-
55Two Sets of Concerns about Heath's “Pragmatic Theory of Convergence”Dialogue 44 (2): 383-390. 2005.A central concern of Joseph Heath's Communicative Action and Rational Choice is to find a plausible response to “the problem of convergence … to explain why we should ever expect to secure agreement on moral questions”. In Chapter 7 of his book, Heath proposes what he calls “a pragmatic theory of convergence.” This account is presented as contrasting with the one proposed by Jürgen Habermas, which emphasizes the existence of an internal relation between convergence and moral truth. According to …Read more
-
958Justice and BeneficenceCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 19 (5): 508-533. 2016.What is a duty of justice? And how is it different from a duty of beneficence? We need a clear account of the contrast. Unfortunately, there is no consensus in the philosophical literature as to how to characterize it. Different articulations of it have been provided, but it is hard to identify a common core that is invariant across them. In this paper, I propose an account of how to understand duties of justice, explain how it contrasts with several proposals as to how to distinguish justice an…Read more
-
Substance and Procedure in Discourse Ethics and Deliberative DemocracyDissertation, New School for Social Research. 2003.In this dissertation, I argue that we should reframe the presentation and defense of the program of discourse ethics and deliberative democracy (DEP) in such a way that we make clear its connection to the substantive moral ideas of solidarity, equality and freedom. This program basically says that we should, when we can, determine the validity of the norms regulating our social life through practices of public deliberation. If we want to understand why engaging in public deliberation makes mora…Read more
-
45How should we think about the Relation between Principles and Agency?Ethics and Global Politics 6 (2): 75-83. 2013.In this article, I will reflect on Lea Ypi’s methodological contribution in her wonderful book Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency. Ypi addresses the important and underexplored issue of the relation between normative principles and political agency. She proposes a ‘dialectical approach’ to normative political theory, which she contrasts with ‘ideal’ and ‘non-ideal’ approaches, arguing that the first does a better job in articulating progressive guidelines for political agents seekin…Read more
-
88Considerations on the Notion of Moral Validity in the Moral Theories of Kant and HabermasKant Studien 97 (2): 210-227. 2006.In what follows I will consider Kant's and Habermas's conceptions of moral validity in a comparative and critical way. First, I will reconstruct Habermas's discursive or deliberative reformulation of Kant's moral theory. And, second, I will introduce some comparative critical considerations. I will contend that, though much is gained with Habermas's intersubjectivist reformulation of Kant's moral philosophy, some problems emerge that could be treated with the help of certain Kantian insights. I …Read more
-
79A substantivist construal of discourse ethicsInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 13 (3). 2005.This paper presents a substantivist construal of discourse ethics, which claims that we should see our engagement in public deliberation as expressing and elaborating a substantive commitment to basic moral ideas of solidarity, equality, and freedom. This view is different from Habermas's standard formalist defence of discourse ethics, which attempts to derive the principle of discursive moral justification from primarily non-moral presuppositions of rational argumentation as such. After explica…Read more
-
320Relaciones Sociales, Conflicto e Historia. Una Interpretación de 'Dialéctica' en MarxIn Maria Luisa Femenias (ed.), Cuatro concepciones de Dialéctica., Editorial De La Universidad Nacional De La Plata. pp. 117-146. 1998.
-
242The feasibility of basic socioeconomic human rights: A conceptual explorationPhilosophical Quarterly 59 (237): 659-681. 2009.To be justifiable, the demands of a conception of human rights and global justice must be such that (a) they focus on the protection of important human interests, and (b) their fulfilment is feasible. I discuss the feasibility condition. I present a general account of the relation between moral desirability, feasibility and obligation within a conception of justice. I analyse feasibility, a complex idea including different types, domains and degrees. It is possible to respond in various ways if …Read more
-
28Les perspectives humaniste et politique sur les droits humainsPhilosophiques 42 (2): 251-282. 2015.Pablo Gilabert,Aude Bandini | : Cet article s’intéresse au lien entre deux perspectives qui concernent la nature des droits humains. Selon la perspective « politique » ou « pratique », les droits humains sont des revendications que les individus entretiennent face à un certain nombre de structures institutionnelles, dans certains États modernes, en vertu des intérêts qui sont les leurs selon les contextes qui les mettent en jeu. Selon la perspective « humaniste » ou « naturaliste », plus traditi…Read more
-
253Is there a genuine tension between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities?Philosophical Studies 138 (3). 2008.Samuel Scheffler has recently argued that some relationships are non-instrumentally valuable; that such relationships give rise to “underived” special responsibilities; that there is a genuine tension between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities; and that we must consequently strike a balance between the two. We argue that there is no such tension and propose an alternative approach to the relation between cosmopolitan egalitarianism and special responsibilities. First, while…Read more
-
585La Justice Globale, le Multiculturalisme et les Revendications des ImmigrantsPhilosophiques 34 (1): 41-60. 2007.
-
1385Justice and Feasibility: A Dynamic ApproachIn Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates, Oup Usa. pp. 95-126. 2017.It is common in political theory and practice to challenge normatively ambitious proposals by saying that their fulfillment is not feasible. But there has been insufficient conceptual exploration of what feasibility is, and very little substantive inquiry into why and how it matters for thinking about social justice. This paper provides one of the first systematic treatments of these issues, and proposes a dynamic approach to the relation between justice and feasibility that illuminates the impo…Read more
-
440Should discourse ethics do without a principle of universalization?Philosophical Forum 36 (2). 2005.
-
215From Global Poverty to Global Equality: A Philosophical ExplorationOxford University Press, UK. 2012.Do we have positive duties to help others in need or are our moral duties only negative, focused on not harming them? Are any of the former positive duties, duties of justice that respond to enforceable rights? Is their scope global? Should we aim for global equality besides the eradication of severe global poverty? Is a humanist approach to egalitarian distribution based on rights that all human beings as such have defensible, or must egalitarian distribution be seen in an associativist way, as…Read more
-
591Comentarios sobre la concepcion de la justicia global de PoggeRevista Latinoamericana de Filosofia 33 (2): 205-222. 2007.This paper presents a reconstruction of and some constructive comments on Thomas Pogge’s conception of global justice. Using Imre Lakatos’s notion of a research program, the paper identifies Pogge’s “hard core” and “protective belt” claims regarding the scope of fundamental principles of justice, the object and structure of duties of global justice, the explanation of world poverty, and the appropriate reforms to the existing global order. The paper recommends some amendments to Pogge’s pr…Read more
-
2787Basic Positive Duties of Justice and Narveson's Libertarian ChallengeSouthern Journal of Philosophy 44 (2): 193-216. 2006.Are positive duties to help others in need mere informal duties of virtue or can they also be enforceable duties of justice? In this paper I defend the claim that some positive duties (which I call basic positive duties) can be duties of justice against one of the most important prin- cipled objections to it. This is the libertarian challenge, according to which only negative duties to avoid harming others can be duties of justice, whereas positive duties (basic or nonbasic) must be seen, …Read more
-
187The Capability Approach and the Debate between Humanist and Political Perspectives on Human Rights. A Critical SurveyHuman Rights Review 14 (4): 299-325. 2013.This paper provides a critical exploration of the capability approach to human rights (CAHR) with the specific aim of developing its potential for achieving a synthesis between “humanist” or “naturalistic” and “political” or “practical” perspectives in the philosophy of human rights. Section II presents a general strategy for achieving such a synthesis. Section III provides an articulation of the key insights of CAHR (its focus on actual realizations given diverse circumstances, its pluralism of…Read more
-
122The Importance of Linkage Arguments for the Theory and Practice of Human Rigths. A Response to James NickelHuman Rights Quarterly 32 (2): 425-438. 2010.
-
2625Human Rights, Human Dignity, and PowerIn Rowan Cruft, Matthew Liao & Massimo Renzo (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Oxford University Press. 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
-
153Review of Gillian Brock, Global Justice (review)Philosophy and Social Criticism 38 (3): 333-338. 2012.
-
550Comparative 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
-
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
-
617Ability 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
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Normative Ethics |
Value Theory |