Social and Political Philosophy

One prominent criticism of luck egalitarianism is that it requires either shameful revelations or otherwise problematic declarations by the state toward those who have had bad brute luck. Relational egalitarianism, by contrast, is portrayed as an alternative that requires no such revelations or declarations. I argue that this is false. Relational equality requires the state to draft anti-discrimination laws for both state and private action. The ideal of relational egalitarianism requires these laws to be asymmetric, that is to allow affirmative (...) action for disadvantaged groups while prohibiting affirmative action for advantaged groups. Hence, the state needs to make a public declaration on which groups are privileged and which are underprivileged; and individuals need to reveal whether they belong to groups officially declared underprivileged. These declarations are no more problematic in this case than in the case of luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

According to a prominent view, discrimination is wrong, when it is, because it makes people worse off. In this paper, I argue that this harm-based account runs into trouble because it cannot point to a harm, without making controversial metaphysical commitments, in cases of discrimination in which the discriminatory act kills the discriminatee. That is, the harm-based account suffers from a problem of death. I then show that the two main alternative accounts of the wrongness of discrimination—the mental-state-based account and (...) the objective-meaning account—do not run into this problem. (shrink)

This paper argues against the idea of climate change refugeehood. Drawing on political realism, it reconstructs the idea and function of refugeehood in international politics. Refugees are not the agencyless victims merely in search of rescue by states of the Global North, as the idea of climate refugeehood as a form of humanitarian refugeehood would have it. Nor are they simply a function of reparative justice, or of defending international state legitimacy. To liberal democracies, refugees are those fleeing political oppression. (...) They hold an important political function in inter-state relations in undermining rival political systems and strengthening liberal democratic regimes, both ideally and materially. The idea of climate refugeehood collides with the role refugeehood plays in international politics, the reasons for their admission, and the conceptualization of their plight and function. It ought, hence, to be rejected. (shrink)

Both within academic and contemporary circles, the nascent nature of the South African democracy cannot be denied. Although many may illustrate the massive strides made within the South African democratic project, it is by no means a ‘consolidated democracy’ with its greatest test yet still ahead: The transition of power away from the ruling liberation party, the African National Congress. While many African states, both within Southern Africa and across the continent at large, have suffered massive political, economic, social, and (...) humanitarian crises subsequent to liberation, South Africa has largely escaped such calamities. However, it can be argued that the continued avoidance of similar calamities rests upon the continued maturation of the South African democracy. Although many scholars have written about democratic consolidation from sociological, economic, and broadly political positions globally, Southern Africa is unique due to the presence and concentration of liberation movements turned ruling parties. Due to their respective histories of opposing the rule of colonial governments, or white minority regimes, these ‘liberation parties’ ascend to power with a vast amount of popular support, and in turn legitimacy, leading to the erection of dominant party structures. Despite possessing strong political, economic and moral mandates, these liberation movements have subjected their electorates to massive service delivery failures, and in many instances autocratic behavior, hindering, irreparably damaging, or completely reversing the democratic advances made. As such, it is vital to not only evaluate the post liberation ability of formerly liberation movements, but also to critically examine the nature of these liberation parties, and their effect on the advancement of democratic principles, this paper intends to focus on the latter. (shrink)

This paper examines the critique of Voegelin in Kelsens "Secular Religion". While Kelsen sets out with the false premise that secular world view can in principle have no religious character, his critique of Voegelin remains largely unimpaired by this mistake. With convincing arguments Kelsen criticises (1) Voegelins interpretation of modernity as an age of gnosticism, (2) Voegelins reinterpretation of enlightened and secular philosopher as gnostics in disguise and (3) Voegelins rejection of modern politics and, to a lesser degree, modern science. (...) I have also uploaded the critical margin notes that some person (unfortunately I do not know any more who) had been so friendly to sent me. The paper was originally written in German, but an English translation is available as well. (shrink)

Our editorial introduces this Special Issue devoted to exploring the ethics of youth work practice in the twenty-first century. The call for papers for this Special Issue went out in October 2022 w...

Despite theorisation and consistent Pracademic (academics who are also practitioners) contributions to the concepts of truth-telling and decolonising epistemologies in the fields of activist research, there remains ongoing need for articulating the everyday praxis and positionality of empirical work. This paper considers the practice of two intercultural Australian-based practitioners’ examination of the ethical practices towards decolonising praxis as a contributor to third-space youth development which considers the space between participants. First Nations terminology is drawn on to explore the empirical nature (...) of third space theory (Bhabha) acknowledging the social construct of hybrid identities within individuals and communities’ personhood. Through exploring Indigenous inquiry as a contributor to third-space youth development, this paper argues that co-creation of knowledge amongst young people and practitioners considers a third space which can allow for deeper understandings of intercultural work and power dynamics. This article provides the opportunity to further explore a critical analysis of the challenges and possibilities of practitioners/pracademics working towards a decolonising journey which has implications for the ethics of youth work practice globally. (shrink)

We write as Australian youth work educators. We consider some of the ethical challenges involved in teaching youth work ‘in a warm climate’, situated in the diaspora of English youth work but where youth work also has a uniquely Australian character, placing us in an ethically liminal space in our teaching between an understanding of youth work that is robustly defended as being both ‘good’ and ‘true’, and what we do, which is different from this, and has its own character (...) and strengths. We situate this in the policy history of youth work in Australia, particularly in the ‘neoliberal turn’ that this has taken in the last four decades which has created ethical challenges for us, just as it has for those elsewhere. Two guiding questions shape this paper. The first is, given our differences, what challenges do we face in maintaining connections with ‘good’ youth work and its value base as traditionally defined and defended in England, and relatedly, given that policy and funding regimes in the UK seem to be aligning more with an Australian model, is there anything that the youth work community in the UK can learn from the Australian experience? (shrink)

Environmental Justice as Social Work Practice is written to be a main textbook in a specialised course on social work and the environment. First published in 2018, the importance of a textbook cove...

This study attempted to answer the question of how to share the values and ethics of youth work among practitioners and with policymakers, funders, and society. Although social interest in youth support in Japan has been on rise recently due to the increase number of difficulties surrounding young people, the ‘ethics and values’ in practice and in the field can be driven by the neoliberal social and political trends present in our society. This study presents a way to resist and (...) counter the penetration of neoliberal practical ethics and organisational management through the process of visualising, sharing and legitimising the ‘practical ethics and values’ embedded in the fields where youth work has been developed with young people. This is the research-based practice of ‘practitioners collectively telling, writing, sharing, and communicating the stories of practice’. (shrink)

Evidence of the far-reaching impact of the Anthropocene on young people presents youth work with opportunities to reflect on some long-standing issues. This pioneering exercise considers the implications for youth work practice and its ethical frameworks should it embrace the tenets of the ‘new materialism’. We ask how youth work practice is currently understood, especially in ‘British-influenced youth work’ and whether there are problems with its conceptual, ethical and practice frameworks. We offer an account of ‘new materialism’ then consider the (...) implications for the ethics of youth work practice if practitioners were to adopt this ontological perspective. Conceptually youth work would have a more relational orientation and rely less on essentialist universalised categories like ‘child’, ‘adolescent’ and ‘adult’. It would jettison developmentalist narratives and the structure-agency impasse by elaborating new accounts of assemblages-contingency. Adopting this approach also entails an ethic of cultivation grounded in care for the world. Such an ethic would entail situational judgements about how to enact care in a world in which unexpected changes periodically emerge. This bears a close relationship to ‘phronetic practice’. (shrink)

The present article revolves around the notion of universality and its relation to freedom and temporal orientation in contemporary political thought, with a focus on Susan Buck-Morss' notion of universality. The purpose is twofold. Firstly, I discern and critique the historico-political premises of her approach. Secondly, I suggest an alternative historico-political approach to universality addressing the drawbacks of her approach. I present three objections to her approach. Drawing on Arendt's distinction between liberation and the practice of freedom, I first present (...) a critique of the conceptualisation of freedom on which Buck-Morss' approach hinges, arguing that she overemphasises the moment of liberation. Thereafter, I turn to her reflections on historical orientation. My third objection concentrates on Buck-Morss' concept of universality. As a heuristic tool to expound on my critique, I activate the distinction between fictive and ideal universality as suggested by Étienne Balibar. I contend that Arendt's distinction between liberation and the practice of freedom efficiently elucidates the questions at stake in Balibar's discussion, as well as how his distinction points to the limits of Buck-Morss' argumentation. Ultimately, I contend that these critical remarks open up for a more dialectical approach to universality as a historical-political problem. (shrink)

In the recent progressive reappraisals of the enlightenment by Jonathan Israel and Rainer Forst, Voltaire figures as almost a reactionary thinker, opposing the radical dimensions of the enlightenment pushing forwards secularisation, democratisation, and toleration. Part 1 examines Israel’s and Forst’s accounts of Voltaire, showing their striking proximity. Part 2 is divided into the three subheadings of (i) Voltaire’s deism, (ii) the pivotal subject of toleration, and (iii) the decisive question of what philosophical radicalism, in the direction of democratising reform, involves. (...) At issue in Israel’s and Forst’s claims that Voltaire’s deism represents a step backwards from Bayle’s and Spinoza’s more radical conceptions of reason and toleration, we will claim, is a shared, anachronistic failure to duly credit Voltaire’s deism’s distance from the revealed religions, and the radicalism of Voltaire’s anti-clericism. In the key claim of the paper, however, we will argue that the larger issue in Israel’s and Forst’s positioning of Voltaire as almost reactionary are a deeper set of assumptions about how we should assess philosophical texts which aim to act in the world, and (evoking Feuerbach) to change it (2, iii). Both Israel and Forst, despite the former’s extensive labours in contextualisation, read the texts of eighteenth century philosophers for their arguments alone, rather than as rhetorical and political acts and interventions which aimed to reach, entertain, and reform an expanding reading public through esprit, art, satire, and rhetoric, as well as by making argumentative contributions to the controversies of the day. (shrink)

Faced with the absurdity of continued climate inaction, more people are becoming morally outraged about the projections of human suffering and loss due to global warming impacts. This article draws from the work of Albert Camus to examine human responses to absurdity through rebellion and how this can be applied to understand the notion of climate rebellion. Focusing on Camus’ works The Rebel and The Plague, as well as his speech “The Human Crisis”, I examine the conditions of climate injustice (...) that present the grounds for climate rebellion, what becoming a climate rebel might mean, the importance of solidarity in climate rebellion, and lastly how Camus’ value of limitation might inform ethical responses to minimize climate-related harm. (shrink)

This article presents a critical examination of Igor Soikhedbrod’s Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality, and Rights. We argue that the book presents an important criticism of antinomian forms of critical theory, which underplay the extent to which Marx engaged in an imminent critique of liberal societies, including the rule of law, and upheld that progressive advances enshrined in this rule should be carried over or sublated in a communist dispensation.

Technology has been at the centre of existentialist (e.g. Heidegger) and sociological (e.g. Marcuse) critique for a long time. The latest versions of criticism rely on the results of “science and technology studies”: they argue that essentialist conceptualisations of technology should be replaced while aiming at “democratizing technology” (e.g. Feenberg). However, even these approaches are characterised by a shortcoming when it comes to providing a normative basis: as contemporary technology intermeshes with the elementary levels of existence (such as perception or (...) cognition), it remains in the blind spot of those users, who could “democratize” it through their critique. Accordingly, the formal normative bases (e.g. the one provided by Feenberg, who relies on Habermas’ democracy principle), need to be complemented with substantive claims. For this purpose, a phenomenological-existentialist framework is elaborated with the help of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. It is argued that due to the ongoing expansion of social systems relying on various forms of technology (Luhmann), the “mediated flesh” becomes rigid. By losing the plasticity of the chiasm, subjects are exposed to existential crises unmanageable by mere technology (e.g. mental disorders). Such experience of technologically induced social suffering could serve as a normative basis for criticising the over-expansion of technology. (shrink)

Presentamos al lector el tercero de los tres libros que fueron resultado del proyecto de investigacion semilla Fondo Fomento a la Investigacion de la Universidad Panamericana que en nuestro caso fue titulado Argumentos de filosofia politica de las cuatro transformaciones de Mexico, etapa primera, la Ilustracion mexicana de los siglos XVIII y primeros años del XIX, la Independencia de Mexico segunda etapa, (1848-1898): antecedentes y consecuencias de la segunda transformacion del pais, la Reforma tercera etapa, tercera transformacion de Mexico, la (...) Revolucion y, cuarta transformacion de Mexico, la presidencia de Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.En los textos aqui presentados se estudia el origen de las ideas clave para las llamadas transformaciones de Mexico, asimismo del impacto de la difusion ideologica en la mente del mexicano. Exhortamos a cualquier lector que se acerque al libro a darle la importancia que merece a la conciencia historica dicha conciencia permitira una mejor toma de decisiones frente al panorama actual. Dicho esto, esperamos que los textos aqui reunidos despierten reflexiones en torno al futuro del pais y la responsabilidad de cada individuo para el porvenir. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes a pivotal music production – British band Radiohead's seminal album "OK Computer" (1997) – as a document of its time and contemporaneity, focusing on its modes of reflection of attitude and practice from a philosophical perspective. After scrutinizing the details of the album's production values, music, lyrics, and artwork, the article distils the 'habitus' of the work and compares it with related musical documents. These findings of reconstructive social research are subsequently deepened with insights from reconstructive ethics, (...) the similarities and overlaps of which are pointed out. It is argued that the Radiohead album retrospectively appears as a clairvoyant document of anger and despair voiced in an evolving setting of the dehumanization, exploitation, and subjugation of human beings in a world increasingly dominated by corporate and technological power, formulated at a time when large-scale digitalization was still in its infancy. The frequent vagueness of the songs and their lyrics, their ambiguity and indecision, reveal their inherent nihilistic tendencies. Radiohead's "OK Computer" summarizes what 1997 felt like and reflects a transformation process towards digitalized practices that is by no means complete even 20 or 25 years later. (shrink)

In recent years, with the advances in machine learning and neuroscience, the abundances of sensors and emotion data, computer engineers have started to endow machines with ability to detect, classify, and interact with human emotions. Emotional artificial intelligence (AI), also known as a more technical term in affective computing, is increasingly more prevalent in our daily life as it is embedded in many applications in our mobile devices as well as in physical spaces. Critically, emotional AI systems have not only (...) the ability to not passively read and classify emotions, but most also have an ability to predict and ‘nudge’ users to certain desired emotional states. Drawing from Piredda (2020)’s account, we've examined various emerging emotion-sensing technologies such as recommender algorithms, personal AI assistants, work-related emotion trackers, and emotional AI toys and robots through the lens of affective artifacts. We show how these technologies fulfill the criteria of being affective artifacts: they can influence the affective states of the users (e.g., help regulate emotions of ourselves and others), some emotion-sensing algorithms and importantly, our manipulation of these algorithms, can intersect with the maintenance and construction of our sense of self and identity. (shrink)

The idea that the state ought to be neutral towards different conceptions of the good life has been an influential principle in liberal theory since the 1970s. It has, however, been subject to criticism by communitarians, multiculturalists and liberal perfectionists. Recently, Peter Balint has attempted to defend state neutrality against its liberal critics as the adequate interpretation of the liberal project by redefining it as a range concept. By arguing that neutrality always occurs within a specific range of permissible conceptions (...) of the good life, Balint provides a convincing rebuttal of neutrality’s critics. In this paper I argue that while neutrality as a range concept provides an adequate account of state neutrality, it also makes it vulnerable to a new line of critique. Since the range of neutrality cannot be deduced from the principle of neutrality itself, neutrality is subject to political developments beyond its own control. I will start by clarifying the notion of neutrality as a range concept. Secondly, I will demonstrate that Balint’s notion of the range concept finds ample support in the wider literature on neutrality. Thirdly, I will argue that, as a range concept, neutrality ultimately depends on politically constituted value judgments. (shrink)

In this paper, I engage with the debate between John Rawls and Charles Mills. In the first part, relevant works by Rawls and Mills are mainly examined. To this end, I first begin by examining Rawls’s ideal theory of justice and its relevance to the issue of racism. I then consider Mills’s non-ideal critique of Rawls and supplement it with the help of the notion of social norms. Whereas Rawls’s view can deal with racial injustice as discrimination, in my view, (...) I argue that Mills’s theory is mostly concerned with racist injustice as oppression. Between racial injustice as discrimination and racist injustice as oppression, however, there are varying degrees of race-related wrongs, which can be elucidated by harmful social norms. As a result, I conclude that Mills’s point can be shown without supposing that the Rawlsian basic structure is inherently racist. (shrink)

Much philosophical work has examined both imperatival and non-imperatival forms of address that aim to motivate others to action. But one such kind of address has received relatively little attention: begging. This is partly surprising as begging, both as an individual act and as a widespread social practice, raises acute, yet difficult to articulate, moral and political concerns. In this paper, I identify a central form of the phenomenon which constitutively involves communicating one’s relative powerlessness as a means of motivating (...) one’s target to act. I argue that this form of begging is present in a number of cases that animate many of our pre-theoretic normative worries about begging. I argue that when begging of this kind is bad for the beggar herself, this is so because either (i) the invoked powerlessness is bad for the beggar and thereby gives the action a negative evaluative meaning, or (ii) the invoked powerlessness is good/neutral, but the act of begging precludes or replaces valuable ways of interacting that the parties have reasons to care about in the context. In a slogan, the badness of begging revolves around power and helplessness. (shrink)

Metaphors of positions, spectrums, perspectives, viewpoints, and polarization reflect the same model, which treats beliefs—and the people who hold them—as points in space. This model is deeply rooted in quantitative research methods and influential traditions of Continental philosophy, and it is evident in some qualitative research. It can suggest that deliberation is difficult and rare because many people are located far apart ideologically, and their respective positions can be explained as dependent variables of factors like personality, partisanship, and demographics. An (...) alternative model treats a given person’s beliefs as connected by reasons to form networks. People disclose the connections among their respective beliefs when they discuss issues. This model offers insights about specific cases, such as discussions conducted on two US college campuses, which are represented here as belief-networks. The model also supports a more optimistic view of the public’s capacity to deliberate. (shrink)

This article responds to four critics of Democracy in Spite of the Demos and reiterates its central thesis. Christopher Holman and Théophile Pénigaud attempt to maintain the critical value of democracy by invoking different elements of the deliberative tradition, while Benjamin Schupmann answers my charges by appealing to a strong liberal constitutionalism. I argue that these attempts repeat the ambivalence described and criticized in the book: democracy is taken as an end in itself, but with asterisks that introduce conditions and (...) qualifications. As long as democracy is only desirable given certain caveats, the critical weight is placed on these caveats and not on the figure of democracy. Andrew Norris takes a different approach, interrogating the book’s use of ideology critique and the concept of “socially necessary delusion.” This intervention presents difficulties to the concluding suggestion of the book, but I maintain that that these difficulties can be productive and generative rather than limiting or prohibitive. (shrink)

Democracy in Spite of the Demos challenges democratic authority when the people are no longer able to make good decisions in an economic environment generating systemic social delusion. However, the solution offered to overcome the stalemate remains precarious, and the tension between democracy and emancipation is addressed with wrong conceptual tools. This calls for a reflection on the conditions for a democratically legitimate refoundation of democracy, bridging the gap between critical and democratic theory.

This is an introduction to my edited book, the Research Handbook on Liberalism (2024). Some chapters tackle broad, meta-level questions about the coherence and justificatory limits and possibilities of liberalism; others tackle conceptual issues; still others, specific institutional, cultural, historical, and political questions. This introductory chapter is intended to provide a general orientation to these discussions, but also highlight some recurring themes and challenges facing liberalism in an era of rampant inequality, illiberalism, rising autocracies, populism, and massive technological change. I (...) provide a taxonomy of five different kinds of liberalism in play in the field, along with three overarching challenges discussed in the book - the apparent insufficiency, complacency, and self-undermining nature of liberalism. Can contemporary liberalism survive? It can, but not without clearly grasping some of the fundamental challenges it faces today. (shrink)

The New Diversity Theory (NDT) represents a novel approach to public reason liberalism, providing an alternative to the traditional, Rawlsian public reason paradigm. One of the NDT's distinctive features is its emphasis on the potential advantages of a diverse society, with a particularly strong focus on the epistemic benefits of diversity. In this paper, I call into question whether societal diversity has the epistemic benefits that New Diversity theorists claim. I highlight a number of pernicious epistemic phenomena that tend to (...) arise in diverse contexts, ultimately arguing that the only feasible way around these epistemic pitfalls is through widespread convergence on certain intellectual virtues. If these virtues are indeed necessary, then the benefits highlighted by the NDT should only be expected in societies that reflect certain kinds of diversity. More precisely, only the kinds of diversity that can still persist despite homogenization along the lines of certain intellectual virtues are compatible with the NDT's claims. Building upon this insight, I then highlight features of the NDT that require further development in order for it to serve as a compelling alternative to its Rawlsian counterpart. (shrink)

This article critically examines Busk's Democracy in Spite of the Demos, which critiques the “categorical imperative of democracy.” Although Busk effectively challenges the commitment to value-neutral democratic procedures as the foundation for legitimate law, his alternative, curtailing powerful interests ability to manipulate voters using “socially necessary delusions,” risks establishing elite rule. This article instead proposes basic liberal rights as the normative foundation for legitimate public order and militant democracy as its most effective institutional safeguard, arguing that this combination better realizes (...) human emancipation. (shrink)

Precarious work is a growing and alarming phenomenon. This paper analyses two of its distinctive normative features. First, precarity increases the risks workers face, blurring their capacity for prospection and lessening their security in accessing the opportunities associated with their jobs. Second, precarious work challenges workers’ collective action capacity. I will argue that both features threaten workers’ republican freedom. I develop the second point by presenting a conception of solidarity between workers and then showing how precarious work erodes it. On (...) the one hand, when the labour market is dualised, precarity is distributed unevenly and the risks undergone by groups of workers are different. Thus, dual labour markets create a potential conflict of interest between the preferences of different groups, insiders and outsiders. On the other hand, various economic changes hinder workers from acting based on shared purposes due to increased coordination costs. To the extent that workers’ power depends on their bonds and collective action, primarily through unions, the eclipse of their solidarity leaves them powerless and thus increases their domination. Finally, I consider various scenarios that could boost workers’ collective power. (shrink)

-- 08.09.2023 -- Intervention held in the discussion panel for the Summer School entitled "War, Hospitality, Theater" (3rd edition) in San Cesario di Lecce, Italy -- -/- The speech tries to delve into the complex philosophical landscape of Deleuze and Guattari’s "A thousand plateaus" and to propose a comparation between their concept of "War Machine" and that of “Artistic Alienation” from Herbert Marcuse’s mature work. The analysis will be conducted through an initial yet obliged brief deconstruction of Deleuze and Guattari’s (...) relational ontology, with a particular focus on the concepts of "ritornello" and "territory". (shrink)

This paper elucidates Ricoeur’s use of genetic phenomenology in his analysis of ideology and utopia, and how genetic phenomenology contributes to ideology critique. I argue that Ricoeur’s analysis, examined through the lens of genetic phenomenology, unveils the genesis of the experience of ideology. I propose a model of ideology critique emphasizing the liberation of individuals from ideological delusion without proclaiming an ideology-free position. Additionally, I explore the strategic use of utopian imagination to incite liberating experiences. In conclusion, I underscore the (...) role of social identity constitution as an implicit counterforce to ideology critique. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The built environment matters for democracy: certain forms of political action require particular types of physical space, and decisions about designing such spaces are eminently political. Specific spaces have received more attention than others, though. Relatively few theorists have sought to identify the functions of streets in a democracy. This article revisits, but also relativizes two arguments for democratic street life: an epistemic-cum-moral one about the experience of diversity, and one concerning political community-building. The article argues that streets remain crucial (...) for certain forms of protest, and that the advantages of street life to do with diversity and community-building might in fact most plausibly be realized in moments of protest. Finally, two threats to political street life are discussed and suggestions are offered of how they might be countered. (shrink)

Social work is underpinned by values of anti-oppressive practice and social justice. Our professional standards require social workers to consider their personal and professional development. Thus, this article combines a reflection on both our professional role as academics and our existential identity as social workers in challenging racism and mental health stigma. To progress equality of opportunity, we argue it is necessary to understand first what we mean by an ‘integrated society’ before we can secondly challenge diverse forms of oppression. (...) We conclude by positing that a community free of interpersonal, institutional and structural oppression may only be possible within a virtual world. (shrink)

“Functional finance” is an economic theory within the Post Keynesian school of thought. Especially in the form of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), it has begun to have two big but opposite effects on the debate over Universal Basic Income (UBI). Some people state MMT in an exaggerated way that implies the government can spend all it wants on UBI or anything else without ever raising taxes or borrowing money as if government spending had no limits of any kind. Other people (...) refer to MMT while arguing that any effort to maintain a livable level of UBI is unsustainable. This article discusses the functional finance implications for the cost and sustainability of UBI, arguing that neither of those exaggerated implications are correct. MMT doesn’t free us for the concern for how to support UBI with taxes, but neither does it give reason to believe UBI is any less sustainable. (shrink)

In this essay I evaluate Larry Alan Busk’s critique of contemporary democratic theorists and contemporary “democratic” politics in Democracy in Spite of the Demos in the context of Carl Schmitt’s critique of modern democracy. I argue that Busk shares Schmitt’s general conception of democracy and of the dangers attending any appeal to it. Though Busk presents Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno as alternatives to the current crop of democratic theorists, I demonstrate that Marcuse fell prey to the most significant of (...) the paradoxes and ambivalences that Schmitt prognosticated. Adorno, I argue, is less unsteady an ally, but one that stays further back from politics than Busk evidently wishes. In the end, Busk’s Schmittian critique of democracy and democratic theory extends further than he himself suggests and reveals, not to a solution to our problems, but a new way of understanding them and their severity. (shrink)

In the paper I attempt to close the gap between the tradition of contemporary radical democracy and that of the ideology critique of Critical Theory which is opened by Larry Alan Busk in his Democracy in Spite of the Demos. I argue that, on the one hand, it is not necessarily the case that the affirmation of the two ontological hypotheses Busk identifies as essential to radical democracy – that of the autonomy of the political and that of the universality (...) of doxa – need generate the ambiguities that his text critiques. On the other hand, I show how Adorno and Marcuse themselves remain committed to democracy, seeing socialization in the practice of the latter as fundamental to the development of critical-reflective consciousness. In the final instance, both radical democracy and Critical Theory can be seen to as committed to the same ideal of human autonomy, and equally useful resources for emancipatory thinking. (shrink)

This essay argues for two conclusions. First, clinical decision-making is not best thought of as analogous to the purchase of other services, such as car repair. Health-care decision-making is far more difficult, collaborative, emotionally fraught, and subject to cognitive distortions. Second, the provision of health care should not be delegated to unregulated markets. Unlike other markets, there is no reason to expect health-care market outcomes to be efficient or fair or to promote individual freedom, properly conceived. Markets may play an (...) important role in implementing an allocation of healthcare, but they are not an ethically acceptable alternative to determining what that allocation should be. (shrink)