This paper shows an alternative way in which compatriot partiality could be justified within the framework of global distributive justice. Philosophers who argue that compatriot partiality is similar to racial partiality capture something correct about compatriot partiality. However, the analogy should not lead us to comprehensively reject compatriot partiality. We can justify compatriot partiality on the same grounds that liberation movements and affirmative action have been justified. Hence, given cosmopolitan demands of justice, special consideration for the economic well-being of your (...) nation as a whole is justified if and only if the country it identifies is an oppressed developing nation in an unjust global order. This justification is incomplete. We also need to say why Person A, qua national of Country A, is justified in helping her compatriots in Country A over similarly or slightly more oppressed non-compatriots in Country B. I argue that Person A’s partiality towards her compatriots admits further vindication because it is part of an oppressed group’s project of self-emancipation, which is preferable to paternalistic emancipation. Finally, I identify three benefits in my justification for compatriot partiality. First, I do not offer a blanket justification for all forms of compatriot partiality. Partiality between members of oppressed groups is only a temporary effective measure designed to level an unlevel playing field. Second, because history attests that sovereign republics could arise as a collective response to colonial oppression, justifying compatriot partiality on the grounds that I have identified is conducive to the development of sovereignty and even democracy in poor countries, thereby avoiding problems of infringement that many humanitarian poverty alleviation efforts encounter. Finally, my justification for compatriot partiality complies with the implicit cosmopolitan commitment to the realizability of global justice theories. (shrink)

Ethical theories normally make room both for global duties to human beings everywhere and special duties to those we are attached to in some way. Such a split-level view requires us to specify the kind of attachment that can ground special duties, and to explain the comparative force of the two kinds of duties in cases of conflict. Special duties are generated within groups that are intrinsically valuable and not inherently unjust, where the duties can be shown to be integral (...) to relationships within the group. Since nations can be shown to meet these conditions, acknowledging special obligations towards compatriots is justified. However for such partiality to be reasonable, it must be balanced against recognition of duties of global justice. These duties include duties to respect human rights and duties of fairness towards non-nationals. Weighing such duties against domestic duties of social justice is not a simple task, and the outcome should depend on the precise specification of the duty at stake. In particular, the duty to respect human rights fragments into four sub-duties whose force when set against local duties is markedly different. (shrink)

In Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration, Anna Stilz argues that legitimate political authority requires the actual—rather than hypothetical—consent of the governed. I argue, however, that her analysis of that consent is inconsistent, in the weight it ascribes to the felt desire to refrain from doing politics with some particular group of people. In the context of secession and self-determination, the lack of actual consent to shared political institutions is weighty enough to render such institutions presumptively illegitimate. In the context of (...) migration, however, a lack of actual consent to the presence of newcomers is ascribed nearly no weight, and instead is taken as evidence of irrationality or immoral preferences. I argue that this apparent contradiction must be clarified before Stilz's overall account of self-governance can be accepted. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 52, Issue 3, Page 344-361, Fall 2021.

According to David Miller, duties of domestic national and global justice are of equal importance, given that nationhood is both intrinsically valuable and not inherently an unjust way of excluding outsiders. The consequence of this?split?level? view is that it may be reasonable to prioritize domestic justice in some cases, while letting demands of global justice take precedence in others, depending on a weighting model which seeks to account for the relative urgency of domestic and global claims and the extent to (...) which agents are more closely attached to compatriots than to outsiders. In this chapter, I argue against this weighting model on grounds of internal coherence with the theory set out in National responsibility and global justice. I first inquire into the conditions under which justice at home conflicts with justice in the world at large, according to Miller?s main principle of global justice? respect for basic human rights. I then show that on Miller?s own understanding of the various duties of global and domestic justice, cases of conflict rarely arise, and that when they do, there is a powerful argument for prioritizing global duties on grounds of urgency, which contradicts the reasoning of the weighting model. Finally, I address a problem arising from Miller?s basic assumption that under?fulfillment of basic human rights in poor countries only generates claims of global justice to which rich nations are under a duty to respond, following the acceptance of a scheme of remedial responsibilities to provide aid by each of these nations. The normative structure of the split?level view set out in NRGJ needs to be clarified with respect to the key question of whether nations can be held to be under a duty of justice to bring such a scheme into existence in the first place. (shrink)

In his stimulating and provocative collection of essays, Globalization and Justice, Kai Nielsen (2003b) defends a cosmopolitan account of global justice. On the cosmopolitan view, as Nielsen understands it, individuals are entitled to equal consideration regardless of citizenship or nationality and global institutions should be arranged in such a way that each person's interest is given equal consideration. Nielsen's defense of cosmopolitan justice in this collection will be of no surprise to readers familiar with his socialist egalitarian commitments. Indeed, the (...) internationalism underlying socialism, Nielsen would argue, naturally entails the cosmopolitan account of justice (e.g., chs. 5 and 6). (shrink)

In his stimulating and provocative collection of essays, Globalization and Justice, Kai Nielsen defends a cosmopolitan account of global justice. On the cosmopolitan view, as Nielsen understands it, individuals are entitled to equal consideration regardless of citizenship or nationality and global institutions should be arranged in such a way that each person's interest is given equal consideration. Nielsen's defense of cosmopolitan justice in this collection will be of no surprise to readers familiar with his socialist egalitarian commitments. Indeed, the internationalism (...) underlying socialism, Nielsen would argue, naturally entails the cosmopolitan account of justice. (shrink)

This paper asks whether we can defend associative duties to our compatriots that are grounded solely in the relationship of liberal co-citizenship. The sort of duties that are especially salient to this relationship are duties of justice, duties to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship, and a duty to favour the interests of compatriots over those of foreigners. Critics have argued that the liberal conception of citizenship is too insubstantial to sustain these duties — indeed, (...) that it gives us little reason to treat compatriots any differently from how we treat foreigners, with all the practical consequences that this would entail. I suggest that on a specific conception of liberal citizenship we can, in fact, defend associative duties, but that these extend only to the duty to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship. Duties of justice and favouritism, I maintain, cannot be particularised to one's compatriots. (shrink)

Distinguishing between reasonable partiality and reasonable impartiality makes a difference in resolving the serious clashes between priority for compatriots versus cosmopolitan global duties. Defenders of a priority for compatriots have to acknowledge two strong moral constraints: states have to fulfil all their special, domestic and trans-domestic duties, and associative duties are limited by distributive constraints resulting from the moral duty to fight poverty and gross global inequalities. In the recent global context, I see four main problems for liberal-nationalist (...) defenders of priority for compatriots: (i) Reasonable particularists often forget that associative duties for compatriots compete with many sub-national and trans-domestic associative duties. (ii) They tend to forget that associative national duties compete with other, strong special (contractual, reparative) obligations regarding not only citizens and residents inside nation-states but also trans-domestic obligations across state borders. (iii) They do not properly discuss the problem of unallocated duties in addressing global poverty and insecurity. (iv) The design of supra-national and global mediating institutions, and the crafting of policies to remedy the misallocation of duties and to coordinate the required state activities is an urgent task neglected by liberal nationalists. In the recent context, reasonable partialitys bias towards partiality is most unwelcome and morally dubious. Reasonable impartialitys bias towards cosmopolitanism helps to stimulate a drastic shift in obligations and stimulates productive trans-national institutional design. (shrink)

Distinguishing between reasonable partiality and reasonable impartiality makes a difference in resolving the serious clashes between 'priority for compatriots' versus cosmopolitan global duties. Defenders of a priority for compatriots have to acknowledge two strong moral constraints: states have to fulfil all their special, domestic and trans-domestic duties, and associative duties are limited by distributive constraints resulting from the moral duty to fight poverty and gross global inequalities. In the recent global context, I see four main problems for liberal-nationalist (...) defenders of priority for compatriots: Reasonable particularists often forget that associative duties for compatriots compete with many sub-national and trans-domestic associative duties. They tend to forget that associative national duties compete with other, strong special obligations regarding not only citizens and residents inside nation-states but also trans-domestic obligations across state borders. They do not properly discuss the problem of unallocated duties in addressing global poverty and insecurity. The design of supra-national and global 'mediating' institutions, and the crafting of policies to remedy the misallocation of duties and to coordinate the required state activities is an urgent task neglected by liberal nationalists. In the recent context, reasonable partiality's bias towards partiality is most unwelcome and morally dubious. Reasonable impartiality's bias towards cosmopolitanism helps to stimulate a drastic shift in obligations and stimulates productive trans-national institutional design. (shrink)

How are we to navigate between duties to compatriots and duties to non-compatriots? Within the literature there are two important kinds of accounts that are thought to offer contrasting positions on these issues, namely, cosmopolitanism and statism. We discuss these two rival accounts. I then outline my position on global justice and how to accommodate insights from both the cosmopolitan and statist traditions within it. Having outlined my ideal theory account of what global justice requires, I discuss the (...) far more pressing question of what our remedial responsibilities are in our decidely non-ideal world: what does the developed world owe to the developing world and what are our responsibilities to non-compatriots, given our situation here and now? I argue that we have considerable responsibilities and I sketch some of the supporting grounds for this view. Finally, I consider how the general account of global justice and remedial responsibilities developed here applies to the case of responsibilities for migrants’ and refugees’ healthcare. (shrink)

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

Several political theorists argue that states have rights to self-determination and these rights justify immigration restrictions. Call this: the self-determination argument for immigration restrictions. In this article, I develop an objection to the self-determination argument. I argue that if it is morally permissible for states to restrict immigration because they have rights to self-determination, then it can also be morally permissible for states to deport and denationalize their own citizens. We can either accept that it is permissible for states to (...) deport and denationalize their own citizens or reject the self-determination argument. To avoid this implication, we should reject the self-determination argument. That is, we should also reject the conclusion that rights to self-determination can justify any significant immigration restrictions. (shrink)

Stalnaker argued that conditional excluded middle should be included in the principles that govern counterfactuals on the basis that intuitions support that principle. This is because there are pairs of competing counterfactuals that appear to be equally acceptable. In doing so, he was forced to introduced semantic vagueness into his system of counterfactuals. In this paper it is argued that there is a simpler and purely epistemic explanation of these cases that avoids the need for introducing semantic vagueness into the (...) semantics for counterfactuals. (shrink)

While we generally take it for granted that governments should provide social welfare and other benefits to their citizens, justification of these services depends on special moral requirements people owe to their compatriots, as opposed to inhabitants of other countries, who may be far more needy. While widely discussed defenses of compatriot preferences can be seen to be flawed, the latter may be justified through a public goods argument. Security and other public goods are not only necessary for acceptable (...) lives but are provided through the cooperative activity of compatriots, coordinated and enforced by the state. Because the necessary public goods require general cooperation throughout society, all individuals who are required to comply should have rights to participate in decisions about the form in which they are provided. Because these political rights must be substantive rather than merely formal, they justify requirements of distributive justice and so compatriot preferences. (shrink)

Liberal nationalism is a boundary‐making project, and a feature of this boundary‐making enterprise is the belief that the compatriots have a certain priority over strangers. For this reason it is often thought that liberal nationalism cannot be compatible with the demands of global egalitarianism. In this essay, I examine the sense in which liberal nationalism privileges compatriots, and I argue that, properly understood, the idea of partiality for compatriots in the context of liberal nationalism is not at (...) odds with global equal concern for all persons. In particular, I argue that the three central goals and aspirations of liberal nationalism—promoting individual autonomy and cultural identity, the realization of deliberative democracy, and the aspiration for social justice within the state—do not entail or require a form of compatriot partiality that is inconsistent with the demands of global egalitarian justice. (shrink)

Most of us believe that partiality applies in a broad range of relationships. One relationship on which there is much disagreement is co-nationality. Some writers argue that co-national partiality is not justified in certain cases, like killing in war, since killing in defense of co-nationals is intuitively impermissible in other contexts. I argue that this approach overlooks an important structural feature of partiality—namely, that its scope is sometimes restricted. In this essay, I show how some relationships that generate reasons of (...) partiality are restricted in scope—that is, they generate reasons within particular contexts or with respect to particular goods. I then argue that co-national partiality is scope restricted. I then show how this fact helps proponents of co-national partiality overcome the aforementioned objection to its application in cases like war. (shrink)

This article examines the conflict between people's associative duties and their wider obligations of global justice. After clarifying the nature of associative duties, it defends the view that such duties may be civic in nature: obtaining between citizens, not just friends and families. Samuel Scheffler's 'distributive objection' to civic associative duties is then presented in the context of global distributive injustice. Three solutions to the objection are considered. One is that the distributive objection is more a philosophical puzzle than a (...) practical problem because of the means by which global justice would be achieved. This is only partially correct. The second reply is that associative duties are additional to citizens' more cosmopolitan duties. This reply loses its purchase if global justice is conceived of in comparative terms. The third reply claims that associative duties are justified by genuine values and do not disappear even when over-ridden by more weighty moral concerns. While in practice, our duties to engineer global justice are likely to over-ride our associative duties in the near future, in ideal circumstances the two kinds of duties can co-exist. (shrink)

Looking back on it, it seems almost incredible that so many equally educated, equally sincere compatriots and contemporaries, all drawing from the same limited stock of evidence, should have reached so many totally different conclusions---and always with complete certainty.

Special obligations toward compatriots are more controversial than other forms of partiality, because compatriot relationships are relatively “impersonal.” Even so, a variety of justifications for special duties among compatriots have been defended. This entry outlines three such accounts, drawing on categories identified in previous literature (Tan 2003, 2004; Beaton et al. 2021). The first two approaches – the instrumental approach and the institutional approach – derive special obligations to compatriots from general duties of justice. By contrast, the (...) third approach is relational in nature and grounds the justification for compatriot partiality directly in the special relationship compatriots share. (shrink)

Though the average person may take patriotism for granted as a natural feeling of loyalty to one's country, among philosophers the nature, moral standing, and political significance of patriotism have always been contentious. On the one hand, there are those who defend patriotic loyalty as either a duty or a virtue and extol it as an indispensable condition of a viable polity. On the other hand, critics of patriotism maintain that it is morally suspect to prefer one's country and (...) class='Hi'>compatriots, and doing so offends against impartial justice and hinders universal human solidarity. Today patriotism is a topic of debate not only in moral philosophy but also in political theory, where it is often brought up as a test case in the confrontation between liberals and communitarians. These debates have produced much high-quality writing, the best of which is here presented in this wide-ranging collection of essays by philosophers and political theorists. All the main varieties of patriotism are covered—moderate and extreme, as well as ethnic/cultural and political—and both critics and defenders are given a hearing. Editor Igor Primoratz has also included articles that discuss the history of the term in moral and political discourse in the English-speaking world, the distinctively American type of patriotism, the relation of patriotism to nationalism and racism, and the tension between patriotism and universal human solidarity, especially as this issue relates to foreign aid. As the first anthology to treat patriotism in its own right, this work emphasizes that patriotism is a distinct moral and political outlook, and is not merely a variety of nationalism or the emotional underpinning of nationalist theories. As such, it will be an important resource for courses in philosophy and political science, and will also serve as an accessible general reader for the interested layperson. (shrink)

Nationalism is often dismissed today as an irrational political creed with disastrous consequences. Yet most people regard their national identity as a significant aspect of themselves, see themselves as having special obligations to their compatriots, and value their nation's political independence. This book defends these beliefs, and shows that nationality, defined in these terms, serves valuable goals, including social justice, democracy, and the protection of culture. National identities need not be illiberal, and they do not exclude other sources of (...) personal identity, such as ethnicity or religion. An ethics that gives weight to special relationships is more effective in motivating people to pursue justice and other values because it connects peoples’ duties to their identity; but this is consistent with recognizing some universal values, such as human rights. There are strong reasons for making the boundaries of states and nations coincide wherever possible, but in other cases, nations can achieve forms of self‐determination that fall short of full sovereignty. Multicultural arguments in favour of identity politics and special rights for minority groups ignore the benefits that such groups derive from participating in a shared national identity and the kind of democratic politics that such an identity makes possible. Although national identities are often said to be in decline in an increasingly globalized world, they serve such important purposes that our aim should be to rebuild them in a form that makes them more accessible to excluded cultural minorities. (shrink)

Marrying the map -- Headwaters -- Compatriots -- Saint Beech -- After olive picking -- Hunter in the sky -- Gifts of prophecy -- The broken sheepfold -- Mowing -- Dust of snow -- Inheriting Mount Tom -- Forever wild again -- Into the wind -- Maggie Brook.

IntroductionThe various special concerns and commitments that individuals ordinarily have, for example towards family members, friends, and possibly compatriots, present an interesting challenge for justice. Justice, after all, is said to be blind and imposes demands on persons that ought to be impartial, at least in some respects, to personal ties and relationships. Yet individual special concerns are obviously of moral importance and are deeply valued by participants in these relationships. Thus any conception of justice to be plausible has (...) to be able to accommodate to some extent the various types of valuable and valued special concern characteristic of ordinary social life. In particular, it is important to see how the impartial demands of justice can be maintained while accommodating special concern. (shrink)

This article examines the rise and decline of the enthusiasm for intelligence testing in early twentieth-century China, focusing on the appeal, the challenges, and the critiques revolving around this psychological instrument. The introduction of intelligence testing reflected not only China’s urgent needs in modernizing its merit system, but also Chinese psychologists’ aspirations for pursuing exactitude and redefining the racial characteristics of their compatriots against foreign interpretations. But despite psychologists’ endeavors, the political and geographical fragmentation of Republican China troubled the (...) epistemic imperative of uniformity demanded by Euro-American psychometrics and therefore undermined the validity of measurement. Subsequently, the legitimacy of intelligence testing began to be questioned by several influential Chinese psychologists in the late 1920s and 30s. The difficulties in standardization and the hostility within the psychology community formed a vicious cycle, impeding the progress of nationwide testing. Through this history, the article demonstrates not only the elevation of measurement to epistemic authority in modern China, but also how its promise was challenged by a diverse and rapidly changing society. (shrink)

David Miller offers us a sophisticated account of how we can reconcile global obligations and duties to co?nationals. In this article I focus on four weaknesses with his account such as the following two. First, there remains considerable unclarity about the strength of the positive duties we have to non?nationals and how these measure up relative to other positive duties, such as the ones Miller believes we have to co?nationals to implement civil, political, or social rights. Second, just how responsibilities (...) for enacting our global commitments will be assigned still needs further development. A unifying theme of my criticisms concerns Miller?s account of how we are to mediate responsibilities to fellow?nationals and the partiality we may defensibly show co?nationals. In the final section I sketch an alternative way of conceptualizing our duties to fellow?nationals and duties to non?nationals, which can give more systematic advice about the partiality we may defensibly show co?nationals. (shrink)

This book explores the associative duties we owe to our children, parents, friends, colleagues, associates and compatriots and defends a novel account which justifies such duties through the realization of values that are produced in these various kinds of social relationships. Seglow engages with several key contemporary debates including parental rights over children’s education, the burdens of eldercare, permissible partiality to friends, and global justice versus compatriot duties.

According to the special-obligations challenge to the justice argument for more open borders, immigration restrictions to wealthier polities are justified because of special obligations owed to disadvantaged compatriots. I interrogate this challenge by considering three types of ground for special obligations amongst compatriots. First, the social relations that come with shared residence, such as participation in a territorially bounded, mutually beneficial scheme of cooperation; having fundamental interests especially vulnerable to the state’s exercise of power; being subject to coercion (...) by the state; and having pervasive and roughly equal stakes in a political society. Second, the civic relations of shared citizenship, such as participation in a common political enterprise. And third, the political relation of joint responsibility for the exercise of political power. In light of this analysis, I argue that whatever special obligations are owed by citizens (or residents) of wealthier polities to their domestic poor, they do not justify restrictions on immigration by the global poor. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe Republic of Letters of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries teaches us two lessons about style in science. First, the bearer of style—individual, nation, institution, religious group, region, class—depends crucially on historical context. When the organization and values of intellectual life are self-consciously cosmopolitan, and when allegiances to other entities are culturally more compelling than those to the nation-state, distinctivelynationalstyles are far to seek. This was largely the case for the Republic of Letters, that immaterial but nonetheless real (...) realm among the sovereign states of the Enlightenment. Second, that form of objectivity which made science seem so curiously detached from scientists, and therefore so apparently unmarked by style at any level, also has a history. The unremitting emphasis on impartial criticism and evaluation within the Republic of Letters encouraged its citizens to distance themselves first from friends and family, then from compatriots and contemporaries, and finally, in the early nineteenth century, from themselves as well. Although this psychological process of estrangement and ultimately of self-estrangement may seldom have been completely realized, the striving was genuine and constitutes part of the moral history of objectivity. (shrink)

People often think that their special relationships with family, friends, comrades and compatriots, can ground moral reasons. Among these reasons, they understand some to be duties – pro tanto requirements that have genuine weight when they conflict with other considerations. In this paper I ask: what is the underlying moral structure of associative duties? I first consider and reject the orthodox Teleological Welfarist account, which first observes that special relationships are fundamental for human well-being, then claims that we cannot (...) have these relationships, if we do not recognise associative duties, before concluding that we should therefore recognise associative duties. I then introduce a nonteleological alternative, grounded in the Appropriate Response approach to ethical theory. (shrink)

The central question in political philosophy is whether political states have the right to coerce their constituents and whether citizens have a moral duty to obey the commands of their state. In this 2005 book, Christopher Heath Wellman and A. John Simmons defend opposing answers to this question. Wellman bases his argument on samaritan obligations to perform easy rescues, arguing that each of us has a moral duty to obey the law as his or her fair share of the communal (...) samaritan chore of rescuing our compatriots from the perils of the state of nature. Simmons counters that this, and all other attempts to explain our duty to obey the law, fail. He defends a position of philosophical anarchism, the view that no existing state is legitimate and that there is no strong moral presumption in favor of obedience to, or compliance with, any existing state. (shrink)

Traveler, come with us! Do not be afraid. You will see sublime and melancholy, gay and beautiful scenes. Poet! Down there you will find poetic themes worthy of your most inspired verses. Artist! For you there are pictures of admirable freshness, painted by the hand of God. Writer! There you will encounter legends not yet written, legends of love and hate, of gratitude and vengeance, of hypocrisy and abnegation, of noble virtues and repugnant crimes; legends of fragrant romanticism and rich (...) in truth. Let us go there, plowing the dark and agitated waves of the restless Atlantic, through the islands of the Antilles, to the shores of Anáhuac.In the strictest sense, the Occident, (that prestigious union of nations, ideologies of progress, and export and import companies) discovered Mexico in the 19th century. Only at the end of Spanish domination—that never understood that “there are various kinds of excellence”—did other countries and Mexico itself begin to learn of the scope of the Conquest and regions affected by it, partially replacing Spanish mythology with another, more varied but equally remote. The greatness of the ancient Indians and their happy age was praised, while the living natives were reviled; the idealization of the pre-Columbian, which had been suspended by priests and encomenderos, was continued (Hernández wrote in 1577, “In this new world signs of avarice had never penetrated, nor had ambition been born until our compatriots arrived, carried by ships and the wind”); the possibilities of the new country were greedily examined; scornful notes were taken on the successive and simultaneous failures in the attempt to create a republic; the vices and virtues of those who were suddenly free were enumerated; a climate favorable to invasions and the amputation of territories was created; customs were observed with joy or alarm. (shrink)

In his recent book One World one of Peter Singer’s main concerns is the preferential treatment of compatriots. Two aspects of Singer’s theoretical reflections on this issue are critically discussed: the use of an impartiality test as basis for the justification of special duties and the resulting condemnation of partial preferences for compatriots. Subsequently, an alternative way to justify special duties is outlined and applied to the case of fellow citizens. It is argued, that partiality to compatriots (...) can be defended, if special duties are regarded as a constitutive part of valuable relationships. (shrink)

_Criticism and Conviction_ offers a rare opportunity to share personally in the intellectual life and journey of the eminent philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Internationally known for his influential works in hermeneutics, theology, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics, until now, Ricoeur has been conspicuously silent on the subject of himself. In this book--a conversation about his life and work with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay--Ricoeur reflects on a variety of philosophical, social, religious, and cultural topics, from the paradoxes of political power to the (...) relationship between life and art, and life and death. In the first of eight conversations, Ricoeur traces the trajectory of his life, recounting the origins of his convictions and the development of his intellect against the tragic events of the twentieth century. Declaring himself the "son of a victim of the First World War," Ricoeur, an orphan, sketches his early years in the house of stern but loving grandparents, and the molding of his intellect under the tutelage of Roland Dalbiez, Gabriel Marcel, and André Philip. Ricoeur tells the intriguing story of his capture and five-year imprisonment by the Germans during World War II, where he and his compatriots fashioned an intellectual life complete with a library and lectures, and where he, amazingly, was able to continue his dissertation research. Elegantly interweaving anecdotal with philosophical meditations, Ricoeur recounts his relationships with some of the twentieth century's greatest figures, such as Heidegger, Jaspers, and Eliade. He also shares his views on French philosophers and explains his tumultuous relationship with Jacques Lacan. And while expressing his deepest respect for the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel Foucault, Ricoeur reserves his greatest admiration for the narratologist Algirdas Julien Greimas. Ricoeur also explores the relationship between the philosophical and religious domains, attempting to reconcile the two poles in his thought. And readers who have struggled with Ricoeur's work will be grateful for these illuminating discussions that provide an invaluable key to his writings on language and narrative, especially those on metaphor and time. Spontaneous and lively, _Criticism and Conviction_ is a passionate confirmation of Ricoeur's eloquence, lucidity, and intellectual rigor, and affirms his position as one of this century's greatest thinkers. It is an essential book for anyone interested in philosophy and literary criticism. (shrink)

Do we have positive duties to help others in need or are our moral duties only negative, focused on not harming them? If these positive duties exist, are they strong and strict demands or are they weak and discretionary? Can we say that at least some positive duties of assistance are also duties of justice worthy of institutionalization and coercive enforcement by legal institutions? Can the scope of some of such duties be cosmopolitan or should all of them be circumscribed (...) to what we owe to our compatriots? This paper addresses these questions from a Kantian perspective, and argues that Kant’s practical philosophy provides sufficient resources to develop and defend the claim that there are basic positive duties of justice, some of which have a global scope. (shrink)

The concept of solidarity has recently come to prominence in the healthcare literature, addressing the motivation for taking seriously the shared vulnerabilities and medical needs of compatriots and for acting to help them meet these needs. In a recent book, Prainsack and Buyx take solidarity as a commitment to bear costs to assist others regarded as similar, with implications for governing health databases, personalized medicine, and organ donation. More broadly, solidarity has been understood normatively to call for ‘standing with’ (...) or assisting fellow community members and possibly also distant others in regard to their needs, whether for its own sake or in order to realize the demands of justice. I argue here that the understanding of solidarity in the existing bioethics literature is unduly restricted by not sufficiently theorizing the notion of structural (or systemic) injustice and its import for understanding solidarity. Extending traditional conceptions of labor and social movement solidarity, I contrast unitary solidarity within a given group with ‘networking solidarities’ across groups. I analyze the meaning of structural injustice and its significance for solidarity, including countering institutionally entrenched inequalities and economic exploitation. I then apply this broadened conception to healthcare, discussing structural problems with the U.S. insurance system and the solidarity movements addressing its deficiencies. I analyze some natural disasters and global health challenges that were aggravated by structural injustices, along with the solidarity movements they engendered. Finally, I revisit the questions of governing health databases and of personalized medicine with the enlarged conception of solidarity in view. (shrink)

Medical rules of eligibility permit severely injured Iraqi and Afghan nationals to receive care in Coalition medical facilities only if bed space is available and their injuries result directly from Coalition fire. The first rule favors Coalition soldiers over host-nation nationals and contradicts the principle of impartial, needs-based medical care. To justify preferential care for compatriots, wartime medicine invokes associative obligations of care that favor friends, family, and comrades-in-arms. Associative obligations have little place in peacetime medical care but significantly (...) affect wartime medicine. The second rule suggests liability for collateral harm that is unsupported by international law and military ethics. Absent liability, there are pragmatic reasons to offer medical care to injured local civilians if it quells resentment and cements support for Coalition forces. In contrast to peacetime medicine, military necessity and associative obligations outweigh distributive principles based on medical need during war. (shrink)

According to the special-obligations challenge to the justice argument for more open borders, immigration restrictions to wealthier polities are justified because of special obligations owed to disadvantaged compatriots negatively impacted by the immigration of low-skilled foreign workers. We refute the special-obligations challenge by refuting its empirical premise and draw out the normative implications of the empirical evidence for border policies. We show that immigration to wealthier polities has negligible impact on domestic wages and that only previous cohorts of immigrants (...) are adversely affected. The special-obligations challenge therefore succeeds only if special obligations owed to previous immigrants justify closing borders to further immigration; we argue that they do not. (shrink)

African ethicists have so far not agreed on a single, precise, secular and comprehensive basic norm, an Afro-Grundnorm, which captures the core values of Ubuntu sub-Saharan African cosmopolitanism. This article constructs and proffers the ‘double-dignity’ Grundnorm that partly shares with Western stoic cosmopolitans the view that our common human ontological capacity for autonomy identifies us as members of the human species. This capacity grants our first dignity, inherent dignity. Inherent dignity only grants our universal basic (security and subsistence) rights. Our (...) duties to care of each other derive from the second dignity, acquired dignity. Acquired dignity itself derives from our second ontological capacity, our capacity for communion. Unlike inherent dignity, acquired dignity is neither universal nor automatically present in us. It is earned when we commune with others in fostering harmony as we earn ‘full personhood’. Since fostering harmony starts with nurturing communal identities and solidarities, Ubuntu entails efficiency-model moderate cosmopolitanism which permits prioritizing serving our immediate associates or compatriots not because of their special moral worthiness but because we more efficiently serve humanity at large when we do so. (shrink)

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