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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
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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
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2785Basic 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
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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
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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.
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153Review of Gillian Brock, Global Justice (review)Philosophy and Social Criticism 38 (3): 333-338. 2012.
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2622Human 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
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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
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Normative Ethics |
Value Theory |