This article claims that it is not mutual benefit but mutual risk that grounds compatriot preference. Exposure to risks such as state abuse provide us with a reason to take our compatriots' interests seriously. The same argument, however, displays the limits of this reasoning, and also grounds a demanding obligation to aid other societies.

David Miller is right that weak cosmopolitanism is undistinctive and strong cosmopolitanism implausibly curtails associative duties. But there are intermediate views that avoid both of these problems. One such view holds that compatriotism makes no difference to our most important negative duties and that among these is the duty not to impose unjust social institutions upon other human beings. On this view, our duty not to impose an unjust institutional order on foreigners is exactly as stringent as our duty not (...) to impose an unjust institutional order upon our compatriots. This view is not trivial; it has important consequences for our moral responsibilities in the world as it is. And it is compatible with associative duties insofar as these increase what we owe to some without decreasing what we owe to persons at large. (shrink)

Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to lifelong severe poverty, with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. This problem is solvable, despite its magnitude.

John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration is one of the canonical English-language texts in the history of the idea of toleration. Its publication in 1689 sparked a heated debate with Anglican cleric Jonas Proast, and in recent years the Locke-Proast cont.

Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice of (...) a state's domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

Of John Stuart Mill's major commitments, none was more passionately pursued than equality; it marks his writings throughout his life, and serves as a uniting force in his comments on many subjects, especially lawand education. This volume presents, in scholarly form for the first time, writings that reveal his goals and methods in diverse circumstances. They begin with his precocious essay on the law of libel and include his influential Subjection of Women, his major essays on slavery, his Inaugural Address (...) at St Andrews, and his contributionsin the struggle to being Governor Eyre of Jamaica to trial. A variety of shorter essays is also presented: such personal documents as his declaration just before amrriage renouncing all legal rights over his wife, and his and Harriett Taylor's companion pieces on marriage, newly edited from manuscript. Also included is Mill's evidence before parliamentary committees on education and the Contagious Diseases Acts. The appendices include ancillary texts and a bibliographic index listing all works and persons mentioned or quoted in the essays. An analytic index gives easy access to the full range of Mill's ideas in these important essays. (shrink)

Including new material as well as previously published articles, John Rees here brings his abilities as both a historian of ideas and a political philosopher to bear in this combination of historical and textual research and philosophical analysis of liberty. A major contribution to the existing literature on Mill, it is also a tribute to an important scholar.

Almost every country today contains adherents of different religions and different secular conceptions of the good life. Is there any alternative to a power struggle among them, leading most probably to either civil war or repression? The argument of this book is that justice as impartiality offers a solution. According to the theory of justice as impartiality, principles of justice are those principles that provide a reasonable basis for the unforced assent of those subject to them. The object of this (...) book is to set the theory out, explain its rationale, and respond to a variety of criticism that have been made of it. As the second volume of his work-in-progress, A Treatise on Social Justice, this work lies at the heart of a thriving academic debate which the author has played a key role in shaping. (shrink)

In this 2nd edition, John Gray adds an extensive postscript which defends the interpretation of Mill set out in the first edition, but develops radical criticisms of the substance of Millian and other liberalism.

In a new preface, Peter Singer discusses the prospects for the ethical approach he advocates."--BOOK JACKET.

This 1988 volume is a collection of thirteen seminal essays on ethics, free will, and the philosophy of mind. The essays deal with such central topics as freedom of the will, moral responsibility, the concept of a person, the structure of the will, the nature of action, the constitution of the self, and the theory of personal ideals. By focusing on the distinctive nature of human freedom, Professor Frankfurt is able to explore fundamental problems of what it is to be (...) a person and of what one should care about in life. (shrink)

If we agree with the notion of a global community, then we must extend our concepts of justice, fairness, and equity beyond national borders by supporting measures to decrease global warming and to increase foreign aid, argues Peter Singer.