Varieties of Justice

A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM, PRUDENCE, MODERATION AND TRADITION, by Ferenc Hörcher. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 2020. vi + 210pp. Hardback: $103.50; Paperback: $35.96. ISBN: 978-1-350-06718-9. Reviewed by H.G. Callaway, Department of Philosophy, Temple University. Email: HG1Callaway (at) gmail (.) com Ferenc Hörcher is Head of the Research Institute of Politics and Government of the National University of Public Service, Hungary. His new book, A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CONSERVATISM, appears in the Bloomsbury Studies in the Aristotelian Tradition. Hörcher (...) aims to understand, elucidate and develop political conservatism in the long Aristotelian-Stoic tradition, emphasizes the role of character formation for statesmanship and political actors, the constraints implied by specific cultural traditions and the details of factual context, and addresses the contemporary standing and revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics and the specifically political virtue of prudence or “practical wisdom.” The book comes recommended by Harvard University historian James Hankins, who, on the back cover, recommends it for readers “disturbed by the collapse of statesmanship in the contemporary world.” . (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in narrative both in certain areas of philosophy and in the study of religion. The philosophy of religion has not itself been at the forefront of this narrative turn, but exceptions exist—most notably Eleonore Stump’s work on biblical stories and the problem of suffering. Characterizing Stump’s approach as an apologetic orientation, this article contrasts it with pluralistic orientations that, rather than seeking to defend religious faith, are concerned with doing conceptual justice to the (...) range of possible human perspectives, both religious and nonreligious. By discussing various examples, the article makes a case for narrative philosophy of religion, especially in its pluralistic form. (shrink)

Reprint of an article first appearing in the Journal of Global Ethics (2018).

1.1. A major purpose in nationalizing the provision of health care in the UK was to affect its distribution between people, and, in particular, to minimize the impact of willingness and ability to pay upon that distribution. It has never been clear, however, what alternative distribution rule is to apply. There is no shortage of rhetoric about ‘equality’ and ‘need’, but most of it is vacuous, by which I mean it does not lead to any clear operational guidelines about who (...) should get priority and at whose expense. The closest we have got so far to such explicit guidelines has been the formulae which determine the geographical distribution of NHS funds, the driving force behind which is a notion of need based on relative mortality rates and on the demographic structure. The avowed objective is to bring about equal access for equal need irrespective of where in the UK you happen to be. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Frage nach der Gerechtigkeit im Gesundheitswesen wird aus der Perspektive einer allgemeinen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit betrachtet. Diese Theorie ist ein Befähigungsansatz, der zwischen 1) der Grundversorgung aller Bürger mit Grundbefähigungen, 2) einem gerechten Anteil an den Früchten gesellschaftlicher Kooperation und 3) individuell erstrebten Gütern und Leistungen differenziert. Die Anwendung dieser Theorie reagiert auf charakteristische Probleme der Allokation im Gesundheitssektor: den prinzipiell ungedeckten Bedarf, die mangelnde Zurechenbarkeit des Bedarfes und die asymmetrische Informationsstruktur zwischen Patienten und Leistungserbringern.

The late Susan Moller Okin was a leading political theorist whose scholarship tried to integrate political philosophy and issues of gender and the family. This volume stems from a conference on Okin, and contains articles by some of the top feminist and political philosophers working today. Their aim is not to celebrate Okin's work, but to constructively engage with it and further its goals.

هذا البحث هو بحثٌ في المشروعيّة أو في مداها، بحثٌ في مشروعيّة دراسة فلسفة جان جاك روسّو ونظرية ا، سواءٌ على الصعيد الفلسفيّ، أو على الصعيد العربيّ. فهو من جهةٍ أولى، بحثٌ في مشروعيّة دراسة نظريّة الاعتراف وارتباطها بنظريّة العدالة، في تلك الفلسفة؛ ومن جهةٍ ثانيةٍ، هو بحثٌ في مشروعيّة دراسته عربيًّا. ونعني بالمشروعيّة، في هذا السياق، وجود مسوّغاتٍ فكريّة أو واقعيّةٍ، نظريّةٍ أو عمليّةٍ، معقولةٍ ومقبولةٍ، جزئيًّا ونسبيًّا على الأقلّ، تُظهر إمكانيّة القيام بدراسةٍ ما وضرورة القيام بهذه الدراسة. وتتمثّل (...) هذه المسوّغات عمومًا في الجِدّة التي تتضمّنها الدراسة، وفي الفائدة التي تسعى إلى تقديمها، وفي مدى تناسبها مع القارئ المستهدف وواقعه. وبالنسبة إلى المشروعيّة الأولى، سيكون السؤال الذي سنتناوله هو، ما مدى مشروعيّة دراسة نظريّة الاعتراف عند روسّو، وما مدى مشروعيّة القول بأنّ هذه النظريّة هي النظريّة التأسيسيّة الرائدة، في تاريخ فلسفة الاعتراف؟ وبالنسبة إلى المشروعيّة الثانية، فستتّخذ شكل الراهنيّة، إذ سيكون السؤال المطروح بهذا الخصوص هو: ما هي راهنيّة فلسفة روسّو عمومًا، ونظريّتي الاعتراف والعدالة لديه خصوصًا، بالنسبة إلى الواقع والقارئ العربيّين؟ وبخصوص سؤالي المشروعيّة، يتبنى البحث أطروحةً مفادها تأكيد وجود هاتين المشروعيّتين. وعلى هذا الأساس، ينقسم بحثنا إلى قسمين أساسيّين: يناقش القسم الأوّل علاقة روسّو بفلسفة الاعتراف، في حين يوضّح القسم الثاني مدى حضور فلسفة روسّو في الفكر العربيّ الحديث والمعاصر، ومدى أهمّيّة هذا الحضور وضرورته، بالنسبة إلى القارئ والواقع العربيّين. (shrink)

This piece discusses the account of contested territories and of corrective justice Moore offers in A Political Theory of Territory. In Chapter 6, Moore offers an occupancy account of boundary-drawing. My discussion focuses on the status of Moore's occupancy account compared to the statist and nationalist accounts it aims to replace. Specifically, I consider whether these other accounts are as unsuccessful as Moore suggests, and whether Moore's account is as distinct from these accounts as she suggests. In Chapter 7, Moore (...) offers a distinction between three different types of rights violations involved in the unjust taking of territory, and considers potential remedies for each. My discussion focuses on the arguments Moore offers to justify the presence or absence of certain remedies, in particular the right of return and the redistribution of land. I conclude that the territorial claims of historically wronged groups are too quickly dismissed, and I suggest that this is problematic from the point of view of Moore's own account. (shrink)

The settlements surrounding the Exxon Valdez oil spill prove to be an interesting case of retributive and corrective justice in regard to damage to the ecology of the commons, particularly in light of the recent Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After reviewing the harm done to the ecology of Prince William Sound by the spill, and an account of Exxon Corporation’s responsibility, I examine the details of the litigation, particularly the Supreme Court decision in this matter. In (...) the early settlement, there is a clear disproportion between damage awards to plaintiffs representing the current economic users of Prince William Sound versus the trustees for the Sound’s commons. I argue that the disproportion reveals not only a thoroughly economic understanding of ecological commons, but bias in the treatment of its current economic users, as opposed to an understanding of such ecologies as true commons shared over generations. I argue that such biases fail reasonable moral tests and do not stand up to common principles of retributive justice. I end by suggesting a legal maneuver to correct such tendencies. (shrink)

This article argues that a theory of recognition cannot provide the comprehensive basis for a critical theory or a conception of social justice. In this respect, I agree with Fraser's impulse to include more in such a theory, such as distributive justice and participatory parity. Fraser does not go far enough, to the extent that methodologically she seeks a theory of the same sort as Honneth's. Both Honneth's and Fraser's comprehensive theories cannot account for a central phenomenon of contemporary societies: (...) domination as structural exclusion rather than tyranny or the lack of parity. This phenomenon shows that at the very least freedom ought to remain central to any critical theory of globalization. Most of all, both theories fail to provide a way to decide whether democratic practices can produce justice. A pluralist and pragmatic form of critical theory is thus superior to any comprehensive normative theory. (shrink)

For quite some time, reinsurance companies have been pricing the ongoing climate change using weather- and catastrophe-related instruments and thus have been able to make money through climate change. Yet, at the same time, for reinsurance companies it is crucial that the likelihood of the events they underwrite is diminished as much as possible. Consequently, while profiting from the situation, these key actors of global capitalism also work to prevent climate change from taking place, and support the kinds of measures, (...) on all political scales, that diminish the likelihood of severe climate change destruction. This article analyzes the materials that the reinsurance company Munich Re has distributed to stakeholders and asks how climate change is objectified by the reinsurance industry. How are weather-related catastrophes made into a financial risk and opportunity? The key conceptual tools for answering these questions are provided by Michel Serres’s work on world-objects. (shrink)

While debates over the existence of climate change rage on, impacts thereof have begun to unfold. Yet such impacts are uneven: for some, the impacts of climate change comprise direct threats, while for others it remains a relatively abstract idea. In this essay, I suggest that conceptualizing climate change as violence rather than exclusively an environmental or technological problem brings it closer to everyday life by exposing it as a concrete social and political issue, and that film provides a medium (...) through which audiences might profitably grapple with climate change as violence. I first situate climate change amidst theories of structural violence and slow violence. I then argue that film represents the violence of climate change in a way that invites its audiences to locate their own corporeal and psychic lives in relation to climate change impacts. I demonstrate these claims through readings of The Day after Tomorrow and Half-Life. (shrink)

"Amid ongoing debate about health care reform, the need for informed analyses of U.S. health policy is greater than ever. The twelve original essays in this volume show that common public debates routinely bypass complex ethical, sociocultural, historical, and political questions about how we should address ideals of justice and equality in health care. Integrating perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and public health, the contributors illuminate the relationships between justice and health inequalities to complicate and enrich debates often (...) dominated by simplistic narratives"--. (shrink)

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick contrasts entitlement theories of justice and “traditional” theories such as Rawls', utilitarianism or egalitarianism, and advocates the former against the latter. What exactly is an entitlement theory of justice? Nozick's book offers two distinct characterizations. On the one hand, he explicitly describes “the general outlines of the entitlement theory” as maintaining “that the holdings of a person are just if he is entitled to them by the principles of justice in acquisition and transfer, (...) or by the principle of rectification of injustice ”. On the other hand, his famous “Wilt Chamberlain” argument against alternative theories is first said to apply to “non-entitlement conceptions”, and later to any “end-state principle or distributional patterned principle of justice” — which amounts to an implicit characterization of an entitlement conception as a conception of justice which is neither end-state nor patterned. (shrink)

The focus of this article is fair access to nanomedicine, which refers to the application of nanotechnology to medicine. By use of nanotechnology improved diagnostics and therapy are expected in medicine and health care. Researchers, however, warn that nanomedicine products may be so expensive when they go on the market that they may provisionally make health inequalities worse both nationally and internationally. If this is true, it raises specific questions of justice as to whether we should accept these inequalities and (...) accept that some persons may not have access to health care.This article argues that a promising approach to the ethics of nanomedicine is given with the ethics of the American ethicists Tom L. Beauchamp & James F. Childress. The article introduces the basic ethical principles of these authors: respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Specific attention is dedicated to the principle of justice and fair access to national health care. The principle of justice of Beauchamp & Childress is discussed and with the aim of creating fair access to nanomedicine, this article suggests an appropriate principle of justice to evaluate this field.Accordingly, this article defends a national health care system based on an egalitarian principle of justice, which requires equal access to health care including long-term and chronic care services. Also, it is argued that, contrary to the suggestion by Beauchamp & Childress, persons are entitled to social coverage of health care even though they suffer from a disease caused by personal autonomous activities. If it is economically feasible, nanomedicine should be included in the national health care system and it should be accessible to all citizens. (shrink)

abstract Debate about physician‐assisted suicide has typically focused on the values of autonomy and patient wellbeing. This is understandable, even reasonable, given the import‐ance of these values in bioethics. However, these are not the only moral values there are. The purpose of this paper is to examine physician‐assisted suicide on the basis of the values of equality and justice. In particular, I will evaluate two arguments that invoke equality, one in favour of physician‐assisted suicide, one against it, and I will (...) eventually argue that a convincing equality‐based argument in support of physician‐assisted suicide is available. I will conclude by showing how an equality‐based perspective transforms some secondary features of debate about this issue. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Norman Daniels suggests that the just distribution of resources between different age‐groups is determined by the choice a prudential agent would make in budgeting resources over the different temporal stages of a single life. He calls this view the “prudential lifespan account” of justice between age‐groups. Daniels thinks that the view recommends a rough kind of equality in resources between age‐groups. I argue that in the case of a single life prudence would choose an unequal distribution of resources. Consequently, (...) using prudence to model distribution between age‐groups might severely restrict the share of resources assigned to the elderly. If we think that extreme inequality between age‐groups would be unjust, we should continue to think of justice between age‐groups as a problem concerned with the relationship between different lives. But we should apply the requirement of equality to the temporal parts of lives, not just to complete lives. (shrink)

Post-colonial theories present narratives of discontent based on resentment toward colonial exploitation and cultural hegemony. The substance matter of post-colonial narratives is sound. Post-colonial theories often rely on a post-modern philosophical argumentative structure. The second-order argument is not able to support the first-order argument. In particular, the nihilist consequences of post-modernism make impossible the construction of a discourse through which the discontent is transformed in a basis for a reasonable political action. The lack of such a discourse is a source (...) of intellectual despair and predisposes to political fragmentation. Moreover, protest without arguments often coincides with violence. Within a liberal view of justice it is possible to represent post-colonialism as a critical stance. (shrink)

Part I of this essay will be devoted to Gauthier's principle of minimax relative concession. Part II will focus, more generally, on the variety of possible strategies available to liberal theory. In Part I, I will argue that the principle of minimax relative concession does not define “essential justice” as Gauthier claims. In Part II, I will argue that the difficulties facing Gauthier's strategy are common to other strategies of die same general kind. I will close by suggesting what I (...) think may prove to be a more promising approach. (shrink)

The question of what constitutes human flourishing elicits an extraordinary variety of responses, which suggests that there are not merely differences of opinion at work, but also different understandings of the question itself. So it may help to introduce some clarity into the question before starting work on one answer to it.

Can a society be just if it ignores the plight of other societies? Does it matter whether those societies are contemporaries? Moral “purists” are likely to assume that the answer to these questions must be “no.” Relying on familiar claims about impartiality or universalizability, the purist is likely to assert that the dictates of justice have no bounds, that they extend with equal strength across space and time. On this view, if, for example, justice requires us to maximize the expectations (...) of the worst-off group in our society, it also requires us to maximize the expectations of the worst-off group in any society, at any time, so far as it is in our power to do so. Is such a position plausible? Is it more plausible than alternative positions? I am unsure about the answers to these questions, but both the questions, and the answers, are important. Clearly, the nature and extent of a just society's obligations will vary markedly depending on the scope of the correct principles of justice. (shrink)