Research has paid scant attention to reparative behavior to compensate for unintended wrongdoing or to the role of emotions in doing the right thing. We propose a new approach to investigating reparative behavior by looking at moral emotions and psychological proximity. In this study, we compare the effects of moral emotions (guilt and shame) on the level of compensation for financial harm. We also investigate the role of transgressors’ perceived psychological proximity to the victims of wrongdoing. (...) Our hypotheses were tested through a scenario based questionnaire on a sample of 261 participants. Analyses indicate that (1) guilt has a stronger effect on the level of compensation than shame; (2) psychological proximity influences the level of guilt, shame, and compensation; and (3) shame interacts with psychological proximity to predict compensation, whereas guilt mediates the relationship between psychological proximity and compensation. (shrink)

It has often been found in the literature that guilt motivates reparative behavior and that shame elicits aggressive reactions. However, recent research suggests that it is not the experience of shame, but rather the experience of humiliation that triggers aggressive reactions. The present study focuses on the role of shame, guilt and humiliation appraisals in predicting the motivation to repair and be aggressive in four different countries, namely Argentina, Belgium, Finland and Portugal. Using multi-group structural equation modeling with (...) situational-level assessments of shame, guilt and humiliation appraisals, we found that guilt appraisals were indeed most likely to motivate reparation, although guilt also had a weak, but positive link to aggression via blaming others. Shame defined as negative self-evaluations had weak positive relations with both aggression and reparation. The experience of being humiliated clearly motivated aggression through blaming others and reduced reparation tendencies. These results were largely stable across the four cultural groups. The present study underlines the need to take humiliation into account when studying the links between guilt, shame and aggression. (shrink)

This essay brings Critical Whiteness Studies into liberationist Christian ethics in order to analyze white Protestant responses to the 1969 Black Manifesto, which demanded reparations from white churches. The essay's primary argument is that the absence of a sense of white moral agency among white Protestants manifested itself in behaviors and rhetoric that ensured whiteness went unacknowledged, which caused Protestant responses to the Manifesto to fail. A related argument is that white behavior and rhetoric were particularly dramatic because of (...) the call for reparations. Reparations assume that race is a material relationship in which there has been a perpetrator and a victim, rendering the acknowledgment of white agency unavoidable. This essay thus analyzes several ways in which whites can be seen turning away from white selves, turning a scrutinizing gaze instead to Black selves and, in the process, absenting white agency from the work of racial justice. (shrink)

Anger gaslighting is behavior that tends to make someone doubt herself about her anger. In this paper, I analyze the case of anger gaslighting, using it as a paradigm case to argue that gaslighting can be an affective injustice (not only an epistemic one). Drawing on Marilyn Frye, I introduce the concept of “uptake” as a tool for identifying anger gaslighting behavior (persistent, pervasive uptake refusal for apt anger). But I also demonstrate the larger significance of uptake in (...) the study of affective injustice: just as the concept of credibility names the epistemic behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an epistemic being, the concept of uptake names the uniquely affective cooperative behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an affective being. I answer Miranda Fricker’s epistemic notion of a prejudicial credibility economy with the affective notion of prejudicial uptake economies: uptake, like credibility, can be produced in a deficit for one social group relative to a surplus for another. Deviating from the parallels with Fricker, for whom the injustice of epistemic injustice is due to prejudice in the motives or character of individuals, as well as from accounts that ground it in aptness or affective goods, I suggest that the injustice of anger gaslighting behavior can be located at the structural scale of power relationships between social groups, in the tradition of Iris Marion Young. Anger gaslighting behavior counts as unjust wherever it (re)produces prejudicial uptake economies. Adapting sociological concepts of feeling rules and the emotion work they demand, I introduce the concepts of “uptake rules” and “uptake work” to further enable analysis of uptake economies as affective social structures, and to suggest a site for resistant or reparative affective agency. (shrink)

Guilt is considered by many researchers to be the hallmark social emotion. Guilt theories perceive guilt to be a negative emotion with positive interpersonal consequences, and empirical research has shown guilt to motivate prosocial behaviours aimed at restoring the relationship with one's victims. The current research questions the relationship-oriented nature of this emotion. Five experiments reveal that when a person repairs the transgressor's damage caused to a victim, the transgressor's guilt feelings, reparative intentions, and prosocial behaviour decrease. These findings (...) suggest that it is not the relationship with the victim that is important in the regulation of guilt feelings, but rather the reparative actions that have been undertaken. Implications for theory and behavioural research on guilt are discussed. (shrink)

This paper involves a critical evaluation of a conceptualization of guilt and shame, which guides a number of research mainly in social psychology. In the contemporary literature, conceptualization of guilt and shame shows variation. In one of the leading approaches, guilt is regarded as an experience that targets behavior in evaluative thought and shame as targeting the self. According to this distinction, guilt has a constructive nature and it motivates the individual to take reparative actions, since it targets (...) the behavior, whereas shame has a destructive quality and is linked with problem behaviors, since it targets the self. The claim that guilt and shame are adaptive and maladaptive feelings respectively by their very nature, has been challenged by theory and research. Researchers from non-Western cultures also criticized compartmentalization of guilt and shame as constructive and destructive emotions by emphasizing cultural variation in the experience of self-conscious emotions. In this regard, the present paper argues that features of constructiveness and destructiveness do not necessarily follow from the definitions of guilt and shame and that this dichotomous conceptualization of guilt and shame, and the research findings based on this dichotomy need reconsideration. (shrink)

What makes a policy work? What should policies attempt to do, and what ought they not do? These questions are at the heart of both policy-making and ethics. Philosophy, Ethics and Public Policy: An Introduction examines these questions and more. Andrew I. Cohen uses contemporary examples and controversies, mainly drawn from policy in a North American context, to illustrate important flashpoints in ethics and public policy, such as: public policy and globalization: sweatshops; medicine and the developing world; immigration marriage, family (...) and education: same-sex marriage; women and the family; education and Intelligent Design justifying and responding to state coercion: torture; reparations and restorative justice the ethics of the body and commodification: the human organ trade, and factory farming of animals. Each chapter illustrates how ethics offers ways of prioritizing some policy alternatives and imagining new ones. Reflecting on various themes in globalization, markets, and privacy, the chapters are windows to enduring significant debates about what states may do to shape our behavior. Overall, the book will help readers understand how ethics can frame policymaking, while also suggesting that sometimes the best policy is no policy. Including annotated further reading, this is an excellent introduction to a fast-growing subject for students in Philosophy, Public Policy, and related disciplines. (shrink)

Background: By organizing and activating our passions with both hormones and experiences, the heart and mind of sexual behavior, sexual motivation, and sexual preference is the brain, the organ of learning. Despite decades of progress, this incontrovertible truth is somehow lost in the far-too-often biologically deterministic interpretation of genetic, hormonal, and anatomical scientific research into the biological origins of sexual motivation. Simplistic and polarized arguments are used in the media by both sides of the seemingly endless debate over sexual (...) orientation, equality, and human rights with such catch phrases as ‘‘born gay’’ contrasted against attempts of ‘‘reparative therapy’’ or ‘‘pray the gay away’’. Though long abandoned in practically every other area of psychology, this remnant of the nature-nurture controversy remains despite its generally acknowledged insufficiency in explaining any adult aspect of the human condition within the scientific community. Methods: This theoretical review article identifies three factors: 1) good intentions with regard to the argument from immutability; 2) false dichotomies limiting intellectual progress by oversimplification of theory and thus hypothesis, and most dangerously, interpretation and; 3) Tradition: a historical separation of the disciplines of biology and psychology, which, to this day, interferes with the effective translation of well-conducted science into good public understanding and policy. Results: Studies clearly demonstrate that progress toward sexual-orientation equality is being made, if slowly, despite the apparent irrelevance of the ‘‘born gay’’ argument from immutability. Evidence is further provided supporting the inadequacy of polarized, dichotic theories of sexual development, particularly those pitting ‘‘blank slate learning’’ against a fated, deterministic biological perspective. Results of this review suggest that an emerging interactionist perspective will promote both better scientific progress and better public understanding, hopefully contributing to progress toward nondiscriminatory public policy. Conclusion: Accepting that the brain is a highly plastic, modularly dimorphic, developmentally biased organ of learning, one which is organized and activated by both hormones and experiences across the lifespan, is essential for doing ‘‘good science’’ well. Interactionist theories of psychosexual development provide an empirically sound, strong, yet modifiable foundation for testable hypotheses exploring biologically biased sexual learning. Keywords: Brain; conditioning; controversy; dichotomy; differentiation; discrimination; equality; sex; sexual; orientation; learning; learned sexuality; born gay; hedonic evaluation; immutability; imprinting; incentive motivation; interactionism; predispositions; theory; therapy (Published: 15 March 2012) Citation: Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology 2012, 2 : 17334 - DOI: 10.3402/snp.v2i0.17334. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Tincture of the Doctor's TimeHolland KaplanI first thought of Mr. H as a "difficult patient" while reading the written hand-off I received on him as I was preparing to take over an inpatient general medicine service—"He leaves all the time to smoke." I don't think the statement was meant to imply anything about the patient; if anything, it may have been included for context to prepare me for (...) the patient's intermittent absence. But, reading this, I felt a familiar sense of annoyance rising in my chest. Every few months, I take care of a patient who seems to never be in his room. The patient is consistently out smoking, in the cafeteria, or in another unknown location, seemingly doing an undisclosed activity. This is frustrating because it means I have to work around the patient's schedule of smoke breaks and jaunts to the cafeteria to evaluate the patient on a daily basis. The thoughts inevitably cross my mind: Does this patient even want care in the hospital if he's never in his room? Is he actually sick enough to need to be in the hospital if he's able to spend so much time outside of the hospital? Why is he leaving so frequently—is he doing drugs?This particular patient had been in perfect health until two months before I met him when he was shot multiple times during an encounter at a gas station. One of the bullets had lodged in his back, shattering a vertebra. Another had decimated the bones in his right upper arm, which were now held in place by screws and plates. Several had landed in his abdomen, necessitating the removal of part of his bowel. Finally, a bullet had sliced through the lower part of his right kidney, shredding his ureter and mandating surgical reconstruction of his urinary system. After over a month in the intensive care unit with multiple reparative surgeries, he was discharged to a rehabilitation facility. But he started having fevers and fast heart rates; ultimately, he was admitted to the hospital again for multiple infected fluid collections that had formed at the sites of his surgeries. He left the hospital prior to getting treated for these infections, purportedly "against medical [End Page 12] advice." And now, several weeks later, he was here in the hospital for the same reason.The first time I went to see Mr. H, he was, of course, not in his room. I went to the nursing station to ask if the clerk knew where he was. She knowingly said, "Oh yeah, he goes out a lot. I can give him a call to let him know the doctor is here to see him if you'd like." I assented, thanked the clerk for calling him, and proceeded, annoyed, in seeing the rest of my patients. I considered how I would address Mr. H's behavior when I was finally able to talk to him. I had seen others take many different approaches—negotiation about the timing and frequency of these extramural expeditions, ultimatums about getting discharged, mandating urine drug screens upon return, and silent, frustrated tolerance. I resolved to wait to speak to him to determine which approach might be most suitable. An hour later, I received a call from the clerk that Mr. H had returned to his room to see me.The first time I met Mr. H, he informed me he had taken the bus to midtown to make a run to the grocery store. I was internally incredulous. He felt well enough to go to the grocery store? Why was he in the hospital then? At that moment, I opted not to discuss his frequent departures yet, as I was frustrated and realized I wouldn't be able to identify the best way to address them. I reviewed his medical issues with him, asked specific questions about how he was feeling, performed a physical exam, and reiterated his current plan of care. Mr. H made it very clear that he would like to get out of the hospital as soon as possible. I tried to set the expectation that he... (shrink)

Application of the reliability of repairable systems on solving problems from constructing production systems takes an important place in the process of finding the optimal solution among the suggested system choices. The basic hypothesis when using the reliability of the repairable systems is that every machine is representing a component, a fact that is debatable when talking about technical sciences. However, considering the second assumption of the stationary process, the function of the availability is introduced. It represents the measure between (...) the reliability and the benefit of maintaining the components and the system as a whole one. An additional and the last reason for analyzing constructing machine as a whole one has an economic reason. From the aspect of the total cost and the capacity of the system, the function of the availability is catching more and more impact in the process of determinating the total cost in bill of quantities as the most important part of tender documents. Until former works, techno-economic optimisation usually ran over when choosing the system of the construction machines. In the work, there are shown the methodologies for gathering and analyzing the indicators of availabilities per unit of a company's machine park. The time of demission and reparation have been investigated among 34 components in the period of 6 years. Based on the obtained result for different conditions of machine exploitation and facilities, it is suggested the methodology of the future behaviour of the corresponding within the model optimization availability of constructing production system with the aim of eliminating extra criterion. The suggested model takes in consideration the total cost of the components when they are functional, and when they are not. This kind of approach enables the one who take choices decision of the height of profits, in the lenght of work in function of the projection of cash flow and managing with real indicators of functioning the system at the project level. Given the fact that the maintanance policy of machines is based on availability, and not on reliability of components, with the aim of maximizing the availability of different budget scenarios, a logical approach to the selection of the objective function in the terms of management of construction production systems is to minimize costs for a given availability of system constructing machinery is based on the use of historical data base with the values of the operational availability of components, conditions in which they function, in the process of forecasting the project availability for projects that follow. Ranking variant solutions is the result of the adopted function of the aim as a consequence due to enlargement methods of availability for serial parallel systems with the associated restrictions. For optimal system availability is taken a value that belongs to minimal total cost. However, it is predicted that after the end of the financial year, the real and projected indicators of system functions get compared to each other. Informational support to the proposed model is informational company system, which was built in the PHP programming language on the Linux software platform, and with data based in My SQL. The suggested model is tested on the system for the production and embedding bitumen bound materials on the specific project. Obtained results confirm the assumptions used in work. (shrink)

This paper provide the first extended discussion in the philosophical literature of the epistemic significance of the phenomenon of “being known” and the relationship it has to reparations that are distinctively epistemic. Drawing on a framework provided by the United Nations of the “right to know,” it is argued that victims of gross violations and injustices not only have the right to know what happened, but also the right to be known—to be a giver of knowledge to others about their (...) own experiences. It is shown that such victims can suffer epistemic wrongs by being rendered invisible, vilified or demonized, or systematically distorted, and that these ways of not being known demand epistemic reparations. While there are traditional reparations that are epistemic in nature, such as memorialization and education, it is argued that there is a prior and arguably more important epistemic reparation—knowing victims of gross violations and injustices in the sense of bearing witness. The paper concludes with a sketch of an epistemological picture to underwrite this notion of epistemic reparations, one that significantly expands the traditional picture by including epistemic duties that are imperfect in nature and concern actions in addition to beliefs. (shrink)

An analysis of the case for reparations for American chattel slavery.

Machine learning algorithms pervade contemporary society. They are integral to social institutions, inform processes of governance, and animate the mundane technologies of daily life. Consistently, the outcomes of machine learning reflect, reproduce, and amplify structural inequalities. The field of fair machine learning has emerged in response, developing mathematical techniques that increase fairness based on anti-classification, classification parity, and calibration standards. In practice, these computational correctives invariably fall short, operating from an algorithmic idealism that does not, and cannot, address systemic, Intersectional (...) stratifications. Taking present fair machine learning methods as our point of departure, we suggest instead the notion and practice of algorithmic reparation. Rooted in theories of Intersectionality, reparative algorithms name, unmask, and undo allocative and representational harms as they materialize in sociotechnical form. We propose algorithmic reparation as a foundation for building, evaluating, adjusting, and when necessary, omitting and eradicating machine learning systems. (shrink)

Jeremy Waldron argues that claims to reparation for historic injustices can be superseded by the demands of justice in the present. For example, justified Maori claims to reparation resulting from the wrongful appropriation of their land by European settlers may be superseded by the claim to a just distribution of resources possessed by the world’s existing inhabitants. However, if we distinguish between reparative and restitutive claims, we see that while claims to restitution may be superseded by changes in circumstance, (...) this does not entail that claims to reparation are. In contrast, claims to reparation are robust to changes in circumstance. (shrink)

Some claim that a commitment to egalitarianism is in tension with support for reparations for historical injustice. This tension appears to arise insofar as egalitarianism is a forward-looking approach to justice: an approach that tells us what kind of world we should aim to build, where that world is not defined in terms of the decisions or actions of previous generations. Some have claimed that egalitarianism thereby renders reparations redundant. One popular option for egalitarians who aim to reject this thesis (...) is to insist that historical injustices demand reparations when they have caused present-day inequality. A promising alternative, skilfully defended by Alasia Nuti in Injustice and the Reproduction of History, is to argue that historical injustices stand in need of repair when they are reproduced into the present-day, such that some past and present injustices are in fact the same injustice. In this paper, I assess these egalitarian responses to the redundancy thesis. I find that Nuti’s account is equipped to reject this thesis, but that the same lines of reply can be adopted by proponents of the causal approach. I suggest that both approaches therefore be viewed as potential ways to conceptualise the relationship between historical injustice and our present normative circumstances; and that in choosing between them, we should understand ourselves to be engaged in an ameliorative project – a project that is guided by, and designed to help us to achieve, our legitimate purposes. (shrink)

This chapter examines two basic philosophical challenges for the idea of reparations for past injustices (using colonialism as the focal point). The first challenge is that requiring people today to make reparations for an injustice they themselves did not commit is unfair. The second is that if reparative claims are invoked because of lingering injustices, then recalling the past is in fact normatively redundant if lingering present injustices can be handled by forward-looking principles. In response to the first challenge, (...) I argue that the unfairness worry is deflected if we adopt a collectivist-model of responsibility, ie, one that holds states instead of individuals to be the responsible actor. Against the redundancy objection, I suggest that reparative arguments can supplement and reinforce forward-looking distributive principles. (shrink)

This paper sketches an account of reparative justice for climate refugees, focusing on total land loss due to sea-level rise. I begin by outlining the harm of this loss in terms of self-determination and cultural heritage. I then consider, first, who is owed these reparations? Second, who should pay such reparations? Third, in what form should the reparations be paid? I end with thoughts on the project of reparative justice more generally, arguing that such obligations do not depend (...) upon a perfect account of how reparations might be fulfilled; we simply have an obligation to shoot the arrow as close to the target as we can. (shrink)

Positive law and problems with identifying beneficiaries confine reparations for U.S. slavery to the level of discourse. Within the discourse, the broader topic of rectification can be addressed. The rectification of slavery includes restoring full humanity to our ideas of the slaves and their descendants and it requires disabuse of the false biological idea of race. This is not racial eliminativism, because biological race never existed, but more importantly because African American racial identities and redress of present racism are based (...) on lifeworlds of race in contrast with which the biological idea has been an external imposition. (shrink)

This essay argues that reparations for wrongs by one's ancestors can be justified. Differential benefits to those descended from victims of one's ancestors is discrimination which can be justified by one's right to be partial to one's ancestors, doing what they, with clearer thinking, would have done--namely compensating their victims. So, while there is no obligation to discriminate, one has a right to, in virtue of one's partiality towards one's ancestors.

Reparations is an idea whose time has come. From civilian victims of war in Iraq and South America to descendents of slaves in the US to citizens of colonized nations in Africa and south Asia to indigenous peoples around the world--these groups and their advocates are increasingly arguing for the importance of addressing historical injustices that have long been either ignored or denied. This volume contributes to these debates by focusing the attention of a group of highly distinguished international experts (...) on the ways that reparations claims figure in contemporary political and social justice movements. Four broad types of reparations claims are examined, those involving indigenous peoples, the legacy of slavery in the United States, victims of war and conflict, and colonialism. In each instance, scholars and activists argue about the character of the injustice for which reparations are owed, why it is important to take these demands seriously, and what form redress should take. The aim is not consensus but to exhibit better the complexity of the issues involved--a goal which the interdisciplinary nature of the volume furthers--as well as the importance of taking seriously both conceptual issues and the actual politics of reparations. (shrink)

Reparative Environmental Justice in a World of Wounds examines how we can repair human and biotic relationships damaged by environmental injustice, climate change, animal exploitation, and ecological destruction by arguing for the merits of a reparative approach to environmental justice and critically assessing challenges that come with it.

All of these claims for reparations have mobilized popular support, and all share a degree of intuitive plausibility. The challenge to the theorist is to judge whether and which of such demands are grounded in sound principles of political normativity, so as to be able to select out the valid claims and to measure how the urgency of these claims compares with other demands on the public agenda. The most basic question for those considering the justifications of reparations is how (...) to orient their theories within the space of reasons. Do valid claims for reparation rest at the deepest level on reasons we have for redressing a past injustice? Or do they rather rest on reasons we have to improve our current relations so that we can get along better in the future? Are valid reparative demands backward- or forward-looking? (shrink)

Positive law and problems with identifyingbeneficiaries confine reparations for U.S.slavery to the level of discourse. Within thediscourse, the broader topic of rectificationcan be addressed. The rectification of slaveryincludes restoring full humanity to our ideasof the slaves and their descendants and itrequires disabuse of the false biological ideaof race. This is not racial eliminativism,because biological race never existed, but moreimportantly because African American racialidentities and redress of present racism arebased on lifeworlds of race in contrast withwhich the biological idea has been (...) an externalimposition. (shrink)

Offering the most comprehensive book-length study to-date of reparation programs, this handbook contains an innovative blend of case-study analysis, thematic papers, and national legislation documents from leading scholars and practitioners. This landmark work will make a genuine contribution to the theory and practice of reparations.

La réparation du dommage corporel est omniprésente dans le projet de réforme du droit de la responsabilité civile présenté par la Chancellerie le 13 mars 2017, manifestant ainsi nettement la volonté de ses auteurs de conférer un statut juridique particulier à cette catégorie de dommage. Un tel souci se manifeste de deux manières. Il s’agit d’une part d’infléchir, dans un sens généralement plus favorable aux victimes, les règles de la responsabilité civile, pour assurer une indemnisation moins aléatoire et plus large (...) des préjudices consécutifs à une atteinte à la personne. Ainsi en est-il notamment de la dérogation au droit commun de la preuve, s’agissant d’établir la causalité en cas de dommage occasionné par le membre indéterminé d’un groupe. Ainsi en est-il également de la soustraction du dommage corporel de l’obligation faite à la victime dans le projet, de minimiser son préjudice. Il s’agit d’autre part de préciser les modalités de la réparation du dommage corporel. Le projet reprend à son compte certaines innovations intervenues ces dernières années (mise en place d’une nomenclature, d’un barème médical unique), et consacre aussi des solutions inédites, telles que le recours de principe à la rente (plutôt qu’à une indemnisation en capital) pour certains chefs de préjudices comme le besoin en tierce personne ou les pertes de gains professionnels) ou l’affirmation du principe de libre disposition des dommages et intérêts. (shrink)

The polluter pays principle (PPP) has the form of a reparative principle. It holds that since some countries have historically contributed more to global warming than others, these countries have the follow-up responsibility now to do more to address climate change. Yet in the climate justice debate, PPP is often rejected for two reasons. First, so the objection goes, it wrongly burdens present-day individuals because the actions of their predecessors. This is the unfairness objection. The second objection is that (...) early polluters were not aware of the harm that they were doing, and so ought not to be held culpable. This is the objection from excusable ignorance. In this commentary, I defend PPP against these two objections. The aim of this short reflection is not to provide a full justification of PPP, or to respond to all objections that have been made against it. My more limited but, I hope, important goal is to show that PPP is neither immediately unfair (in making innocent parties pay) nor immediately unreasonable (in making excusably ignorant parties pay) as is commonly noted, and is therefore worthy of further consideration as a principle of climate justice. (shrink)

A recent development in philosophical scholarship on reparations for black chattel slavery and Jim Crow segregation is reliance upon social science in normative arguments for reparations. Although there are certainly positive things to be said in favor of an empirically informed normative argument for black reparations, given the depth of empirical disagreement about the causes of persistent racial inequalities, and the ethos of 'post-racial' America, the strongest normative argument for reparations may be one that goes through irrespective of how we (...) ultimately explain the causes of racial inequalities. By illuminating the interplay between normative political philosophy and social scientific explanations of racial inequality in the prevailing corrective justice argument for black reparations, I shall explain why an alternative normative argument, which is not tethered to a particular empirical explanation of racial inequality, may be more appealing. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question of the appropriateness of a Congressional apology for American slavery. After offering an account of what an apology entails, I consider the claim that today's Congress fails to stand in the right relation to the guilt of American slavery to apologize for it. I argue that, while the current Congress and the constituency it represents do not bear a guilt that would permit it to apologize FOR slavery, it has inherited a guilt RELATED TO slavery (...) for which it is appropriate for it to apologize. (shrink)

The end of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of demands for reparations for slavery and segregation in the United States. At the same time, a chorus of prominent political theorists warned against the threat "identity politics" poses for democratic politics. This essay considers whether it is possible to construct an argument for reparations that responds to these concerns, particularly as they are articulated by Wendy Brown. To do so, I explore how Brown's analysis of the dangers of political organizing (...) around "wounded identities" and of appealing to the state for redress might inform and be informed by arguments for black reparations. (shrink)

Reconsidering Reparations is a book about global justice. Its central philosophical argument claims that a just world would be one in which everyone enjoys the capabilities that they need to relate to one another as equals; maintains that realising this vision (in the right way) would serve as reparation for the injustices of trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism; and warns that this project is threatened by the climate crisis...

In a recent paper, Thomas Carnes develops a novel argument for reparations for historical injustices. This Reply shows that Carnes succeeds only at the cost of invoking an implausible formalism. The Reply also presents in brief a simpler argument for reparations.

The debate concerning the legitimacy of awarding reparations for historical injustices focuses on the issue of finding a proper moral justification for granting reparations to the descendants of the victims of injustices which took place in the remote past. Regarding the case of Romanian communism as a more recent injustice, and analyzing the moral problems entailed by this historical lapse, within this paper I argue that overcoming such a legacy cannot be carried out, as in the case of historical injustices (...) situated more remotely in time, through the means of selective reparations, such as restitutions or compensations. For, even though they are justified from the perspective of rectificatory justice, selective reparations do not fulfill the requirements of social justice. Rather, I argue that the fall of the Romanian communist regime should have been followed by an equal distribution of all properties illegitimately seized by the state, to all adult Romanian citizens at that time, in order to attain the imperative of equal distribution of property among all citizens. The equal distribution thesis is the only way through which the Romanian society could have complied, at that moment of political and social renewal, with the requirements of justice. I also aim at explaining why other principles of justice, which either have or could have been implemented, cannot be properly justified. Finally, I analyze two main objections which could be invoked against my thesis, namely the economic efficiency objection and the legal realist objection. (shrink)

The science of genetics is undergoing a paradigm shift. Recent discoveries, including the activity of retrotransposons, the extent of copy number variations, somatic and chromosomal mosaicism, and the nature of the epigenome as a regulator of DNA expressivity, are challenging a series of dogmas concerning the nature of the genome and the relationship between genotype and phenotype. According to three widely held dogmas, DNA is the unchanging template of heredity, is identical in all the cells and tissues of the body, (...) and is the sole agent of inheritance. Rather than being an unchanging template, DNA appears subject to a good deal of environmentally induced change. Instead of identical DNA in all the cells of the body, somatic mosaicism appears to be the normal human condition. And DNA can no longer be considered the sole agent of inheritance. We now know that the epigenome, which regulates gene expressivity, can be inherited via the germline. These developments are particularly significant for behavior genetics for at least three reasons: First, epigenetic regulation, DNA variability, and somatic mosaicism appear to be particularly prevalent in the human brain and probably are involved in much of human behavior; second, they have important implications for the validity of heritability and gene association studies, the methodologies that largely define the discipline of behavior genetics; and third, they appear to play a critical role in development during the perinatal period and, in particular, in enabling phenotypic plasticity in offspring. I examine one of the central claims to emerge from the use of heritability studies in the behavioral sciences, the principle of minimal shared maternal effects, in light of the growing awareness that the maternal perinatal environment is a critical venue for the exercise of adaptive phenotypic plasticity. This consideration has important implications for both developmental and evolutionary biology. (shrink)

This paper discusses the pluralist theory of reparations for historical injustice offered by Daniel Butt (2021). Butt attempts to vindicate purely past-regarding corrective duties in response to Alasia Nuti’s historical-structural model of reparations. I agree with Butt that reparative justice requires both past-regarding and future-looking structural duties. And I agree with him that Nuti’s model leaves out purely past-regarding duties. I argue, however, that Butt does not offer a genuinely pluralist account. I present minimal necessary conditions for past-regarding (corrective) (...) justice and demonstrate that the past-regarding duties Butt advocates do not meet these conditions. The past-regarding duties Butt offers collapse into the kinds of distributive (structural) duties from which he attempts to separate them. Yet, I suggest these shortcomings are instructive and sketch a path forward for a genuinely pluralist account of reparations. A genuinely pluralist account must follow this path in order to vindicate the intuitions that motivate both past-regarding duties and the structural injustice model. (shrink)

Reparations whether to blacks for slavery, or to Indians for land theft, or to settle any number of other conflicts, has an interesting political background. Analysts on the left, who are usually no friend of private property rights, nevertheless rely on this doctrine to support their case for reparations. Those on the right, in contrast, who supposedly defend the institution of property rights, jettison them when it comes to reparations. It is only libertarians, such as the present authors, who both (...) favor private property rights in general, and, also, apply them to the issue of reparations, who are logically consistent. (shrink)

The paper adopts philosophical research methodologies of conceptual clarification, critical analysis, and extensive argumentation. It attempts to jointly employ African metaphysical and epistemological grounds to address the problem of finding appropriate justification for reparations for Africa on the issue of past slavery and slave trade. The paper states that the crux of the problem is how to formulate a coherent theoretical framework, which provides a strong connection between the direct victims of slavery and slave trade and their descendants in Africa, (...) on the basis of which the latter could justifiably claim for restitutive justice against the wrong done to the former. Western traditional accounts usually define reparations such that the concept only intelligibly applies to moral relations among contemporaries, not between the departed and the living. This reasoning, therefore, forecloses any moral relations between the departed and the living, making it morally unjustifiable for the latter to claim for restitutive justice on behalf of the former. However, this study re-thinks the concept of reparations, using two core areas of African philosophy. African metaphysics recognizes that an experiential being is ontologically connected to the other, that is, any other experiential being and spirits, inclusive of ancestors. This relationship also invariably closes the epistemological gap between the experiential and non-experiential worlds, making them a unity within African cosmology. Situated within the present study, the foregoing shows that the living could justifiably claim for restitutive justice on behalf of the departed, the direct victims of slavery and slave trade. (shrink)

This paper focuses on demands for reparations for colonial slavery and their public reception in France. It argues that this bottom-up, context-sensitive approach to theorising reparations enables us to formulate a critical republican theory of international racial justice. It contrasts the critical republican perspective on reparations with a nation-state centred approach in which reparations activists are accused of threatening the French republic’s sense of homogeneity and unity, thus undermining the national narrative on the French identity. It also rejects the liberal (...) egalitarian perspective, which itself rejects reparations in favour of focusing on present disadvantages. In so doing, this paper illustrates how the notion of non-domination offers a superior way of conceptualising global racial injustices compared to more traditional distributive outlooks. (shrink)

In spite of some revisionist attempts to rationalise slavery as just another form of trade between interested parties, there is an overwhelming conviction that it represented an age of man’s highest inhumanity to fellow man. Accordingly, calls have been loud and persistent as to the need for reparation which though will never compensate for actual loss, nevertheless has the possibility of symbolising penitence and serve as cushion for some of the debilitating damages done. This paper examines the moral basis of (...) the call for reparation. In agreeing with the moral validity of the claims, the paper probes further in a realistic manner and argue that African states in their present situation cannot make a serious case for reparation. The paper argues further that for African states to position themselves for genuine reparation struggles in this age of political realism, urgent steps must be taken to ensure the useful and productive deployment of available resources in Africa and remove the continent from its appendage status with the west. The paper concludes that only when African states are able to break the cycle of poverty and underdevelopment, freeing themselves from external manipulations can a credible and rewarding case for reparation be made. Keywords : Reparation, Slavery, Realism, Africa, Leadership. (shrink)

This paper describes the reparations programs implemented in Chile from 1990 to 2004. These programs target the victims of human rights violations committed during the military regime. These include the relatives of the missing and executed persons; people who were dismissed from their jobs for political motives; peasants who participated in land reform and were expelled from the land for political reasons; and Chilean exiles returning to the country. Political prisoners and torture victims were considered only in 2003. The creation (...) of the Commission for Political Imprisonment and Torture was followed by a law which provides pensions to political prisoners and torture victims identified by the Commission. Created with different kinds of victims in mind, these programs were based on pensions, social services, educational benefits, and public recognition of the violations of the victims’ rights, monuments, sites of memory, and health assistance, mainly in the form of mental health services. The Program for Reparation and Integral Health Assistance for Victims of Human Rights Violations, created in 1991 and reinforced by a law at the end of 2004, has been the reparation measure for all kinds of victims of human rights violations, including third-generation relatives. (shrink)

This introduction to our special section of Human Rights Review on Reparations and Peacebuilding gives an overview of the challenges currently confronting both peacebuilding and reparations. The special section aims to explore the relationship between these two mechanisms and examines the role that reparations schemes can play in salving or exacerbating conflict.

Amidst increasing concerns about harmful ecological change brought about by human actions upon the earth, environmental thinkers and activists attempt to envision human relations with the earth in new ways. Such thinking, however, frequently comes up against an inability to conceive of the more-than-human world as something towards which we can empathize or sympathize or to which we owe justice. As such, a powerful force in environmental discourse sees this problem as intractable and sees ecological change as a problem to (...) be solved and the future of the earth as something to be managed rather than to explore new forms of relations with. This chapter explores Robert Waters’ art project uncover RECOVER in terms of this problem. His project activates a reflection on human life and social relations that fosters social healing and transformation. Is there a way to activate a similar process, but in terms of a natural healing of the earth and a social transformation of our relations to the earth? In considering this question, I explore Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel’s concept of “reparation ecology” and analyse how the idea of the Anthropocene blocks our capacities to think the reparation of human relations with the more-than-human world. I suggest that that Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concepts of becoming and sympathy offer a way of thinking human relations with earth others that could generate ethical and political responses to ecological change where the more-than-human world is considered as a co-participant and collaborator in human action and a subject to whom justice is owed. Sympathy with the non- human world acknowledges that human capacities are constituted by non-human materials and affects that do not respect the boundaries that tend to frame our thinking. Rather than continuing to allow our traditional assumptions about the separation of humans and nature to shape our relations to non-human world, imagining the human in new ways makes possible new forms of relations with the earth. I argue that attending to the ways that humans co-become with the non-human world affords opportunities for transforming human relations with the more-than-human world by fostering spaces for the emergence of new ecological sensibilities and potentials for social-ecological justice. (shrink)