A faulty understanding of the relationship between morality and politics encumbers many contemporary debates on human enhancement. As a result, some ethical reflections on enhancement undervalue its social dimensions, while some social approaches to the topic lack normative import. In this essay, I use my own conception of the relationship between ethics and politics, which I call “political minimalism,” in order to support and strengthen the existing social perspectives on human-enhancement technologies.

What is the relationship between morals and politics? What is the relationship between moral philosophy and political philosophy? Defenders of political moralism postulate moral aims or constraints for politics, and hence they see political philosophy as a chapter of moral philosophy. Contrastingly, advocates of political realism describe politics as an independent endeavor aiming at providing order and security, and conceive of political philosophy as an autonomous discipline. This article claims that political moralism and (...) class='Hi'>political realism share the mistake of assuming that politics has substantial, permanent goals or constraints. After criticizing political substantialism, the article explains the main ingredients of its alternative, political minimalism: the idea that politics, understood as collective instrumental rationality, aims at providing adequate means for the accomplishment of people's goals, whatever these are; and the conception of the relationship between morality and politics as one of “reciprocal containment.” Finally, it addresses some foreseeable criticisms of political minimalism. (shrink)

Drawing on the Confucian political philosophy of China, Roger Ames presents “family feeling” (xiao) as a candidate for a universal minimalist morality. Challenging certain conventional views in political philosophy that see family feeling as a threat to achieving an egalitarian level playing field, Ames underscores the ethical and political significance of family, advocating for the integration of familial sentiments into the political sphere. He addresses modern challenges, showing how diverse cultural expressions are allowed for within this (...) philosophy’s pluralistic and locally focused framework. This dynamic ethical perspective rooted in the shared sentiment of family feeling challenges us to critically reexamine Confucianism, China, and our entire geopolitical situation. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to show that the relationships between individuals, including the intersubjectivity inherent to the body politic, are also affective relationships, so as to reconstruct Spinoza’s minimalist theory of tolerance. According to Spinoza’s concept of affectivity and bodily life, affection refers to a state of the affected body and implies the presence of the affecting body, while affect refers to the transition from one state to another, taking into account the correlative variation of affective bodies, that (...) is, the affect is always a passage or variation in the intensity of our power to exist and act — the increase or decrease, the favoring or the restraint of our power to exist and act. We argue that Spinoza’s geometry of affective relations decisively contributes to a political theory of democracy, insofar as it anticipates modern, liberal conceptions of tolerance. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to show that the relationships between individuals, including the intersubjectivity inherent to the body politic, are also affective relationships, so as to reconstruct Spinoza’s minimalist theory of tolerance. According to Spinoza’s concept of affectivity and bodily life, affection refers to a state of the affected body and implies the presence of the affecting body, while affect refers to the transition from one state to another, taking into account the correlative variation of affective bodies, that (...) is, the affect is always a passage or variation in the intensity of our power to exist and act—the increase or decrease, the favoring or the restraint of our power to exist and act. We argue that Spinoza’s geometry of affective relations decisively contributes to a political theory of democracy, insofar as it anticipates modern, liberal conceptions of tolerance. (shrink)

Beyond Community political minimalism, citizenship, rights and States are today associated with new constitutional ambitions. In this connection this paper draws attention to the “unsaturated” character of national institutions, especially parliamentary institutions, and argues for a re-elaboration of the classical European conceptions of rights in an institutional rather than a purely individualistic perspective.

Thomas Hobbes's theory of the laws of nature covers only a subset of these rules, namely, those that “concern the doctrine of Civill Society”. There are many interpretations that attribute more ambitious aims to Hobbes, such as reconciling the claims of morality and interest, defending a version of divine command theory, showing that some aims are supremely rational, or using a theory of reciprocity to unite reason and morality. This chapter argues that Hobbes can accomplish his most important goals with (...) the minimalist theory. Hobbes describes the behavior of societies in the state of nature whose members support themselves by raiding other cities. Hobbes's moral theory makes the case for the state because it holds that social life governed by the laws of nature is available only within the state. In addition to supporting Hobbes's political theory, the minimalist theory presents an alternative to Aristotle's theory of justice. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the upcoming reform of local self-government initiated by amend­ments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation (2020) and the Draft Federal Law No. 40361-8 «On general principles of the organization of local self-government in a unified system of public author­ity», submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in December 2021. The purpose of the study is to identify and analyze trends in the development of the institutional organization of local self-govern­ment, (...) manifested in the context of the development of the new Draft Federal Law. It is shown that a special type of institutional organization is emerging in the sphere of domestic local self-government, which can be defined as institutional minimalism. Its main features are highlighted. It is concluded that the manifes­tations of institutional minimalism are possible only in the conditions of continuation of such trends as the strengthening state control and unification of local self-government, which previously existed, but were further strengthened in connection with the building of a unified system of public power. (shrink)

This work seeks to highlight that an understanding of aesthetic practices is essential to the analysis of politics and political processes. If today, aesthetics has become a rather overused term, referring to a variety of historical periods and groups, even states of being (love, melancholy...), nonetheless its relevance as a connecting agent between individual, state and society remains strong. Placing it as a central theme for understanding processes of domination, contestation and transversal links highlights the mobilization of spaces, bodies (...) and objects in a struggle for the exercise of power and the challenges to it. It is impossible to study historical shifts or systems of power without examining the mobilisation of aesthetic languages: of splendour and display, austerity, asceticism, minimalism or restraint. In this book the concern is with the dynamics between the custodians of aesthetics and the dissenters, with the moment, and with change over time. This book approaches contemporary politics through the aesthetics of power and its practices: from the more formal and regulated presence of state power in the public space in the form of official buildings, commemorative monuments, to the aestheticisation of sacrifice in politics and judicial spectacles. The studies presented here promise to lead us further to deepening our understanding of the dynamics of political spaces and the politics of the aesthetic in contemporary politics. (shrink)

Peace plays a central role in the ethics of war and peace, but this proves to be an enormous challenge. In a recent article, Elisabeth Forster and Isaac Taylor grapple with this important topic. They argue that certain concepts in just war theory—aggression, legitimacy, and peace—are essentially contested and susceptible to manipulation. Because the rules are interpreted and applied by the very states that wage war, it is as if the fox is asked to guard the chicken coop—a recipe for (...) disaster. To avoid manipulation of the theory and make the goal of peace attainable, they defend “minimalism” in the ethics of war and peace. This paper responds to and builds on their article. After nuancing the analysis, I will argue that their minimalism does not solve the problem since the proposed alternative concept is equally prone to misuse, and that their minimalism is mistargeted. What I propose is to specify and ground the rules of war without raising the standard too high, to disentangle jus ad bellum and jus post bellum and see peace as guiding principle for jus post bellum, and to interpret that in a minimalist way. (shrink)

Since America's founding, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued a vast number of decisions on a staggeringly wide variety of subjects. And hundreds of judges have occupied the bench. Yet as Cass R. Sunstein, the eminent legal scholar and bestselling co-author of Nudge, points out, almost every one of the Justices fits into a very small number of types regardless of ideology: the hero, the soldier, the minimalist, and the mute. Heroes are willing to invoke the Constitution to invalidate state (...) laws, federal legislation, and prior Court decisions. They loudly embrace first principles and are prone to flair, employing dramatic language to fundamentally reshape the law. Soldiers, on the other hand, are skeptical of judicial power, and typically defer to decisions made by the political branches. Minimalists favor small steps and only incremental change. They worry that bold reversals of long-established traditions may be counterproductive, producing a backlash that only leads to another reversal. Mutes would rather say nothing at all about the big constitutional issues, and instead tend to decide cases on narrow grounds or keep controversial cases out of the Court altogether by denying standing. As Sunstein shows, many of the most important constitutional debates are in fact contests between the four Personae. Whether the issue involves slavery, gender equality, same-sex marriage, executive power, surveillance, or freedom of speech, debates have turned on choices made among the four Personae--choices that derive as much from psychology as constitutional theory. Sunstein himself defends a form of minimalism, arguing that it is the best approach in a self-governing society of free people. More broadly, he casts a genuinely novel light on longstanding disputes over the proper way to interpret the constitution, demonstrating that behind virtually every decision and beneath all of the abstract theory lurk the four Personae. By emphasizing the centrality of character types, Sunstein forces us to rethink everything we know about how the Supreme Court works. (shrink)

Democratic legitimacy is often grounded in proceduralist terms, referring to the ideal of political equality that should be mirrored by fair procedures of decision-making. The paper argues (§1) that the normative commitments embedded in a non-minimalist account of procedural legitimacy are well expressed by the ideal of co-authorship. Against this background, the main goal of the paper is to argue that structural forms of epistemic injustice are detrimental to the overall legitimacy of democratic systems. In §2 I analyse Young’s (...) notion of political powerlessness and claim that in structurally unjust social contexts members of powerless groups often are not properly acknowledged as functioning members of the polity, hence being jeopardized in their ability to develop part of their personal identity. In §III, I define gerrymandering as an example of political disempowerment that involves an epistemic harm for oppressed citizens, namely, to be prejudicially excluded from the community of epistemic trust. My thesis is that being epistemically disempowered has a negative impact on the way in which citizens understand themselves as political actors, since they suffer a lack of social recognition that may impede a proper development of their reflexive agency. In §IV, I discuss the proposal of granting epistemic privilege to members of oppressed groups, given their specific experience of social injustices. I introduce two concerns about this proposal, one morally grounded and one pragmatically oriented. Finally, in §V, I briefly sketch some institutional remedies that can be employed in order to politically fight systemic forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Richard Price (1723-1791) was an eminent Welsh philosopher and Dissenting Minister. His political pamphlets won him considerable fame in the eighteenth century as a supporter of the American rebels in their struggle for independence, and for the enthusiasm with which he greeted the opening events of the French Revolution. It was this enthusiasm that provoked Edmund Burke into writing "Reflections on the Revolution of France." Price is noteworthy as a defender of freedom of thought (especially on religious matters), as (...) a proponent of parliamentary reform, and as an advocate of a minimalist conception of government. He espoused the doctrine of natural rights and the principle of self-government. This book is a collection of Price's most important pamphlets of the period 1759-1789, and is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction putting Price's work in context, complete bibliographical material, a chronology, and bibliographic notes on persons mentioned in the texts. (shrink)

This article examines stasis in Chantal Akerman's cinema by means of a genealogical study into its minimalist origins in order to make visible its political operationality in her work and, by extension, its inherent political potential. Stasis is an aesthetic effect generated through the use of repetition, seriality, and duration in temporal media that proliferated in Minimalism across artforms and was taken up by Akerman during her séjour in New York in the early 1970s. The characteristic endless (...) temporality created by stasis in temporal media takes shape in Minimalism due in part to the movement's literalist, phenomenological orientation, which at one point caused Minimalist art to be regarded as nonideological – this while the static quality in Akerman's work appears to be constitutive of its political character. A study of her early films Hotel Monterey (1972) and Je tu il elle (1974), clearly influenced by the Minimalist scene she was immersed in, illustrates how stasis emerges analogously in Minimalist music, dance, and Akerman's cinema. Minimalism's paradigmatically phenomenological orientation and its intricate entwinement with stasis are examined in relation to Akerman's work to reveal their inherent potential for political operationality in art. (shrink)

This paper asks whether David Miller's minimalist theory of human rights is coherent with his claim that obligations of global justice involve obligations to provide people with a minimally decent life. I argue that there is a justice gap in Miller's theory: the structure of his distinction between basic and societal needs is such that people will be left below the level of minimal decency even when obligations of justice are met. Miller can either bite this bullet or look for (...) alternative sources of obligations of justice. I take up the second option by arguing that there can be obligations of global justice to build institutions that enable societies to generate income and wealth. (shrink)

How should automated vehicles react in emergency circumstances? Most research projects and scientific literature deal with this question from a moral perspective. In particular, it is customary to treat emergencies involving AVs as instances of moral dilemmas and to use the trolley problem as a framework to address such alleged dilemmas. Some critics have pointed out some shortcomings of this strategy and have urged to focus on mundane traffic situations instead of trolley cases involving AVs. Besides, these authors rightly point (...) out the political nature of the most interesting debates involving AVs. However, in our view, they do not offer an adequate account of the distinction between ethics and politics and still see their proposals as contributions to the ethics of AVs. We argue that many of the interesting questions about how AVs should behave, both in emergency and other situations, are of political, and not moral, nature. This view is based on a conception of politics and political normativity that we have developed elsewhere and that we call “political minimalism.” Additionally, we show that this proposed perspective has significant consequences for the design, management, and regulation of transport systems. (shrink)

Pricing policies and fair-trade practices are critical for sustaining commercial relationships between firms and customers. Nevertheless, in current business practices, fairness has been mistakenly reduced to a minimalistic ethic wherein justice only demands legal and explicit norms to which commercial parties voluntarily agree. Aimed at giving a different explanation of commercial agreements, this paper will introduce a Virtue Ethics (VE) explanation of the relationship between pricing and the common good by taking up classical concepts related to justice in commerce. In (...) particular, we will explore three principles associated with the notion of fairness in commerce as defined in Neo-Aristotelian ethics towards a relationship between a common good and justice in pricing, i.e., proportionality, benevolence and well-being. To exemplify how these criteria of justice apply to decision-making in commercial practices, we will discuss several cases of fair and unfair commercial relationships. (shrink)

Our aim is to defend the Precautionary Principle (PP) against the main theoretical and practical criticisms that it has raised by proposing a novel conception and a specific formulation of the principle. We first address the theoretical concerns against the idea of there being a principle of precaution by arguing for a distinctively political conception of the PP as opposed to a moral one. Our claim is that the rationale of the PP is grounded in the fact that contemporary (...) societies wish to avoid morally unacceptable risks while at the same time pursuing other goals, aspirations and values. Following this political conception of the PP, we propose a specific formulation in terms of an argumentation scheme—the Argumentation Scheme for Appealing to Precaution—which is meant to solve, in turn, the main practical concerns that the PP has raised. We explain the advantages of our proposal by analysing appeals to precaution in the cases of (1) the European restrictions on the free movement of persons during the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) the discharge of nuclear wastes into the Irish Sea. (shrink)

In recent developments in political and legal philosophy, there is a tendency to endorse minimalist lists of human rights which do not include a right to political participation. Against such tendencies, I shall argue that the right to political participation, understood as distinct from a right to democracy, should have a place even on minimalist lists. In addition, I shall defend the need to extend the right to political participation to include participation not just in national, (...) but also in international and global governance processes. The argument will be based on a cosmopolitan conception of political legitimacy and on a political conception of human rights that is normatively anchored in legitimacy. The central claim of my paper is that a right to political participation is necessary – but not sufficient – for political legitimacy in the global realm. (shrink)

In this paper, two claims are made. The main claim is that a fruitful approach for theorizing the political legitimacy of global governance and the proper normative role of civil society actors is the so-called ‘function-sensitive’ approach. The underlying idea of this approach is that the demands of legitimacy may vary depending on function and the relationship between functions. Within this function-sensitive framework, six functions in global governance are analyzed and six principles of legitimacy defended, together constituting a minimalist (...) account of political legitimacy. This account suggests that civil society actors may strengthen political legitimacy by performing five of these functions under certain conditions and insofar as the proposed normative political principles are fulfilled: problem identification, agenda-setting, implementation, enforcement and monitoring, and evaluation. The second claim is critical and is chiselled out against the backdrop of this function-sensitive account, through which I demonstrate that much vagueness and confusion with regard to the proper role of civil society actors for strengthening the political legitimacy of global governance could be traced to the so-called ‘transmission belt’ model, which has gained popularity in international political theory. This model depicts civil society as a transmission belt between the public sphere and decision-making loci, where it is assumed that civil society actors contribute to the strengthening of political legitimacy by transmitting peoples’ preferences, beliefs, and opinions from the former to the latter space by indirectly or directly influencing the decision-making. It is argued that this picture is misleading and generates erroneous prescriptions of how civil society actors should act to increase political legitimacy. (shrink)

In this thesis, I defend John Rawls’s assertion that political liberalism does not use the concept of truth. I respond to objections from Joshua Cohen and David Estlund. I argue that Cohen fails to show that public reason needs a minimalist conception of truth, since individuals with a range of conceptions of moral truth can meet the requirements of public reason. I dispute Estlund’s argument that the liberal principle of legitimacy is merely insular. Estlund assumes that the claim that (...) the liberal principle of legitimacy is reasonable is no different than the claim that the principle is acceptable to reasonable persons. I argue that this assumption is incorrect, and that therefore the liberal principle of legitimacy is justifiable on the grounds that it is reasonable. I argue that political liberals need not worry that doing without the concept of truth will undermine the semantic coherence or objectivity of political liberalism. (shrink)

Although libertarians typically eschew coercion as a means to political ends, many theorists cannot avoid endorsing the coercion that is entailed by even minimal states when addressing the concerns of individualist anarchists. The dissertation first identifies distinct approaches to libertarian theory, then examines the arguments justifying the minimal level of coercion necessary for the state. I argue that minimal state libertarians implicitly appeal to a particular set of concerns that, despite the general presumption against the state, are taken to (...) justify political authority. I isolate and examine these core worries about the threat of chaos and compare them against anarchist responses to the challenges they pose. Although some economists and game theorists have worked on the problem of coercion and cooperation, this body of work has not yet been brought to bear on the philosophical discussion about the relationship of the individual to the state, at least not with regard to resolving the dispute between libertarian statists and libertarian anarchists. I conclude that the anarchists' conception of legal theory and social order, in light of the work on the evolution of cooperation, is sufficiently plausible to answer the concerns of libertarian statists. (shrink)

Utilitarianism and rights -- Libertarianism, classical economics and liberty -- Mill's minimalist ethics -- The Rawlsian objection.

In this article, I defend the idea that Bentham's international political theory entails a cosmopolitan dimension. First, I explain that Bentham rejects two pillars of internationalism, namely, the sovereign's unconstrained autonomous power and authority in international politics, and the legal and moral personality of the state in the international realm. This critique leads Bentham to construct a complex international political theory which places the issue of states’ responsibility at its centre. Bentham's international theory articulates a minimalist international system (...) of cooperation between states and an institutional model of public officials’ responsibilities that together play the crucial role in securing the greatest happiness of the greatest number in the world. In this last part, I explain how Bentham's international political theory relies heavily on the responsibilities of states, a set of responsibilities that encompasses both national and cosmopolitan responsibilities that public officials in each state hold. (shrink)

Dominant normative theories of armed conflict orientate themselves around the ultimate goal of peace. Yet the deployment of these theories in the international sphere appears to have failed in advancing toward this goal. In this paper, we argue that one major reason for this failure is these theories’ use of essentially contested concepts—that is, concepts whose internally complex character results in no principled way of adjudicating between rival interpretations of them. This renders the theories susceptible to manipulation by international actors (...) who are able to pursue bellicose policies under the cover of nominally pacific frameworks, and we show how this happened historically in a case study of the Korean War of 1950–1953. In order to better serve the goals of peace, we suggest, the rules of war should be reframed to simpler, but more restrictive, normative principles. (shrink)

According to political minimalism, a debate is considered political when it revolves around the question “What shall we do?” This account suggests that certain issues related to human enhancement technologies (HETs), which have traditionally been addressed in the realm of applied ethics, could be better approached from a political standpoint. However, this raises the question of who constitutes the “we” – the communities that face the political challenges posed by HETs. We argue that there is (...) a global human community that directly faces at least some of these challenges, and this fact underscores the relevance of a cosmopolitan perspective. While some authors have already advocated for a cosmopolitan approach in addressing issues such as poverty or climate change, they often do so from a moral outlook, without adequately distinguishing between ethics and politics. In contrast, we assert that HETs present compelling arguments in favour of cosmopolitanism as a political stance. In support of this claim, we consider two cases: the pills that would allow people to eat at will without gaining weight, and the choice between different types of cognitive enhancers. (shrink)

This paper grapples with Bernard Williams’s prima vista enigmatic assertion that ‘[w]hether it is a matter of good philosophical sense to treat a practice as a violation of human rights, and whether it is politically good sense, cannot ultimately constitute two separate questions’. Though Williams’s approach to thinking about human rights has a number of affinities with other ‘political’ and ‘minimalist’ understandings, we highlight its distinctive features and argue that it has significant implications for our understanding of human rights (...) along a number of key dimensions. We then proceed to explain how Williams’s way of thinking about human rights coheres with certain aspects of the reasoning of one of the most important international human rights courts, to wit, the European Court of Human Rights. This lends further plausibility to the view that a politically realistic understanding of human rights, of the kind urged by Williams, should be taken seriously, since it is a plausible candidate for the explanation of important aspects of human rights practices. We close by examining the suggestion that thinking in these terms is worryingly conservative. (shrink)

The EU's politics of protecting refugees through deals such as that struck with Turkey in 2016 have been vilified by human rights campaigners. This article asks whether a full engagement with the Responsibility to Protect could offer the EU a way out of its current ethical and political malaise. It argues against such a proposition for two reasons. First, the EU already proclaims a long list of values that it asserts both contributed to its founding and continues to guide (...) its actions; the addition of RtoP, which contains no obligations to protect refugees in other territories, would add little. Second, when the logic underlying the EU and RtoP's politics of protection are examined, a similarity emerges which would make such supplementation redundant. Both primarily entail a solidarity with, and a bolstering of, the sovereign capacity of the modern state. All that is offered to refugees, and other suffering populations, is a minimalist humanitarian solidarity through the “outsourcing” of protection. Neither the EU's ethos nor RtoP can therefore provide the firm ethical grounds from which to build protection for the figure most clearly failed by modern states—the refugee. (shrink)

The relationship between constitutional secularism and gender equality acquires peculiar dimensions in the context of the laïcité project in republican France – particularly, in the contemporary conflict between a laïcité interpreted as a politics of emancipatory social transformation, and the more minimalist liberal conception prevailing in French law. The dominant narrative in the republican establishment, shared between left and right, has been that laïcité will lead to gender emancipation not only by dissolving any sectarian dimensions of women’s citizenship – that (...) is, by sustaining a religiously neutral public sphere – but also, by preventing the domination as well as the coercion of religious choice in the intimate and private spheres of family and community. In this narrative, laïcité represents a more ambitious project of gender emancipation than that promised by the liberalisms more redolent of the Anglo-American world. The apogee of this expansionary interpretation of constitutional secularism is expressed in the 2004 prohibition on conspicuous markers of religious affiliation in the public schools, and the recent debate on the ‘full’ Islamic veil. This article considers the relationship of laïcité to gender equality through the lens of the broader theoretical debate surrounding the relationship of political liberalism to the politics of non-domination. The elusive challenge is to craft a constitutional secularism that can sustain a viable politics of non-domination – going beyond the formalist voluntarism redolent of classical liberalisms, offering undominated as well as uncoerced religious choice – yet also avoiding an overzealous emancipatory stance that itself assumes a regulative role for women’s religious choices. (shrink)

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Against the background of intellectual and political debates in France during the 1950s and 1960s, Daniel Just examines literary narratives and works of literary criticism arguing that these texts are more politically engaged than they may initially appear. As writings by Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, Albert Camus, and Marguerite Duras show, seemingly disengaged literary principles - such as blankness, minimalism, silence, and indeterminateness - can be deployed to a number of potent political and ethical ends. At the (...) time the main focus of this activism was the escalation of violence in colonial Algeria. The poetics formulated by these writers suggests that blankness, weakness, and withdrawal from action are not symptoms of impotence and political escapism in the face of historical events, but deliberate literary strategies aimed to neutralize the drive to dominate others that characterized the colonial project. (shrink)

This doctoral thesis analyzes the systematic role of Kant’s conception of happiness in his moral, legal and political theory. Although many of his conclusions and arguments are directly or indirectly influenced by his conception of human happiness, Kant’s underlying assumptions are rarely overtly discussed or given much detail in his works. Kant also provides different and apparently incompatible definitions of happiness. This research explores the domains of Kant’s practical philosophy in which his conception of happiness plays a systematic role: (...) the relation between the natural need of human beings to pursue happiness and the ends-oriented structure of the human will; Kant’s anti-eudaimonism in ethical theory; Kant’s claim that we have an indirect duty to promote our own happiness and the problem that under certain circumstances, the indeterminacy of happiness makes it not irrational to choose short term satisfaction at the costs of one’s overall, long term happiness, given Kant’s conception of non-moral choice as expectation of pleasure; Kant’s justification of the duty to adopt the happiness of others as our ends and the latitude and eventual demandingness of this duty; finally, since Kant also subsumes subsistence needs and welfare under the concept of happiness of individuals, I also engage with the question of state provision for the poor in the Kantian Rechtsstaat and explore Kant’s conception of equity or fairness as an alternative to the traditional minimalist and the welfare interpretations of the Kantian state. (shrink)

This article aims to investigate the way in which a political theory of justice should respond to the endorsement of pluralism. After offering reasons in support of the necessity for such a theory to take pluralism seriously, an argument is put forward for its characterization in minimal and procedural terms. However, taking issue with the straightforward relationship of implication identified by a number of scholars between pluralism and procedural justice, this article contends that a direct relation can only be (...) established between pluralism and the need to define a minimal theory of justice, i.e. a theory that assumes as little as possible in terms of values and views of the world. Its procedural formulation is seen, instead, as a consequence of the limited predictive power of theory facing the heterogeneous situations with which it is expected to deal. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Rawls and Human Rights Minimalism State Sovereignty and the Role of Human Rights Rawls's Political Liberalism and the Doctrine of Human Rights in LoP The Importance of the Role in LoP of Rawls's Narrow Doctrine of Human Rights Rawls's Arguments for the Narrow Doctrine ldquo;Ideal” and “Non‐ideal” Theory in LoP Strategies for the International Enforcement of Respect for Human Rights Conclusion Notes.

La pratique des droits de l'homme est souvent décrite comme une entreprise qui vise à établir des standards minimaux pour guider l'action des États et des individus. Dans cet article, je tente de remettre en question la position minimaliste défendue par deux auteurs, James Nickel et James Griffin, en défendant une thèse selon laquelle la philosophie et la morale ne devraient pas être limitées par la pratique et les circonstances du monde. Sans apporter une réponse précise à la question de (...) la faisabilité des droits de l'homme tels qu'on les connaît, je soutiens que le minimalisme défendu par Griffin et Nickel n'est pas nécessaire, ni souhaitable, dans la lutte pour la défense des droits de l'homme, lutte dans laquelle la philosophie a un rôle de premier ordre à jouer. (shrink)

This essay applies the issues raised by Althaus-Reid to feminist theology, the Religious Left, and public policy in the US. Against many feminist theologies, it argues that an idealistic theology of eros has led feminist theologians to ask too much of sex. Particularly in the public arena, sexual ethics should be minimalist, focussing on the prevention of serious public harm and the promotion of sexual and reproductive freedom. The Religious Left, whether under the influence of old Christian anti-sexualism or the (...) newer theologies of eros, has failed to stand for sexual freedom as such and has instead sought to bring abortion rights and gay rights into the realm of sexual decency. The most pernicious example is the Religious Left's tacit acceptance of new public policies that deny women, in particular poor black women, sexual and reproductive freedom outside patriarchal marriage. (shrink)

Often, political theories of the subject detach the subject from nature or else reduce the subject to a mere aggregate of natural features. Consequently, many attempts to articulate theories of the subject purport to preserve political theoretical concepts such as freedom, normativity, or responsibility by means of disjoining the subject from its environment. This article proposes a new theory of the ecologically conditioned subject. Developing the concept of companion ecologies, the article employs three examples – architecture, the human (...) microbiome, and indigenous Amazonian ontologies – to show how theorizing the subject at all necessitates theorizing her ecological conditions, as well. Companion ecologies do not refer merely to our environmental conditions, then. The term also functions as a referent. Ultimately, companion ecologies reveal that the individuation and formation of the subject is a process that takes place, paradoxically, only because of the ecological plurality underlying it. From this, I derive a minimalist theory of the subject for which subjects are materially and temporally extended and causally distributed morphogenetic sites, which emerge only in the context of interactive, multiscalar, and overlapping companion ecologies. (shrink)

Associative Democracy has been developed as a specific response to statist socialism and neoliberal capitalism, drawing on older traditions such as associationalism, democratic socialism, and cooperative socialism. As the ‘real third way’, it is distinct from neoliberal privatization and deregulation in the Blair–Schröder varieties of social democracy and in the conservative Reagan–Thatcher–Cameron varieties. This article summarizes what seemed to make AD an attractive realist utopia: its combination of economic, societal and political democracy; its focus on democratic institutional pluralism in (...) all these regards; its considered moral/political minimalism; and its practical experimentalism. It recapitalizes some of the important economic, societal and political changes during the last decennia that seem to make AD plainly utopian again. It focuses on an outline of basic principles and institutions of socio-economic alternatives to capitalism because, if neoliberalism rules supreme, no viable alternatives can emerge and grow. Even if there is not one institutional design that fits all countries and contexts, we can show what the basic tenets of such alternatives are and how such a colourful democratic socialism relates to and can integrate other approaches such as ‘circular economy’, ‘foundational economy’ and ‘radical social innovation’. The hope is that AD’s broad institutional pluralism and its emphasis on practical experimentalism show new ways of thinking which are urgently needed for sustainable and socially fair economic development and for renewing representative democracy. (shrink)

The objective of this thesis – Reflective Equilibrium as a Form of Life – is to contribute to the deepening of understanding of the method of reflective equilibrium – a method of internal epistemic justification. In the first part of the study, four paradigmatic conceptions of the method will be analyzed in order to carve out a conceptual core: The ones by John Rawls – who coined the name of the method – Norman Daniels, Michael DePaul and Catherine Elgin. I (...) will argue that the conceptual core of the method contains four elementary rules: 1) A minimalistic fallibilism, 2) a moderate holism, 3) a minimalistic rationality, and 4) a weak foundationalism. Compliance with these rules is necessary and jointly sufficient for any epistemic procedure of justification to be in accordance with the method of reflective equilibrium. The second part of the study is intended to answer some of the open questions concerning this definition of the conceptual core of the method. It will be argued that the a minimalistic fallibilism, as a very central element of the method, is justified since there is no belief whose truth is transparent to an epistemic agent. Even if it were the case that such beliefs exist, there would be attractive options of retreat which provide a quasi-universal justification of minimalistic fallibilism. It will also be argued that all alternative methods of justification are either compatible with the method of reflective equilibrium or are not justified. While a metajustification of the method – understood as a justification of the method employing the method itself – is on the one hand not completely satisfactory, as it presupposes the acceptance of the method before it is justified, it is epistemically acceptable on the other hand, since it allows for a critical inquiry and is open-ended. It will be pointed out that a moderate foundationalism can be justified by the method for some specific area of inquiry insofar as basic beliefs can be identified. Yet, the default-position of the method is only a weak foundationalism (often also termed “coherentism”). With regard to the possibility of a formal interpretation of the method with which one could specify key terms used in the definition of the conceptual core, I will sketch general ways such a formalization might take. However, I will argue that the informal interpretation of the method has priority over any formal interpretation. In the third and concluding part of the study, I will present the claim that one should interpret the method of reflective equilibrium as a form of life. This means that the method is at least implicitly accepted by some epistemic agents: they have developed a disposition and ability to act according to the method. This interpretation of the method can be related to the notion of critical thinking, which, as a civic virtue and educational ideal, is subject of empirical research and practical application. A possible misunderstanding with respect to the method of reflective equilibrium as a form of life should be avoided: To interpret the method as a form of life does not indicate that it must be a comprehensive form of life. Acknowledging it in private life is optional. According to the proposed understanding of the method it is primarily a public and political form of life. (shrink)

Political thought has long identified demagogic leadership as one of the key pathologies of democracy. Unusually among political thinkers, Max Weber not only accepts the inevitability of demagogy in democratic politics but also appropriates the figure of the demagogue for democratic thought, praising certain kinds of ‘responsible’ demagogic leadership. This paper examines the role of demagogues in democracy through the lens of Weber's political thought. It critically reconstructs Weber's view of demagogy in terms of the kind of (...) representation charismatic leaders can offer. Demagogues articulate images of ‘the people’ that express a group's deep values and identities. However, Weber worried that demagogues often act irresponsibly, exacerbating dangerous divisions, given their ability to overcome legal and normative constraints. For Weber, democracy requires institutions that encourage an ‘ethic of responsibility’ in leaders while also holding them accountable. Weber's partial defence of demagogy provides useful perspectives on representation and on the institutional prerequisites for responsible leadership that neither deliberative nor minimalist models of democracy sufficiently appreciate. (shrink)

Relational views of equality put forward a social and political ideal of equality that aims at being a better interpretation of what social justice requires than the prevailing distributive conceptions of equality, especially luck egalitarian views. Yet it is unclear what social justice as relational equality demands in distributive terms; Elizabeth Anderson's view seems to vacate a large part of the terrain of distributive justice in favor of a minimalist, sufficiency view. Against that, this paper argues that relational equality, (...) properly understood, requires setting stringent limits to distributive inequality, for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons. First, the relational egalitarian conception of society as a cooperative enterprise among equals gives rise to a presumption of equality in socially produced goods (and bads); inequalities in these goods have to be justified by justice-relevant reasons. Second, relational egalitarianism also delivers instrumental reasons to limit inequalities in income, wealth, and opportunities, because such inequalities may generate both opportunities for domination and inegalitarian status norms that threaten the social bases of self-respect of the worse off. (shrink)

This essay reclaims a political proceduralist vision of democracy as the best normative defense of democracy in contemporary politics. We distinguish this vision from three main approaches that are representative in the current academic debate: the epistemic conception of democracy as a process of truth seeking; the populist defense of democracy as a mobilizing politics that defies procedures; and the classical minimalist or Schumpeterian definition of democracy as a competitive method for selecting leaders.