Sen’s purpose in this comparatively short chapter seems to be to draw a distinction between principles of justice that focus on institutions and those that focus on behaviour and so on consequences, and then condemn “institutionally fundamentalist” principles for failing to take account of what actually happens. This distinction is supposed to be illuminated or perhaps even typified by a contrast Sen begins the chapter with, between the policies of two figures from Indian history, Ashoka and Kautilya. Ashoka, having seen at firsthand the horrors of coercion and violence during a campaign to extend his empire, apparently renounced the normal means of exercising power and instead exhorted his subjects to behave virtuously in a way that Sen reads as showing that he equated moral knowledge and moral motivation in a rather simplistic way. Indeed, as Sen notes, part of the reason that the political order did not totally collapse once Ashoka gave up on enforcing his will through force seems to have been that the administrative reforms implemented by his grandfather’s advisor, Kautilya, had a life of their own. The idea appears to be that focussing on institutions exhibits Ashoka’s utopian idealism about the possibility of spontaneous moral reform whereas focussing on behaviour and its consequences is more like Kautilya’s pragmatic acceptance of human fallibility.

This contrast though, is a different one from the one between institutions and consequences as the relevant units of moral assessment. Since, as Sen makes clear, Kautilya’s reforms were institutional reforms, it could hardly be the same one. The reason for this is that what one thinks are the relevant units of moral assessment and how one thinks about the possibilities for human motivation are two, perhaps related, but nonetheless clearly distinct questions. Blain I think has already mentioned that Sen’s reading of Rawls in this kind of area may not be entirely sympathetic, but there seem to me other cases where this claim borders on the bizarre. Hobbes, for example, is in Sen’s typology an institutionally-focused theorist, as his focus on the figure of the Sovereign presumably justifies. Yet Hobbes is clearly not of the view that human moral motivation can be improved by moral education in anything like the way that Sen presents Ashoka as being. A focus on institutions rather than behaviour or consequences in stating principles of justice may be for a number of reasons. One is that institutions provide and in a certain sense are stable patterns of coordinated behaviour enforced through sanctions, and so can constrain human behaviour in ways that ensure that it remains within at least an acceptable set of outcomes. This, for example, seems to be Hobbes’ reasoning. Not only does that depend on views of human behaviour that Sen at least implies are anathema to institutionally-focussed theorists and so demonstrate the failure of his attempt to align views of human behaviour with the focus of principles of justice, but it also casts doubt on the way that Sen wants to exclude institutional theorists from having a concern with consequences.

This is, on Sen’s account, not a symmetrical exclusion. Theories which focus on realization may take account of the ways in which the consequences they are supposed to be focussing on are produced; the means to these ends can be incorporated into their assessment. The effect of this definition is to make the struggle that institutionally-focussed theories face more difficult by allowing their opponents access to all the resources they can draw on without any parallel expansion of the tools they can make use of. The way Hobbes, though, thinks about the value of institutions is clearly dependent on their consequences. It is not clear that the consequences have any existence independent of the institutions - part of Hobbes’ case is clearly that the only way out of the State of Nature is through a near-absolute sovereign - but neither is it as if the institutions have virtues independent of the production of those consequences.

Sen acknowledges this at times, as when he observes that the difference principle is clearly an institutional requirement related to consequences: it is the production of a particular set of consequences that mean that institutions fulfil the difference principle, after all. Yet he seems determined to force institutionally-focussed theories into a deontological straitjacket, where his paradigms of institutionally-focussed theory seem to be Nozick and Gauthier, despite the fact that his real target, Rawls, clearly does not think about duties in the same sort of way. Indeed, Rawls’ own critique of libertarianism is precisely that it is not institutionally-focussed in the right way, that libertarians do not have a theory of the basic structure, thinking of it not as the exercise of public power but as analogous to private contract (see for example PL, Lecture VII, §3).

One way of thinking about this would be to think of the sorts of theories that Sen wants to condemn as failing to take proper account of consequences as procedural: a libertarian entitlement theory is roughly procedural, just as Rawls claims that institutions which meet the difference principle are examples of pure procedural justice. Yet there are a variety of different forms of procedural justice, all of which may take some interest in consequences. Whether a procedure’s outcome is appropriate because of the procedure itself or because the procedure tracks some independent criterion, considerations about the state of affairs they realize can be incorporated into their justification. As far as perfect and imperfect procedures go, the independent criterion could relate to outcomes just as it could to deontological considerations, while pure procedures may have their constitutive rules justified on grounds of their consequences; presumably competitive sports are if played to the rules pure procedures, yet changes to their rules can be and are justified on grounds of improving the spectacle.

The pair of contrasts Sen draws and claims are aligned in this chapter then seem to me unhelpful. They do not align, and the polemical use Sen wants to put them to I think relies on skewing the deck against his opponents. Part of this seems to be because of Sen’s insistence that asking “how things are going and whether they can be improved is a constant and inescapable part of the pursuit of justice”. That is why it would be wrong not to make the realization of states of affairs the focus of principles of justice. Notice though, that if the means by which states of affairs come about can be incorporated into their assessment, that this tells us nothing about whether consequences or the means of bringing them about are what can be improved. As long as deontological restraints are part of what matters from the perspective of justice, then until we know what deontological restraints are properly included in assessments of justice, this assertion is perfectly compatible with more or less any theory of justice. More, it is unclear why a perfectly general concern with the state of the world is always and everywhere a part of justice. That it would make you happy and cost me very little to say how much I liked your cooking does not mean that it is a question of justice whether I do. There are ways that things can be good or bad without being about justice, and I am not sure Sen is prepared to acknowledge that.

As its title suggests, this chapter is a critical discussion of Rawls’s political philosophy.  However, the chapter is not Sen’s only critical treatment of Rawls’s ideas in the book: some criticisms noted in the ‘Introduction’ are not developed here but elsewhere, and some criticisms mentioned here are developed further later in the book.  Moreover, the chapter is not entirely critical: Sen begins by recounting his long friendship with Rawls, and about halfway through the chapter Sen identifies seven ‘positive lessons’ from Rawls’s political philosophy.  Nonetheless, the bulk of the chapter is critical of Rawls’s views.

The following three criticisms especially struck me as I was reading the chapter:

1. Sen’s claim that if Rawls acknowledges that unanimity on a conception of justice cannot be achieved, then it follows that Rawls’s entire theory of justice is ‘devastated.’
2. Sen’s claim that Rawls simply assumes that citizens will “spontaneously do what they agreed to do in the original position” (61).
3. Sen’s worry that ‘parochial beliefs’ might adversely affect the selection of principles of justice by the parties within the original position.

I found all three criticisms unconvincing.

1.

Sen restates his pluralism with respect to conceptions of justice: “There are genuinely plural, and sometimes conflicting, general concerns that bear on our understanding of justice” (56-7).  Consequently, he does not think that rational agents invariably will converge on a unique set of principles of justice within the original position.  Sen goes on to note that Rawls, in his later writings, acknowledges that alternative conceptions of justice might be selected by the parties in the original position.

(The picture is actually more complicated than Sen presents.  Not only does Rawls acknowledge that the original position device does not necessitate the selection of the two principles of justice as fairness, given the many different considerations to which the parties might appeal in their deliberations [JF, 133-4], he also claims that the original position device itself is only one way to satisfy the ‘criterion of reciprocity,’ and that other liberal theories might employ different justificatory strategies for arriving at principles of justice that satisfy the criterion of reciprocity [PL, xlviii-xlix].)

According to Sen, while Rawls accepts “that there are incurable problems in getting a unanimous agreement on one set of principles of justice in the original position,” Rawls fails to recognize that this “cannot but have devastating implications for his theory of ‘justice as fairness’”(58).  However, Sen does not seem to provide any argument (as far as I could discern) for this claim.  That is, I could not see why Sen thinks that Rawls’s acknowledgement that there might be a plurality of reasonable liberal conceptions of justice renders Rawls’s overall theory no longer viable.

I think that the most plausible way to understand Rawls’s project (in his writings on political liberalism, at least) is that he is trying to identify and defend what he takes to be the best justified conception of justice available, ‘justice as fairness,’ and to explain to us why he thinks that that conception of justice is the best one (namely, by means of the original position device, etc.).  Rawls hopes that we will agree with him, and that we will, in light of his arguments, achieve a reflective equilibrium in support of the principles of justice as fairness (and subsequently employ those principles when thinking about fundamental political matters).

Rawls acknowledges that this is an ongoing, open-ended democratic process.  As he writes: “…we are in civil society and…the political conception of justice, like any other conception, is always subject to being checked by our reflective considered judgements” [‘Reply to Habermas,’ 153].  Commitment to the principles of justice as fairness does not require or depend upon the achievement of unanimous support for those principles (as far as I can tell).  It is not clear why we should abandon our commitment to justice as fairness (assuming that we have been convinced by Rawls’s arguments) once we acknowledge that other reasonable and rational persons might endorse other liberal conceptions of justice.

Moreover, it is important not to overstate the scope for reasonable disagreement with respect to justice in Rawlsian political liberalism: “The limiting feature of these forms [of reasonable liberalism] is the criterion of reciprocity” [PL, 450].  Thus all reasonable political conceptions of justice (roughly, all conceptions that could be supported by reasonable persons, i.e., persons who acknowledge the fact of reasonable pluralism and are committed to satisfying the criterion of reciprocity) will include three features, according to Rawls.  These features are: (a) a set of basic (liberal democratic) rights and liberties, (b) a ‘special priority’ for these rights and liberties over other considerations of justice, and (c) measures ensuring that all citizens have adequate resources to make effective use of their basic rights and liberties.  Consequently, conceptions of justice like libertarianism and classical utilitarianism remain ‘unreasonable’ and thus ‘off the table’ in Rawlsian political liberalism (libertarianism fails with respect to (c), whereas classical utilitarianism fails with respect to (b)).  Even late Rawls, then, would reject Sen’s ‘flute example’ from the Introduction.  Therefore, the concession that Rawls makes does not look especially harmful to his overall project.  All reasonable liberal conceptions of justice are going to overlap on certain core features.  Their differences simply are not fundamental in nature.  (They concern disagreements over questions like: should the basic liberties have ‘lexical priority,’ or a ‘special weight,’ relative to other considerations of justice’?  In ensuring that all citizens have adequate means to make effective use of their liberties, is the ‘difference principle’ to be preferred, or a weaker ‘sufficientarian’ principle?  Etc.)

Perhaps Sen thinks that unanimity is required for the implementation of the principles of justice, given Rawls’s account of a ‘well-ordered society’?  This is not mentioned at all in the chapter, but I suppose that an argument to this effect might proceed along the following lines.  A fully just society, according to Rawls, is a ‘well-ordered society,’ and in a well-ordered society all reasonable persons endorse the same political conception of justice.  If unanimity on a conception of justice is recognized as unachievable, then a well-ordered society cannot be regarded as a realistic utopia, and so the Rawlsian project crumbles.  (Or so such an argument might go.  Again, Sen does not explicitly make this argument.)

However, I think that the idea of a well-ordered can easily be tweaked from one in which there exists unanimous support for the relevant conception of justice to one in which the basic structure is organized in accordance with a legitimate political conception of justice (one that satisfies the criterion of reciprocity, and thus includes the three features outlined above).  If all reasonable persons in a society acknowledge the legitimacy of the conception of justice that governs their basic structure, that society is ‘well ordered’ in nature, i.e., ‘stable for the right reasons,’ as citizens’ sense of justice is sufficient for them to freely support the conception of justice (even if the conception is not their most preferred one, and they consequently exercise their democratic rights to recommend the adoption of a different conception).  If this modest amendment to the idea of a well-ordered society is plausible, then arguments in favour of a conception of justice that claim that a society organized in accordance with it would be ‘well ordered’ in nature can still be made, that is, the idea of a well-ordered society can continue to play its role in demonstrating the feasibility and legitimacy of a conception of justice (within the second stage of the original position argument).

My apologies for this somewhat lengthy discussion!  The main point that I want to make simply is that Sen provides us with no argument, as far as I can tell, for his claim that Rawls’s acknowledgement that the original position device need not yield a unique set of principles of justice entails the demise of his overall theory.  Moreover, I’m sceptical that such an argument is available.

2.

Sen claims that Rawls’s focus on determining principles of justice for institutions leads him to neglect the ‘actual behaviour’ of people; instead, Rawls simply assumes compliance with the requirements of justice.  Within Rawls’s system, according to Sen, the selection of the principles of justice ensures not only the right choice of institutions, but also the necessary behaviour by citizens (see 69).

This strikes me as clearly incorrect.  On Rawls’s account, political power in an adequately just society is ultimately the “power of free and equal citizens as a collective body.”  Consequently, the question of whether citizens actually can do what is necessary in order to maintain just institutions over time is of central importance to Rawls’s project.  There are no ‘political institutions’ that are independent of citizens’ behaviour: “political power is citizens’ power, which they impose on themselves and one another as free and equal” [JF, 40].  Consequently, there is a vital second stage to the original position, in which the parties determine whether the principles that are selected in the first stage can be stable over time ‘for the right reasons,’ i.e., through the free support of reasonable citizens, given the parties’ knowledge of human psychology, the circumstances of justice, and so forth.

All of Part V of Justice as Fairness is devoted to this question (just as is a substantial part of A Theory of Justice, with its discussion of the ‘strains of commitment,’ the ‘argument for congruence,’ etc.).  While Rawls’s discussion of this stage of the original position is conducted at a high level of generality, the parties in the original position, when determining the stability of justice as fairness, do appeal to general psychological and social facts (as well as the general circumstances of justice, including the fact of reasonable pluralism, etc.).  Consequently, Rawls is not simply assuming that citizens in a just society will ‘spontaneously’ act in accordance with the requirements of justice.  Indeed, failure to demonstrate the stability of a society governed by principles of justice in the second stage of the original position is sufficient to show that those principles must be rejected.  While one might fault the details of Rawls’s discussion of stability, Sen is clearly incorrect in claiming that Rawls simply assumes compliance with the requirements of justice.

Perhaps Sen’s criticism should be construed as levelled against Rawls’s assumption of ‘full compliance’ within a just society?  (The argument in the second stage of the original position is meant to show that ‘full compliance’ by reasonable persons is possible, despite the fact of reasonable pluralism, and in light of, inter alia, general features of human psychology).  If so, this is not stated explicitly by Sen in this chapter.  (Although this reading might be suggested by Sen’s presentation of the “6th exclusion” of Rawls’s theory in chapter four (90).)

Certainly, when trying to realize the principles of justice in non-ideal theory, more specific information concerning ‘actual behaviour’ (including expectations regarding probable levels of non-compliance, the actions of ‘unreasonable’ persons, etc.) needs to be taken into account.  However, I do not see why such considerations would undermine the original position device and the justifiability of the principles of justice derived via that device.  This seems especially to be the case once we keep in mind the different roles of the ‘general conception of justice’ and the ‘special conception of justice’ in Rawls’s theory.  The former provides a threshold account of the requirements of justice by means of which we can judge the justice/injustice of existing, ‘non-ideal’ societies.  The latter conception of justice, in contrast, constitutes a ‘regulative ideal’ for thinking about how to reform existing societies.  Once we keep in mind the different content and roles of these two conceptions of justice in Rawls’s theory, the complaint that Rawls fails to consider adequately the ‘actual behaviour’ of persons does not seem to have much force, in my judgement.

3.

Finally, Sen criticizes Rawls’s social contract approach to thinking about justice for being vulnerable to the problem of ‘parochialism.’  Sen writes: “each country, or each society, may have parochial beliefs that call for more global examination and scrutiny” (71).  Sen pursues this criticism at greater length in chapter six, so perhaps we should postpone discussion of it for later.  Nonetheless, I wanted to note that I find this criticism deeply misguided.  The parties in the original position only know certain very general facts about their society, namely, “that it exists under the circumstances of justice, both objective and subjective, and that reasonably favourable conditions making a constitutional democracy possible obtain” [JF, 87].  Beyond that, when identifying principles of justice (as opposed to just institutions), the parties in the original position do not know more particular information about their society – and, in particular, they do not employ the kinds of country or society-specific beliefs that would give rise to concerns about ‘parochialism.’  It seems that Sen is conflating the original position, in which principles of justice are selected, with the ‘constitutional stage,’ at which point the parties apply the principles of justice to the constitutional structure of a particular society, while remaining ignorant of the particular place of the people whom they represent within that society.  (Even with respect to the ‘constitutional stage,’ though, I find Sen’s concern with ‘parochialism’ misguided.)

In conclusion, I would like to note that while I have not (so far) been very impressed by Sen’s criticisms of alternative accounts of justice, and especially Rawls’s account, I remain hopeful that his ‘positive’ project, his ‘comparativist’ approach to justice, will prove to be more compelling.

(Finally, my apologies for so grotesquely exceeding the recommended word limit!)

Workshops in Political Theory, Seventh Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University, 1-3 September 2010

TOLERATION AND RESPECT: CONCEPTS, JUSTIFICATIONS AND APPLICATIONS

Conveners:
Emanuela Ceva (Institute for Advanced Study, University of Pavia)
Sune Laegaard (Roskilde University)
Federico Zuolo (Institute for Advanced Study, University of Pavia)

Discussions of the ideas of toleration and respect have animated vivid and ongoing debates in political and moral philosophy during the last decades. The formulations given to the idea of toleration have come to range from the negative appeal to non-interference to the positive recognition of difference. In a similar vein, the idea of respect has been object of some serious reformulation building on the works of neo-Kantians up to the most recent applications to issues of cultural diversity and religious liberty. However, the sophistication of the dicussions revolving around each of the two ideas has not been accompanied by a clarification of their reciprocal conceptual and normative relations, thus leading, in fact, to a blurring of the lines between them.

On this backdrop, the workshop will offer an occasion to engage in debates leading to a more systematic exploration of the intricate relations, conceptual and practical, between the two ideas. In particular, papers could address one (or more) of the following issues: Read the rest of this entry »

Two theory-heavy political science conferences released their schedules today: the Canadian Political Science Association , June 1-3, Montreal (with the theory section organized by Jennifer Rubenstein and myself, and including a dedicated workhop on “Non-ideal and institutional theory”) and the New England Political Science Association (theory panels organized by Sharon Krause).For those who just want to see the theory listings for CPSA instead of browsing through the unwieldy 86-page pdf, I’ve separated them out here.

The main point of this chapter is to defend a conception of objectivity in our normative thinking about justice.  Against critics of the ‘Enlightenment tradition,’ Sen defends the idea that we should understand reason as the “ultimate arbitrator of ethical beliefs.”  This is not because “reasoned scrutiny” can provide us with “any sure-fire way of getting things exactly right,” but rather because ethical thinking requires us to be “as objective as we reasonably can,” and reason is our only reliable way of doing this (p. 39).  This role for reason is compatible, Sen points out, with recognizing the dangers of ‘overselling reason,’ or in being overconfident in the conclusions of our own reasoning.  Sen also makes the point that our emotions pose no threat to, and should not be understood as hostile towards, our capacity for reason, despite the fact that historically many Enlightenment thinkers may have ignored or downplayed the cognitive role of the emotions (here Sen mentions, unsurprisingly, Smith and Hume as important exceptions).  Nonetheless, “the need for reasoned scrutiny of psychological attitudes does not disappear even after the power of emotions is recognized” (p. 50).  These general claims all strike me as correct and not especially controversial.

Sen also sketches some of the main elements of his account of ‘ethical objectivity’ in this chapter.  One element is Adam Smith’s device of the ‘impartial spectator.’  Another is Rawlsian public reason.  Public reason provides a ‘public framework of thought’ by means of which arguments can be made in a transparent and mutually justifiable way.  Despite the differences amongst the different accounts of ethical objectivity mentioned in this chapter, Sen notes that “there is an essential similarity in their respective approaches to objectivity to the extent that objectivity is linked…by each of them to the ability to survive challenges from informed scrutiny coming from diverse quarters.”  Despite appropriating Rawlsian public reason to his account of ethical objectivity, though, Sen asserts that “the principles that survive such scrutiny need not be a unique set,” (p.45) and that this marks a significant difference between his position and Rawls’s.  (I don’t think that this is a fair interpretation of Rawls’s position in his later writings, but will postpone this discussion until next week.)

One potentially controversial claim is Sen’s assertion that Rawls’s and Habermas’s respective approaches to public justification ultimately do not differ much.  “If people are capable of being reasonable in taking note of other people’s points of view and in welcoming information,” Sen writes, “then the gap between the two approaches would tend to be not necessarily momentous” (p. 43).  I think that Sen is correct here (at least I think I do – I found his discussion in this section at times to be somewhat opaque), but then I haven’t read Habermas in years.  I’d be curious to know what anyone better informed of Habermas’s criticisms of Rawls thinks.

Sen makes another comment that some readers of a Kantian persuasion might find debateable.  He states: “Since reasoned support can hardly be in itself a value-giving quality, we have to ask: why, precisely, is reasoned support so critical?” (Pp. 39-40.)  I suspect that some Kantians (especially those influenced by Korsgaard’s interpretation of Kant’s theory of value) would disagree.  (Although the comment by Sen is so brief, perhaps I am reading too much into it?)

I found Sen’s comment on Rawls’s idea of ‘reasonable persons’ on the bottom of page 43 somewhat puzzling.  After noting his overall sympathy with the idea of Rawlsian public reason, he writes: “I will not make a big distinction between those whom Rawls categorizes as ‘reasonable persons’ and other human beings… I have tried to argue elsewhere that, by and large, all of us are capable of being reasonable” (p. 43).  He then goes on to remark that his own view is instead similar to Rawls’s idea of ‘free and equal citizens,’ according to which all persons have ‘two moral powers’ (a capacity for a sense of justice, and a capacity to form, revise, and pursue a conception of the good).

Sen does not seem to appreciate that Rawls’s idea of ‘reasonable persons’ is a very specific one in political liberalism, and one related directly to the idea of citizens as ‘free and equal.’  The first feature of reasonable persons is that they acknowledge the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’ (i.e., they manifest a “willingness to recognize the burdens of judgement and to accept their consequences for the use of public reason in directing the legitimate exercise of political power” [PL, p. 54]).  The second feature of reasonable persons is that they hold the ‘criterion of reciprocity’ to be a prescriptive norm for the public political relations of citizens (“reasonable persons are ready to propose, or to acknowledge when proposed by others, the principles needed to specify what can be seen by all as fair terms of cooperation” [JaF, pp. 6-7]).  Finally, reasonable persons honour these principles, even at some cost to their own interests.  These features of reasonable persons correspond to citizens’ capacity for a sense of justice, just as the rationality of persons corresponds to citizens’ capacity for a conception of the good.  So the idea of ‘free and equal citizens’ with ‘two moral powers’ is not wholly distinct from the idea of persons understood as ‘rational and reasonable’ in Rawlsian political liberalism.  Moreover, I see nothing in Rawls’s conception of ‘reasonable persons’ that rules out the possibility that ‘all of us’ are capable of being ‘reasonable’ in the relevant sense.

This is obviously a relatively minor criticism.  However, I think that Sen’s comments here are indicative of a problem that becomes more marked in the next chapter, namely, an apparent failure on the part of Sen to address adequately key features of Rawlsian political liberalism.  This problem is well illustrated, I think, by the very label ‘transcendental institutionalism.’  I’ll have more to say about this next week.

Copenhagen: 19-20 August 2010 | CFP: 1 April 2010

The second University of Copenhagen conference in epistemology will be held from 19-20 August 2010. The following is the description:

We tend to think of liberal democracy as providing the most ethically defensible way to set up a modern society. A separate yet highly relevant issue is whether liberal democracies also are preferable from an epistemological perspective, i.e., from the point of view of promoting true over false belief, knowledge over ignorance, and so on. The purpose of this conference — and of the research project that it is part of — is to investigate the norms, practices, and institutions that  determine how belief and knowledge is acquired and transmitted in liberal democracies. Questions to be addressed include but are not limited to the following: Read the rest of this entry »

Hi All,
This is the first post to kick off the reading group on Sen’s new book The Idea of Justice. I want to thank Blain for organizing this and I look forward to participating in it.

I have to admit it is with much anticipation that I begin to read Sen’s book. A few years ago I heard him give this talk which outlined the basics of the arguments he advances in the book. His project struck me as one that I (as a critic of ideal theory) would be very sympathetic with and I hope this book can helpfully advance the methodological debates the discipline is now engaged in. So I have high hopes for this book and look forward to reading it together with the group.

OK, so down to the business at hand. Keeping Blain’s advice about word count (I’m a bit over, sorry!) in mind, I thought I would begin by drawing attention to a crucial passage in the Preface, and then link that with a few of the central issues that follow in the Introduction itself (issues which will, I suspect, play an important role in the overall argument of the book).

In the Preface Sen explicitly states that the theory of justice he seeks to advance “aims to clarify how we can proceed to address questions of enhancing justice and removing injustice, rather than to offer resolutions of questions about the nature of perfect justice” (ix).

The issue of what we want a theory of justice to deliver is arguably one of the most interesting, and hotly debated, topics in the field today. Some obvious examples that immediately come to my mind are David Schmidtz’s analogy between theories and maps in The Elements of Justice, Elizabeth Anderson’s critique of luck egalitarianism, and G.A. Cohen’s Rescuing Justice and Equality where he distinguishes principles of regulation from principles of justice and maintains that the latter are “fact-free”.

The contrast between Cohen’s position and Sen’s is very stark and worth considering. The vision of political philosophy Sen is invoking, at least in this early chapter of The Idea of Justice, is one primarily concerned with the question “How should be done?”. Whereas for Cohen the primary concern of the philosopher is: “what we should think, even when what we should think makes no practical difference”. I myself come down on the side of Sen on this issue. Those partial to Cohen’s approach might maintain that we ought to privilege deliberating about perfect justice for it is only once we comprehend the ideal that we can properly undertake the practical task of trying to realize justice in the “real world”. Sen notes that he will address this kind of challenge in Chapter 4, so I look forward to seeing how he addresses that concern.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Moving to the top since the deadline is tomorrow. SCM]

THE APT CONFERENCE 2010 – PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

Reed College, Portland, Oregon, October 21-23, 2010; Proposals Due February 20, 2010

The Association for Political Theory welcomes paper proposals, panel proposals, and proposals for roundtable discussions from all approaches and on all topics in political theory, political philosophy, and the history of political thought. Faculty, advanced PhD candidates, and independent scholars are eligible to apply. We also encourage faculty to volunteer to serve as chairs and/or discussants.

Read the rest of this entry »

Global Justice. Concepts, Theories and Constraints: May 18-19, 2010 | CFP: 20 April 2010

Having gained an unprecedented urgency, the topic of global justice has received increasingly public and academic attention, and has lately become a central issue in moral and political philosophy. Our conference seeks to be a forum for discussing the most important theories of global justice, their central concepts and constraints.

Professor Thomas Pogge (Yale University) will deliver the conference keynote address.

The conference will be held at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. The conference is organized by the The Center for the Study of Rationality and Beliefs as part of the research project Reason and Beliefs. Rationality, Public Reason and Education within a Multicultural Society financed by CNCSIS/UEFISCSU.

Submission of papers
We welcome papers concerning any topic related to global justice. Contributions are expected from researchers from different academic fields who are interested in the outlined topic or in closely related ones. Students are also invited to submit papers for the conference, as we intend to organize a student panel. Abstracts should be sent by e-mail as attachment at globaljustice@ub-filosofie.ro until the 20 April 2010. The deadline for submitting the full version of your paper is 10 May 2010. Along with the abstract, please send us your contact details: current affiliation, address and telephone number. The organizers cannot support any travel or accommodation costs.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are pleased to announce the third issue of Dissensus, focused on “Droit et philosophie du langage ordinaire”, directed by D. Pieret, with contributions of D. Pieret, B. Leclercq, B. Ambroise, D. Pasteger, S. Goltzberg, N. Thirion, T. Berns & G. Jeanmart, A. Janvier & J. Pieron, A. Herla and T. Bolmain.

Dissensus is the University of Liege (Belgium) peer-reviewed electronic journal in political philosophy. Papers are welcome, in English or French and are to be sent to secretariat.dissensus [at] ulg.ac.be

Dissensus is available on http://popups.ulg.ac.be/dissensus/ and http://www.philopol.ulg.ac.be/dissensus.html.

Dear Public Reason Contributors and Readers,

Below is the schedule for our international online reading group on Amartya Sen’s recent book, The Idea of Justice.  Of course, modifications to the schedule may have to be made as we go along, but hopefully we will be able to maintain, for the most part, a weekly schedule.

I envision this group as operating in a similar fashion to the previous reading groups conducted on this blog (viz., the ones on Estlund and Brettschneider).  Participants may want to look at those discussions in order to get a sense of what is involved.  (Links to both can be found on the left hand side of this webpage.)

Before we get rolling, there are three modest suggestions that I would like to make.

First of all, it is expected that all participants will have done the relevant reading for the week in question.  Consequently, I don’t think that detailed or comprehensive summaries for each chapter will be necessary.  Rather, I would recommend summarizing only the material that you think is especially interesting, controversial, or relevant to the matters that you want to comment upon.

Second, I would recommend that most posts try to stay under 1000 words (ideally ‘well under’).  “Brevity is the soul of wit,” as the Bard says.  We are all busy people, and I worry that posting ‘mini-articles’ may serve as a disincentive for people to read the commentaries in their entirety and to participate in the discussion.

Third, although this probably is quite obvious to us all, I would recommend, if possible, trying to identify 1-3 specific questions, issues, or criticisms for further discussion in each commentary.

Obviously these are meant as suggestions only!  Feel free to write a longer post, or raise 4+ issues (or none at all), if you think that the chapter on which you are commenting warrants it.

We have an extremely impressive group of commentators lined up for this discussion.  Thanks to all of you in advance for your time and effort!  I’m very much looking forward to our discussion.

Best wishes,
Blain

Schedule

Introduction (Feb 22) Colin Farrelly (Queens U)

Part I – The Demands of Justice

1. Reason and Objectivity (March 1) Blain Neufeld (UW-M)
2. Rawls and Beyond (March 8.) Blain Neufeld (UW-M)
3. Institutions and Persons (March 15) Robert Jubb (UCL/Oxford)
4. Voice and Social Choice (March 22) Chris Lowry (CU HK)
5. Impartiality and Objectivity (March 29) Derek Bowman (Brown)
6. Closed and Open Impartiality (April 5) Jonathan Quong (Manchester)

Part II – Forms of Reasoning

7. Position, Relevance and Illusion (April 12) Steve Vanderheiden (Colorado)
8. Rationality and Other People (April 19) Alon Harel (Hebrew U)
9. Plurality of Impartial Reasons (April 26) Charles Olney (UCSC)
10. Realizations, Consequences and Agency (May 3) Andrew Lister (Queens U)

Part III – The Materials of Justice

11. Lives, Freedoms and Capabilities (May 10) Daniel Weinstock (Montreal)
12. Capabilities and Resources (May 17) David Wiens (Michigan)
13. Happiness, Well-being and Capabilities (May 24) Colleen Murphy (Texas A&M)
14. Equality and Liberty (May 31) Jurgen De Wispelaere (CREUM)

Part IV – Public Reasoning and Democracy

15. Democracy as Public Reason (June 7) Peter Stone (Stanford)
16. The Practice of Democracy (June 14) Cynthia Stark (Utah)
17. Human Rights and Global Imperatives (July 21) Alex Sager (Calgary)
18. Justice and the World (July 28) Alex Sager (Calgary)

The Department of Philosophy at Virginia Tech invites applications for a one-year position, to begin August 10, 2010. Rank: Visiting Assistant Professor; AOS: Ethics; AOC: Open. Five courses per year, including one graduate seminar.

Evidence of teaching ability and research potential required. Salary: competitive. Ph.D. completed by August, 2010. In addition to offering a first class MA in Philosophy, the department is also a major component of two interdisciplinary PhD programs: Science and Technology Studies; and The Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought. Virginia Tech is an EO/AA employer and particularly encourages applications from women, veterans, persons with disabilities, and minorities.

Interested candidates are REQUIRED to complete a brief on-line application at www.jobs.vt.edu posting #0100027 and send dossier (cover letter with statement of interest, CV, three letters of recommendation, and evidence of teaching excellence) to Chair, Philosophy Search Committee, Department of Philosophy (0126), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061. We will begin reviewing applications as soon as they are received, until the position is filled. Those received by 12 March 2010 can expect full consideration.

Rights, Equality, and Justice:A Conference Inspired by the Moral and Legal Theory of David Lyons

Boston University is proud to honor Professor David Lyons with a conference featuring many outstanding scholars in law and philosophy giving papers and commentaries on important topics about which he has written. Professor Lyons will give a response. Boston University Law Review will publish the papers and proceedings. Information about the conference, along with papers (as we receive them), will be posted on the BU School of Law Web site: http://www.bu.edu/law/events/upcoming/. The conference, which is co-sponsored by the BU School of Law and Department of Philosophy, will be held at BU School of Law, 765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA.

All are welcome to attend. There is no registration fee, but if you plan to attend, please RSVP to Andrea Larsen, alarsen@bu.edu. If you have academic questions about the program, please contact Professor James E. Fleming, jfleming [at] bu.edu.

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I just wanted to announce the publication of my book with David Schmidtz, A Brief History of Liberty.

It’s something of an unusual book for philosophers, because it’s as much a genuine history (and economics, psychology, law, and sociology) book as it is a philosophy book. I’d summarize our motivation for the project as follows: Dave and I note that historically, philosophers and regular people have used the word “liberty” to refer to a wide range of related things. When philosophers debate what the word “liberty” refers to, or which kind of liberty is most important, they often have a background assumption that liberty, whatever that is, is to be promoted by government in a particular way. But that’s not a good assumption. What role government, or any institution, ought to play in promoting a particular kind of liberty is determined not by conceptual analysis, but by investigating (empirically) what government and other institutions are likely to accomplish. What value any kind of liberty has is also for the most part contingent—we need to see what having certain kinds of liberties does to people, and what happens to people when those liberties are absent. Again, this goes beyond philosophy and requires empirical work. Also, what relationship different kinds of liberty with one another requires empirical work. For instance, while people might debate whether negative or positive liberty is more important, we instead note that empirically, it looks like protecting negative liberty has a long and non-accidental historical track record of promoting positive liberty.

Here’s the table of contents:

Introduction: Conceptions of Freedom.

1. A Prehistory of Liberty: Forty Thousand Years Ago.

2. The Rule of Law: AD 1075.

3. Religious Freedom: 1517.

4. Freedom of Commerce: 1776.

5. Civil Liberty: 1954.

6. Psychological Freedom, the Last Frontier: 1963.

Congress: Democracy Today - In Political Philosophy and Theory, 3 - 6 November 2010 - Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

Today western democracies confront social, cultural and political challenges, which call for a reevaluation of our state affairs, our system of practices and our system of discourses. In contemporary pluralist and multicultural societies, there is an increased gap between citizens and political establishments. Traditional approaches of politics of recognition or redistribution, used to translate claims into the public sphere, seem no longer sufficient in this new paradigm of an increased globalized world and trans-national politics. Under this light, the meaning(s) we generally tend to attribute to the concept of democracy need to be re-evaluated and ultimately redefined.

This will be the First International Congress on ‘Democracy Today’ which will take place at Universidade do Minho, Braga. Having as starting point the assumption that the concept of democracy needs to be revised, we intent, during this congress, to accomplish two main tasks: on the one hand, to provide an account of the multiplicity of meanings of ‘democracy’ and its conceptual nuances. On the other hand, to account for the different instantiations of democracy and its intrinsic practices. Under this light we propose four days of reflection, discussion and dialogue, specially under the scope of political philosophy and political theory.

These are some of the questions we expect to explore:

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Penn State: 25 July-1 August 2010 | Applications by 10 March (grad) or 15 April (undergrad)

Via Eva Kittay:

The Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute (PIKSI) is designed to encourage undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to consider future study in the field of philosophy. PIKSI, held 25 July to 1 August, emphasizes both traditional and nontraditional philosophical scholarship, such as feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and disability studies. All undergraduate student participants are fully funded by PIKSI.

PIKSI is a project of the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST) and is supported the Rock Ethics Institute and the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State, as well as a number of graduate programs which have funded their graduate students to serve as Graduate Student Assistant.

The deadline for applications is 10 March for graduate students and 15 April for undergraduates. For more information on the summer institute, institutional co-sponsorship, and the Iris Marion Young Diversity Scholars fund please visit the PIKSI website.

Newcastle University: 25-26 February 2010

The Newcastle Ethics, Legal and Political Philosophy Research Group are holding a conference in honour of Professor Peter Jones. The topic of the conference is “The Value and Limits of Rights.” The conference will be held at the Devonshire Building (G21 & G22) at Newcastle from 25-26 February. The programme is as follows:

Thursday, 25 February
1:30-2:00pm: Registration and Welcome Address
2:00-3:15pm: Albert Weale (UCL)
3:30-4:45pm: Simon Caney (Oxford)

Friday, 26 February
9:30-10:45am: Richard Bellamy (UCL)
10:45-11:00am: Tea/coffee
11:00am-12:15pm: John Horton (Keele)
12:15-1:00pm: Buffet lunch
1:00-2:15pm: Susan Mendus (York)
2:15-3:30pm: David Miller (Oxford)
3:30-3:45pm: Tea/coffee
3:45-5:00pm: Hillel Steiner (Manchester)

All are welcome to attend although there is a registration fee of £10 to cover the cost of the refreshments and buffet lunch. Payments can be made online here. Please address any questions to Dr Ian O’Flynn.

Speaking of non-ideal theory (or ideal theory in less than ideal contexts)… I am curious to hear whether my fellow public reasoners believe that the recent US Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance should have any impact on our work as political philosophers.  To be clear, I don’t mean to start a debate over whether or not the Supreme Court ruled correctly, or whether campaign donations are speech, or even whether corporations are people who have rights like you and me (though I do have opinions on such matters).  Instead, I want to consider whether the American legal landscape should guide our work on theories justice or democracy.

Here’s what I have in mind. Liberal political thought, to this point, has largely ignored a set of concerns that were central to many Labor movements, which might be called concerns over “workplace democracy” or what is sometimes called “democratic corporatism.”  With some notable exceptions (Pateman, Gould, Mansbridge), frequently offered by those operating in a Marxist framework, political philosophers have instead focused on issues of distribution or issues of legitimacy in terms of public reasons or political dialogue.  Relatively little attention has been paid to whether a society with profound inequalities in wealth, where corporations are dominant players in the political landscape, can be meaningfully democratic. There are a number of reasons for this omission, I think, including the assumptions that (1) if distribution problems are taken care of the rest will take care of itself or (2) the ideal society will have stringent campaign finance laws, public election financing, or some other way of insulating the political sphere from the economic sphere.  Given the economic and, following the Supreme Court Ruling, political-legal realities in the US for the indefinite future, I no longer believe that such assumptions will do.

Instead, I believe that if corporations are going to be dominant players in the political landscape for the indefnite future, more work needs to be done to consider whether such organizations need to be more democratic.  Are CEOs or Boards of Directors the “free speakers” for corporations, at liberty to use corporate money to influence election outcomes and policy debates?  Do campaign contributions require the approval of the majority of shareholders?  Do they require the approval of employees? There are of course reasons to favor discretionary decision making by executives - taking a vote for all decisions may leave firms unable to respond efficiently to market demands. Nonetheless, there are also substantial reasons to provide protections for workers or stockholders from what may be arbitrary or self-servingly indefensible decisions made by a board of directors. Also, the need for such rapid, discretionary decision-making with regard to political contributions is far from clear.  Treating corporations, in theory or in practice, as individuals with a right to free speech completely ignores these issues.

Later in his career Rawls himself more clearly distinguishes a property-owning democracy from the idea of a welfare state. A recent symposium in the Journal of Social Philosophy considers the implications of this distinction, in a way that is frequently relevant to the issue at hand. Given Citizens v. FEC, however, I believe that more work on the moral and political implications of corporate involvement in contemporary politics, and the ways in which workplace democracy can further democratic equality without unduly sacrificing market competitiveness, is necessary.  It is no longer plausible (if it ever was) in the American context, to believe that campaign finance law will insulate the political sphere from the economic sphere, such that inequalities in one need not entail inequalities in the other.

Any thoughts?

Many of you have probably seen Simmons’ article just out in PPA on ideal and non-ideal theory. Simmons defends Rawls’ account of the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction and his paper is a must read. That said, I have been ruminating over a slightly different take on the debate over the nature of the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction and so thought I’d throw an idea out there.

Drawing on John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice many have suggested that the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction is akin to the full/partial compliance distinction. In creating his ideal theory, Rawls assumes that people will comply (almost) perfectly with the requirements of justice. He then uses his original position argument to conclude that his first principle of justice should have priority over his second. Next, Rawls weakens his ideal theory assumptions, adding the constraint that people may not abide by the requirements of justice. He concludes that we should only embrace his general conception of justice in non-ideal theory.

Unfortunately, the canonical examples of ideal and non-ideal theories cannot be fully characterized as full and partial compliance theories respectively. As Simmons and others note, even Rawls says ideal theory requires more than perfect compliance. In creating his ideal theory he assumes, for instance, that the circumstances do not prevent justice from being secured. Furthermore, others have more recently provided ideal and non-ideal theories that are not full and partial compliance theories (respectively). The main thing that distinguishes Allen Buchanan’s and Michael Blake’s non-ideal theories from their ideal theories, for instance, is that their non-ideal theories assume that there will be states and consider what we should do given that we are confined to a statist system. Similarly, the main thing that distinguishes Ronald Dworkin’s non-ideal theory from his ideal theory is that he assumes that people only have different talents and disabilities in his ideal theory. Blake’s, Buchanan’s, and Dworkin’s ideal theories do not require perfect compliance. Assuming that there is something to the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction and these authors are not just using the terms in completely different ways, the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction cannot just be the full/partial compliance distinction.

Reflecting on the many ways people seem to use the terms, one might despair at the thought of trying to unify such disparate ideal and non-ideal theories. In the draft of his book manuscript Michael Blake suggests, for instance, that the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction is not that useful because it can mean many different things. He implores others to be careful to explain just what assumptions they are making in advancing any theory. Perhaps this is part of what drives Simmons and others to argue for one or another of these ways of thinking about the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction.

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According to the BBC, in the latest twist in l’affaire du foulard/voile, a French parliamentary committee has recommended a ban on women wearing Islamic face veils in public [Correction: the proposal applies to public facilities, such as hospitals and mass transit, and not walking about the street]. The reasoning behind the report seems to be that face veils are contrary to the values of the republic, as symbols of women’s repression and extremist fundamentalism.

The proposal strikes me as a very bad idea in a number of ways. I don’t see how the law liberates women from whatever social pressure there exists to wear a veil. Will wearing a balaclava in public be illegal too? If not, then won’t the law just force a change of attire? Nussbaum has some discussion of this general issue in her Liberty of Conscience, pp. 346-53, invoking the ability of Chicagoans (and the Dutch, and presumably the French) to conduct normal social interactions with their faces covered in winter.

What if feminists who believe that make-up is just a manifestation of the objectification of women in patriarchy, and hence symbolic of repression and degradation, are right? Is there a way to support the veil ban, but not think that this claim about make-up would justify a make-up ban?* How about t-shirts with sexist imagery and messages? Quite apart from dress codes, we can recognise prostitution as degrading, and hence contrary to the values of an egalitarian republic, without thinking it should be illegal, primarily because making it illegal may very well just make the lives of those women, so degraded, even worse.

So, a question: can anything be said in support of this proposal (from ideally a feminist perspective), that does not run into these and other problems?

*[I should add I think having to wear a burqa is worse than feeling compelled to wear make-up.]

The Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP) is pleased to announce the results of its 2010 book manuscript competition. The Annual Montreal Political Theory Manuscript Workshop Award has been awarded to Hélène Landemore, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, for her manuscript titled “Democratic Reasons: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many.”Le groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP) a le plaisir de vous annoncer les résultats de la concurrence pour son prix annuel. Le lauréat 2010 du Prix annuel de l’atelier de manuscrit de philosophie politique de Montréal est Hélène Landemore, professeure adjointe en sciences politiques à l’Université Yale, pour son manuscrit intitulé “Democratic Reasons: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many.”

Call for Papers from Faculty and Graduate Students

Northwestern University Society for Ethical Theory and Political Philosophy

Fourth Annual Conference: May 20-22, 2010

Keynote Addresses: Elizabeth Anderson and Christine Korsgaard

Submission Guidelines: The deadline is February 15, 2010.  We welcome submissions from faculty and graduate students, as some sessions will be reserved for student presentations.  Please submit an essay of approximately 4000 words and an abstract of at most 150 words.  Essay topics in all areas of ethical theory and political philosophy will be considered, although some priority will be given to essays that take up themes from the works of Anderson and Korsgaard, such as value theory, philosophy and economics, democratic theory, constructivism, practical reason, personal identity, and the moral status of animals.  Essays and abstracts should be prepared for blind review in .doc, .rtf, or .pdf format.  Graduate submissions should be sent by e-mail to leegoldsmith2012@u.northwestern.edu and faculty submissions should be sent by e-mail to garthoff@northwestern.edu.  Notices of acceptance will be sent by March 31, 2010.  For more information, please contact Jon Garthoff at the e-mail address above or visit our website:

http://www.philosophy.northwestern.edu/conferences/moralpolitical/

So, another query: Should the US defend Google?  Why or why not?US to protest formally to China over Google ‘attacks’

JOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY:
An International Journal of Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
(ISSN 1740-4681)Volume 7, Number 1 (2010)

ARTICLES

William Sin, ‘Trivial Sacrifices, Great Demands’, pp. 3-15

Lina Papadaki, ‘What is Objectification?’ pp. 16-36

M. B. E. Smith, ‘Does Humanity Share a Common Moral Faculty?’ pp. 37-53

Jonathan Seglow, ‘Associative Duties and Global Justice’, pp. 54-73

Miriam Ronzoni, ‘Constructivism and Practical Reason: On Intersubjectivity, Abstraction, and Judgment’, pp. 74-104

Kenneth R. Westphal, ‘From “Convention” to “Ethical Life”: Hume’s Theory of Justice in Post-Kantian Perspective’, pp. 105-32

REVIEW ARTICLE

Wim de Muijnck, ‘Thinking about Normativity: Ralph Wedgwood on “Ought”‘, pp. 133-44

BOOK REVIEWS

Clare Chambers on Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory, pp. 145-47

Anca Gheaus on Disadvantage, pp. 148-50

Paul Bou-Habib on Climate Change, Justice, and Future Generations, pp. 151-53

All issues of the Journal of Moral Philosophy are available on Swetswise here and IngentaConnect here.

Subscription information can be found on our Brill website here.

Please direct all enquiries regarding article or discussion submissions to the Editor, Thom Brooks (Newcastle).

Please direct all enquiries regarding review articles and books for review to the Reviews Editor, Christian Miller (Wake Forest).

JOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY:
An International Journal of Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
(ISSN 1740-4681)

Volume 6, Number 4 (2009)ARTICLES

Ty Landrum, ‘Persons as Objects of Love’, pp. 417-39

Elizabeth Tropman, ‘Renewing Moral Intuitionism’, pp. 440-63

David Alm, ‘Deontological Restrictions and the Good/Bad Asymmetry’, pp. 464-81

Carl Knight, ‘Egalitarian Justice and Valuational Judgment’, pp. 482-98

Geoffrey Scarre, ‘The “Banality of Good”?’ pp. 499-519

REVIEW ARTICLE

Sean Coyle, ‘The Ideality of Law’, pp. 521-34

BOOK REVIEWS

Stefan Bird-Pollan on The Founding Act of Modern Ethical Life: Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Moral and Political Philosophy by Ideo Geiger, pp. 535-37

Justin Jeffrey on A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good by R. M. Adams, pp. 538-40

Adam Rawlings on Reasons and the Good by Roger Crisp, pp. 541-43

BOOKS RECEIVED

REFEREES FOR VOLUME 6

All issues of the Journal of Moral Philosophy are available on Swetswise here and IngentaConnect here.

Subscription information can be found on our Brill website here: http://www.brill.nl/jmp

Please direct all enquiries regarding article or discussion submissions to the Editor, Thom Brooks (Newcastle).

Please direct all enquiries regarding review articles and books for review to the Reviews Editor, Fabian Freyenhagen (Essex).

Dear all,

I post here in pdf format a paper of mine in which I argue, well, that Rawls’s theory of justice implies the justification of slavery and genocide and is therefore an abysmal failure as far as reflective equilibrium is concerned. Comments are highly welcome

All the best, Uwe  Unsavory Implications of A Theory of Justice and The Law of Peoples

A question: do people think international humanitarian intervention (or any international intervention, for that matter; perhaps even any intervention at all) has to be coercive?  That is, as a conceptual issue, is intervention necessarily coercive?

The Monist 94 (4): October 2011 | CFP: 31 October 2010

Via Gillian Brock, a CFP for an issue of the Monist on cosmopolitanism due out in 2011:

According to cosmopolitanism, every person has global stature as the ultimate unit of moral concern and is therefore entitled to equal respect and consideration no matter what her citizenship status or other affiliations happen to be. This issue of The Monist is intended as a forum for debates about the pros and cons of cosmopolitanism. It will address questions such as: What does cosmopolitanism require by way of obligations of justice to all? What kinds of reforms to our global and local institutions do cosmopolitan concerns require? Are these requirements feasible? In addition to our obligations to everyone, do we have further, more demanding, obligations to compatriots or to family members? Do non-cosmopolitan theories provide a better account of our obligations and allow us a more useful framework for mediating the interests of compatriots and non-compatriots?

Inquiries should be directed to Gillian at gbrock [at] auckland.ac.nz

St. Anne’s College, Oxford: 2-4 July 2010 | CFP: 9 January 2010

Moving up to the top because the deadline is soon — SCM.

The 2010 Society for Applied Philosophy annual conference will be held at St. Anne’s College from 2-4 July 2010. It will be an open themed applied philosophy conference (papers will be considered from the full range of topics in applied philosophy). Plenary speakers include Professor Thomas Pogge (Yale), Professor Judith Lichtenberg (Georgetown), Professor Catherine Lu (McGill), and Professor Ingmar Persson (Gothenburg).

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Princeton: 9-10 April 2010 | CFP: 18 January 2010

The deadline for this conference has now been extended to 18 January 2010 — SCM.

The Committee for the Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University welcomes papers concerning any period, methodological approach or topic in political theory, political philosophy, or the history of political thought. Approximately eight papers will be accepted.

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Linköping, Sweden: 8-12 June 2010 | CFP: 8 March 2010

The European Science Foundation (ESF), in partnership with LFiU is organising a conference on the “Responsibility to Protect: From Principle to Practice” to be held at the Scandic Hotel Linköping Väst, Linköping, Sweden, from 8-12 June 2010. The conference chair is Prof. Andre Nollkaemper, of the Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam.

The closing date for application is the 8 March, 2010. This conference is part of the 2010 ESF Research Conferences Programme and is accessible at its website.

Veniamin Zatsepin

University of Melbourne, Faculty of Education

Table of Contents - Part 2:

Personality types as the elements of anthroposystem

What is human nature?

Where is the concept of evil human nature from?

Afterword

Acknowledgments

References

Personality types as elements of the anthroposystem

The anthroposystem and the social system are two aspects of the same developed human society. Both of them represent humankind as a single whole and both of them are organized and structured. But their structural and organizational elements, and consequently the objects of their attention, are different. The social system’s constructive elements are social institutions, each performing their specific functions of maintaining and regulating economic, political, legal, moral and other relations. The anthroposystem’s “cells”, the “points of references”, are informal social-psychological groups of personality types. The anthroposystem and social system are closely tangled, so these two systems influence each other, but at the same time they still remain relatively independent.

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Veniamin Zatsepin

University of Melbourne, Faculty of Education

Table of Contents - Part 1:

Preface

Creation of the concept of the social system

The social system in Marxist philosophy

Post-Marxist concepts of the social systems

Testing the social system theories

Into the fabric of social institutes

The basic personality types

Psychopath (sociopath)

Authoritarian personality

Machiavellian personality

“Technocratic”, “practical” or “hoarding” personality

Amiable, friendly or agreeable personality

Altruistic personality

Creative personality

Part 2:

Personality types as the elements of anthroposystem

What is human nature?

Where is the concept of evil human nature from?

Afterword

Acknowledgments

References

Preface

It has always made me feel uneasy reading or hearing someone trying to explain people’s inhumane acts, and even brutish violence, by recourse to the concept of “human nature”. On this explanation, there are really only two possibilities: either one is a criminal (or at least a potential criminal) or one is simply not a human being. At the same time, I still find it bewildering that our primeval ancestors, the illiterate people of the stone and bronze ages (and our contemporaries, the Aborigines of Australia and the Americas), while poorly versed in the theory of nature’s laws, knew and expressed in their everyday lives closer kinship with nature than do even the most educated of us today. Their attitude to each and every part of nature was more humane and respectful than that of the majority of our contemporaries, despite the fact that these people burned trees for fire and killed animals for food. So what has happened to modern people, to society? Does civilization, indeed, spoil us? Why have we been breaking our contracts or mutual understanding with the animate natural world? What has been pitting us against each other and why do we degrade and eliminate other people? Is it true that mankind is a malignant tumor of the body that is earth? Are we, human beings, indeed evil from our very childhood? And who and what exactly are ‘we’?

These are the questions that the following discussion is concerned with.

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“Basic Income at a Time of Economic Upheaval: A Path to Justice and Stability?”, 15-16 April 2010, Université de Montréal.  

Dear Colleagues,

You might be interested in participating in an upcoming conference on ”Basic Income at a Time of Economic Upheaval: A Path to Justice and Stability?”, to be held on 15-16 April 2010 at the Université de Montréal. Jointly organized by CRÉUM, BIEN Canada and USBIG, this conference will examine the role of the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) as a radical new approach to rethink the economic fabric of our society in the current economic turmoil.

The conference includes keynote addresses from Dr. Louise Haagh (University of York), Prof. Guy Standing (University of Bath), and Senator Eduardo Suplicy (São Paulo,Brasil), and a roundtable discussion featuring Senators Art Eggleton and Hugh Segal, Amélie Châteauneuf (FCPASQ), Rob Rainer (Canada Without Poverty), Sheila Regehr (National Council of Welfare) and Allan Sheahen (USBIG).

We invite panel presentations from academic scholars, practitioners and policy advocates on a wide variety of topics dealing with the challenges of designing, promoting or instituting a BIG in the current economic climate.Everyone is welcome to attend. For further information please visit the conference website at: http://bigmontreal.wordpress.com/

best wishes,

Jurgen De Wispelaere

BIG Montreal conference organizer

Jacob Levy has put up a link to the podcasts from the recent memorial colloquium on Jerry Cohen’s life and work organised by the Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique at Montreal. The presentations are from Daniel Weinstock, William Clare Roberts, Joseph Carens, Jurgen De Wispelaere, and Jacob Levy.

Bristol: 30 June - 2 July 2010 | CFP: 1 March 2010

The third International Global Ethics Association conference will be held at the University of the West of England in Bristol from 30 June to 2 July 2010. Confirmed speakers include Simon Caney (University of Oxford) and Darrel Moellendorf (Director, Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs, San Diego State University).

Papers and panels on all aspects of global ethics are invited. The organisers encourage multidisciplinary papers which address the theory and practice of Global Ethics and global justice from academic, policy and practice perspectives. Issues include:

• Development issues like progress towards achieving the MDGs and impact of post-colonial and post-development critiques on development ethics
• Ecological crises such as global warming and the distribution of increasingly scarce natural resources
• War and peace concerns such as the ethical issues arising from the War on Terror, humanitarian intervention, privatization of the military and the ethics of peace-keeping
• Gender issues 20 years since CEDAW, for example, transnational feminism and reproductive rights
• Human rights issues 60 years after the UDHR
• Economic injustices and the global market
• Global networks and civil society
• Identity politics, multiple identities and transnationalism

Please e-mail panel proposals and abstracts (no more than 500 words) to global-ethics [at] uwe.ac.uk by 1 March 2010. For further information please contact Dr Christien van den Anker and Professor Heather Widdows at the same email address.

Prato, Italy: 25-29 August 2010| CFP: 8 March 2010

Karen Green, Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt and Paul Gibbard are organising a conference on on the contribution of women to the history of political thought in Europe during the Enlightenment period. Papers may discuss the political ideas of individual women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Macaulay, Mary Hays, Sarah Churchill, Mary Delariviere Manley, Marie Jodin, Emilie du Châtelet, Madame Dupin, Olympe de Gouges, Felicité Keralio-Robert, Madame Roland, Germaine de Staël, Dorothea Erxleben Leporin, Amalie Holst, Johanna Charlotte Unzer, Luise Gottsched, Mariana von Ziegler, Elise Reimarus, Elisabetta Caminer Turra, and others. Papers placing the work of such women in the broader context of political writing by men are encouraged. ‘Political thought’ is broadly interpreted to include sexual politics as well as political theory, and discussions of the political ideas of women as expressed in genres other than the political treatise are welcome.

Submissions of title and one page abstract should be sent by 8th March 2010 to Karen Green by email or in hard copy to her at the School of Philosophy and Bioethics, Monash University, Melbourne 3800, Australia. Up to five bursaries of up to $500 will be available to help post-graduates and early career researchers to attend the conference. Applicants who wish to be considered for one of these should indicate this with their submission.

An edited volume on women’s political thought in Europe during the eighteenth century is proposed, and contributions to the conference may be submitted for publication in this volume. Contributors who are unable to attend the Prato Conference, but would like to contribute a paper to the volume are invited to submit papers for consideration by September 30th 2010.

Boulder: 5-8 August 2010 | CFP: 1 February 2010

The third annual Rockey Mountain Ethics Congress will be held from 5-8 August 2010 at the University of Colorado, Boulder. ?The conference is hosted by the Center for Values and Social Policy. Papers from all areas of ethics and political theory are invited. To encourage the participation of junior scholars, the University of Colorado will be awarding a Young Ethicist Prize of $500 for most meritorious submission. The prize competition is open to any participating untenured philosopher (including, but not limited to, tenure-track faculty, instructors, and graduate students).

Abstract (750-1000 words) should be submitted electronically (in Word format) to Benjamin Hale and Alastair Norcross. Here is a pdf of the CFP.

Southampton: 8-10 April 2010 | CFP: 31 January 2010

The 2010 Association for Legal and Social Philosophy conference will be held at the University of Southampton from 8-10 April 2010. The theme of the conference is the future(s) of democratic citizenship. From the ALSP website:

In the contemporary world the ideal of democratic citizenship appears to be confronted with many challenges and opportunities, and there is substantial disagreement about how it should respond to them. In the light of changing forms of democratic engagement, the globalisation of political power, the continuing challenge of maintaining a common citizenship in the face of cultural diversity and mass migration, the form democratic citizenship will take in the future is open to question. Contributions to this conference will seek to think through the forms that democratic citizenship might, and should, take in the future. We focus on four sets of themes:

* democratic innovations,
* democratic citizenship: from local to global?
* democratic citizenship: threats and insecurities
* competing visions of democratic citizenship.

Keynotes confirmed thus far include Rainer Baubock (European University Institute) and Stuart White (University of Oxford). Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Washington University St. Louis 1-25 June 2010 | Apply by 2 March 2010

Andrew Altman and Kit Wellman will be running a four-week National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar on Philosophical Perspectives on Liberal Democracy and the Global Order from 1-25 June 2010.

Sixteen participants (fourteen faculty and two graduate students) will be chosen from among eligible applicants interested in liberalism, democracy and international justice. The seminar will feature appearances by Arthur Applbaum (Harvard), David Estlund (Brown), Debra Satz (Stanford), and Thomas Pogge (Yale), who will discuss their recently-published work and/or work-in-progress. Ample time will be allowed for participants to pursue individual projects on Seminar-related topics.

Summer Stipend: $3,300. Stipends are intended to help cover the cost of travel and living expenses during the course of the Seminar. Applications must be postmarked (or submitted electronically) no later than March 2nd, 2010.