Daniel Marc Weinstock

Wendy Donner'sThe Liberal Self: John Stuart Mill's Moral and Political Philosophyis an important and thought-provoking addition to the growing body of literature seeking to rescue Mill's practical philosophy from the rather lowly place it occupied in the estimation of many philosophers earlier this century, and to present him as a philosopher whose views form a coherent, systematic whole that can still contribute significantly to numerous moral and political debates. The book proposes an interpretation of the whole of Mill's practical philosophy, and attempts to reveal how aspects of Mill's thought, hitherto considered incompatible, actually mutually support one another. At the same time, Donner sets many of Mill's positions in the context of contemporary moral and political philosophical debates, and finds that on a number of important issues, his thought stands up rather well against more recent work.

There is an underappreciated disconnect between the ultimate values that lie at the heart of contemporary theories of distributive justice, and the practice of state institutions. State institutions deliver “intermediate goods” – goods such as health-care, education, housing, transportation, and the like – that are instrumental to a society being distributively just, but that do not in an of themselves constitute criteria of justice. Researchers who have emphasized the “social determinants of health” provide an insight that, when generalized, point us in a direction that theorists of distributive justice should follow, that of attending not just to the instrinsic value of intermediate goods, but also to their causal contributions to realizing the values that theories of distributive justice make central. “Platforms”, which represent principle-driven attempts at designing compossible policies that attend both to the causal and to the intrinsic value of intermediate goods, should be given more importance within theories of distributive justice if such theories are to be policy-relevant, for they connect the ultimate values of these theories to the practices of state institutions

I outline Rawls's theory of justification, highlighting its philosophical and pragmatic conditions. I argue that the theory has remained essentially unchanged since his earliest methodological writings, and that his recent writings have sought to show how "justice as fairness" can satisfy these conditions, given Rawls's new construal of the "fact of pluralism" which theories of justice designed for modern Western liberal democracies must address. I argue that neither Rawls's revised conception of reflective equilibrium, based on the "fixed points" of such societies' political cultures rather than on individuals' "considered moral judgments" nor the newer notion of "overlapping consensus", succeed in justifying "justice as fairness" according to the terms of Rawls's theory of justification

Le débat entre libéraux et communautariens a fait coulé des fleuves d’encre depuis le début des années 1980 dans le domaine de la philosophie politique d’expression anglaise. Le coup d’envoi de ce débat fut sans doute la Théorie de la justice de John Rawls, publiée en 1971. Le livre suscita de la part des auteurs communautariens une vive réaction, dont les moments les plus forts furent probablement Liberalism and the Limits of Justice de Michael Sandel, Spheres of Justice de Michael Walzer, et After Virtue, d’Alasdair MacIntyre. Le projet de Rawls fut de renouveler la tradition libérale du contrat social en mettant à contribution les ressources conceptuelles des sciences économiques et de la théorie du choix rationnel. Rawls démontra que des individus auxquels on aurait ôté toute information quant à leurs traits individuants choisiraient dans une situation contractuelle hypothétique des principes de justice garantissant en premier lieu à tous une part aussi importante que possible de droits et de libertés, et établissant deuxièmement, à travers le célèbre «principe de différence» les bases d’une redistribution équitable des richesses sociales.

Defining the principles of justice that ought to govern the global economic and political sphere is one of the most urgent tasks that contemporary political philosophers face. But they must also contribute to working through the institutional implications of these principles. How might principles of global justice be realized? Must the institutions that aim to implement them be transnational, or can global justice be attained within the context of the state system? Can institutions of democratic self-governance be imagined beyond the nation-state? These are just some of the questions that still face political philosophers even when issues of abstract principle have been addressed. This volume establishes a dialogue between philosophers working at all levels of abstraction. Some of the authors are concerned with the grounds and scope of the obligations that bind the citizens and governments of rich countries to those of poorer nations. But many examine the question of how these obligations can be satisfied, both within existing institutional frameworks and beyond. Together their essays constitute a major contribution to the advancement of both the theoretical understanding and the practical requirements of global justice

Substantive theorists of secession face a problem explaining why the international community ought on their view to withhold recognition from secessions which involve a loss in terms of the substantive criteria they privilege; this is so because the normal electoral politics giving rise to such a loss should not in their opinion meet with any adverse international reaction. The substantive theory of David Miller uses criteria for the legitimacy of secessions which give rise to strangely amoral consequences. A procedural theory of secession is to be preferred on both moral and pragmatic grounds; this is one which that countenance secession when appropriate procedural hurdles are cleared, regardless of the substance of the claims put forward by secessionists to justify secession

ABSTRACT Recent writings by philosophers such as David Miller and Yael Tamir have undertaken to provide nationalism with a normative foundation, a task which has been all but ignored by post‐War English‐language political philosophy. I identify and criticise three lines of argument which have been deployed in their writings. First, it is argued by Miller that the universalism and abstraction of rationalist moral theories have made them suspicious of ‘particularisms’ such as nationalism, but that they stem from a faulty metaethics. Against this I argue that abstraction and universality need not be grounded in a universalist metaethics, but can be derived pragmatically from the ethical needs of multicultural societies. Second, it is argued that liberal policies such as taxation and material redistribution, restrictions on immigration, as well as liberal concepts such as political obligation, presuppose the validity of the nationalist point of view. Against this I hold that nationalism never provides the strongest moral grounds for these policies and concepts, and that, in the specific case of distributive justice, it can even undermine them. And third, I examine the argument that the historical excesses of which nationalists have been guilty are actually the product of a narrow, ‘ethnic’nationalism, in contrast to which we can articulate a categorically distinct, open, ‘civic’nationalism, which would be broadly compatible with liberal political morality. I argue that the concept of civic nationalism is unstable, and that under fairly plausible and widespread empirical conditions, it either collapses back into a form of ethnic nationalism, or else becomes devoid of any recognisably nationalist content.

Abstract: Debates about the possibility of global democracy and justice are plagued by a fallacious assumption made by all parties. That assumption is that there is a "naturalness" to relations among fellow nationals to which a global demos could never aspire. In fact, nation builders employed a great many tools that mobilized the psychological and moral susceptibilities of individuals in order to create a sense of solidarity out of initially heterogeneous elements. Two such tools are described and then applied to the global sphere: first, appeals to prudence through the sometimes artificial engineering of Hobbesian situations, and second, uses of philosophically inferior but motivationally optimal moral argument. The applicability of these strategies to the global sphere suggests that cosmopolitans would be well advised to examine further the nation builder's toolbox for other devices through which a global demos might be motivated.

Much liberal theorizing of the past twenty years has been built around a conception of neutrality and an accompanying virtue of reasonableness according to which citizens ought to be able to view public policy debates from a perspective detached from their comprehensive conceptions of the good. The view of “justifi catory neutrality” that emerges from this view is discussed and rejected as embodying controversial views about the relationship of individuals to their conceptions of the good. It is shown to be based upon a “protestant” assumption according to which conceptions of the good can be cashed out in terms of propositional beliefs. An alternative conception of reasonableness, grounded in the stable disposition of individuals to prefer social peace over conflict is described. It is argued that it better satisfies the neutralist requirement than do theories of justifi catory neutrality

In her book, Conscience and Conviction, Kimberley Brownlee argues that there is nothing undemocratic about the robust, primary right to civil disobedience that she devotes most of her argument to defending. To the contrary, she holds that there is nothing paternalistic about civil disobedients opposing the will of democratic majorities, because, inter alia, democratic majorities cannot claim particular epistemic superiority, and because there are flaws inherent to democratic procedures that civil disobedience addresses. I hold that Brownlee’s arguments fail. In particular, her argument fails because it does not properly construe the nature of the epistemic claim that can be made either by democratic procedures or by civil disobedients, and because it illegitimately conflates the concern about permanent minorities that has been a constant thorn in the side of democratic theorists, with a concern with all outvoted minorities, whether permanent minorities or not.

In this paper we re-examine Hugh LaFollette's proposal that the state carefully determine the eligibility and suitability of prospective parents before granting them a?license to parent?. Assuming a prima facie case for licensing parents grounded in our duty to promote the welfare of the child, we offer several considerations that complicate LaFollette's radical proposal. We suggest that LaFollette can only escape these problems by revising his proposal in a way that renders the license effectively obsolete, a route he implicitly adopts in his recent revisiting of the licensing proposal. We conclude that there is little merit in the idea of licensing?natural? parents as a practical policy proposal, and raise some questions about its continued use in relation to adoptive and foster parents.

Simon May has argued that the notion of a principled compromise is incoherent. Reasons to compromise are always in his view strategic: though we think that the position we defend is still the right one, we compromise on this view in order to avoid the undesirable consequences that might flow from not compromising. I argue against May that there are indeed often principled reasons to compromise, and that these reasons are in fact multiple. First, compromises evince respect for persons that we have reason to think of as our epistemic peers, and acknowledgement of our own finitudes as moral reasoners. Second, compromises are often made morally necessary by the shortfalls that unavoidably separate democratic institutions from democratic ideals. Third, compromises express a desirable form of democratic community. And fourth, compromises are often justified from a consequentialist point of view, in that they allow for the realization of values that would not be realized as well by the failure to compromise.

Pour certains philosophes pluralistes politiques, accepter la thèse de pluralisme des valeurs entraîne le rejet de l’autonomie libérale en faveur d’une forme de libéralisme fondée sur l’idéal de la tolérance. Cette idée est fausse. D’abord le pluralisme des valeurs partage avec le relativisme la difficulté inhérente à toute tentative de tirer une conclusion normative d’une thèse descriptive. Chercher à soutenir l’argument en comblant les prémisses manquantes montre que le pluralisme des valeurs est plus naturellement lié au libéralisme autonomiste qu’à un libéralisme fondé sur la tolérance. C’est parce que les individus doivent posséder une capacité de choix autonome pour que le pluralisme puisse les concerner