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32In some discussions on global distributive justice, it is argued that the factthat the state exercises coercive authority over its own citizens explains whythe state has egalitarian distributive obligations to its own but not to otherindividuals in the world at large. Two recent works make the case that the globalorder is indeed coercive in a morally significant way for generating certainglobal distributive obligations. Nicole Hassoun argues that the coercivecharacter of the global order gives r…Read more
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65Priority for compatriots: Commentary on globalization and justiceEconomics and Philosophy 22 (1): 115-123. 2006.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 fa…Read more
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805Luck, Institutions, and Global Distributive JusticeEuropean Journal of Political Theory 10 (3): 394-421. 2011.Luck egalitarianism provides one powerful way of defending global egalitarianism. The basic luck egalitarian idea that persons ought not to be disadvantaged compared to others on account of his or her bad luck seems to extend naturally to the global arena, where random factors such as persons’ place of birth and the natural distribution of the world’s resources do affect differentially their life chances. Yet luck egalitarianism as an ideal, as well as its global application, has come under seve…Read more
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65Global Justice and Global RelationsSocial Theory and Practice 36 (3): 499-514. 2010.In Globalizing Justice, Richard Miller offers a novel understanding of the grounds and scope of the demands of global justice. Miller argues that our duties to the global poor should be conceived relationally, that is, as deriving from the very complex and substantial relationships that we, members of rich countries, have with members of poor countries. In this review essay, I ask whether a relational approach to justice is necessary for the kinds of global duties Miller wishes to advance (that …Read more
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81Cosmopolitan Impartiality and Patriotic PartialityCanadian Journal of Philosophy 35 (sup1): 165-192. 2005.Cosmopolitanism, as a moral idea, holds that individuals are the ultimate units of moral worth and are entitled to equal consideration, regardless of contingencies such as citizenship or nationality. In one common interpretation, cosmopolitan justice not only regards individuals as the basic subjects of moral concern, but it also requires distributive principles to transcend national affiliations and to apply equally to all persons of the world. As Simon Caney puts it, “persons’ entitlements sho…Read more
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17The Demands of Global JusticeOeconomia 13 (4): 665-679. 2013.This review essay discusses recent books by Nicole Hassoun, Laura Valentini and Pablo Gilabert. Topics I examine that are stimulated by these books include the distinction between global egalitarian obligation and humanitarian duties, the role of coercion in justifying global obligations, and the possibility of a third position that falls between humanitarianism and cosmopolitan egalitarianism
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2The Problem of Decent PeoplesIn Rex Martin & David Reidy (eds.), Rawls's Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia?, Blackwell. 2006.
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1089Colonialism, Reparations and Global JusticeIn Jon Miller & Rahul Kumar (eds.), Reparations: interdisciplinary inquiries, Oxford University Press. pp. 280--306. 2007.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 re…Read more
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98Justice, Institutions, and Luck: The Site, Ground, and Scope of EqualityOxford University Press. 2012.Kok-Chor Tan addresses three key questions in political philosophy: Where does distributive equality matter? Why does it matter? And among whom does it matter? He argues for an institutional site for egalitarian justice, a luck-egalitarian ideal of why equality matters, and a global scope for distributive justice.
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30Equality and special concernIn Colin Murray Macleod (ed.), Justice and equality, University of Calgary Press. pp. 73-98. 2010.
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117Two Conceptions of Liberal Global TolerationThe Monist 94 (4): 489-505. 2011.How should a liberal state respond to a nonliberal state that is however a decent society? By “decent,” I mean, adopting John Rawls’s terminology, that the so described state is nonaggressive and recognizes the independence and equality of other states and that it also honors basic human rights. Should a liberal state tolerate such a nonliberal state? We can identify two possible conceptions of global toleration in this regard. One conception holds that liberal states ought to tolerate nonlibera…Read more
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733The Boundary of Justice and The Justice of BoundariesCanadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 29 (2): 319-344. 2006.Two classes of arguments are often deployed by the anti-global egalitarians against attempts to universalize the demands of distributive equality. One are arguments attempting to show that global egalitarians have misconstrued the reasons for why equality matters domestically, and hence have wrongly extended these reasons to the global arena. These arguments hold that the boundary of distributive justice is effectively coextensive with the boundaries of state. The other are arguments that attemp…Read more
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Liberal equality : what, where, and whyIn Cheryl Misak (ed.), The Oxford handbook of American philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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Hent De Vries and Samuel Weber, eds., Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 19 (1): 9-11. 1999.
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164Critical Notice: John Rawls, The Law of PeoplesCanadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (1): 113-132. 2001.This review essay on John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples focuses on two of its more contentious claims. The first is that international economic justice is secured by a principle of assistance and that a principle of distributive justice will in fact have “unacceptable” results. The other is that certain non-liberal societies, or peoples, fall within the limits of international toleration. The essay evaluates and critiques these claims from a liberal cosmopolitan perspective.
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85Why global justice mattersJournal of Global Ethics 10 (2): 128-134. 2014.Why does global justice as a philosophical inquiry matter? We know that the world is plainly unjust in many ways and we know that something ought to be done about this without, it seems, the need of a theory of global justice. Accordingly, philosophical inquiry into global justice comes across to some as an intellectual luxury that seems disconnected from the real world. I want to suggest, however, that philosophical inquiry into global justice is necessary if we want to address the problems of …Read more
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3Rights, harm, and institutionsIn Alison Jaggar (ed.), Thomas Pogge and His Critics, Polity. 2010.
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32Nationalism and CosmopolitanismIn Garrett Wallace Brown & David Held (eds.), The Cosmopolitanism Reader, Polity. pp. 176. 2010.
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500Enforcing Cosmopolitan Justice: the problem of interventionIn Roland Pierik & Wouter Werner (eds.), Cosmopolitanism in Context, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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174Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and PatriotismCambridge University Press. 2004.The cosmopolitan idea of justice is commonly accused of not taking seriously the special ties and commitments of nationality and patriotism. This is because the ideal of impartial egalitarianism, which is central to the cosmopolitan view, seems to be directly opposed to the moral partiality inherent to nationalism and patriotism. In this book, Kok-Chor Tan argues that cosmopolitan justice, properly understood, can accommodate and appreciate nationalist and patriotic commitments, setting limits f…Read more
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44Equality and Special ConcernCanadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (S1): 73-98. 2010.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. Th…Read more
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43Toleration, Diversity, and Global JusticePennsylvania State University Press. 2000.The "comprehensive liberalism" defended in this book offers an alternative to the narrower "political liberalism" associated with the writings of John Rawls. By arguing against making tolerance as fundamental a value as individual autonomy, and extending the reach of liberalism to global society, it opens the way for dealing more adequately with problems of human rights and economic inequality in a world of cultural pluralism.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |