Johannes Giesinger

Matthew Clayton claims that ‘comprehensive enrolment’ – raising one’s children in accordance with one’s own conception of the good – is illegitimate. In his argument against comprehensive enrolment, Clayton refers to Rawls’s idea of public reason. In a recent response to Clayton, Christina Cameron not only rejects Clayton’s conclusions, but also denies that the idea of public reason can be applied to the parent–child relationship. This article responds to both Clayton and Cameron: It is stated, first, that political arrangements concerning children’s upbringing must be acceptable in the light of public reason. Second, it is claimed that comprehensive enrolment can nevertheless be considered as legitimate.

In this essay, Johannes Giesinger comments on the current philosophical debate on educational justice. He observes that while authors like Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz develop a so-called adequacy view of educational justice, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift defend an egalitarian principle. Giesinger focuses his analysis on the main objection that is formulated, from an egalitarian perspective, against the adequacy view: that it neglects the problem of securing fair opportunities in the competition for social rewards. Giesinger meets this objection by expressing two basic theses: First, he argues that Brighouse and Swift themselves fail to give an adequate account of fair competition; and, second, he shows that the adequacy view provides the theoretical resources to face this problem.