Daniel Marc Weinstock

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

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.

One of the most prominent themes of recent political philosophy, at least in the English-speaking world, has been the challenge which the cultural and moral diversity of modern Western societies poses for traditional liberal theories of justice. Given that these theories, in their classical formulations, either ignored the issue of social heterogeneity, or operated on the tacit assumption that the societies to which they would be applied were essentially homogeneous, what changes should a new appreciation of diversity impose upon both the content and the pattern of justification of theories of justice? Philosophers have been far from unanimous in their answers to this basic question. Some, like Will Kymlicka, have argued that recognizably liberal, autonomy-based justificatory arguments should lead us to change our view of liberalism's content, in that it should now incorporate collective rights to the traditional repertoire of individual rights. Others, like Iris Young, have argued that a real recognition of “difference” should lead to the wholesale abandonment of the liberal framework. Still others have argued that it is the manner in which liberalism goes about justifying normative principles that ought to be rethought, given the “fact of pluralism.” The disagreements on moral and political issues which are constitutive of modern societies have led some to argue that we can no longer hope to justify substantive principles deductively on the basis of general moral propositions taken as axiomatic. Authors who follow this line have argued that, in order not to tread on the moral or cultural toes of a diverse citizenry, liberal justification must ultimately reduce to the outcome of certain deliberative procedures. In radically plural societies, justified norms of social interactions are those to which people in conversation with one another would agree.

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.

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

This article provides an introduction to the articles in this theme issue. This collection examines epistemological, ontological, moral and political questions in medicine in light of the philosophical ideas of Charles Taylor. A synthesis of Taylor's relevant work is presented. Taylor has argued for a conception of the human sciences that regards human life as meaningful–deriving meaning from surrounding horizons of significance. An overview of the interdisciplinary articles in this issue is presented. This collection advances our thinking in the philosophy of medicine as well as the philosophy of Charles Taylor

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

Recent defenders of nationalism have pointed to the fact that most people feel that their obligations towards their compatriots are either more numerous or more stringent than those which bind them to people from other countries. They point to this fact as evidence that something is seriously amiss with the universalism which allegedly underpins liberal theory. That people believe quite strongly that they have such special obligations is taken as a datum for which different theories of justice must somehow offer an account. It is taken to be a measure of the theoretical success of a theory of justice that what we might call the "special-obligations thesis" can be derived from it.