the sake of riches, you must have done so for the sake of novelty.' Confucius, Analects, Book 12. 10. (shrink)

During the last half of the twentieth century, legal philosophy has grown significantly. It is no longer the domain of a few isolated scholars in law and philosophy. Hundreds of scholars from diverse fields attend international meetings on the subject. In some universities, large lecture courses of five hundred students or more study it. The primary aim of the Law and Philosophy Library is to present some of the best original work on legal philosophy from both the Anglo-American and European (...) traditions. Not only does it help make some of the best work avail able to an international audience, but it also encourages increased awareness of, and interaction between, the two major traditions. The primary focus is on full-length scholarly monographs, although some edited volumes of original papers are also included. The Library editors are assisted by an Editorial Advisory Board of internationally renowed scholars. Legal philosophy should not be considered a narrowly circumscribed field. (shrink)

Child poverty is one of the biggest challenges of today, harming millions of children. In this book, it is investigated from a philosophical social justice perspective, primarily in the context of modern welfare states. Based on both normative theory (particularly the capability approach) and empirical evidence, the authors identify the injustices of child poverty, showing how it negatively affects the well-being of children as well as their whole life course. But child poverty is not 'given by nature'. It (...) is avoidable and there is certainly the moral duty to alleviate it. Therefore, Graf and Schweiger develop a normative theory of responsibilities, which clarifies the moral role of different agents in the poor child's environment: the family, the state and many others, that have so far been neglected in philosophical theories. They conclude their book by sketching how their theory can be extended to global child poverty and what it means to show equal respect and concern for every child - no matter where and in which context they were born. (shrink)

Social justice is a contested concept. For example, some on the left argue for equality of outcomes, those on the right for equality of opportunities, and there are differing emphases on the roles of state, market and individual in achieving a socially just society. These differences in emphasis are critical when it comes to examining the impact that public policy has on minority ethnic groups. Social justice should not be culture-blind any more than it can be (...) gender-blind yet the overwhelming burden of evidence from the UK shows that public policy, despite the political rhetoric of fifty years of governments since large-scale immigration started, has failed to deliver social justice to Britain’s minorities. In terms of outcomes, in respect for and recognition of diversity and difference, in their treatment, and in the failure of governments to offer an effective voice to minorities, the latter continue to be marginalised in British social, economic and political life. This is not an argument for abandoning the project of multiculturalism, however, but for ensuring that it is framed within the values of social justice. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of Roman Catholic teachings on social justice and rights to health care. It argues that contemporary societies, such as those in North America and Western Europe, have an obligation to provide health care to their citizens as a matter of right. Moral considerations provide a basis for evaluating concerns about the role of equality when determining health care entitlements and giving some precision to the widespread belief that the right to health care requires (...) equal entitlement to health care benefits. (shrink)

This paper develops a framework for conceptualising social justice in education, drawing particularly on Martha Nussbaum's (2000) capabilities approach. The practical case for consideration is that of widening participation and pedagogical implications in higher (university) education in England. While the paper supports the value and usefulness of Nussbaum's list of ten capabilities for developing a more radical and challenging language and practice for higher education pedagogies, it also argues that her approach is limited. Other ways of conceptualising (...) class='Hi'>social justice are also required in order to develop adjudicating theories which enable us to judge which practices take us closer to social justice. An argument is made for 'bivalent' theorising which integrates individual and institutional development and agents and social structures. (shrink)

Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery shows that there were definitive condemnations of slavery and social injustice as iniquitous and even impious, in antiquity and late antiquity. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli highlights that these came especially from ascetics, both in Judaism and in Christianity, and occasionally also in Greco-Roman philosophy. Ramelli argues that this depends on a link not only between asceticism and renunciation, but also between asceticism and justice, at least in ancient and late (...) antique philosophical asceticism. This volume provides a careful investigation through all of Ancient, Ancient to Rabbinic Judaism, Hellenistic Jewish ascetic groups, all of the New Testament, and Greek, Latin, and Syriac Patristic. Particular attention is given to Gregory of Nyssa and the interrelation between theory and practice in all of ancient and patristic philosophers, as well as to the parallels that emerge in their arguments against slavery and against social injustice. (shrink)

Social justice has been a central normative component of U.S. social welfare and social work for over a century, although the meaning and implications of the term have often been ambiguous. A major source of this ambiguity lies in the conflict between universalist views of social justice and those which focus on achieving justice for specific groups. This conflict has been masked by several long-standing assumptions about the relationship between social justice (...) and multiculturalism – assumptions which have been challenged by recent developments. The assumption that the pursuit of social justice requires the creation of a more egalitarian society has been challenged by the new political-economic realities of globalization. The assumption that the maintenance of individual rights complements the pursuit of social equality has been challenged by racially-based attacks on social welfare benefits and civil rights. Most significantly, the assumption that a socially just society is one in which different groups share a compatible vision of social justice has been challenged by the realities of multiculturalism. This paper explores the evolution of four themes regarding the relationship between social justice and multiculturalism during the past century and discusses their implications for the contemporary demographic and cultural context of the U.S. These themes are: the relationship of cultural diversity to the nation’s values and goals; the contradiction between coerced cultural assimilation and coerced physical and social segregation; the relationship between individual and group identity and rights; and the linkage between “Americanization” and the equal application of justice. (shrink)

Can the need for incentives justify inequality? Starting from this question, Frank Vandenbroucke examines a conception of justice in which both equality and responsibility are involved. In the first part of the inquiry, which explores the implementation of that conception of justice, the justification of incentives assumes that agents make personal choices based only upon their own interests. The second part of the book challenges the idea that a normative conception of distributive justice can be based on (...) that traditional assumption, i.e. that personal choices are not the subject matter of justice. Thus, Vandenbroucke questions the Rawlsian idea that the primary subject of a theory of justice is the basic structure of society, and not the individual conduct of its citizens. For a society to be really just, the ethos of individual conduct has to serve justice. Non-mathematical readers can skip the formal model proposed in Chapter 3 and understand the rest of the book. (shrink)

Recognising the relevance of Iris Marion Young's work to education, this article poses the question: given Iris Young's commitment to both social justice and to recognition of the political and ethical significance of difference, to what extent does her position allow for transnational interventions in education to foster democracy? First, it explores some of Iris Young's arguments on the relationship between democracy and social justice, with particular reference to their implications for education. Second, I argue that (...) if her ideas are extended to the issue of global justice, the strategies which she offers should be extended, at least when it comes to educational intervention, to allow for a wider range of actions in support of global justice through education for democracy than Iris Young's work so far seems to allow. The wider range of strategies which I propose call on western feminists and their governments to do more to promote democracy and social justice globally. This can be done in ways that are consistent with Iris Young's stipulation that transnational interference is permissible if undertaken against dominative harm. (shrink)

This paper explores the concept of white complicity and provides illustrations of how traditional conceptions of moral agency support the denial of such complicity. Judith Butler's conception of subjectivity is then examined with the aim of assessing its usefulness as a foundation for social justice pedagogy. Butler's conception of subjectivity is of interest because it offers insights into how dominant group identities are unintentionally complicit in the perpetuation of hegemonic social norms. While Butler's conception of subjectivity is (...) shown to be useful in understanding white complicity, questions around the notion of agency that follow from such a conception of subjectivity are raised and briefly discussed. Finally, I show the implications of Butler's conception of self and agency for social justice pedagogy. (shrink)

The present article identifies how social determinants of health raise two categories of philosophical problems that also fall within the smaller domain of ethics; one set pertains to the philosophy of epidemiology, and the second set pertains to the philosophy of health and social justice. After reviewing these two categories of ethical concerns, the limited conclusion made is that identifying and responding to social determinants of health requires inter-disciplinary reasoning across epidemiology and philosophy. For the reasoning (...) used in epidemiology to be sound, for its scope and (moral) purpose as a science to be clarified as well as for social justice theory to be relevant and coherent, epidemiology and philosophy need to forge a meaningful exchange of ideas that happens in both directions. (shrink)

Abstract Hayek's argument that social justice is a mirage consists of six claims: that the very idea of social justice is meaningless, religious, self?contradictory, and ideological; that realizing any degree of social justice is unfeasible; and that aiming to do so must destroy all liberty. These claims are examined in the light of contemporary theories and debates concerning social justice in order to assess whether the argument's persuasive power is due to sound (...) reasoning, and to what extent contemporary theories of justice meet or escape the Hayekian challenge. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to challenge the validity of the distinction between legal justice and social justice. It is argued that what we usually call legal justice is either an application of the more fundamental notion of social justice to legal rules and decisions or is not a matter of justice at all. In other words, the only correct uses of the notion of legal justice are derivative from the (...) notion of social justice and, hence, the alleged conflicts between criteria of social and legal justice result from the confusion about the proper relationship between these two concepts. Two views about the social justice/legal justice dichotomy are of particular importance and will provide the focus for the argument: this dichotomy is sometimes identified with a classical distinction between distributive and commutative justice and sometimes with the distinction between substantive and procedural justice. (shrink)