•  58
    For and Against the State: New Philosophical Readings (edited book)
    Rowman & Littlefield. 1996.
    This collection addresses the central issue of political philosophy or, in a couple of cases, issues very close to the heart of that question: Is government justified? This ancient question has never been more alive than at the present time, in the midst of continuing political and social upheaval in virtually every part of the world. Only two of the pieces collected here have been published previously. All the other contributions were, at the time of the inception of the volume, fresh from the…Read more
  •  56
    Morality and non-violence
    Philosophia 8 (2-3): 447-459. 1978.
  •  56
    When, If Ever, Do We Aggregate? And Why?
    Social Philosophy and Policy 26 (1): 48-75. 2009.
    Aggregation in moral philosophy calls for the summing or averaging of values or utilities as a guide to individual behavior. But morality, it is argued, needs to be individualistic, in view of the evident separateness of persons, especially given the great disparities among individuals who nevertheless interact with each other in social life. The most plausible general moral program is the classical liberal (or “libertarian”) one calling for mutual noninterference rather than treating others as …Read more
  •  55
    The agreement to keep our agreements: Hume, Prichard, and Searle
    Philosophical Papers 23 (2): 75-87. 1994.
    Does it make sense, and is it at all plausible, to view the moral obligation to keep particular promises and do what is called for by particular agreements such as contracts as being founded on a general "Social Contract" -- i.e., to give a contractarian account of promise-keeping? This paper argues that it does. Borrowing from Hume, David Lewis, Gilbert Harman, and David Gauthier, I provide a sketch of what the "social contract" is (not, e.g., either a real or a hypothetical meeting of all with…Read more
  •  54
    The Right to be Old and the Right to Have Young
    Tulane Studies in Philosophy 31 183-217. 1982.
  •  50
    Democracy and Economic Rights
    Social Philosophy and Policy 9 (1): 29. 1992.
    We have long been accustomed to thinking of democracy as a major selling point of Western institutions. That a set of political institutions should be democratic is widely regarded as the sine qua non of their legitimacy. So widespread is this belief that even those whose institutions do not look very democratic to us nevertheless insist on proclaiming them to be such. Meanwhile, an adulatory attitude toward democracy has arisen in many quarters, and many theorists have taken up anew the idea th…Read more
  •  49
  •  48
    Aesthetics, Charity, Utility, and Distributive Justice
    The Monist 56 (4): 527-551. 1972.
    As I sit down to begin this essay, the strains of “Tristan und Isolde” are still ringing in my ears; meanwhile, another dozen or so Pakistanian refugees have died for lack of sufficient food, shelter, or medical attention, probably, during the time it will have taken to compose this paragraph. The Isolde in that performance commanded, probably, a fee of four or five thousand dollars; each member of the audience paid, on the average, perhaps ten dollars to see the performance. This works out, pro…Read more
  •  46
    Inequality
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (2): 482-486. 1996.
    This book investigates the idea of inequality. According to the author, it does not address the question whether one should care about inequality nor which version is more plausible. Instead, its purpose is “to understand egalitarianism”, to “elucidate the notion of inequality”. The general thesis is that inequality is a “complex notion,” as shown by the fact that there are many different ways of measuring it. This is relentlessly detailed in a series of chapters that many will find rather hard …Read more
  •  46
    Reply to Dworkin
    Social Philosophy and Policy 1 (1): 41. 1983.
    My main complaint about Dworkin's papers on equality was that he had not said much by way of arguing for it. His intriguing response to this request provides a good start, and I shall confine this brief, further comment to what he says on that basic subject. Space considerations, alas, require me to ignore the other parts of his discussion. Dworkin distinguishes what he calls the “abstract egalitarian thesis” from his particular version of equalitarianism, equality of resources. His strategy is …Read more
  •  45
    Anarchy, State and Utopica, by Robert Nozick
    Dialogue 16 (2): 298-327. 1977.
    Most books defending the position now know as “libertarianism”, the thesis that government ought to confine itself only to the most minimal functions of preventing or punishing force and fraud, can be dismissed with little scruple as the work of cranks. And some have already done so with this one as well: but wrongly. It is clearly the work of a person of extraordinary brilliance, penetration, and learning, possessed of a pungent style and an uncommon flair for paradox and counterexample. Those …Read more
  •  45
    Pacifism—Fifty Years Later
    Philosophia 41 (4): 925-943. 2013.
    I suppose I’m writing this because of my 1965 paper on Pacifism. In that essay I argued that pacifism is self-contradictory. That’s a strong charge, and also not entirely clear. Let’s start by trying to clarify the charge and related ones.Pacifism has traditionally been understood as total opposition to violence, even the use of it in defense of oneself when under attack. I earlier maintained (in my well-known “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis” (Narveson, Ethics, 75:4, 259–271, 1965)) that thi…Read more
  •  45
    Morality and utility
    Johns Hopkins University Press. 1967.
    This book is a general account of utilitarianism. It claims to provide a justification of the theses in Mill's On Liberty in utilitarian terms. There are several innovations relative to prevailing utilitarian literature of the day.
  •  44
    Wrongness, wisdom and wilderness
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 11 (1): 58-61. 1998.
  •  44
    Reiman on Labor, Value, and the Difference Principle
    The Journal of Ethics 18 (1): 47-74. 2014.
    In As Free and as Just as Possible: The Theory of Marxian Liberalism, Jeffrey Reiman proposes to develop a theory of “Marxian Liberalism.” ‘Liberalism’ here is defined by the principle that “sane adult human beings should be free in the sense of free from coercion that would block their ability to act on the choices they make.” While the idea of coercion could use some glossing, it is not obvious that poverty, unemployment, racism, and sexism are as such coercive. In this book, it is, very broad…Read more
  •  43
    Equality vs. Liberty: Advantage, Liberty
    Social Philosophy and Policy 2 (1): 33. 1984.
    The subject of this essay is political, and therefore social, philosophy; and therefore, ethics. We want to know whether the right thing for a society to do is to incorporate in its structure requirements that we bring about equality, or liberty, or both if they are compatible, and if incompatible then which if either, or what sort of mix if they can to some degree be mixed. But this fairly succinct statement of the issue before us requires considerable clarification, even as a statment of the i…Read more
  •  41
    Internal/External
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 23 (1): 125-132. 2009.
    Where does domestic policy leave off and foreign policy begin? I point out that many domestic policies have major repercussions forother countries, some of them of a kind that are conducive to violence if not outright warfare. My examples are the drug laws, which create huge incentives for foreign criminals as well as domestic ones; concerns about “global warming” which are likely to impoverish many poor countries or prevent them from advancing; and the penchant for extensive government interven…Read more
  •  41
    On a new argument from design
    Journal of Philosophy 62 (9): 223-229. 1965.
  •  41
    The "Invisible Hand"
    Journal of Business Ethics 46 (3). 2003.
    The argument of the "Invisible Hand" is that the system of free enterprise benefits society in general even though it is not the aim of any particular economic agent to do that. This article proposes an analysis of why this is so. The key is that the morality of the market forbids only force and fraud; it does not require people to do good to others. Nevertheless, when all transactions are voluntary to both parties, that is exactly what we can expect to happen. This is both because the sum of th…Read more
  •  39
    Utilitarianism and moral norms
    with Carl Wellman
    Journal of Value Inquiry 4 (4): 273-286. 1970.
    An outline of a utilitarian account of the justification of particular moral rules and principles. a distinction between 'cardinal' and 'ordinal' utilitarianism is suggested, and a method for distinguishing prima-facie legitimate from prima-facie illegitimate desires proposed. moral rules mostly have the function of identifying the latter and proscribing the corresponding actions
  •  37
    Libertarianism, postlibertarianism, and the welfare state: Reply to Friedman
    Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 6 (1): 45-82. 1992.
    Jeffrey Friedman broaches a number of criticisms of Libertarianism as a conceptual basis for opposing the extensive modern welfare state, examining several variants and concluding that they are fundamentally unsupported. He opts for a “consequentialist” view of foundations. Nevertheless, he thinks that the modem welfare state is subject to effective critique along such lines. But rational contractarian individualism works and does provide foundations for libertarianism, while “consequentialism” …Read more
  •  37
    The Medical Minimum: Zero
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (6): 558-571. 2011.
    The question is what the mandated medical minimum for all should be. The correct answer is zero. That is to say, the government should not be forcing anyone to pay for anyone. The most popular arguments within the liberal framework, presumed to be shared by all, are briefly surveyed. Health care is provided by someone to someone else, and that someone else should either be paying for it, or recognize that someone is providing it charitably to him or her. Compelling someone else to pay for it is …Read more
  •  34
    It is widely thought that Robert Nozick’s views on rectification of past injustices are of critical importance to his theory of distributive justice, even perhaps justifying wholesale redistributive taxes in the present because of the undoubted injustices that have pervaded much past history. This essay undertakes to correct this impression—not mostly by disagreeing with Nozick’s claims, but nevertheless proceeding on basic libertarian theory. Of enormous importance is the role of putative innoc…Read more