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2677Human Rights, Human Dignity, and PowerIn Rowan Cruft, S. Matthew Liao & Massimo Renzo (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 196-213. 2015.This paper explores the connections between human rights, human dignity, and power. The idea of human dignity is omnipresent in human rights discourse, but its meaning and point is not always clear. It is standardly used in two ways, to refer to a normative status of persons that makes their treatment in terms of human rights a proper response, and a social condition of persons in which their human rights are fulfilled. This paper pursues three tasks. First, it provides an analysis of the conten…Read more
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556Comparative Assessments of Justice, Political Feasibility, and Ideal TheoryEthical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (1): 39-56. 2012.What should our theorizing about social justice aim at? Many political philosophers think that a crucial goal is to identify a perfectly just society. Amartya Sen disagrees. In The Idea of Justice, he argues that the proper goal of an inquiry about justice is to undertake comparative assessments of feasible social scenarios in order to identify reforms that involve justice-enhancement, or injustice-reduction, even if the results fall short of perfect justice. Sen calls this the “comparative …Read more
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648Ability and Volitional IncapacityJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 10 (3): 1-8. 2016.The conditional analysis of ability faces familiar counterexamples involving cases of volitional incapacity. An interesting response to the problem of volitional incapacity is to try to explain away the responses elicited by such counterexamples by distinguishing between what we are able to do and what we are able to bring ourselves to do. We argue that this error-theoretic response fails. Either it succeeds in solving the problem of volitional incapacity at the cost of making the conditional an…Read more
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226Does Global Egalitarianism Provide an Impractical and Unattractive Ideal of Justice?International Affairs 84 (5): 1025-1039. 2008.In his important new book National responsibility and global justice, David Miller presents a systematic challenge to existing theories of global justice. In particular, he argues that cosmopolitan egalitarianism must be rejected. Such views, Miller maintains, would place unacceptable burdens on the most productive political communities, undermine national self-determination, and disincentivize political communities from taking responsibility for their fate. They are also impracticable and quite…Read more
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43Solidarity, equality, and freedom in Pettit’s republicanismCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18 (6): 644-651. 2015.This article discusses Pettit’s views of social justice and political legitimacy in On the People’s Terms. Although Pettit’s book presents a powerful account of the ideal of nondomination, this article probes some deficiencies regarding important questions about solidarity, equality, and feasibility.
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1745Global Justice and Poverty Relief in Nonideal CircumstancesSocial Theory and Practice 34 (3): 411-438. 2008.
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386Kant and the Claims of the PoorPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (2): 382-418. 2010.Do we have positive duties to help others in need or are our moral duties only negative, focused on not harming them? If these positive duties exist, are they strong and strict demands or are they weak and discretionary? Can we say that at least some positive duties of assistance are also duties of justice worthy of institutionalization and coercive enforcement by legal institutions? Can the scope of some of such duties be cosmopolitan or should all of them be circumscribed to what we owe to our…Read more
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Normative Ethics |
Value Theory |