In this paper, I explain what I take to be one of the most significant contributions made by feminism to Western understandings of social justice. This is feminism’s disclosure of objects of justice ignored by most other mainstream philosophers. I also consider whether a feminist approach to social justice is usefully described as a way of fleshing out the ideal of androgyny.

Until recently, struggles for justice proceeded against the background of a taken-for-granted frame: the bounded territorial state. With that "Westphalian" picture of political space assumed by default, the scope of justice was rarely subject to open dispute. Today, however, human-rights activists and international feminists join critics of structural adjustment and the World Trade Organization in challenging the view that justice can only be a domestic relation among fellow citizens. Targeting injustices that cut across borders, they are making (...) the scale of justice an object of explicit struggle. Inspired by these efforts, Nancy Fraser asks: What is the proper frame for theorizing justice? Faced with a plurality of competing scales, how do we know which one is truly just? In exploring these questions, Fraser revises her widely discussed theory of redistribution and recognition. She introduces a third, "political" dimension of justice—representation—and elaborates a new, reflexive type of critical theory that foregrounds injustices of "misframing." Engaging with thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, Michel Foucault, and Hannah Arendt, she envisions a "postwestphalian" mapping of political space that accommodates transnational solidarity, transborder publicity, and democratic frame-setting, as well as emancipatory projects that cross borders. The result is a sustained reflection on who should count with respect to what in a globalizing world. (shrink)

Targeting injustices that cut across borders, they are making the scale of justice an object of explicit struggle.Inspired by these efforts, Nancy Fraser asks: ...

In Political Liberalism, Rawls emphasizes the practical character and aims of his conception of justice. Justice as fairness is to provide the basis of a reasoned, informed and willing political agreement by locating grounds for consensus in the fundamental ideas and values of the political culture. Critics urge, however, that such a politically liberal conception of justice will be designed merely to ensure the stability of political institutions by appealing to the currently-held opinions of actual citizens. In (...) order to evaluate this concern, I suggest, it is necessary to focus on the normative character of Rawls's analysis. Rawls argues that justice as fairness is the conception of justice that citizens of modern democratic cultures should choose in reflective equilibrium, after reflecting fully upon their considered judgments regarding justice. Since judgments in reflective equilibrium are grounded in considered judgment, rather than situated opinions, I argue that the criticism fails. Key Words: justification • objectivity • political liberalism • Rawls • reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

The argument of this article is framed by a debate between the principle of humanity and the principle of justice. Whereas the principle of humanity requires us to care about others and to want to help them meet their vital needs, and so to be partial towards those others, the principle of justice requires us to consider their needs without the intrusion of our subjective interests or emotions so that we can act with impartiality. I argue that a (...) deep form of caring lies behind both approaches and so unites them. In the course of the argument, I reject Michael Slote’s sentimentalist form of an ethics of care, and expound Thomas Nagel’s moral theory, which seems to lie at the opposite end of a spectrum ranging from moral sentiments to impersonal objectivity. Nevertheless, Nagel’s theory of normative realism provides unexpected support for the thesis that a deep and subjective form of caring lies at the base of even our most objective moral reasons. (shrink)

For Emmanuel Levinas objectivity is intersubjectively constituted. But this intersubjectivity is not, as in Merleau-Ponty, the intercorporeality of perceivers nor, as in Heidegger, the active correlation of practical agents. It has an ethical structure; it is the presence, to each cognitive subject, of others who contest and judge him. But does not the exposure of each cognitive subject to the wants and needs of others result in the constitution of a common practical field, which is not yet the objective world (...) of scientific cognition? For Levinas, the constitution of a world common to all is governed by the practice of justice. Justice begins when above the elf and the other there intervenes a third party, who contests and judges both. But whether this third party is a representative of humanity, or a figure of God, would not his justice be but the name of a higher egoism? (shrink)

Critique of Justice is a collection of reflective essays on ditferent dimensions of justice written by eminent scholars of Philosophy and allied disciplines who are astively engaged in the academic pursuit and promoting the cause of philosophy The book is conceived from the standpoint of multi-perspectival approach to the multifarious concept of justice which is regarded as the highest value in any civilized society On the one hand from traditional metaphysical point of view justice consists of (...) the eternal and immutable principles hat are transcendent, objective and absolute, where as from modern positivistic and empirical approachjustice is ahuman construct relative to time and space. Justice is, therefore, regarded as complex and dynamic concept which is multi-dimensional. It synthesizes other values like rights, liberty equality and property. In this well researched book there are 40 scholarly articles covering a wide range from Plato's concept of justice to Nozick's concept of justice in the Western Philosophy and from Vedic concept of justice to Amartya Sen's view ofjustice in Indian perspective. (shrink)

A recurring objection to the exploration, development and deployment of radical new technologies is based on their implications with regards to social justice. In this article, using synthetic biology as an example, I explore this line of objection and how we ought to think about justice in the context of the development and introduction of radically new technologies. I argue that contrary to popular opinion, justice rarely provides a reason not to investigate, develop and introduce radical new (...) technologies, although it may have significant implications for how they ought to be introduced. In particular I focus on the time dependency of justice objections and argue that often these function by looking only at the implications of the introduction of the technology at the point of introduction, rather than the more important long-term impact on patterns of distribution and opportunity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Defining the Term “Citizens Labeled with Cognitive Disabilities” The Scope of Moral Personhood: The Potentiality View The Fully Cooperating Assumption How Are the Two Moral Powers Acquired? The Enabling Conditions Personhood as Requiring Enabling Conditions Blocking Developmental Pathways to Moral Personhood The Causal Relationship Between Epistemic Claims and the Concrete Lives of People with Disabilities First Objection: Responding to the Epistemic Difficulty Second Objection: The Argument from Marginal Cases Conclusion Acknowledgments References.

Fichte's definitions of property appear to diverge from modern common linguistic usage, especially his identification of leisure as the object of an absolute right of property, and they may even appear arbitrary. I argue that these definitions are not in fact arbitrary. Rather, any divergence from common linguistic usage can be explained in terms of a conceptual innovation which consists in expanding or modifying a concept by thinking it through, thereby generating new content. In the case of Fichte's theory of (...) property, this content turns out to be leisure as the primary object of a theory of distributive justice. The conceptual innovation found in Fichte's theory of property invites a reconceptualization of the relation between work and freedom. (shrink)

This article argues that Honneth’s ‘plural conception of justice’, founded on a theory of recognition, does not succeed in distancing itself from Rawls’ liberal theory of justice. The article develops its argument by evaluating three major objections to Rawls’ liberalism raised by Honneth in his recent articles on justice: namely, first, that the parties responsible for choosing principles of justice are too individualistic and their practical reasoning too instrumentalist; second, that by taking as its ‘object-domain’ the (...) negative liberty of persons, Rawls’ theory fails to promote the actual realization of liberty; and finally, that Rawls’ method of principle justification undermines the ‘priority’ of its Kantian ‘formality’ by presupposing a substantive commitment to a conception of individual good. Arguing that Honneth’s interpretation of Rawls’ theory contains important errors, the article concludes that both theories share the basic intention of securing for all citizens the material and institutional conditions for the actualization of otherwise merely formal liberties or, in Honneth’s terms, mutual self-realization. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Norway has a complex, even paradoxical, relationship to the United Nations Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It makes considerable financial contributions to the United Nations and has strongly supported the establishment of the sustainability agenda aimed at promoting global equity and mitigating the ecological and climate crises. Norway is also a prominent petroleum-producing nation. The Norwegian position is explored using an approach that emphasizes justice and education in the sustainability agenda. Three key texts are studied. (...) The first is the objectives clause in the Education Act, the second is an address by then prime minister Erna Solberg at the annual conference of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise, and the third are educational assignments published by the Norwegian Petroleum Museum addressing sustainability and climate change. What is decisive is how specific facets of justice are emphasized in ways that detach Norway from tensions, contradictions, and dilemmas involved. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive study of Plato’s conception of justice. The universality of human rights and the universality of human dignity, which is recognised as their source, are among the crucial philosophical problems in modern-day legal orders and in contemporary culture in general. If dignity is genuinely universal, then human beings also possessed it in ancient times. Plato not only perceived human dignity, but a recognition of dignity is also visible in his conception of justice, which (...) forms the core of his philosophy. Plato’s Republic is consistently interpreted here as a treatise on justice, relating to an individual and not to the state. The famous myth of the cave is a story about education taking place in the world here and now. The best activity is not contemplation, but acting for the benefit of others. Not ideas, but individuals are the proper objects of love. Plato’s philosophy may provide foundations for modern-day human rights protection rather than for totalitarian orders. (shrink)

Within the framework of the contemporary discussions of the presuppositions of democracy, the author of this paper poses the question whether discussing justice primarily from the social rather than the personal aspect and level is, perhaps, more appropriate. This ties in with the question of the primary object of justice – is justice the trait of social institutions or individuals? Thus the question of what kind of justice matches democracy. The author explicates this network of questions (...) through three underlying models of the theory of justice – Plato, Aristotle and Rawls’s model. Plato’s model is about the realisation of a good life in a political community in view of the idea of justice that one should do that which is proper to one. Aristotle’s understanding of justice sets forth from a systematic analysis of the concepts that differentiate between the levels of general and particular justice. Rawls’s model of distributive justice rests on the mechanism of the forces of the institutional functional frameworks in well-organised societies. The author’s conclusion is that both forms of justice correspond well to the realisation of democracy. It is best when one’s personal disposition to justice provides strength and support to the social institutions of democracy. Without an adequate institutional framework there is, most certainly, no democracy. Without the personal support of citizens, which issues from fundamental consent, democracy can neither be sustained nor developed. In a democratic system, the private sphere of citizens cannot be fully separated from their public actions. Democracy always and necessarily contains in itself some of the political ideals, which citizens cannot, in their worldviews, relate to neutrally. The questions of the institutional and political shaping of relations, and the questions of the good and just life should be in the interest of the citizens. If they do not accomplish their democratic ideals through their own belief and virtue, then there is no substance that would shape identity for a just system of social institutions. If they do not relate to it as to their own common sense and good to be preserved, democracy has no prospects. (shrink)

Background: Theoretically, the principle of justice is strong in healthcare priorities both nationally and internationally. Research, however, has indicated that questions can be raised as to how this principle is dealt with in clinical intensive care. Objective: The objective of this article is to examine how significant others may affect the principle of justice in the medical treatment and nursing care of intensive care patients. Method: Field observations and in-depth interviews with physicians and nurses in intensive care units (...) (ICU). Emphasis was placed on eliciting the underlying rationale for prioritisations in clinical intensive care with particular focus on clinicians’ considerations when limiting ICU treatment. Results: Significant others could induce an unintentional discrimination of ICU patients. Family members who were demanding received more time and attention for both the patient and themselves. Patients’ and families’ status and position and/or an interesting medical diagnosis seemed to govern the clinicians’ priorities of patients and families—consciously as well as unconsciously. The clinicians emphasised that patient information given through families was important. However, patients’ preferences and values conveyed to clinicians through their families were not always taken seriously. This even applied in cases with very serious prognoses and an explicit patient wish to forego life-prolonging treatment. Conclusion: The principle of justice was violated when qualified attention was given to significant others, and through this also to patients. Attention given to significant others was influenced by the healthcare workers’ professional and personal values, attitudes and interests. (shrink)

I begin this chapter by outlining Mill's thinking about why justice is a problem for utilitarians. Next, I turn to Mill's own account of justice and explain its connection with rights, perfect duties, and harms. I then examine David Lyons' answer to the question of how Mill's account is meant to answer the Weak Objection from Justice. Lyons maintains that Mill's account of justice has both a conceptual side and a substantive side. The former provides an (...) analysis of such concepts as 'justice' and 'rights'. The latter, based on the Principle of Utility, provides an explanation of when these concepts apply. As a result, utilitarians can allow for circumstances in which actions are wrong because they are unjust, while also claiming that the standards of right and wrong (as well as justice and injustice) are determined by the Principle of Utility. However, the main thesis of this paper is that Lyons' interpretation is flawed. The distinction between the conceptual and the substantive levels of Mill's thinking does not hold up to scrutiny, and even if it did, it would not support Lyon's reading of Mill. It would instead support a debunking interpretation of justice, an interpretation recently explored by Roger Crisp. Such a debunking interpretation suggests a very different response to the Weak Objection from Justice, one that many, but not all, utilitarians will find unwelcome. (shrink)

Many liberal political philosophers hold that the state should not impose or even promote any particular conception of the good life or human flourishing. It should not, for instance, enact laws and policies designed to elevate citizens' tastes, to refine their sensibilities or to perfect their characters. Instead, the state should restrict itself to maintaining a fair framework of rights and opportunities within which all citizens can pursue their own beliefs about what constitutes a good life. Against this backdrop, Collis (...) Tahzib develops a version of perfectionist political philosophy. Whereas previous perfectionists have argued that the promotion of flourishing ways of life is permissible or legitimate, Tahzib casts perfectionism as a doctrine of justice. On this view, the implementation of laws and policies designed to promote sound ideals of the good life--ideals such as moral, intellectual and artistic excellence--is not merely a legitimate complement to justice but an essential constituent of justice. Over the years, perfectionism has faced various objections: that it is premised on values and judgements that are controversial within modern pluralistic societies; that it is unduly restrictive of freedom or autonomy; that it treats citizens as if they are children, unable to run their own lives; that it expresses the meddlesome mentality of a village busybody; that it mistakenly assumes that there are objective truths about human flourishing; and that it risks the abuse of power by incompetent, overzealous or corrupt state officials. These ideas represent some of the deepest, most vibrant and most powerful strains in liberal thought. In defending perfectionism against these charges, the arguments in A Perfectionist Theory of Justice make a novel and important contribution to longstanding debates about the philosophical foundations of liberalism. (shrink)

The most recent major contribution to the literature on justice as mutual advantage is Peter Vanderschraaf’s book Strategic Justice. In this book, he develops a theory of justice as convention, where justice is those principles that rational, self-interested agents would choose to solve problems of partially conflicting interest. His theory is thus a kind of theory of justice as mutual advantage. A common criticism of theories of justice as mutual advantage is the Vulnerability Objection: (...) if the principles of justice require that resources are only shared with those that are net-contributors to a cooperative surplus, then those that are not net-contributors to that cooperative surplus (so-called vulnerable people) have no claim of justice to any share of the resources. But, the objection states, surely justice cannot exclude people simply because they are vulnerable. Vanderschraaf argues that his theory of justice as convention successfully answers the Vulnerability Objection. However, in this paper, I argue that although Vanderschraaf’s theory successfully demonstrates that it can be to the mutual advantage of rational, self-interested people to agree to share equally even when some people contribute more than others, the problem remains of why such people would share with those that can never contribute more to the cooperative surplus than what they would withdraw from it. Vanderschraaf’s solution is to weaken the requirement that people actually contribute. But that, I argue, undermines the claim that his theory is a theory of justice as mutual advantage. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Two Forms of Property‐Owning Democracy What Is Stability? Why Does It Matter? The Sense of Justice Participation in Public Life Three Distinctive Features of Rawls's View Democratic Corporatism and Participation Objections Conclusion References.

Can history be objective? Is history a science or humanistic discipline? What is its subject-matter? These three questions are variations on a single theme—the objectivity of history—which I want to explore. Faced with the welter of claims and counter-claims regarding objectivity in history, there is need to be explicit about one's approach to these claims. My prime endeavor in this paper is to reformulate these questions from my scheme of reference. I want to consider the objectivity of historical knowledge from (...) a framework that does justice both to philosophic and methological issues and to historical knowledge-claims themselves. How this philosophic framework be labeled is immaterial. What is alone important is that it does distinguish philosophy proper from both science and its methodological analysis. Confusion between the three, I believe, frequently generates problems out of whole cloth. The result is that obfuscation of issues present in much recent literature concerning history. (shrink)

Contents 1 Introduction / 2 The Timaeus on dignity: the Demiurge’s speech / 3 Justice as a virtue / 4 The content of just actions / 5 Justice of the law and justice of the state / 6 Equality / 7 Some key issues in Plato’s conception of justice / 7.1 What is more excellent—justice of the soul or justice of action? / 7.2 Which activity is best and what is its best object? / (...) 7.2. Just actions over contemplation / 7.2. The Timaeus and Plato’s teaching on justice / 7.2. The elderly Cephalus on justice: foreword as epilogue / 7.3 The sharing of wives: testing the interpretation on a ‘hard case’ / 8 Conclusions. (shrink)

Singular-term semantics has been intractable. Frege took the referents of singular terms to be their semantic values. On his account, vacuous terms lacked values. Russell separated the semantics of definite descriptions from the semantics of proper names, which caused truth-values to be composed in two different ways and still left vacuous names without values. Montague gave all noun phrases sets of verb-phrase extensions for values, which created type mismatches when noun phrases were objects and still left vacuous names without (...) values. There is a single type of value for all noun phrases that dissolves the difficulties which have beset singular-term semantics. (shrink)

Critics allege that justice as mutual advantage excludes vulnerable people and is thus inadequate as a conception of justice. Building on Peter Vanderschraaf’s Strategic Justice, this paper considers three distinct vulnerability objections. After Sect. 1 clarifies the “vulnerable,” Sect. 2 discusses an objection according to which it is impossible for a mutual advantage view to protect the vulnerable. Answering this objection only requires a possibility proof, such as that Vanderschraaf provides. Section 3 discusses an objection according to (...) which it is merely contingent whether, not guaranteed that, a mutual advantage view protects the vulnerable. Mutual advantage theorists indeed cannot provide such guarantees, so they must argue that such guarantees are too much to demand from a conception of justice. Section 4 discusses an objection according to which it is improbable that a mutual advantage view will protect the vulnerable. Addressing this concern opens paths for future fruitful research, including considering the conditions that make including the vulnerable more or less likely as well as the conditions that facilitate cooperative ability or create vulnerability. Section 5 builds on the foregoing by emphasizing the diversity of vulnerabilities along with the broader social contract tradition’s diversity of strategies for addressing vulnerability. (shrink)

Intergenerational justice gives present citizens obligations to past as well as future generations. Present members of a political society have an obligation to respect the contributions of their predecessors. But respect for past generations also means taking their intergenerational objectives into account in political decision-making—giving them weight in determining intergenerational policies—and thus treating past generations as participants in intergenerational policymaking. Neither the inability of the dead to have experiences, nor epistemological difficulties in determining their interests, nor the entitlement of (...) present citizens to make political decisions are reasons for ignoring or discounting the intergenerational concerns of past generations. (shrink)

The agency objection to applying distributive justice globally is that principles of distributive justice need to apply to the behaviour of a special kind of institutional agent of distributive justice because of the special powers of that agent. No such agent exists capable of configuring cooperative arrangements between all persons globally, and so distributive justice does not apply globally. One response to institutional views of this kind is that they do not rule out Natural Duties of (...) Justice that fall on all of us to bring about institutional agencies capable of global distributive justice. In this article I argue that this move presupposes a particular, teleological, conception of justice whilst institutional accounts most plausibly rest on a non-teleological one. I provide an argument for favouring the non-teleological conception. I also show why alternative ways of arguing for global Natural Duties of Justice do not get around this controversy. The debate is at the level of presuppositions about justice, and relying on a partisan conception is question begging. (shrink)

1. Introduction. In a famous passage near the beginning of A Theory of Justice, John Rawls discusses utilitarianism’s notorious difficulties with justice. According to classic forms of utilitarianism, a certain course of action is morally right if it produces the greatest sum of satisfactions. And, as Rawls points out, the perplexing implication is “…that it does not matter, except indirectly, how this sum of satisfactions is distributed among individuals any more than it matters, except indirectly, how one man (...) distributes his satisfactions over time.” He concludes the passage by saying that “[u]tilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons.”. (shrink)

The debate over the applicability of the concept of (distributive) justice to the international sphere appears to focus on practicalities in the agent of redistribution. The agency objection says there is no appropriate agent of (the equivalent of societal distributive) justice and its aims for the international sphere. A common response is that the agency question is merely a matter of practicality, the concepts of justice and injustice can apply to circumstances in which distributive justice may (...) not currently be practically achievable. The paper argues that this response is based on a particular and contentious (in the debate) understanding of distributive justice as focused on outcomes rather than treatment by specific types of agents. A number of problems with that concept of justice are adduced and the alternative concept set out. Rejecting the agency objection based on an assumed concept of justice to which those making it would not obviously subscribed begs the question against them. (shrink)

The discourse on nihilism in the German-speaking world continues to take its orientation primarily from Friedrich Nietzsche’s understanding of nihilism as a historical movement of the decline of values. This means that the aspects of nihilism that are not tied to specific epochs and cultures are not accorded due importance (I). In order to make a reappraisal of nihilism that does justice to these objective contents, I will present a classification of types of nihilism and of arguments that support (...) it. The discussion of the typology of the principal meanings of nihilism points to a loss in relevance of conceptions that take their orientation from Nietzsche (II). The discussion of the arguments testifies to the importance of objective knowledge in the justification of nihilism (III). (shrink)

Plato’s account of justice in the Republic has been questioned by David Sachs, who charges Plato for committing a fallacy of irrelevance. Sachs’ objection is built on the assumption that Plato has employed two accounts of justice: a vulgar one, and a Platonic one. Insofar as Socrates’ interlocutors hold a vulgar conception, then Socrates should prove to them that being vulgarly just will be beneficial to them. But Socrates, according to Sachs, never does that. Through emphasizing the dialogues (...) of Socrates with his interlocutors, this essay shows incorrect the assumption that Plato is holding two accounts of justice. The dialogues in the Republic demonstrate that there are vulgar confusions, rather than a vulgar ideology. Furthermore, through defining justice as the dominance of reason over humans and politics, and through relating reason to the Good, Plato leaves open the possibility that some vulgar actions conform to his account of justice. (shrink)

This paper provides a new interpretation of Plato’s account of justice as psychic health in Republic IV. It argues that what has traditionally been considered to be one single analogy is actually a more complex line of reasoning that contains various medical analogies. These medical analogies are not only different in number but also in kind. I discuss each of them separately, while providing a response to various objections.

Machine learning algorithms are increasingly used to shape high-stake allocations, sparking research efforts to orient algorithm design towards ideals of justice and fairness. In this research on algorithmic fairness, normative theorizing has primarily focused on identification of “ideally fair” target states. In this paper, we argue that this preoccupation with target states in abstraction from the situated dynamics of deployment is misguided. We propose a framework that takes dynamic trajectories as direct objects of moral appraisal, highlighting three respects (...) in which such trajectories can be subject to evaluation in relation to their temporal dynamics, robustness, and representation. (shrink)

Are positive duties to help others in need mere informal duties of virtue or can they also be enforceable duties of justice? In this paper I defend the claim that some positive duties (which I call basic positive duties) can be duties of justice against one of the most important prin- cipled objections to it. This is the libertarian challenge, according to which only negative duties to avoid harming others can be duties of justice, whereas positive duties (...) (basic or nonbasic) must be seen, at best, as informal moral requirements or recommendations. I focus on the contractarian version of the libertarian challenge as recently presented by Jan Narveson. I claim that Narveson’s contractarian construal of libertarianism is not only intuitively weak, but is also subject to decisive internal problems. I argue, in particular, that it does not pro- vide a clear rationale for distinguishing between informal duties of virtue and enforceable duties of justice, that it can neither successfully justify libertarianism’s protection of negative rights nor its denial of positive ones, and that it fails to undermine the claim that basic positive duties are duties of global justice. -/- . (shrink)

In this chapter, Plato’s view of justice is presented, which possibly differs from Socrates’. Plato’s “sufficient thesis”, is compared with the “comparative thesis”, held by Glaucon and Adeimantus. A detailed discussion of all the relevant problems of book II, the relation between happiness and justice, is outlined. In conclusion, some aspects of Plato’s view are critically evaluated.

The paper defends the so-called political conception of the scope of justice proposed by Thomas Nagel. The argument has three stages: (a) I argue that A. J. Julius’ influential criticism of the political conception can be answered. Pace Julius, actual and (relevant) hypothetical cases of state coercion do in fact involve a claim to the effect that people have a duty to obey, so the problem of justice does arise, according to Nagel’s criterion, in the critical cases scrutinised (...) by Julius. Hence the ‘perverseness’ objection lapses. (b) I argue, against other critics of Nagel’s view, that in central instances of international coercion such as immigration control people are not asked to accept the ongoing coercion. Consequently, the problem of justice does not, on Thomas Nagel’s view, arise internationally. Furthermore, to the extent that political authority is exercised internationally, it does not give rise to justificatory burdens involving principles of distributive justice.(c) I relate the notion of authority to other aspects of the political conception, including responsibility, and argue that together they constitute an attractive alternative to an influential allocative conception of justice. (shrink)

Background: A fair distribution of healthcare services for older patients is an important challenge, but qualitative research exploring clinicians’ consideration in daily clinical prioritisation in healthcare services for the aged is scarce.Objectives: To explore what kind of criteria, values, and other relevant considerations are important in clinical prioritisations in healthcare services for older patients.Design: A semi-structured interview-guide was used to interview 45 clinicians working with older patients. The interviews were analysed qualitatively using hermeneutical content analysis and template organising style.Participants: 20 (...) physicians and 25 nurses working in public hospitals and nursing homes in different parts of Norway.Results and interpretations: Important dilemmas relate to under-provision of community care and comprehensive approaches, and over-utilisation of certain specialised services. Overt ageism is generally not reported, but the healthcare services for the aged seem to be inadequate due to more subtle processes, for example, dominating considerations and ideals and operating conditions that do not pay sufficient attention to older patients’ needs and considerations of justice. Clinical prioritisations are described as being dominated by adapting traditional biomedical approaches to the operating conditions. Many of the clinicians indicate that there is a potential for improving end of life decisions and for reducing exaggerated use of life-prolonging treatment and hospitalisations.Conclusion: The interviews in this study indicate that considerations of justice and patients’ perspectives should be given more attention to strike a balance between specialised medical approaches and more general and comprehensive approaches in healthcare services for older patients. (shrink)

This chapter summarizes briefly what John Rawls meant by stability, the role it plays in Theory of Justice (TJ), and the outline of his main strategies for showing that a well‐ordered society based on his principles of justice would be relatively stable. It presents comments on Rawls's use of developmental moral psychology in support of his claim that societies based on justice as fairness would be relatively stable. The chapter discusses Rawls's conception of self‐respect, its role in (...) his arguments for justice as fairness, and whether it is subject to a certain Kantian objection that echoes in our contemporary political culture. It argues that if Rawls's turn to an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines as the basis of stability in Political Liberalism (PL) was well motivated, then why not quietly bypass the earlier work on a sense of justice and self‐respect simply as an acknowledged failure. (shrink)

Rawls' main aim in A Theory of Justice is to provide a viable alternative to the utilitarianism which has dominated so much modern moral philosophy. Although philosophers have long recognised the difficulties in the way of acceptance of a utilitarian account of judgments of justice, they have often responded by seeking merely to reformulate the principle of utility. Other philosophers, with a juster appreciation of the seriousness of these difficulties, have been prepared to reject utilitarianism in all its (...) guises, but they have failed “to construct a workable and systematic moral conception to oppose it”. What is needed, beyond a powerful reaffirmation of the familiar objections to utilitarian accounts of justice, is the careful elaboration of a radically non-utilitarian theory of justice. It is this need which Rawls sets out to meet in his book. (shrink)

Thrasymachus’ position on justice, as articulated in Book I of Plato’s Republic, has emerged in the literature as a frustratingly intractable problem because it seems to be made up of contradictory accounts. This paper accomplishes three objectives in relation to this problem. First, it offers an original solution, ‘the relativity view’, which reads Thrasymachus’ two speeches as a temporal narrative, thereby explaining away the notorious contradiction. Second, it highlights the little-noted and underappreciated relativistic and perspectival understandings of justice (...) in Thrasymachus’ account in order to demonstrate where the dominant positions in the literature have gone wrong. Finally, it connects the ‘relativity view’ to the Republic as a whole, a surprising deficiency in most of the literature, which gestures to a deeper understanding of the connections between Book I and the rest of the Republic. (shrink)

Con la finalidad de fundamentar y reforzar su teoria de los bienes primários, J. Rawls introduce, en el §65 de Una teoria de la justicia, la idea de "principio aristotélico". Se discuten las dificultades que implica aceptar dicha noción, asi como las limitaciones de la idea de bien que subyace en dicho principio. Se busca mostrar que la concepción de bien que Rawls presenta alli padece de "insuficiencia moral" y se defiende la tesis de que su aproximación a la idea (...) de bien opaca la dimensión práctica de la racionalidad. In order to ground and reinforce his theory of primary goods, J. Rawls introduces the idea of the "Aristotelian principle" in §65 of A Theory of Justice. The article discusses the difficulties entailed by the acceptance of this notion, as well as the limitations of the idea of the good underlying that principle. The objective is to show that the conception of the good presented by Rawls is affected by "moral insufficiency" and to argue in support of the thesis that his approach to the idea of the good overshadows the practical dimension of rationality. A fim de fundamentar e reforçar sua teoria dos bens primários, J. Rawls introduz, no parágrafo 65 de Una teoría de la justicia, a ideia de "principio aristotélico". Discutemse as dificuldades que implica aceitar essa noção, bem como as limitações da ideia de bem que subjaz nesse principio. Pretendese mostrar que a concepção de bem que Rawls apresenta ali padece de "insuficiência moral". Além disso, defendese a tese de que sua aproximação à ideia de bem ofusca a dimensão prática da racionalidade. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the question of the scope of justice, in a not unusual distributive, egalitarian, and universalistic framework. Part I outlines some central features of the egalitarian theory of justice I am proposing. According to such a conception, justice is – at least prima facie – immediately universal, and therefore global. It does not morally recognize any judicial boundaries or limits. Part II examines whether, even from a universalistic perspective, there are moral or pragmatic (...) grounds for rejecting or limiting the global scope of justice. In particular, I scrutinize five universalistic objections: (1) the principle of “moral division of labor”; (2) the connection between cooperation and distributive justice; (3) the primacy of democracy; (4) the dangers of a world state; and (5) political‐pragmatic reasons. I intend to show that these objections cannot undermine the strong normative claims of global justice. At the most, political‐pragmatic reasons speak in favor of initially striving for somewhat less, in order to receive more general backing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:32. HUME'S CLASSICAL THEORY OF JUSTICE1 Let me begin by formulating a broad distinction between two sorts of theories of justice. I shall stipulate that a modern theory of justice is one which treats justice as a moral quality, in fact as one moral quality among a multitude of moral virtues, and which accordingly takes the obligation tö' be just as pre-eminently a moral obligation. On (...) this approach the philosophical appreciation of justice requires that we interpret it in terms of a moral theory, and correspondingly any viable moral theory is expected to afford a framework within which the virtue of justice is to be understood. The important philosophical question to be asked about justice concerns the moral obligation to abide by the conventions and rules of justice. By a classical theory of justice I mean one which treats this quality not as one moral virtue among many others but as fundamental to morality itself. Here justice would have to be explained before one could develop a satisfactory account of morality. Questions about the moral obligation of justice are on this approach not as important philosophically as questions about the basis of justice itself. The modern and the classical theories are distinguished by the relationship each posits between justice and morality. In the modern approach, the account one offers of morality conditions the account one can offer of justice, while in the classical theory the account one offers of justice conditions the account one can offer of morality. As exemplifying a classical theory of justice one might cite Plato's Republic or, closer to the present topic, Hobbes' De Homi ne. While there seems to be no definitive interpretation of Hobbes ' overall moral and political theories, in this work he maintains that the development of a settled morality is subsequent to the establishment of civil society and therein, of course, also of the order of justice. The following passage from the De Homine shows how the order 33. of civil justice plays a foundational role relative to the moral order. Eut whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good: and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of the man, where there is no commonwealth; or, in a commonwealth, from the person that representeth it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up, and make his sentence the rule thereof. 2 Attributing to Hobbes the view that the account one gives of justice and the civil order conditions and serves as a necessary presupposition to the account one can give of a settled morality permits us to count Hobbes among those thinkers who have offered a classical theory of justice. Because Hume seems in so many ways to deserve the appellation of thoroughly modern philosopher, it is not surprising that he is naturally construed as sharing in the modern conception of justice. I want to argue that this way of interpreting Hume is mistaken and that he is in fact a classical theorist of justice. I shall contend, furthermore, that getting clear about the kind of theory of justice Hume offers allows us to resolve a problem in his moral theory—specifically a problem relating to the correction of the moral judgment. In view of these aims, the paper has three parts: (1) investigation as to what kind of theory of justice Hume offers; (2) exploration of a quandary inherent in the modernist interpretation which serves as an objection to the thesis of this paper; and (3) resolution of this objection and conclusion as to the character of Hume's theory of morality. At the end I shall explore a few corollaries 34. of the thesis that Hume is a classical theorist of justice. 1. Hume: A Classical Theorist of Justice There are... (shrink)

Despite a wealth of data we still have no clear idea what color experiences represent. In fact, color experiences vary with so many factors that it has been claimed that they do not represent anything at all. The primary challenge for any representational account of color experience is to accommodate the various psychophysical results that demonstrate that color appearance depends not only on the spectral nature of the target but also on the spectral, spatial and figural nature of the surround. (...) A number of theorists have proposed that this dependence is an aspect of the visual system's constancy mechanism. However this does not in and of itself tell us what, if anything, is represented in color experience. Ultimately the answer to this question will be informed by one's theory of representational content. I will argue that adopting a molecular scheme of representation enables the development of an account of the represented object of color experience that can do justice to the psychophysical data. (shrink)

The paper defends the so-called political conception of the scope of justice proposed by Thomas Nagel. The argument has three stages: (a) I argue that A. J. Julius’ influential criticism of the political conception can be answered. Pace Julius, actual and (relevant) hypothetical cases of state coercion do in fact involve a claim to the effect that people have a duty to obey, so the problem of justice does arise, according to Nagel’s criterion, in the critical cases scrutinised (...) by Julius. Hence the ‘perverseness’ objection lapses. (b) I argue, against other critics of Nagel’s view, that in central instances of international coercion such as immigration control people are not asked to accept the ongoing coercion. Consequently, the problem of justice does not, on Thomas Nagel’s view, arise internationally. Furthermore, to the extent that political authority is exercised internationally, it does not give rise to justificatory burdens involving principles of distributive justice.(c) I relate the notion of authority to other aspects of the political conception, including responsibility, and argue that together they constitute an attractive alternative to an influential allocative conception of justice. (shrink)