Human dignity is one of the key concepts of our ethical evaluations, in politics, in biomedicine, as well as in everyday life. In moral philosophy, however, human dignity is a source of intractable trouble. It has a number of characteristic features which apparently do not fit into one coherent ethical concept. Hence, philosophers tend to ignore or circumvent the concept. There is hope for a philosophically attractive conception of human dignity, however, given that one takes three crucial turns. The negative (...) turn: to start the inquiry with violations of human dignity. The inductive turn: to consider the whole range of applications of the concept of human dignity in different areas of ethics. And finally, the historical turn: to take into account the historical bonds between human dignity and traditional conceptions of dignity. Taken together they point in the direction of an understanding of human dignity as universal nobility. (shrink)

Is it possible to justify territorial rights? Provided a justification for territorial rights can be found, does it ground claims toparticularterritories? And provided a claim to particular territories can be justified, what kind of claim is it? Is it a claim to jurisdiction? A claim to control resources? A claim to control the movement of people across borders? In this paper I review some prominent accounts seeking to answer these questions. After outlining their main features, I focus on some difficulties (...) they encounter, in particular with regard to the justification of exclusion. (shrink)

Normative discourse on genocide frequently refers to group injuries, but this can be problematic for those for whom normative justification ought, in principle, to be reducible to individual terms. Such ethical individualists may hold that an ultimately individualizable description of injury is always theoretically superior (in lacking either superfluous or ontologically suspect entities). Accepting the strictures of individualistic justification, this paper presumes that attributing injury to group subjects will be unsatisfying if this attribution does not include a normatively significant group (...) character. Taking up these challenges, this essay analyzes the conceptual possibility of normatively significant group injury, describing its necessary and sufficient conditions. (shrink)

: International instruments now defend a "right to the truth " for victims of political repression and violence and include truth telling about human rights violations as a kind of reparation as well as a form of redress. While truth telling about violations is obviously a condition of redress or repair for violations, it may not be clear how truth telling itself is a kind of reparations. By showing that concerted truth telling can satisfy four features of suitable reparations vehicles, (...) I defend the idea that politically implemented modes of truth telling to, for, and by those who are victims of gross violation and injustice may with good reason be counted as a kind of reparations. Understanding the doubly symbolic character of reparations, however, makes clearer why truth telling is unlikely to be sufficient reparation for serious wrongs and is likely to be sensitive to the larger context of reparative activity and its social, political, and historical background. (shrink)

Abstract: This article examines the uses of official apologies for massive human rights abuses in the context of democratic transitions. It sketches a normative model of apologies, highlighting how they serve to provide some moral and practical redress for past wrongs. It discusses a number of contributions apologies can make, including publicly confirming the status of victims as moral agents, fostering public reexamination and deliberation about social norms, and promoting critical understandings of history that undermine apologist historical accounts. The article (...) then presents certain normative criteria that any official apology must satisfy, and concludes with a discussion of several theoretical and practical challenges that apologies face in transitional contexts. It draws on Chilean President Patricio Aylwin's apology for his predecessor's crimes as an illustration of some of the promises and challenges that apologies face. (shrink)

Past injustices demand a response if they have led to present deprivation. But skeptica arthe that there is no need to introduce a self-contained concept of 'historical justice' as our general concepts of justice provide all the necessary resources to deal with present inequalities. A rights-based approach to intergenerational issues has some advantages when compared to rival approaches: those based on intergenerational community; for example; or on obligations deriving from traditional continuity. While it is possible to ascribe rights to beings (...) who are not presently in existence; the case for ascribing rights to future generations is much stronger than for past generations. (shrink)

I argue that changes in the numerical identity of groups do not necessarily speak in favour of the supersession of some historical injustice. I contend that the correlativity between the perpetrator and the victim of injustices is not broken when the identity of groups changes. I develop this argument by considering indigenous people's claims in Argentina for the injustices suffered during the Conquest of the Desert. I argue that present claimants do not need to be part of the same entity (...) whose members suffered injustices many years ago. For identifying the proper recipients of reparation, all that is necessary is that the group who suffered the historical injustice under consideration has survived into the present. I also support a view upon which present living members of a certain group have reasons to redress those injustices perpetrated by their predecessors if they are relevantly connected with each other. In particular, by relying on the notion of collective inheritance, I argue that if present-day members of a certain group claim that they are the continuation of the group whose past members bequeathed them certain goods, they cannot consistently reject such a membership when the very same people legated them certain evils. (shrink)

: My aim in this essay is to remove some of the rubbish that lies in the way of an appropriate understanding of rectificatory compensation, by arguing for the rejection of the counterfactual conception of compensation. Although there is a significant extent to which contemporary theorists have relied upon this idea, the counterfactual conception of compensation is merely a popular assumption, having no positive argument in support of it. Moreover, it can make rendering compensation impossible, and absurd notions of compensation (...) can result from its use, results that may themselves constitute injustices. This latter difficulty is most troubling when the CCC is employed in large compensatory cases like the case of rectificatory compensation for the descendants of American slaves. I want to suggest that, taken together, the difficulties with the CCC yield sufficient reason for rejecting it as an acceptable rectificatory notion. (shrink)

How to mobilize a traumatic national history on behalf of a less fractured polity? How to gain closure over a past that bifurcates the nation and establishes (at least) two national histories — history as told by the victims and by the perpetrators, now to be replaced by a history, as Mark Sanders (2003: 79) describes it, not of `bare facts but, at a crucial level, a history judged, and thus shaped, according to norms of universal human rights'. How to (...) engineer through politics the creation of new national selves, no longer pathologically attached to old and circumscribed forms of identification? These are now the critical questions confronting many elites: the overcoming of traumatic memory through various publicly mandated `technologies of the self'. To heal the nation requires the curing of the self. The politics of social repair understands itself largely through a psychologically inflected vocabulary of regret, apology, and forgiveness — the language of reconciliation. `Social cure', or reconciliation is understood as a process of social healing. In the face of traumatic ruptures in the body politic, in short, governments have sought to repair past wrongs and to heal an emotionally infirmed community. Such politics imply that societies have the capacity to repair themselves, to overcome traumatic pasts, just as an individual possesses the potential to overcome his or her own psychic trauma and fragmentation. But what evidence is there to support the claim that trauma — even for the individual — can be overcome, that history can be overridden, that forgiveness is possible? Psychoanalysis offers the most fully developed systematic body of work embracing a concept of the healing of the self. The article's aim, based upon an empirically derived (case-based) psychoanalysis, is to move toward a more robust theory of self-transformation and political reconciliation in post-traumatic communities. Thus, the article considers contemporary psychoanalytic evidence and asks of it the following questions: How is traumatic experience in the past recovered, and disabled, in the present? Is it necessary through memory to `return to the scene of the crime', in order to move beyond it? What features in the present-day therapeutic setting and in the therapeutic relationship promote healing? The objective is a grounded theory of reconciliation that includes discussion for whole societies of the role of historical recovery in social repair, the relation of the present to the past in self-constitution, and the requisite structure of the present-day reparative community to promote self-transformations. (shrink)

Towards the end of her seminal work on the notion of representation Hanna Pitkin makes the following observation:At the end of the Second World War and during the Nuremberg trials there was much speculation about the war guilt of the German people. […] Many people might argue the responsibility of the German people even though a Nazi government was not representative. We might agree, however, that in the case of a representative government the responsibility would be more clear-cut.

Towards the end of her seminal work on the notion of representation Hanna Pitkin makes the following observation:At the end of the Second World War and during the Nuremberg trials there was much speculation about the war guilt of the German people. [...] Many people might argue the responsibility of the German people even though a Nazi government was not representative. We might agree, however, that in the case of a representative government the responsibility would be more clear-cut.2As Pitkin suggests (...) in this quotation, there is a common underlying assumption, both in academic writings and in popular perceptions of democracy, that a people living under a democratic government is ultimately responsible for that .. (shrink)

This article examines the nature of the wrongs that are inflicted on individuals and groups who have been expelled from the land that they previously occupied, and asks what they might consequently be owed as a matter of corrective justice. I argue that there are three sorts of potential wrongs involved in such expulsions: being deprived of the moral right of occupancy; being denied collective self-determination; and having one's property rights violated. Although analytically distinct, all of these wrongs are likely (...) to be perpetrated when people are expelled from their homelands. Although there is substantial literature on corrective justice dealing with such cases, most of that literature focuses on the expropriation of property only, and is therefore unlikely to grasp the full implications of the wrong done or to reveal the full extent of what might be owed to people as a matter of corrective justice. (shrink)

The ‘structural injustice’ framework is an increasingly influential way of thinking about historical injustice. Structural injustice theorists argue against reparations for historical injustice on the grounds that our focus should be on forward-looking responsibility for contemporary structural injustice. Through the use of a case study – the Caribbean Community 10-Point Plan for reparations from 2014 – I argue that this reasoning is flawed. Backward-looking reparations can be justified on the basis of state liability over time. The value of backward-looking reparations (...) is that they ensure that historical perpetrators do not evade their reparative obligations and that affected communities are taken seriously. However, I argue that this backward-looking approach should be supplemented by a forward-looking structural injustice approach and the ‘social connection model’ of responsibility, which can expand the scope of responsible agents and forms of injustice that warrant repair and explain how citizens living now can be expected to pay for crimes of the past. (shrink)

Abstract: This article provides an account of the meaning of reparations and presents a brief explanation as to why African Americans believe they are entitled to reparations from the United States government. It then goes on to explain why reparations are necessary to address the distrust that is thought to exist between many African Americans and their government. Finally, it rejects the belief that reparations require reconciliation.

. Two Mutually Exclusive Concepts of Harm? Retrospective and Structural Wrongful Harm at the Bases of a Compensatory-Based Approach for Loss and Damage. Ethics, Policy & Environment: Vol. 21, Geoengineering, Political Legitimacy and Justice, Guest Edited by Stephen Gardiner and Augustin Fragnière, pp. 391-395.

Debates about individual responsibility for climate change revolve mainly around individual mitigation duties. Mitigation duties concern future impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, climate change has already caused important harms and it is foreseeable that it will cause more in the future, in spite of our best efforts. Thus, arguably, individuals might also have duties related to those harms. In this paper, I address the question of whether individuals are obligated to provide compensation for climate related harms that have already occurred. (...) I explore two possible strategies to answer that question. The straightforward strategy answers in the affirmative. Two approaches embrace this strategy: the ‘ecological citizenship’ approach and the benefits-based approach. I challenge those two approaches and rule out an affirmative answer. The alternative strategy answers in the negative but provides a way to respond to why currently living individuals should pay for burdens created for past individuals. Two possible approaches embrace this alternative: the community-based approach and my own state-based benefits approach. I will argue that individual duties do not fall under the realm of compensatory justice, but they have nonetheless a duty to bear compensatory burdens allocated to their states. (shrink)

En este artículo sostengo que muchos países deudores tienen el derecho moral de incurrir en cesación de pagos de sus deudas soberanas. Muestro que deben hacerse excepciones a la afirmación general de que los gobiernos tienen la obligación de devolver préstamos contraídos por gobiernos que le antecedieron.

The early paragraphs of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government describe a poetic idyll of property acquisition widely supposed by contemporary theorists and historians to have cast the template for imperial possessions in the New World. This reading ignores the surprises lurking in Locke’s later chapters on conquest, usurpation, and tyranny, where he affirms that native rights to lands and possessions survive to succeeding generations. Locke warned his readers that this “will seem a strange doctrine, it being quite contrary to (...) the practice of the world.” His doctrine of native right is equally strange to recent scholars who see in Lockean theory the ideological prototype for England’s colonial expropriation in the “vacant lands” of North America. This interpretation, dignified by the elusive principle of vacuum domicilium, is considerably weakened when Locke’s arguments are placed in the historical context of the sixteenth and early seventeenth-century English colonial experience. Locke’s Second Treatise, with its literary flourish of a vast and idyllic state of nature, was written in the full appreciation of Amerindian agriculture, its established populations, the acknowledgement of native property rights, and the policy and practice of purchasing land from the native inhabitants. (shrink)

In order for states to fulfil (many of) their moral obligations, costs must be passed to individuals. This paper asks how these costs should be distributed. I advocate the common-sense answer: the distribution of costs should, insofar as possible, track the reasons behind the state’s duty. This answer faces a number of problems, which I attempt to solve.

In order for states to fulfil their moral duties, costs must be passed to individual citizens. This paper asks how these costs should be distributed. I advocate the common-sense answer: the distribution of costs should, insofar as possible, track the reasons behind the state’s duty. This answer faces a number of problems, which I attempt to solve.

Artikeln tar sin utgångspunkt i två aktuella exempel på krav på historisk rättvisa efter kolonialismen: forna Mau-Mau-kämpars krav på gottgörelse för britternas övergrepp på 1950-talet och hererofolkets krav till Tyskland på gottgörelse för det folkmord som ägde rum 1904–1907. Dessa exempel aktualiserar frågan om historisk rättvisa. Vad innebär historisk rättvisa? Vilka krav på historisk rättvisa är berättigade att ställa? Hur lång tid efter övergrepp och våld finns det skäl att kräva gottgörelse? Kan kraven ärvas till efterkommande generationer? Vem bör gottgöra (...) dem som drabbats? Dessa frågor måste besvaras för att man skall kunna ta ställning till krav på gottgörelse och rättvisa. Syftet med denna artikel är att identifiera och söka besvara en rad frågor som krav på gottgörande rättvisa efter kolonialismen ställer. Avslutningsvis diskuteras kraven från Mau-Mau-kämparna som var internerade i brittiska läger och hererofolkets krav på kompensation från Tyskland.Nyckelord: Gottgörande rättvisa, kompensation, kolonialism, herero, Mau-Mau, global rättvisa, historisk rättvisaEnglish summary: The Meaning of Historical Justice after ColonialismRecently, four Kikuyus and former Kenyan Mau-Mau fighters claimed compensation for castration, torture and rape committed in the British detention camps in the 1950s. Also recently, representatives of the Herero people went to Berlin to bring home skulls that Germans brought to Berlin after the genocide at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The detentions and abuses of Kikuyu and the genocide of the Herero people are just two examples of offenses carried out by European nations during colonialism. Do these offenses have any reverberations today? Should we simply forget about the deeds that happened such a long time ago or do they raise any legal or moral questions?The concept of justice has two dimensions, distributional and rectificatory. This article focuses on the meaning and implication of rectificatory justice for historical wrongs. The simple idea that if A is harming B, A has to correct her act, i.e. the basic idea of rectificatory justice, presupposes a line of complicated assumptions when it is applied to specific historical incidences, for example colonialism.A model provides a basis for an explication of rectificatory justice. It is then applied to a discussion of rectification after colonialism. The questions of who can rightly claim rectification and who owes rectification, if there are temporal limitations to rectification and what rectification after colonialism would imply are discussed. The article ends with an explication of the meaning of rectificatory justice, an argumentation for why rectificatory justice is commendable and an assessment of the demands of the Mau-Mau-fighters and the Herero. (shrink)

This paper considers the relation of corrective to distributive justice. I discuss the shortfalls of one sort of account that holds these are independent domains of justice. To support a more modest claim that these are sometimes independent domains of justice, I focus instead on the case of apologies. Apologies are sometimes among the measures specified by corrective justice. I argue that the sorts of injustices that apologies can help to correct need not always be departures from ideals specified by (...) distributive justice. Apologies and the moral relations they engage might thus be parts of a domain of justice that is neither distributive nor dependent on distributive justice. (shrink)

Alasia Nuti’s recent book Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress puts forward a compelling vision of contemporary duties to redress past wrongdoing, grounded in the idea of “historical-structural-injustice”, constituted by the “structural reproduction of an unjust history over time and through changes”. Such an approach promises to transcend the familiar scholarly divide between “backward-looking” and “forward-looking” models, and allow for a reparative approach that focuses specifically on those past wrongs that impact the present, while retaining (...) a significant focus on the historical. While Nuti’s work is perhaps the most sophisticated treatment of structural injustice to date, this paper argues that an exclusive concentration on historical-structural-injustices neglects some aspects and some acts of wrongdoing that call out for present-day redress. What is needed, therefore, is a pluralist theory that can accept the pressing force in the present of historical-structural-injustices, whilst also making room for past-regarding duties that either do not fit, or are not best conceptualized in terms of, this approach, without being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of historic injustice. (shrink)

The current debate on why colonialism is wrong overlooks what is arguably the most discernible aspect of this particular historical injustice: its exreme violence. Through a critical analysis of the recent contributions by Lea Ypi, Margaret Moore and Laura Valentini, this article argues that the violence inflicted on the victims and survivors of colonialism reveals far more about the nature of this historical injustice than generally assumed. It is the arbitrary nature of the power relations between colonizers and the colonized (...) which is at the heart of the injustice of colonization, and violence was the way arbitrariness and domination was cemented. The example of colonialism in the Caribbean during the 16th and 17th centuries is used to expose the full extent of this historical injustice. (shrink)

Although genocide—a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves—remains a sickeningly frequent phenomenon in the twenty‐first century, it is not an immutable aspect of the human condition. Genocide is a choice, and the civilized world must choose its demise. The unique experience of American Indians—a group subjected to genocide in the process of the creation and expansion of the United States—presents a (...) logical heuristic through which to assess more broadly the requirements of redress for historical episodes of genocide and, even more important, the means to prevent its recurrence. (shrink)

Abstract: Forgiveness of wrongdoing in response to public apology and amends making seems, on the face of it, to leave little room for the continued commemoration of wrongdoing. This rests on a misunderstanding of forgiveness, however, and we can explain why there need be no incompatibility between them. To do this, I emphasize the role of what I call nonangry negative moral emotions in constituting memories of wrongdoing. Memories so constituted can persist after forgiveness and have important moral functions, and (...) commemorations can elicit these emotions to preserve memories of this sort. Moreover, commemorations can be a restorative justice practice that promotes reconciliation, but only on condition that the memories they preserve are constituted by nonangry negative, not retributive, emotions. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that cultural objects ought to be returned to their place of origin in order to remedy injustices committed in the past. In this paper, it is shown that significant challenges attach to this way of arguing. Although there is considerable intuitive appeal in the idea that if somebody wrongs another person then she ought to compensate for that injustice, the principle is difficult to apply to wrongdoings committed many decades or centuries ago. It is not clear (...) that historic injustices can meaningfully be corrected, or compensated for, and there are several arguments why, even in cases where there is a prima facie moral case for compensation, repatriation might not be a legitimate means of remedy. In order to bring analytical clarity to the issue, this paper discusses the various steps of the argument that must be addressed in order to ground a valid repatriation claim based on historic injustices. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is often celebrated and endorsed because of its promise to include, empower, and emancipate otherwise oppressed and excluded social groups through securing their voice and granting them impact in reasoned public deliberation. This article explores the ability of Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy to accommodate the demands of historically excluded social groups in democratic plural societies. It argues that the inclusive, transformative, and empowering potential of Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy falters when confronted with particular types of historical (...) injustices. It falters because it pays little attention to the historical dimension of injustices and the demands to which it gives rise. The historical dimension of longstanding injustices, it is argued, gives rise to a set of distinctive demands, such as collective memory of exclusion, acknowledgement of historical injustices, taking responsibility, and offering apology and reparations for causing these injustices, which go beyond the type of democratic inclusion that is often offered by deliberative democracy. Yet, the solution is not to abandon the model of deliberative democracy. Quite the contrary, it remains a valuable basis for forward-looking political decision making. The article concludes that in order to achieve inclusive, empowering and transformative deliberation in consolidated democracies that have experienced historical injustices, the politics of reconciliation is indispensable. (shrink)

Environmental philosophies concerning our obligations to each other and the natural world too rarely address the aftermath of environmental injustice. Ideally we would never do each other wrong; given that we do, as fallible and imperfect agents, we require non-ideal ethical guidance. Margaret Walker’s work on moral repair and Annette Baier’s work on cross-generational communality together provide useful hermeneutical tools for understanding and enacting meaningful responses to intergenerational injustice, and in particular, for anthropogenic climate change. By blending Baier’s cross-generational approach (...) with Walker’s emphasis on victim subjectivity and moral repair, I propose that a reparative model of intergenerational justice can provide some much needed direction on non-ideal moral issues comparatively neglected in climate-ethics debates today. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore how theorists might navigate a course between the twin dangers of piety and excess cynicism when thinking critically about state apologies, by focusing on two government apologies to indigenous peoples: namely, those made by the Australian and Canadian Prime Ministers in 2008. Both apologies are notable for several reasons: they were both issued by heads of government, and spoken on record within the space of government: the national parliaments of both countries. Furthermore, in each case, (...) the object of the apology – that which was apologized for – comes closer to disrupting the idea both countries have of themselves, and their image in the global political community, than any previous apologies made by either government. Perhaps as a result, both apologies were surrounded by celebration and controversy alike, and tracing their consequences – even in the short term – is a difficult business. We avoid excessive piety or cynicism, I argue, when we take several things into account. First, apologies have multiple functions: they narrate particular histories of wrongdoing, they express disavowal of that wrongdoing, and they commit to appropriate forms of repair or renewal. Second, the significance and the success of each function must be assessed contextually. Third, when turning to official political apologies, in particular, appropriate assessment of their capacity to disavow or to commit requires that consider apologies both as performance and as political action. While there remain significant questions regarding the practice of political apology – in particular, its relationship to practices of reparation, forgiveness and reconciliation – this approach can provide a framework with which to best consider them. (shrink)

This essay discusses the nature of collective responsibility and explores various controversies associated with its possibility and normative value.

Particular conceptions of reconciliation vary across a number of dimensions. As section 1 explains, the kind of relationship at issue in a specific context affects the type of improvement in relations that might be necessary in order to qualify as reconciliation. Reconciliation is widely taken to be a scalar concept. Section 2 discusses the spectrum of intensity along which kinds of improvement in relationships fall, and indicates why, in particular contexts, theorists often disagree about the point along this spectrum that (...) is morally or politically most significant. Section 3 provides an overview of the processes commonly cited as contributing to reconciliation. These processes are often controversial; those praised by some commentators as appropriate and constructive responses to past conflict are dismissed by others as undermining the moral or political conditions for just and peaceful relations. Section 4 concentrates on the relationship between reconciliation and justice. While some see these values as compatible and mutually supporting, others argue that, especially in the immediate wake of conflict, parties must often choose between reconciliation and justice. (shrink)

Do members of cultural groups have special claims to own or control the products of the cultures to which they belong? Is there something morally wrong with employing artistic styles that are distinctive of a culture to which you do not belong? What is the relationship between cultural heritage and group identity? Is there a coherent and morally acceptable sense of cultural group membership in the first place? Is there a universal human heritage to which everyone has a claim? Questions (...) such as these concern the ethics of cultural heritage (or heritage ethics, for short). This entry seeks to provide an overview of the philosophical work on topics in heritage ethics, as well as introduce readers to some of the most philosophically relevant literature from other disciplines. (shrink)

This paper explores early Australasian philosophy in some detail. Two approaches have dominated Western philosophy in Australia: idealism and materialism. Idealism was prevalent between the 1880s and the 1930s, but dissipated thereafter. Idealism in Australia often reflected Kantian themes, but it also reflected the revival of interest in Hegel through the work of ‘absolute idealists’ such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Henry Jones. A number of the early New Zealand philosophers were also educated in the idealist tradition (...) and were influential in their communities, but produced relatively little. In Australia, materialism gained prominence through the work of John Anderson, who arrived in Australia in 1927, and continues to be influential. John Anderson had been a student of Henry Jones, who might therefore be said to have influenced both main strands of Australian philosophical thought. (shrink)

I processi di transizione post-conflitto pongono questioni prominenti per l’agenda politica globale. Si pensi, per esempio, alla transizione democratica in Sud Africa dopo la fine dell’Apartheid o alla ricostruzione politica dei paesi facenti parte dell’ex-Jugoslavia all’indomani delle guerre dei Balcani. Quali principi normativi dovrebbero informare tali processi? Questa domanda è al cuore del crescente dibattito sulla “giustizia transizionale”. Questo dibattito si è concentrato principalmente sulla rettificazione delle ingiustizie occorse a causa dei torti perpetrati e subiti dalle parti coinvolte. Di conseguenza, (...) la giustizia è stata tipicamente concepita come una proprietà di esiti distributivi di diritti e opportunità. I processi di transizione post-conflitto sono giusti nella misura in cui sono in grado di condurre a tali esiti. Un simile approccio orientato agli esiti è capace di rendere conto di dimensioni morali, animate da preoccupazioni di giustizia e/o pacificazione, che dovrebbero certamente figurare nella caratterizzazione e valutazione normativa dei processi di transizione. Tuttavia, esso rischia di perdere di vista un’altra dimensione egualmente rilevante che riguarda le qualità inerenti ai processi di transizione stessi. Per illuminare questa dimensione, vorrei portare l’attenzione su di una diversa idea di giustizia che riguarda le proprietà inerenti alle interazioni tra persone; la giustizia nelle interazioni. La tesi che sosterrò è che le procedure costitutive dei processi di transizione post-conflitto non dovrebbero essere disegnate con la sola o prioritaria preoccupazione di condurre le parti a un consenso o compromesso su di un accordo capace di rettificare le ingiustizie perpetrate e subite. È anche necessario che questi processi siano strutturati in modo da consentire alle parti di reinterpretare il loro conflitto come un problema condiviso, che richiede l’instaurazione di dinamiche d’interazione cooperative capaci di realizzare forme di trattamento inerentemente giuste delle loro pretese reciproche. (shrink)

Liberal multicultural theories developed in late twenty-first century aims to ensure the rights of the minorities, social justice and harmony in liberal societies. Will Kymlicka is the leading philosopher in this field. He advocates minority rights, their autonomy and the way minority groups can be accommodated in a liberal society with their distinct cultural identity. Besides him, there are other political theorists on the track and Galston is one of them. He disagrees with Kymlicka on some crucial points, particularly regarding (...) the scope of civil rights of the minority groups and the responsibilities of both majority and minority groups for the sake of social harmony and justice. He tries to develop a moral theory of mutualism based on inter-community toleration and constitutionalism. Considering toleration as one of the fundamental liberal virtues he contends that the majority government has the responsibility to make arrangement both for the members of majority and minority groups so that they can build inter personal relation and learn toleration. The paper critically justifies the feasibility of his theory in a liberal society and claims that although Galston’s theory has a higher possibility to be accommodated in liberal societies, it eventually fails. (shrink)

While the mechanisms of apology, forgiveness and reconciliation receive considerable scru-tiny, little attention has been afforded the non-apology. This counterfeit, confected typically by false substi-tution or mis-direction, adds moral insult to moral wrong. The paper elucidates the normative structural relationship among apologiser, the apologetic disposition, and the apology and defends the view of the non-apology as the pretended willingness to recalibrate the moral positional relationship among apologiser, wronged, and wrong without actually doing so.