From virtue ethics and interactionist perspectives, we hypothesized that personal justice norms (distributive and procedural justice norms) were shaped directly and multiplicatively by ethical dispositions (equity sensitivity and need for structure) and ethical climates (egoistic, benevolent, and principle climates). We collected multisource data from 123 companies in Hong Kong, with personal factors assessed by participants’ self-reports and contextual factors by aggregations of their peers. In general, LISREL analyses with latent product variables supported the direct (...) and multiplicative relationships. Our findings could lay the groundwork for justice research from a morality perspective in future. (shrink)

This book focuses on two important, interlinked themes in psychiatry, i.e., the relation between self (or: person), context and psychopathology; and the intrinsic value-ladenness of psychiatry as a practice. -/- Written against the background of scientistic tendencies in today’s psychiatry, it is argued in Part I that psychiatry needs a clinical conception of psychopathology alongside more traditional scientific conceptions; that this clinical conception of psychopathology must be based on a fundamental rethinking of the interaction between illness manifestations, contextual influences and (...) the patient as person, such that psychopathology is conceived as the product of this interaction rather than as the outward manifestation of a broken mechanism within the patient. -/- In Part II, it is shown that self- and context-related factors have a large impact on who one is as a professional. I argue that an analysis is needed of the normative aspects of the relations that sustain and frame professional role-fulfilment. This analysis culminates into a so-called normative practice model (NPM) which distinguishes between qualifying, conditioning and foundational principles (or: rules, norms). The normative practice model helps to locate and resist scientistic defenses of the legitimacy of psychiatry and to replace them by a positive account that provides clinicians (and scientists) the conceptual tools they need to justify what they do in broader contexts. The main thrust of the argument is to show that psychiatry needs a value-sensitive account of its legitimacy, in which other normative dimensions are recognized than those that sustain the expert role. Psychiatrists should in other words not defend the legitimacy of their profession by referring to the expert role solely but provide a broader account in which justice is done to the broader social, legal, and economic contexts of professional activity. The analysis of this inherent normativity begins within clinical practice, it extends to the concept of disease as well as to wider domains of psychiatric care and the sociology of professions, and, finally, amounts into an analysis of the value-ladenness of interactions between healthcare institutions, the government, professional organizations and patient groups. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, corrective justice has established itself as central to serious academic discussion of the normative dimension of tort liability. This article describes the consensus about corrective justice that is presently emerging, as is evident from work of the author and from recent work of other tort theorists. The framework for discussing this emerging consensus is what the article calls "the juridical conception of corrective justice." The juridical conception seeks to explicate the most general (...) ideas implicit in liability as a normative practice in which the plaintiff makes a claim against the defendant. Under the juridical conception, corrective justice is the synthesis of two complementary abstractions: correlativity and personality. Correlativity articulates at the most general level the relationship between the interacting parties as doer and sufferer of the same injustice. Personality, i.e., the idea of purposiveness regardless of one's particular purposes, similarly articulates at the most general level the conception of the interacting parties that is presupposed in a regime of rights and their correlative duties. The leitmotif of the emerging consensus is the idea of correlativity, which is now effectively accepted by all of the theorists mentioned, even by those who initially rejected it. Personality, on the other hand, has gained less support, because of the apprehension that it implies that rational agency, as elaborated by Kant or Hegel, is a philosophical truth from which tort theory can be derived. This reason for dismissing personality is insufficient. Corrective justice comes into view not by being derived from a notion of rational agency but by reflection on the most general ideas implicit in liability as a normative practice. Personality is merely the abstraction that represents the parties as the bearers of rights and their correlative duties. Like correlativity, it owes its status within corrective justice to its being implicit in the law's doctrines and institutions. Consequently, whether the Kantian or Hegelian notion of rational agency is plausible is a philosophical question that lies beyond tort theory and that does not affect the place of personality within a corrective justice approach to liability. Moreover, if correlativity and personality are indeed complementary, acceptance of the former should lead to acceptance of the latter. Such acceptance would provide the theorists who now reject it with a concept that would be serviceable for their own formulations. In any case, the consensus about the highly structured notion of correlativity indicates that the main lines of the corrective justice approach to tort law are now firmly established. Although refinements inevitably remain to be made, radical revisions are unlikely to result from further reworking the standard material of corrective justice tort theory. Scholarly attention should instead turn to the examination of the place of corrective justice within the legal order as a whole and to the expansion of the corrective justice analysis from tort law to other bases of liability. (shrink)

What is pedagogy, exactly? Merriam-Webster defines it simply as “the art, science, or profession of teaching.” In contemporary academic discourse, however, pedagogy is generally left undefined — with its apparent implicit meanings ranging anywhere from a specific “model for teaching” (e.g., behaviorist or progressivist instruction) to a broadly political philosophy of education in general (most famously, a “pedagogy of the oppressed”). In this paper, Norm Friesen and Hanno Su follow the Continental pedagogical tradition in giving pedagogy a general but explicit (...) definition. They do so by looking at how pedagogy arises both in everyday life and in school as unavoidably ethical activity undertaken primarily for the sake of the young person or child. Such activities, the authors maintain, are structured not so much by processes, methods, and outcomes, but by irresolvable oppositions and the tensions between them. They illustrate this inductively through a series of images and examples — moving gradually from ones involving parenting and early childhood to ones from elementary and secondary schooling. In this way, Friesen and Su show that pedagogy is not so much one or more ideologically focused or evidence-based instructional or psychological approaches to be mastered by a professional or teaching specialist. It is instead an independent but ethically informed practical perspective — one that can (and has) been extended to form a distinctively pedagogical theory and discipline. As such, it is something that is not only a part of our everyday life and culture, but arguably of all human cultures. (shrink)

Using Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as an example, this paper introduces Wilhlem Dilthey’s hermeneutics and pedagogical theory. Dilthey saw biographies as nothing less than “the highest and most instructive form of the understanding of life.” This, then, serves as the starting point for his hermeneutics or theory of understanding, which distinguishes humanistic understanding from scientific explanation, and sees any one moment or word as having meaning only in relation to a whole—the whole of a sentence (...) or text, or the whole of one’s life. It is also the starting point of his pedagogy, whose ultimate “duty” is “to develop the child as a person who carries their own purpose within themselves.” In introducing Dilthey’s hermeneutic pedagogy, this paper draws principally from his The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, a text that has been long neglected in hermeneutic and phenomenological studies of education. (shrink)

This article discusses the political possibilities of personal forgiveness in transitional justice. Personal forgiveness is extended by a single human victim who has been harmed by a wrongdoer. The victim forgives only that harm which has been done to him or to her. Personal forgiveness is distinguishable from three other forms of forgiveness: group forgiveness, legal forgiveness (a form of group forgiveness), and political forgiveness. In the context of transitional justice, I argue that: (1) (...) class='Hi'>personal forgiveness is a necessary condition for political forgiveness; (2) group forgiveness (including legal forgiveness), while not without a normative function, cannot effectuate either personal or political forgiveness, and (3) personal forgiveness requires a shared narrative framework to lead to political forgiveness. These assertions lead to two further observations. First, because the state has a normative role in its (limited) capacity to forgive on its own behalf and a practical role in its ability to spread and to transmit a shared narrative framework, the state is an important actor in political forgiveness. Second, because the primary historical example of political forgiveness in transitional justice is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission that unfolded within an explicitly Christian theological framework, it may be that the shared narrative framework need be religious or even Christian in nature. (shrink)

Leveraging perspectives from social cognitive theory, the attention-based view, and social networks literatures, we tested the relationship between unethical choice and network unethicality, which we define as respondents’ perceptions of their peer advisors’ unethical choices. Although social cognitive theory predicts that perceptions of peer advisor unethical choice are positively associated with unethical choice, we theorize that the nature of this relationship depends on the personality of the actor and the situation. Results from a lagged study suggest that individual and situational (...) variables may act as key buffers to the adverse impact of unethical social influence on ethical choice. Strengths, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This book rewrites the story of classical Chinese philosophy, which has always been considered the single most creative and vibrant chapter in the history of Chinese philosophy. Works attributed to Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi and many others represent the very origins of moral and political thinking in China. As testimony to their enduring stature, in recent decades many Chinese intellectuals, and even leading politicians, have turned to those classics, especially Confucian texts, for alternative or complementary sources (...) of moral authority and political legitimacy. Therefore, philosophical inquiries into core normative values embedded in those classical texts are crucial to the ongoing scholarly discussion about China as China turns more culturally inward. It can also contribute to the spirited contemporary debate about the nature of philosophical reasoning, especially in the non-Western traditions. -/- This book offers a new narrative and interpretative framework about the origins of moral-political philosophy that tracks how the three normative values, humaneness, justice, and personal freedom, were formulated, reformulated, and contested by early Chinese philosophers in their effort to negotiate the relationship among three distinct domains, the personal, the familial, and the political. Such efforts took place as those thinkers were reimagining a new moral-political order, debating its guiding norms, and exploring possible sources within the context of an evolving understanding of Heaven and its relationship with the humans. Tao Jiang argues that the competing visions in that debate can be characterized as a contestation between partialist humaneness and impartialist justice as the guiding norm for the newly imagined moral-political order, with the Confucians, the Mohists, the Laoists, and the so-called fajia thinkers being the major participants, constituting the mainstream philosophical project during this period. Thinkers lined up differently along the justice-humaneness spectrum with earlier ones maintaining some continuity between the two normative values (or at least trying to accommodate both to some extent) while later ones leaning more toward their exclusivity in the political/public domain. Zhuangzi and the Zhuangists were the outliers of the mainstream moral-political debate who rejected the very parameter of humaneness versus justice in that discourse. They were a lone voice advocating personal freedom, but the Zhuangist expressions of freedom were self-restricted to the margins of the political world and the interiority of one's heartmind. Such a take can shed new light on how the Zhuangist approach to personal freedom would profoundly impact the development of this idea in pre-modern Chinese political and intellectual history. (shrink)

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

The core of this book is a novel theory of distributive justice premised on the fundamental moral equality of persons. In the light of this theory, Rakowski considers three types of problems which urgently require solutions-- the distribution of resources, property rights, and the saving of life--and provides challenging and unconventional answers. Further, he criticizes the economic analysis of law as a normative theory, and develops an alternative account of tort and property law.

In recent years, several cases about the legal personhood of nonhuman animals garnered global attention, e.g. the recognition of ‘basic rights’ for the Argentinian great apes Sandra and Cecilia. Legal scholars have embraced the animal turn, blurring the once sovereign boundaries between persons and objects, recognising nonhuman beings as legal subjects. The zoonotic origins of the Covid-19 pandemic stress the urgency of establishing ‘global animal law’ and deconstructing anthropocentrism. To this end, it is vital to also consider the extensive premodern (...) legal history that humans share with other animals. Over 200 so-called animal trials have been documented in premodern Europe. In these proceedings, certain nonhuman animals—particularly domestic pigs—were prosecuted, often resulting in their capital punishment or anathema. This paper takes a history of ideas approach to these historical instances where Western philosophy of law and philosophical anthropology intersect, problematising the notion that such trials constitute wholesome precedents of the kind of legal personhood presently debated in jurisprudence. My counter-hegemonic analysis of the legal prosecution and execution of several pigs in fifteenth-century France demonstrates that late mediaeval notions of criminality transcended the alleged human-nonhuman divide whilst reaffirming and reifying human distinctiveness. I propose that pig trials were local laboratories where Christian communities reflected upon the natural hierarchy of God’s creation. Ensuing the apparent breach of the prescribed boundaries of nature, these communities renegotiated and re-naturalised everyday interspecies sociability by utilising the offending animals to exemplify particular norms about what it means to be human, generally to the animals’ detriment. (shrink)

This book sets forth a novel theory of distributive justice premised on the fundamental moral equality of persons. It argues that, subject to certain limitations on personal sacrifice, no one should have less valuable resources and opportunities available to him than anyone else, simply invirtue of some chance occurrence the risk of which he did not choose to incur. Applying this principle to the distribution of wealth and income, the specification of property rights, and the allocation of scarce (...) medical resources, Professor Rakowski reaches challenging, often unconventional,conclusions. He further criticizes the economic analysis of law as a normative theory, and develops an alternative account of tort law.Among the topics discussed are the principles by which earnings, wealth, and gifts should be taxed; whether the compulsory removal of organs for transplantation can be justified; how doctors and public officials should make life-or-death decisions when all those endangered cannot be saved; and themorality of killing human beings and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to Discussion of Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China:Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal FreedomTao Jiang (bio)I am grateful to all six commentators for their careful reading of and thoughtful engagements with my book, especially to Sungmoon Kim for spearheading this group effort. In the book, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom, I try to (...) tell a new story about the foundational period of Chinese philosophy, with a focus on the deliberations of normative values in the respective texts. I make three key points. First, the central intellectual challenge during the Chinese classical period was how to negotiate the relationships between the personal, the familial, and the political domains (sometimes also characterized as the relationship between the private and the public) when philosophers were re-imagining and re-conceptualizing a new moral-political order. Philosophers offered a dazzling array of competing visions for that newly imagined order. Second, the competing visions can be characterized as a contestation between partialist humaneness and impartialist justice as the guiding norms of the newly imagined order, with the Confucians, the Mohists, the Laoists, and the so-called fajia thinkers being the major participants. This was the mainstream intellectual project that dominated the classical debate and set the terms and the parameters of that debate. Third, Zhuangzi and the Zhuangists were the outliers of the mainstream moral-political discourse during this period. They rejected the very parameters of humaneness versus justice in the mainstream debate and instead represented a lone voice advocating personal freedom. For the Zhuangists, the mainstream debate was intellectually banal, morally misguided, and politically dangerous. One critical overall context for these [End Page 475] philosophical endeavors is that they took place within an evolving understanding of Heaven and its relationship with humans.Loy Hui-chiehLet me begin with Loy Hui-chieh's comment on the book's methodology, laid out in the Introduction to my book, as it pertains to the broader norms of practices in contemporary analytic philosophy and Chinese philosophy. The purpose of the methodological reflection in the Introduction is to provide some tools in dealing with the challenges to Chinese philosophy from Sinology (historical and philological approaches to classical Chinese texts) and Western philosophy within Western academia. I argue that scholars of Chinese philosophy, situated between Sinology and Western philosophy in the West, need to be mindful of the constructed nature of the scholarly objects shaped by disciplinary norms and practices. Specifically, scholars of Chinese philosophy, in their philosophical endeavors, construct their scholarly objects based on the operative but often implicit ideas of inherited text, textual author, and textual intent, as opposed to Sinologists who are more motivated by their scholarly objects of original text, historical author, and authorial intent.Loy's comment frames my methodological reflections primarily through the lens of history of philosophy. There is another critical element in this endeavor, namely the philosophical lineage upon which the study of philosophy in the West has been built, conceptually and institutionally. With respect to history of philosophy, Loy's questions concern the presentist orientation in analytic philosophy and its relationship with history of philosophy. As he aptly points out, analytic philosophers are ultimately uninterested in the correct interpretation of who said what in the history of philosophy. Rather their interest lies in philosophical issues and problems themselves, irrespective of how/when/by whom those issues are formulated. Scholars in history of philosophy seek to convince analytic philosophers that the texts and the ideas they study should be recognized as good philosophy by contemporary standards, not just their historical values. The presentist bias is clear. Of course, we do not have to subscribe to such a norm since the present is not necessarily the be-all and end-all of everything philosophers are concerned with, or at least it should not be. Otherwise, our philosophical reflections, even those with the presentist concerns, would be significantly impoverished. As a profession, contemporary philosophers regularly draw upon history of ideas, especially from the Hellenistic and early modern European traditions, to frame their arguments and to seek new inspirations. Such a practice is heavily dependent on the... (shrink)

This article develops a normative theory of the status of ‘internally displaced persons’. Political theorists working on forced migration have paid little attention to internally displaced persons, but internally displaced persons bear a distinctive normative status that implies a set of rights that its bearer can claim and correlate duties that others owe. This article develops a practice-based account of justice in internal displacement, which aims to answer the questions of who counts as an internally displaced person and what (...) is owed to internally displaced persons (and by whom). The first section addresses the question of who counts as an internally displaced person by offering an interpretation of the conditions of non-alienage and involuntariness. The second section articulates an account of what is owed to internally displaced persons that draws on and refines the idea of ‘occupancy rights’. The third section sets out an account of the role of the international community in supplementing the protection of internally displaced persons by their own states. (shrink)

Justice in production is concerned with ensuring the benefits and burdens of work are distributed in a way reflective of persons’ status as moral equals. While a variety of accounts of productive justice have been offered, insufficient attention has been paid to the distribution of work’s benefits and burdens in the future. In this paper, after granting for the sake of argument forecasts of widespread future technological unemployment, we consider the implications this has for egalitarian requirements of productive (...) justice. We argue that in relation to all the benefits affiliated with work, other than undertaking social contribution, the technological replacement of work is unproblematic as these benefits could in principle be attained elsewhere. But because social contribution uniquely corresponds to work (when work is understood as more than a paid job), the normative assessment of technological unemployment will turn on the value theories of justice give to contributive activity. We then argue that despite technological replacement being plainly beneficial insofar as it relieves persons from the burdens of work, such as dangerous work or drudgery, because the nature of care work makes it less susceptible to technological replacement, egalitarian concern will require the burdens of care work to be shared equally between individuals. (shrink)

This book is a comparative study of Kant, Rawls, and Habermas and a critical survey of recent theories of justice. It defends the thesis that the normative ground or basis of social criticism is found in a concept of the person as a free and equal moral being.

Contemporary discussions of egalitarian justice have often focused on the issue of expensive taste. G.A. Cohen has recently abandoned the view that all chosen disadvantages are non-compensable, now maintaining that chosen expensive judgmental tastes—those endorsed by valuational judgment—are compensable as it is unreasonable to expect persons not to develop them. But chosen expensive brute taste—the main type of non-compensable expensive taste on the new scheme—cannot be described in such a way that there is a normative difference between it and (...) chosen expensive judgmental taste. As there are related problems with denying compensation for the other kind of expensive taste that might remain non-compensable, Cohen's position on taste appears to be either implausible or virtually indistinguishable from that of equality of welfare. However, compensation for valuational judgment-based expensive taste might be justified on grounds of responsibility. (shrink)

Rawls's theory of justice has had two parallel lives in political theory. The first is framed as an alternative to utilitarianism, and in particular utilitarianism's failure to take seriously the separateness of persons and each individual's right to pursue his or her own projects in life. The second is framed as an alternative to libertarianism, and in particular libertarianism's failure to take seriously our moral obligations to the well‐being of our fellow citizens. This chapter explores where and why Rawls's (...) “justice as fairness” and libertarianism come apart. It focuses on their respective treatments of the just distribution of wealth. Finally, in the real world one would have to worry about the strains of commitment not just for those who want to defect from “justice as fairness” once they see how things turn out for them, but also from those who never accept its normative vision. (shrink)

We are living in a world where power abuse has become the new norm, as well as the biggest, silent driver of persistent inequalities, racism and human rights violations. As humanity is getting to grips with socio-economic consequences that can only be compared with those that followed World War II, this timely book challenges current thinking, while creating a much needed normative and practical framework for revealing and challenging the power structures that feed our subconscious feelings of despair and defeatism. (...) Structured around the four concepts of power - race - justice - restorative justice, the book uses empirical new data and normative analysis to reconstruct the way we prevent power abuse and harm at the inter-personal, inter-community and international levels. This book offers new lenses, which allow us to view power, race and justice in a modern reality where communities have been silenced, but through restorative justice are gaining voice. The book is enriched with twenty-five case studies written by survivors, practitioners and those with direct experiences of power abuse and inequality. Through robust research methodologies, Gavrielides' new monograph reveals new forms of slavery, while creating a new, philosophical framework for restorative punishment through the acknowledgement of pain and the use of catharsis for internal transformation and individual empowerment. This is a powerful book that generates much needed hope. Through a multi-disciplinary dialogue that uses social sciences, criminology, law, psychology and human rights, the book opens new avenues for practitioners, researchers and policy makers internationally. (shrink)

In John Rawls’s theory, the role of the principles of justice is to regulate the basic structure of society—its major social, political and economic institutions—and to specify the fair terms of cooperation for free and equal persons. Some have interpreted Rawls as excluding contract law, and perhaps the private law as a whole, from the basic structure. However, this interpretation of Rawls is untenable, given the motivations for his emphasis on the basic structure and the highly inclusive characterisations he (...) gives of it. Yet if he includes private law within the basic structure, he seems committed to holding that its design and operations should be regulated by his two principles of justice, which govern the distribution of basic liberties, economic resources and opportunities. This would leave it unclear whether there was any room for values other than distributive values to inform the design of private law. Leaving no role for other values might be unproblematic if distributive justice were a master normative category with equal regulative authority over all basic social institutions. But we should not assume that this ‘distributivist paradigm’ gives the best interpretation either of private law or of the fair terms of cooperation for a society of free and equal people. We need to think further about how non-distributive values may inform the principles of justice that regulate the institutional structure of society. And we need to ask how much of law, whether public or private, is regulated solely by principles of justice that focus on the distribution of basic liberties, economic resources and opportunities. (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)

In this book, an international group of philosophers, economists and theologians focus on the relationship between justice, luck and responsibility in health care. Together, they offer a thorough reflection on questions such as: How should we understand justice in health care? Why are health care interests so important that they deserve special protection? How should we value health? What are its functions and do these make it different from other goods? Furthermore, how much equality should there be? Which (...) inequalities in health and health care are unfair and which are simply unfortunate? Which matters of health care belong to the domain of justice, and which to the domain of charity? And to what extent should we allow personal responsibility to play a role in allocating health care services and resources, or in distributing the costs? With this book, the editors meet a double objective. First, they provide a comprehensive philosophical framework for understanding the concepts of justice, luck and responsibility in contemporary health care; and secondly, they explore whether these concepts have practical force to guide normative discussions in specific contexts of health care such as prevention of infectious diseases or in matters of reproductive technology. Particular and extensive attention is paid to issues regarding end-of-life care. (shrink)

What is the relationship between justice as an individual virtue and justice as an institutional virtue? The latter has been exhaustively explored by political philosophers, whereas the former remains underexplored in the literature on virtue ethics. This article defends the view that individual justice is logically prior to institutional justice, and argues that this view requires a conception of individual justice I call ‘justice as lawfulness’. The resulting view consists of three claims. First, just (...) institutions are composed of the relations between just persons. Second, the just person has a disposition to act in accordance with the legal and social norms (collectively, thenomoi) of the existing political tradition. Third, departures from thenomoirequire that the just person act with practical wisdom to reform thenomoiaccording to an implicit standard of justice in the political tradition. (shrink)

Amartya Sen is a renowned economist who has also made important contributions to philosophical thinking about distributive justice. These contributions tend to take the form of criticism of inadequate positions and insistence on making distinctions that will promote clear thinking about the topic. Sen is not shy about making substantive normative claims, but thus far he has avoided commitment to a theory of justice, in the sense of a set of principles that specifies what facts are relevant for (...) policy choice and determines, given a full characterization of any situation in terms of these relevant facts, what ought to be done in that situation. Moreover, Sen has expressed skepticism about the existence of a fully adequate theory in this sense. According to Sen there is a plurality of moral considerations that bear on choice of action and policy and no particular reason to think that weights can be attached nonarbitrarily to each consideration to yield a theory.1 “Sen’s proposal is that distributive justice entails equalizing midfare levels across persons,” writes John Roemer.2 “Other things being equal,” one has to add by way of correction to Roemer’s formulation. Sen holds that we should be concerned with the extent of people’s capability or freedom to attain midfare as well as the midfare level actually reached. Sen holds that distributive values.. (shrink)

Solidarity has for a long time been referred to as the core value underpinning European health and welfare systems. But there has been debate in recent years about whether solidarity, with its alleged communitarian content, can be reconciled with the emphasis on individual freedom and personal autonomy. One may wonder whether there is still a place for solidarity, and whether the concept of justice should be embraced to analyse the moral issues regarding access to health care. In this (...) article, I will answer this question by analysing the normative foundations of the concept of justice, followed by a deeper examination of the concept of solidarity in continental philosophy. More specifically, I will compare the philosophical traditions rooted in Kant to approaches rooted in Hegel. In addition, I will present the work of Avishai Margalit on the decent society to criticize a predominantly liberal approach to access to health care. The importance of solidarity lies particularly in its emphasis on relational aspects and the role of recognition in care practices, which are usually ignored in liberal approaches to justice. However, the article will argue that solidarity is not an alternative to a rights-based concept of justice, but must be considered as a necessary complement to it. (shrink)

In Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account Gillian Brock makes three important claims: that we have duties of justice to all human beings and not only those with whom we share a state; that our duties to those outside our states are of the same scope and normative weight as our duties to those with whom we share a state; and that the existing framework of international institutions affords us a number of straightforward and accessible means to act on (...) our duties to persons outside our states that we ought to pursue. These claims are important in themselves, but the real interest of Brock’s book lies with the argumentative strategy she uses in support of them. This strategy, which includes emphasizing the compellingness of specific institutional and policy prescriptions and distancing her arguments from debates about the structure and plausibility of Rawlsian internationalism, bears interesting fruit in a number of respects. However, it also raises difficult questions about the coherence of the distinction between cosmopolitanism and nationalism on which Brock relies, and about the value of institutionalist approaches to justice more generally. (shrink)

Solidarity has for a long time been referred to as the core value underpinning European health and welfare systems. But there has been debate in recent years about whether solidarity, with its alleged communitarian content, can be reconciled with the emphasis on individual freedom and personal autonomy. One may wonder whether there is still a place for solidarity, and whether the concept of justice should be embraced to analyse the moral issues regarding access to health care. In this (...) article, I will answer this question by analysing the normative foundations of the concept of justice, followed by a deeper examination of the concept of solidarity in continental philosophy. More specifically, I will compare the philosophical traditions rooted in Kant to approaches rooted in Hegel. In addition, I will present the work of Avishai Margalit on the decent society to criticize a predominantly liberal approach to access to health care. The importance of solidarity lies particularly in its emphasis on relational aspects and the role of recognition in care practices, which are usually ignored in liberal approaches to justice. However, the article will argue that solidarity is not an alternative to a rights-based concept of justice, but must be considered as a necessary complement to it. (shrink)

Solidarity has for a long time been referred to as the core value underpinning European health and welfare systems. But there has been debate in recent years about whether solidarity, with its alleged communitarian content, can be reconciled with the emphasis on individual freedom and personal autonomy. One may wonder whether there is still a place for solidarity, and whether the concept of justice should be embraced to analyse the moral issues regarding access to health care. In this (...) article, I will answer this question by analysing the normative foundations of the concept of justice, followed by a deeper examination of the concept of solidarity in continental philosophy. More specifically, I will compare the philosophical traditions rooted in Kant (with emphasis on autonomy and individual rights) to approaches rooted in Hegel (with emphasis on individual relations of recognition). In addition, I will present the work of Avishai Margalit on the decent society to criticize a predominantly liberal approach to access to health care. The importance of solidarity lies particularly in its emphasis on relational aspects and the role of recognition in care practices, which are usually ignored in liberal approaches to justice. However, the article will argue that solidarity is not an alternative to a rights-based concept of justice, but must be considered as a necessary complement to it. (shrink)

I argue that institutions charged with giving justice must understand responsibility in terms of norms governing what people are entitled to expect of each other. On this conception, the sort of responsibility that is of interest to private law or distributive justice is not a relation between a person and the consequence, but rather a relation between persons with respect to consequences. As a result, nonrelational facts about a person’s actions and the circumstances in which she performs (...) them will never settle the questions of responsibility that matter to institutions charged with giving justice. I show the significance of this way of thinking about responsibility by contrasting it with prominent conceptions of responsibility which suppose that its moral significance derives from the ways in which an individual person acts in the world. I demonstrate its power by focussing on cases in which responsibility is widely agreed to run out in ways that non-relational conceptions of responsibility cannot explain. (shrink)

Justice for Earthlings reprints essays by David Miller written in the first decade of this century. The essays develop central themes of his long-term writings on social justice in interesting new ways and display the lucid and elegant prose, common-sense moral judgement and sophisticated use of analytic philosophical techniques that always characterize his work. -/- Much of the book proceeds by way of comparison of the metaethical and normative views that Miller endorses with the luck egalitarian approach to (...) social justice issues exemplified in the work of the late G.A. Cohen. Cohen tells us we should search for universal, necessarily true moral principles – true at all times and places, and true independently of any empirical facts. One such principle according to Cohen is that justice requires that benefits and burdens be overall equal for all persons, unless those who suffer the short end of unequal distribution can reasonably be held responsible for their predicament by virtue of their acts and omissions. -/- Miller rejects almost everything in this picture, except that Cohen and he unite in affirming that moral reflection turns up a plurality of principles and no master principle that rank orders them (so deciding what morality requires us to do involves intuitive balancing of several considerations), and agree also that what we owe one another is constrained by personal responsibility. (shrink)

This paper claims that a particular interpretation of Kant`s legal-political philosophy, as it is presented in his Doctrine of Right, provides us with the much needed resolution to the question of the normativity of law, precisely because it brings in a perspective that avoids both positivism and ethicism. This particular interpretation follows a strategy of argumentation that I call the “argument for the intrinsic normativity of law”, i.e., the argument that law is defined and justified on its own grounds, without (...) any need to refer to ethics, or rational/enlightened self-interest. This argument highlights the concept of legal person with the innate right to freedom as the necessary presupposition of legal practices, and sets forth a fundamental sense of justice inherent to the concept of law that consists in the reciprocal recognition of legal personality. In the end, I come up with a distinctive conception of law that I formulate as a last resort of normativity in the face of a conflict wherein an ethical solution does not appeal to all parties. (shrink)

The article provides an analysis on how much the standard court proceedings can be regarded as the research, which is performed by investigating by what manner and measures the justice in a procedural sense is implemented. It is generally acknowledged that the court, as a subject, solving a legal dispute, implements justice only in the case, when it ensures the impartiality towards all persons. The appropriate legal proceedings form a constituent part of the constitutional right to apply in (...) the court. The article aims at introducing certain aspects of the implementation of the principle of justice in the court proceedings of Lithuania. It is indicated that the lack of legal methodology results in different arguments of the rendered decisions and their unpredictability, therefore, it does not encourage to opt for the legal peace. The article is topical in a sense that it has not provided an analysis, on which the aspects of impartiality reveal themselves in the nowadays case law in particular cases and how it produces an effect on the approach to justice. In Lithuania, doctrinal presumptions were created for the freedom of the courts, upon which the courts started to formulate new procedural regulations. The freedom of the actions of judges is based on the aim to ensure a stronger safety in regard to the rights pertaining to one of the public groups, i.e. to disallow the domination of certain subjects over the others by eliminating inequality between the parties. The freedom of the actions of judges is also justified by the aim to render the right decision. However, the formulation of the new regulations according to the actual situation by too freely interpreting the norm of the proceedings, without having the doctrinal basis for that, causes the legal confusion, thus inconsistency in the case law appears, the inner contradictions arise and, in addition to that, there is a failure to follow the standard of impartiality. The individualisation of each legal dispute pursuant to the newly established procedural regulations creates the presumptions for legal instability. Upon the absence of doctrinal substantiation for the newly formulated procedural regulations, the risk arises for the courts to unduly avail of the competence granted to them, thus there will be no implementation of the justice attained. The approach, based on the demand for an individual safety, encourages to refuse the regulations, which are universally applied. Such conception of justice is characteristic for legal individualism, which is grounded in consumerism, by means of which the standard court proceedings are refused, while the extended sympathy theory becomes the starting point. The comprehension and observance of the legal methodology is one of the conditions for the development of the consistent case law. The presence of a clear method in the case law will allow to prevent from pursuing different legal conceptions, i.e. different reasoning of a court decision upon the similar circumstances, as well as it will prevent from speculating on the accepted legal position by refusing the legal argument. (shrink)

This article argues that corrective justice is an adequate principle of criminalization. On my interpretation, corrective justice holds that, in order for an action to count as a crime, there needs to be a plausible normative story about an offender having violated the interests of a victim in a way that disturbs their relationship as equal persons and a subsequent story about responding to crime in a way that corrects this disturbance. More specifically, I claim that corrective (...) class='Hi'>justice is concerned with the protection of interests that persons have in owning private goods throughout standard interactions with other persons. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I specify the subject-matter that principles of criminal law need to ground and provide an outline of the idea of corrective justice. Second, I show that corrective justice can account for the main cases of crime and the salient modes of criminal responsibility. I also argue that corrective justice can make sense of two prima facie recalcitrant types of cases. Third, and finally, I address two objections to my corrective justice theory of criminal law. The first concerns the implications corrective justice has for locating criminal law along the private/public law divide. The second objection raises the putatively problematic consequences corrective justice has for understanding the separation between criminal and civil law. (shrink)

We argue that there are three norms of critical discussion in stark relief in Republic I. The first we see in the exchange with Cephalus---that we interpret each other and contribute to discussions in a maximally argumentative fashion. The second we seein the exchange with Polemarchus---that in order to cooperate in dialectic, interlocutors must maintain a distance between themselves and the theses they espouse. This way they can subject the views to serious scrutiny without the risk of personal (...) loss. Third, and finally, from Socrates’ exchange with Thrasymachus, it is clear that uncooperative discussants must be handled in a fashion that reinforces the goals of dialectic. So Thrasymachus is refuted and silenced not just for the sake of correcting his definition of justice, but also for the sake of those listening. (shrink)

This chapter asks the reader to contrast justice with some of the other central virtues—for instance, prudence, courage, temperance, or wisdom. Justice is different. Unlike these others, it is principally a social virtue; its interpersonal element is central. Other virtues, such as generosity, as well as benevolence or charity, are also interpersonal. But unlike justice, acts of generosity or benevolence are not owed to specific people. One ought to help others, but the choice of when and where (...) to act benevolently is for the most part up to the individual. In modern terms their requirements are duties of imperfect obligation; those of justice are for the most part owed to specific individuals. The thesis that the norms of justice are not always preemptive reasons may appear much less plausible regarding certain central norms of justice, for instance, the principle prohibiting the intentional killing of nonthreatening innocent persons. The same may be true with the prohibition of cruelty. (shrink)

Today’s globalized economy cannot be governed by legal strictures alone. A combination of self-interest and regulation is not enough to avoid the recurrence of its systemic crises. We also need virtues and a sense of corporate responsibility in order to assure the sustained success of the global economy. Yet whose virtues shall prevail in a pluralistic world? The moral theory of Thomas Aquinas meets the present need for a business ethics that transcends the legal realm by linking the ideas of (...) justice and virtue in an ingenious way. While allowing for, and incorporating, the specificities of region and religion, industry and culture, Thomas’s virtue theory coordinates private and public activities through a set of context-invariant, justice-oriented norms with conceptual appeal to contemporary questions of global business ethics.In our article, we first sketch how Aquinas’s theory can be also of relevance to a non-confessional audience through its appeal to the ‘natural light of reason.’ Then we explain how his theory of ‘natural law’ aligns his ideas of virtue and justice. From this vantage point, we address the tension between cultural diversity and moral uniformity in the economic sphere in general and in today’s globalized business world in particular. Throughout the article, we aim to show that by interpreting the virtue-dimension of business in light of the idea of social justice, Aquinas’s conception of virtuous business conduct gains inter-personal and inter-cultural validity that establishes social justice as the global virtue of business. (shrink)

This paper explores the theoretical basis of the third party’s duty of justice as to grave human rights violations, presenting role obligations as the best complement to the literature. It begins with discussions on agents of justice in duty-based theories, notably O’Neill’s account on global justice, and rights-based theories, which are both included in the institution-centred perspective. I claim that these studies have failed to consider an individual duty bearer’s motive, autonomous reasoning and integrity in relation to (...) justice, all of which constitute serious lacunae for the effective accomplishment of responsibility. To supplement, I introduce the distinction between responsibility and commitment, and acknowledge that combining the two is the desirable condition for recognising the duty of justice. Finally, I argue that the role obligations undertaken through personal acceptance of an institution-based role or a commitment-based role related to human rights norms adequately explain third parties’ duty to protect others from serious harm. (shrink)

Virginia Held assesses the ethics of care as a promising alternative to the familiar moral theories that serve so inadequately to guide our lives. The ethics of care is only a few decades old, yet it is by now a distinct moral theory or normative approach to the problems we face. It is relevant to global and political matters as well as to the personal relations that can most clearly exemplify care. This book clarifies just what the ethics of (...) care is: what its characteristics are, what it holds, and what it enables us to do. It discusses the feminist roots of this moral approach and why the ethics of care can be a morality with universal appeal. Held examines what we mean by "care," and what a caring person is like. Where other moral theories demand impartiality above all, the ethics of care understands the moral import of our ties to our families and groups. It evaluates such ties, focusing on caring relations rather than simply on the virtues of individuals. The book proposes how such values as justice, equality, and individual rights can "fit together" with such values as care, trust, mutual consideration, and solidarity. In the second part of the book, Held examines the potential of the ethics of care for dealing with social issues. She shows how the ethics of care is more promising than Kantian moral theory and utilitarianism for advice on how expansive, or not, markets should be, and on when other values than market ones should prevail. She connects the ethics of care with the rising interest in civil society, and considers the limits appropriate for the language of rights. Finally, she shows the promise of the ethics of care for dealing with global problems and seeing anew the outlines of international civility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. BehrPatrick Auer JonesSocial Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. Behr (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), ix + 259 pp.The status of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum as the origin point of what has come to be called (...) Catholic Social Teaching (CST), or Catholic social doctrine, has been reinforced on the magisterial level by the commemorations of the encyclical by Pius XI, Paul VI, and John Paul II. It should be noted, then, that the tradition of CST is comparatively recent. Indeed, it is nearly coextensive with the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, this short tradition already calls for a ressourcement. As Russell Hittinger has pointed out, reflections on CST often move swiftly to the particulars of social issues without an adequate grasp even of its basic concepts: subsidiarity, solidarity, the common good, and the dignity of the person. Further, historical [End Page 1101] developments have had dramatic impact upon the ways in which these principles have been received and developed in the course of this young tradition.In his book Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought, Thomas C. Behr provides a major contribution to just such a ressourcement. He does this by presenting an introduction to the thought of the Jesuit scholar whose revival of Thomistic thought in a modern register formed the basis for Leonine social teaching. As Behr explains, Taparelli has remained a somewhat hidden figure in accounts of the genesis and development of CST. He goes unmentioned in the major social encyclicals of Leo and Pius, despite the fact that Leo himself was Taparelli's student. Because of his rhetorically and philosophically potent critique of Enlightenment thought and its effect on mid-nineteenth-century Europe, available to a popular audience through his frequent contributions to the Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica, Taparelli's name carried baggage for a Church that sought to move beyond the posture of reaction to liberal political orders.However, as Behr shows in the introduction, Taparelli hardly rejected the methods and insights of modern political thought tout court. Behr describes Taparelli's system as a "realist social science." This terminology speaks to the promise which Taparelli found in the sociological analysis of Montesquieu in particular. Though Taparelli judged that Montesquieu held a questionable preference for a republican political form, he greatly admired Montesquieu's ability to, as Behr puts it, "bring political theory into relationship with social theory and historical contingency" (8). Though Taparelli was not familiar with the work of Alexis De Tocqueville, Behr also notes the resonances between Taparelli's work and Tocqueville's political sociology and defense of "intermediary institutions." Yet Taparelli makes up for what the sociological approaches of Montesquieu and Tocqueville lack in the way of natural, teleological principles of politics. Behr alerts the reader from the very beginning of his work that, in approaching Taparelli, he will not find a simple recapitulation of Thomas, but rather a creative approach to political thought which aims to set what is worthy in the modern empirical methodologies on firmer foundations through the recovery of Thomistic-Aristotelian principles.In chapter 1, "Taparelli and the Age of Ideology," Behr situates Taparelli within the political conflicts of the early nineteenth century. Behr sets the scene for Taparelli's renovated Scholasticism by explaining the opposition between Catholic traditionalism (represented especially by Joseph De Maistre and Donoso Cortés) and Catholic liberalism (represented especially by Henri Dominique Lacordaire and his more radical associate Felicité de Lammenais). While the Catholic liberals aimed to convince both [End Page 1102] the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the anticlerical, postrevolutionary governments of Europe that Christianity upheld liberal and republican ideals, the traditionalists argued that Europe's moral and political derangement was the result of a rejection of the norms of tradition—especially of papal and monarchical authority. Remarkably, Taparelli entered neither of these camps. In the opening chapter, Behr stimulates the contemporary reader's interest by showing how Taparelli responded to a crisis of ideologies—progressive and... (shrink)

A question that has recently attracted considerable attention is this: What is the nature and significance of the normative relationship a person bears to herself ? On one view, it is held that persons are self-owners : as Locke put it in one of the more famous passages in the Second Treatise : [E]very man has a property in his own person : this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of (...) his hands, we may say, are properly his. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Matthew S. Santirocco JUSTICE IN SOPHOCLES' ANTIGONE Sophocles' Antigone is most often apprehended in terms of conflicts, an approach which the play does indeed invite. The personal clash of Antigone and Creon generates conflicts on many different levels— political (individual or family vs. state, aristocracy vs. democracy), theological (gods vs. men), philosophical (nature vs. law or convention), sexual (woman vs. man), even chronological (young vs. old). However, (...) insofar as no list can ever be so inclusive as the play itself, all such discussions tend by their very nature to be reductionist. And even if a balanced critique were possible at this level, a tragedy is not the sum of abstract conflicts; it is theatre, people in action. Furthermore, the conflict approach encourages us to ask the wrong questions. Although conflict need not imply resolution, critics persist in searching for it. Yet there is no resolution in the Antigone except by death. Similarly, such an approach invites us to ask who is right, Antigone or Creon. But in a very real sense this question misses Sophocles' point. Relevant, perhaps, to versions by Anouilh and Brecht, the question misleads when applied to the ancient play. It is interesting that we oversimplify, for Sophocles' sympathies are more expansive and complex than these modern interpretations of his myth. For all these reasons a valid alternative approach to the play may be to consider it not in terms of the conflicts incarnated in the personalities but rather in terms of one theme in the context of which all the conflicts are played out. The precise issue here, as so often in Greek tragedy, is a philosophical one. As the religious thought of an earlier era was yielding to judicial and political thought, and as older heroic ideals were being supplanted by a rationalistic view of man, tragedy's function in fifth-century Athens was, in part at least, to expose and explore these cultural displacements, either by affirming traditional values and concepts or else by questioning their continued validity. One such concept, perhaps the most recurrent in tragedy, 180 Matthew S. Santirocco181 is justice, dike. Originally a term used to refer to things as they are, dike came also to acquire a normative sense, things as they ought to be. At different times and in different contexts the word can signify custom or usage, law-enforcing authority, penalty, and ofcourse "justice" as a higher standard. Its precise semantic range is wide and fluctuating. Thus tragedy becomes, in a sense, a matter of vocabulary. In the Antigone the characters appeal to justice, but each defines it differently, so that the conflict is not so much between justice and injustice as between one sort of justice and another. The Oresteia of Aeschylus had earlier celebrated the transition from vendetta justice to courtroom justice. The Antigone, however, focuses not so much on the changes in dike as on a question these changes raise, namely the very possibility of dike. The establishment of the law court brought Aeschylus' trilogy to a resolved ending. Sophocles' vision in the Antigone is much more austere. Although he acknowledges the existence of an ideal of justice, he exposes the tensions and ambiguities inherent in it and thereby questions whether that ideal can ever be realized in the lives of men. II A key text concerning justice is contained in one of the choral odes. But can it be trusted? The tragic chorus is not, after all, the mouthpiece of the poet as was the comic chorus in Aristophanes' parabaseis. Nor is it always or necessarily the mouthpiece of the audience, SchlegeFs "ideal spectator." In the Antigone, as elsewhere, the chorus simply constitutes a panel of the population (here, of Thebes) and its perspective on the action is, if not omniscient, not particularly partisan either. Gordon Kirkwood has demonstrated the many dramatic functions of the Sophoclean chorus, including its ambiguities. In the Antigone no fewer than three odes are ambiguous, leaving in doubt the identity of the one who has disturbed order and right (332-75), who has violated the will of heaven (582-625), and whose mind has been perverted by love (781-816). Although the chorus may not be aware of the... (shrink)

In this article, I consider the neglected question of justice between states in the distribution of responsibility for refugees. I argue that a just distribution of refugees across states is an important normative goal and, accordingly, I attempt to rethink the normative foundations of the global refugee regime. I show that because dismantling the restrictive measures currently used by states in the global South to prevent the arrival of refugees will not suffice to ensure a just distribution of refugees (...) between states, a more detailed account of how responsibilities should be shared between states is required. To this end, I make three claims. First, I argue that the definition of ‘refugee’ must be broadened beyond those subjected to persecution to include harms of action or omission by states that seriously jeopardise personal security or subsistence needs. Second, I argue that allocating a fair share of refugees to states should be based on state’s integrative capacities. Finally, I argue that distributive justice between states must be balanced against the legitimate interests of refugees in their destination country and the duty of states to ensure they are settled in places where they are likely to flourish. (shrink)

This article argues that contemporary accounts of justice miss a relational dimension of justice, which focuses on the terms private individuals’ interactions must meet for them to constitute relationships among equal, self-determining persons. The article develops the argument that the justice requirement to respect others as substantively free and equal individuals can sometimes be adequately discharged only if the relevant private persons are held responsible for its realization. It further elaborates the normative framework of relational justice (...) to explain the generic structure, content, and scope of such a requirement. (shrink)

Cynthia Willett brings together diverse insights from social psychology, classical and contemporary literature, and legal and justice theory to redefine the basis of the moral and legal person. Feminists, communitarians, and postmodern thinkers have made clear that classical liberalism, with its emphasis on individual autonomy and excessive rationalism, is severely limited. Although she is sympathetic with the liberal view, Willett finds it necessary to go further. For her, attention to the social dimensions of the family and civil society is (...) critical if issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality are to be taken seriously. Interdependency, not autonomy, is of increasing significance in an era of globalization. Willett proposes an alternate normative theory that recognizes the impact of social forces on individual well-being. Citizenship in a democracy should not be defined solely on the basis of rights to autonomy, such as bare rights to property or free speech, she explains. Rather, citizenship should be defined first of all in terms of the rights, responsibilities, and capacities of the social person. It is within the African American tradition of political thought that Willett finds a more useful definition of human identity and political freedom. The African American experience offers a compelling vision of social change and a deeper understanding of what it means to be a social person. By focusing on everyday battles against racism, Willett contends, we can gain valuable insight into the meaning of justice. (shrink)

In view of the explanatory significance of joblessness, some social scientists, policymakers, and commentators have advocated strong measures to ensure that the ghetto poor work, including mandating work as a condition of receiving welfare benefits. Indeed, across the ideological political spectrum, work is often seen as a moral or civic duty and as a necessary basis for personal dignity. And this normative stance is now instantiated in federal and state law, from the tax scheme to public benefits. This Article (...) reflects critically on this new regime of work. I ask whether the normative principles to which its advocates typically appeal actually justify the regime. I conclude that the case for a pro tanto moral or civic duty to work is not as strong as many believe and that there are reasonable responses to joblessness that do not involve instituting a work regime. However, even if we grant that there is a duty to work, I maintain that the ghetto poor would not be wronging their fellow citizens were they to choose not to work and to rely on public funds for material support. In fact, I argue that many among the black urban poor have good reasons to refuse to work. Throughout, I emphasize what too few advocates of the new work regime do, namely, that whether work is an obligation depends crucially on whether background social conditions within the polity are just. (shrink)