This article seeks to determine whether PT Freeport Indonesia, an operating subsidiary of Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc., has acted in environmentally and socially responsible ways in the context of its operations in Papua, Indonesia, and how well it has responded to the legacy left by its less responsible operations from 1973 until the mid-1990s. This objective is achieved by examining the company's impact on the resources and assets with which it comes into contact as part of its (...) operations, as well as through a historical review of the province of Papua and its incorporation into Indonesia, Freeport's entry into Papua, and the company's engagement with international and Indonesian politics. (shrink)

Global sourcing largely occurs from so-called emerging markets and developing economies. In these contexts, substantial leverage effects for sustainability in supply chains can be expected by reducing adverse impacts on society and minimising related risks. For this ethical end, an adequate understanding of the respective sourcing contexts is fundamental. This case study of South Africa’s mining sector uses institutional theory and the notion of institutional uncertainty to empirically analyse the challenges associated with establishing social sustainability. The case study research (...) is informed by 39 semi-structured interviews with top management representatives and various state and non-state decision makers in SA. Our findings suggest that sustainability in the institutional field is mainly shaped by the Social and Labour Plan institution, induced by state actors and mining companies’ practices. However, four weakening factors were identified that adversely affect this regulative institution, drive institutional uncertainty and allow for mining companies’ gradual decoupling. Contrastingly, complementing pressures of non-state actors limit institutional uncertainty and push toward mainstreaming the stipulations of the institution. This study contributes to the business ethics literature by providing an in-depth exploration of institutional uncertainty’s drivers and barriers within an upstream SC setting and shedding light on multiple actors’ interplay and relevance in sector-wide sustainability. The findings are condensed into three main propositions as well as an analytical framework as a basis for follow-up research. This case study helps practitioners understand and manage complexity that results from actor plurality and institutional uncertainty in EMDEs. (shrink)

Environmental degradation and extractive industry are inextricably linked, and the industry’s adverse impact on air, water, and ground resources has been exacerbated with increased demand for raw materials and their location in some of the more environmentally fragile areas of the world. Historically, companies have managed to control calls for regulation and improved, i.e., more expensive, mining technologies by (a) their importance in economic growth and job creation or (b) through adroit use of their economic power and bargaining leverage (...) against weak national governments, regional and international regulatory bodies. More recently, the industry has had to contend with another set of challenges that involved treatment of indigenous people and their traditional land rights, fair treatment of workers, human rights abuses, and bribery and corruption involving local officials and political leaders. These challenges currently fall outside the traditional areas of regulation and control. Nevertheless, they pose serious threat to the industry’s business practices because of their global scope, threat to company’s reputation, and long-term risks of political instability leading to increasing cost of capital. Industry has responded to these challenges by creating voluntary codes of conduct that would signify their intent to comply with higher standards of conduct, and assuage public opinion that no further action is called for. These codes, however, lack any monitoring mechanism and reporting integrity to assure the public that the industry members are indeed meeting their commitments. Consequently, pressure on the industry continues unabated and with ever increasing calls for mandatory regulation and oversight. This article examines the activities of one mining company, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc., which has taken a radically different approach in responding to these challenges at its mining operations in West Papua, Indonesia. While cooperating with industry-based efforts of voluntary codes of conduct, Freeport also initiated a radically different response through its own voluntary code that would directly focus on issues of human rights, treatment of indigenous people on whose traditional land its mine was located; economic development and job creation and, improvements in health, education, and housing facilities, to name a few. Additionally, the company earmarked large sums of money and involved representatives of the indigenous people in their management and disbursement. The company took an even more radical action when it committed itself to independent external audits of the company’s compliance with the code, and that these findings and company’s responses would be made public without prior censorship by the company. We analyze the nature of corporate culture, vision and risk-taking propensities of its management that would impel the company to embark on a high risk strategy whose outcomes could not be predicted with any degree of certainty before the fact. The parent company also had to confront discontent among the management ranks at the mine site because of cultural differences and management styles of expatriates and local (Indonesian) managers. Finally, we discuss in some detail the extensive and intensive character of a two phase audit conducted by the outside monitors, their findings, and the process by which they were implemented and reported to general public. We also evaluate the strengths and challenges posed by such audits, their importance to the company’s future, and how such projects might be undertaken by other companies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Extractivist OntologiesLithium Mining and Anthropocene Imaginaries in Chile's Atacama DesertMauricio F. Collao Quevedo (bio)The term energy transition generally refers to efforts to switch from one energy system to another. In light of the current climate crisis, energy transition projects have sought to move societies away from their reliance on fossil fuels and toward a renewables-based energy system. Yet such projects have not been easy to undertake. As Marie (...) Forget and Vincent Bos point out, an energy system based on renewables requires a transformation of energy "regulatory frameworks, technical and organizational structures, geographic forms and network practices" (1). More specifically, current energy transition models rely on the expansion of lithium production, accompanying systems of private property rights, and complex logistical and technical strategies. This article examines the interplay between lithium extraction, national development, and Anthropocene imaginaries in Chile's Atacama Desert, arguing that the green brand of extractivism that characterizes the industry relies on elaborate institutional arrangements aimed at expanding and protecting extractivist ontological and epistemological regimes in the politically contested region. As such, struggles over lithium in Chile's Atacama region demonstrate the extent to which efforts to decolonize the Anthropocene and make possible non-extractive futures of collective survival must unfold on ontological grounds, against the consolidation of the Age of Man.Mining, Water Rights, and Indigenous Communities in the Atacama DesertAmong today's most promising energy sources and materials are sodium, copper, sulfur, nickel, cobalt, rare earth metals, and lithium. These [End Page 78] have become central to energy transition strategies and states seeking to attract investors for development (Lunde Seefeldt). As a report by the World Bank points out, demand for transition minerals like lithium, cobalt, and graphite could increase by 500% by 2050 ("Climate-Smart Mining"), highlighting the extent to which global energy transition efforts are counting on greater extraction of transition minerals and the expansion of extractive frontiers to previously unexplored or unexploited regions (Moore, Capitalism; World Bank Group). Lithium is at the center of this economic and technological shift toward green economies.Global lithium demand is growing rapidly, with investment and production rates growing significantly in recent years (Narins) and catching the attention of states (e.g., China) and corporate tech giants (e.g., Tesla) that are already trying to secure greater shares of the global market. The light metal's popularity is largely due to its internal chemistry, which meets many of the technical and practical requirements associated with green energy transition. Lithium is light, conducive, and energy-dense, which in the context of batteries means faster recharge, lower costs, and charge-holding abilities that make lithium-ion batteries more efficient than a nickel-metal hybrid equivalent (Perotti and Coviello). Because of this, lithium is increasingly being considered as promising for human development and survival as its energy predecessors, inspiring labels such as "white gold," "white petroleum," "the new copper," "the 21st century's petroleum," or the "new gasoline" of sustainability (Acuña and Tironi; Lunde Seefeldt; Voskoboynik and Andreucci).But the industry is not without its downsides. The negative impacts of lithium extraction in Chile's Atacama Desert have been challenged by local communities for whom the metal does not exist as a discrete entity that can be easily extracted from its socioecological context. For many of these communities, lithium is more than a transition metal found in an appropriable and materially heterogenous underground brine: it is an ontologically contested, socioecological entity that sustains and participates in complex webs of life-supporting, place-based, and more-than-human relations. Such accounts of the brine are radically incompatible with "official" state accounts of it, which are maintained through an institutional architecture that allows the ontological basis of the brine to be manipulated for extractive purposes by both corporate and state actors.In the following pages, I examine the ways in which Chile's legal and institutional arrangements, informed by imaginaries of green modernization, [End Page 79] create conditions under which extralocal actors can manipulate along extractivist lines the ontological ambiguity and material heterogeneity of lithium-containing brines in the salt flats of the Atacama Desert. Through an analysis of the ways in which lithium industries in the... (shrink)

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

This article reports a corpus-aided ecological discourse analysis of texts from an international mining company and an environmental advocacy group regarding a proposal to build a massive open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains of Arizona, USA. The analysis details the grammatical and semantic clusters within the controversial environmental debate and how these clusters reflect the values and beliefs of each group as well as their conceptualization of the mountains and the environment. The integration of the ecolinguistic (...) framework with corpus linguistic methods of keyword analysis as well as part of speech and semantic tag analysis facilitated the identification of clusters of linguistic features perpetuating a dominant and ultimately destructive cultural discourse that places humans in a role of dominion and authority over the environment in the company texts. In contrast, clusters within the oppositional discourse forwarded by the environmental group promote the aesthetic value of the land and a need for responsible environmental stewardship. (shrink)

Whether or not MSF should provide unconditional treatment for lead poisoning in Nigeria partly depends on answers to empirical questions regarding what the overall consequences of such a practice are likely to be. Conditional provision of treatment may yield greater health benefits (especially if treatment resources are limited).

In mid-1987 Taiwanese president Chiang Ching-kuo announced the end of martial law and the legalization of a political opposition. These two changes, in addition to the orderly elections held at the end of 1986, underscored the political development that has occurred in the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Demonstrates the systematic connection between Kant's ethics and his philosophy of history.

ABSTRACTMany academic authors, policy makers, NGOs, and corporations have focused on top-down human rights global norm-making, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. What is often missing are contextual and substantive analyses that interrogate rights mobilization and linkages between voluntary transnational rules and domestic governance. Deploying a socio-legal approach and using a combination of longitudinal field and archival data, this article investigates how a local, indigenous community in Northern Chile mobilized their rights over a period (...) of almost two decades. We found that rights mobilization was largely shaped by tensions between the different logics of legality and the business organization. In our case, the UNGP implementation process has been ineffective in giving rightsholders access to genuine remedy. On the contrary, it has led to weakened rights mobilization, dividing the local community. We conclude that greater attention to rights mobilization and domestic governance dynamics should be given in the business and human rights debate. (shrink)

Software plays an important role in contemporary research. Aside from its use for administering traditional instruments like surveys and in data analysis, the widespread use of mobile and web apps for social, medical and lifestyle engagement has led to software becoming a research intervention in its own right. For example, it is not unusual to find apps being studied for their utility as interventions in health and social life. Since the software may persist in use beyond the life of an (...) investigation, this raises questions as to the extent of ethical duties for researchers involved in its production and/or study towards the participants involved. Key factors identified include the extent of affect created by the software, the effect it has on a participant’s life, the length of investigation, cost of maintenance and participant agency. In this article we discuss the issues raised in such situations, considering them in the context of post-research duties of care and suggesting strategies to balance the burden on researchers with the need for ongoing participant support. (shrink)

Kant infamously claimed that all human beings, without exception, are evil by nature. This collection of essays critically examines and elucidates what he must have meant by this indictment. It shows the role which evil plays in his overall philosophical project and analyses its relation to individual autonomy. Furthermore, it explores the relevance of Kant's views for understanding contemporary questions such as crimes against humanity and moral reconstruction. Leading scholars in the field engage a wide range of sources from which (...) a distinctly Kantian theory of evil emerges, both subtle and robust, and capable of shedding light on the complex dynamics of human immorality. (shrink)

If human rights express the equal claim of every person to the recognition and protection of their vital interests, they necessarily assert universal obligations of justice that cross borders. Sharon Anderson-Gold asks here whether there is a normative consensus on human rights and articulates the role of a cosmopolitan or global community in shaping the theory and practice of international politics. She considers several important works in the field of universal human rights and discusses whether a cosmopolitan system of (...) law is a necessary condition for the stable association of nation states. _Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights_ presents an ethical foundation for the idea of human development and attempts to demonstrate the normative character of universal human rights. It claims that Kant's idea of a federation of nations based upon principles of international right remains highly relevant to contemporary aspirations for global justice, and concludes by suggesting that a ‘cosmopolitan community’ is the locus of a global democratic order and is the necessary framework for the maintenance of human rights. (shrink)

Early Childhood and Neuroscience is a practical guide to understanding the complex and challenging subject of neuroscience and its use (and misapplication) in early childhood policy and practice. The 2nd edition has been updated throughout and includes three new chapters on: - the effects of childhood trauma - school readiness - neurodiversity It also includes a new Foreword by Laura Jana (Penn State University, USA). The book provides a balanced overview of the debates by weaving discussion on the opportunities of (...) using neuroscience in early childhood practice with examination of the limitations and ethical implications throughout the chapters. This enables students to inform their own opinions about the discipline and its use in their future practice. Clear explanations of the main terms and theories are complemented with illustrative case studies of cutting-edge research from around the world, a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading. Reflective discussion questions give students the chance to apply their theoretical knowledge to real-world contexts. (shrink)

It is widely held that a successful theory of the mind will be neuroscientific. In this paper we ask, first, what this claim means, and, secondly, whether it is true. In answer to the first question, we argue that the claim is ambiguous between two views--one plausible but unsubstantive, and one substantive but highly controversial. In answer to the second question, we argue that neither the evidence from neuroscience itself nor from other scientific and philosophical considerations supports the controversial view.

Theories of collective intentions must distinguish genuinely collective intentions from coincidentally harmonized ones. Two apparently equally apt ways of doing so are the ‘neo-reductionism’ of Bacharach (2006) and Gold and Sugden (2007a) and the ‘non-reductionism’ of Searle (1990, 1995). Here, we present findings from theoretical linguistics that show that we is not a cognitive primitive, but is composed of notions of I and grouphood. The ramifications of this finding on the structure both of grammatical and lexical systems suggests that (...) an understanding of collective intentionality does not require a primitive we-intention, but the notion of grouphood implicit in team reasoning, coupled with the individual concept I. This, we argue, supports neo-reductionism but poses difficulties for non-reductionism. (shrink)

This paper offers a sketch of the complicated conflicts which arise—and metastasize seemingly daily—in the era of Big Data. Given the public’s ubiquitous-yet-ostensibly-voluntary data surrender, and industry’s ubiquitous-yet-ostensibly-anodyne collection of the same, inaction is not an option for any near-just society. By revisiting the philosophical basis for Panoptic apparatus, sketching the tumultuous history of US contract law trying to protect the public from itself, and comparing existing industry codes for similarly-situated—read: terrifyingly invasive—fields, the paper will provide a preliminary framework for (...) identifying and confronting the galaxy of problems associated with data analytics. (shrink)

The rejection of behaviorism in the 1950s and 1960s led to the view, due mainly to Noam Chomsky, that language must be studied by looking at the mind and not just at behavior. It is an understatement to say that Chomskyan linguistics dominates the field. Despite being the overwhelming majority view, it has not gone unchallenged, and the challenges have focused on different aspects of the theory. What is almost universally accepted, however, is Chomsky’s view that understanding language demands a (...) theory that posits mental states that represent rules of language. Call this claim, following Cowie (1999), Representationalism or (R). According to (R), ‘‘[e]xplaining language mastery and acquisition requires the postulation of contentful mental states and processes involving their manipulation’’ (Cowie, 1999, p. 154). Although (R) is nothing more than the general assumption on which cognitive psychology is founded applied to the case of language, even it has had its detractors. Critics have argued that linguistic competence should not in fact be thought of as based on the possession of a body of linguistic knowledge but should be thought of, rather, as a kind of skill. This is an important challenge because one might be inclined to think that no recognizable form of Chomskyan linguistics could withstand the falsification of (R). In this paper we attempt to show that in fact (R) could be false without doing much damage to Chomskyan linguistics at all. Indeed, it is possible that the Chomskyan position could be made more coherent by adopting the view we will sketch. Our claim, therefore, is that critics of (R) might be right, but that this does not obviously make them serious critics of the Chomskyan program. (shrink)

In the literature of collective intentions, the ‘we-intentions’ that lie behind cooperative actions are analysed in terms of individual mental states. The core forms of these analyses imply that all Nash equilibrium behaviour is the result of collective intentions, even though not all Nash equilibria are cooperative actions. Unsatisfactorily, the latter cases have to be excluded either by stipulation or by the addition of further, problematic conditions. We contend that the cooperative aspect of collective intentions is not a property of (...) the intentions themselves, but of the mode of reasoning by which they are formed. We analyse collective intentions as the outcome of team reasoning, a mode of practical reasoning used by individuals as members of groups. We describe this mode of reasoning in terms of formal schemata, discuss a range of possible accounts of group agency, and show how existing theories of collective intentions fit into this framework. (shrink)

Sharon Anderson-Gold - Kant and the Ethics of Humility: A Story of Dependence, Corruption, and Virtue - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 666-667 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Sharon Anderson-Gold Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Jeanine Grenberg. Kant and the Ethics of Humility: A Story of Dependence, Corruption, and Virtue. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 269. Cloth, $75.00 In Kant and the Ethics of Humility, (...) Jeanine Grenberg proposes to rehabilitate the virtue of humility. As she states in her introduction: "Humility is a curious virtue with a checkered history." Humility, Grenberg.. (shrink)

For decades American sociologists maintained that due to the elimination of their ancestral heritage under slavery, African-American shad no ethnic culture. Social segregation was due to poverty rather than racial prejudice. Social theorist Robert Blauner contests this view. The theory that black culture is only a lower class life-style is flawed because it ignores the culture-producing effects of racism which is the basis for a distinctive African-American culture. Following Blauner, this paper argues that racism is a more complex phenomenon than (...) discrimination because it asserts a type of inferiority that is not diminished by economic participation in the dominant culture. Racism encourages recurring social separations that set limits to assimilation. This paper also draws upon the work of Davis, Hacker and Winant to demonstrate how the bipolar construction of racial identity characteristic of racial relations in the United States precludes full social assimilation. (shrink)

Global governance has become a topic of interest to many contemporary political theorists. Issues arising from the nature of global markets and multinational corporations can no longer be locally contained. These developments signal the decline of the nation state and therewith the end of the liberal moral and political theory that justified national institutions. The alternative possible orders appear bleak, including anarchy, hegemonic power or the most horrific of all specters, the liberty crushing “world state.” Kant’s cosmopolitan theory of justice (...) can provide a third way between nationalism and its bleak alternatives, providing a measureof global governance upheld by nations without recourse to a world state. My thesis is that a juridical society of states is necessarily founded upon cosmopolitan right having universal jurisdiction and that the implementation of the norms of hospitality underlying cosmopolitan right requires global institutions based upon democratic representation and accountability. (shrink)

Global governance has become a topic of interest to many contemporary political theorists. Issues arising from the nature of global markets and multinational corporations can no longer be locally contained. These developments signal the decline of the nation state and therewith the end of the liberal moral and political theory that justified national institutions. The alternative possible orders appear bleak, including anarchy, hegemonic power or the most horrific of all specters, the liberty crushing “world state.” Kant’s cosmopolitan theory of justice (...) can provide a third way between nationalism and its bleak alternatives, providing a measureof global governance upheld by nations without recourse to a world state. My thesis is that a juridical society of states is necessarily founded upon cosmopolitan right having universal jurisdiction and that the implementation of the norms of hospitality underlying cosmopolitan right requires global institutions based upon democratic representation and accountability. (shrink)

This paper presents the findings of a study of purchasing and supply management professionals in India conducted to identify the key ethical issues they face in carrying out their work related responsibilities as well as to determine the extent to which various factors appear to be helpful or to present challenges to their efforts to act ethically in the course of their work. The Indian findings are then compared to those for studies conducted among purchasing and supply management professionals in (...) the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Key findings for the four studies are summarized and implications for business and the professions are presented. (shrink)

This paper traces the evolution of the international concept of a human right to culture from a general and individual right of participation in the public life of a state (1966, Article 27 of the IC of Civil and Political Rights), to a group right to a cultural identity (1992 Declaration on the rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities). I argue that the original generic formulation of the human right to culture reflected the nineteenth-century (...) ideal of one-nation, one culture which had proved inadequate from the beginning even in Europe and wrecked havoc upon newly evolving nations in previously colonized territories. International Human Rights doctrine has had to evolve in response to the confl icts that have erupted within multi-ethnic states. In this paper I will consider and defend the argument of William Kymlicka that culture is a necessary context for the exercise of meaningful choices and therefore, within limits, deserves protection within liberal regimes. I argue that providing political support for cultural identities in the form of group rights need not imply a right of secession and can support a robust conception of multicultural citizenship. I analyze the philosophical significance of cultural identity for human dignity and democratic participation in multicultural contexts and conclude that group rights are neither “collectivist” nor “individualist” but a necessary and significant byproduct of the fundamental human right to free association. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Kant's concept of cosmopolitan right is the philosophical basis for contemporary international human rights. The law of world citizenship or cosmopolitan right is necessary in order to secure hospitable interactions between individuals and states. Such interactions in turn create an international civil culture or "cosmopolitan condition" which 1 is the source of the further specification and eventual codification of human rights. Human rights, I conclude, are universal because of their international significance and scope and (...) are inherently linked to cosmopolitan values. (shrink)

The question of context is fundamental in the debate on “What is art?” What the uses of the term mean colour all debates about life and art. Since I am interested in the interpretation and understanding of context in art, and also in life, as well as in how visual arts reinforce or change our mind-constructs either consciously or automatically, I investigate the place of context within this scheme, while referring to various approaches to context and raise series of questions (...) that offer alternatives and point to difficulties. (shrink)

This first volume in the four-volume series The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law focuses on the "harm principle," the commonsense view that prevention of harm to persons other than the perpetrator is a legitimate purpose of criminal legislation. Feinberg presents a detailed analysis of the concept and definition of harm and applies it to a host of practical and theoretical issues, showing how the harm principle must be interpreted if it is to be a plausible guide to the lawmaker.

Trolley problems have been used in the development of moral theory and the psychological study of moral judgments and behavior. Most of this research has focused on people from the West, with implicit assumptions that moral intuitions should generalize and that moral psychology is universal. However, cultural differences may be associated with differences in moral judgments and behavior. We operationalized a trolley problem in the laboratory, with economic incentives and real-life consequences, and compared British and Chinese samples on moral behavior (...) and judgment. We found that Chinese participants were less willing to sacrifice one person to save five others, and less likely to consider such an action to be right. In a second study using three scenarios, including the standard scenario where lives are threatened by an on-coming train, fewer Chinese than British participants were willing to take action and sacrifice one to save five, and this cultural difference was more pronounced when the consequences were less severe than death. (shrink)

The theory of rationality has traditionally been concerned with the investigation of the norms of rational thought and behaviour, and with the reasoning pro‐cedures that satisfy them. As a consequence, the investigation of irrationality has largely been restricted to the behaviour or thought that violates these norms. There are, how‐ever, other forms of irrationality. Here we propose that the delusions that occur in schizophrenia constitute a paradigm of irrationality. We examine a leading theory of schizophrenic delusion and propose that some (...) delusions can be traced to a violation of a condition on thought we call egocentricity. We argue that the violation of egocen‐tricity leads to irrational states that cannot be explained by the traditional categories of irrationality and conclude, therefore, that these states belong in a new branch of the theory of irrationality, that of experiential irrationality. (shrink)

Having a good grasp of theories of child development and what these look like in practice, can make a positive difference to how you understand babies and children and the ways in which they learn. This guide offers easy access to a wide range of concepts, as well as traditional and current theories, of how babies and children learn. Each chapter offers clear guidance on how to recognise the theory in action within the setting and suggests ways to test these (...) ideas out in early years' settings, supporting the development of reflective practice. Case studies are included throughout, along with questions to guide thinking and encourage readers to develop their practice. Summaries conclude each chapter offering a quick reference of the theory examined and the benefits of applying it to practice. An essential guide for those looking to develop their practice in supporting child development within the Early Years. (shrink)

In this paper I explore and reject the claim that an anthropocentric ethic necessarily excludes recognition of the intrinsic value of nature. Part One reviews thereasons for attributing intrinsic value to nature and considers how a teleological view of nature can transform the role of the moral subject and the nature of moral judgment. Following Tim Hayward, I argue that anthropocentrism does not entail “speciesism” and can accommodate the extension of moral consideration to non-human nature, thus reconstituting an anthropocentric ethic. (...) In Part Two, I apply these principles to Kant’s notion of natural purposiveness. I argue that Kantian ethics, a paradigm of anthropocentric ethics, cannot be considered speciesist because nature must be evaluated from the perspective of the highest good. I conclude that the highest good requires the promotion of a form of sustainable development that includes strong ecological values. (shrink)

Humanitarian interventions defined as “peace-keeping” missions are becoming an increasingly common occurrence. This paper will consider the relationship between the idea of human rights and the concept of legitimate intervention into the affairs of sovereign nations. I will argue that implicit within the concept of human rights are standards of political legitimacy which render all claims to sovereignty “conditional” upon adherence to these standards. After analyzing how both critics and supporters have viewed human rights interventions, I will consider how the (...) “war on terrorism” may contribute to a further extension of the concept of legitimate intervention. I will conclude with reflections on the implications of these interventions for cosmopolitan democracy and the conditions under which it can be realized. (shrink)