Darrel Frank Moellendorf

This book examines the threat that climate change poses to the projects of poverty eradication, sustainable development, and biodiversity preservation. It offers a careful discussion of the values that support these projects and a critical evaluation of the normative bases of climate change policy. This book regards climate change policy as a public problem that normative philosophy can shed light on. It assumes that the development of policy should be based on values regarding what is important to respect, preserve, and protect. What sort of climate change policy do we owe the poor of the world who are particularly vulnerable to climate change? Why should our generation take on the burden of mitigating climate change that is caused, in no small part, by emissions from people now dead? What value is lost when natural species go extinct, as they may well do en masse because of climate change? This book presents a broad and inclusive discussion of climate change policy, relevant to those with interests in public policy, development studies, environmental studies, political theory, and moral and political philosophy

This critical commentary on the three sections of the philosophy of subjective spirit as it appears in Hegel's final Berlin Encyclopedia uses them to come to a better understanding and evaluation of his general philosophical perspective. This is in contrast to two sorts of dangers which Hegel scholarship faces. One is getting so caught up in summarizing and interpreting the troublesome texts that no evaluation is provided. The other is to view Hegel unsympathetically through the criteria of contemporary Anglo-America philosophy, so that very little is learned from him except that on most counts he falls short of the standards that this philosophy sets for itself. ;Contrary to these methods I present and evaluate the philosophy of subjective spirit in terms of its fulfillment of the aims of Hegel's system, and in terms of the questions that he suggests it is adequate to answer. There are three such questions. These concern the nature of the relationship between the mind and the body, the compatibility of free human will and natural determination, and the unity of the mind in light of its many activities. ;I also frequently compare Hegel to Kant for two reasons. One is pedagogical, the other intimately related to Hegel's project. We can gain greater understanding of Hegel by illuminating his departures from Kant, about whom much is known. What is more important philosophically, however, is Hegel's criticism of the limits which Kant's transcendental idealism places upon knowledge. The origins of these limits lie in Kant's view of the human mind, the forms of intuition and the spontaneity of understanding. However, if Hegel is to overcome the limits which Kant places upon knowledge, he must provide an account of the mind which circumvents what he considers to be the problems that arise out of Kant's account. ;On most of these counts Hegel's philosophy of subjective spirit is a failure, even if his vision is a captivating one. This analysis, however, does reveal certain advantages that Hegel's conception of freedom has over Kant's

In this paper I shall argue that due to the constructivist procedure which John Rawls employs in “The Law of Peoples,” he is unable to justify his claim that there is a relationship between limiting the internal and external sovereignty of states. An alternative constructivist procedure is viable, but it extends the ideal theory of international justice to include liberal democratic and egalitarian principles. The procedure and principles have significant implications for non‐ideal theory as well, insofar as they justify a principle of international resource redistribution and weaken general prohibitions against intervention.

The eurocentrism of Hegel's philosophy of history is well known. Hegel's reputation has not benefited from many of the claims in the Philosophy of History; such as the one that African history, having no development, has contributed nothing to world history. Because of the general lack of attention that Hegel's philosophy of subjective spirit has received, it is little known that this eurocentrism is based, in part, on the racism of the philosophy of subjective spirit. Only here does Hegel systematically treat the biological category of race. Reading through this section one can find passages about racial distinctions which seem initially to be rather ambivalent, but taken as a whole are decidedly racist. Much of what Hegel says about the �inferiority� of African culture and the �justification� for the slave trade finds its foundation here. This paper is an exhibition of the relevant passages of the �Philosophy of Subjective Spirit� and an attempt to link them to Hegel's other claims about African culture and the slave trade. I will argue that Hegel's philosophy of spirit is tainted by the unusual (for Hegel) causal role which he gives to a biological category, namely race. I will argue further that his philosophy of spirit is not necessarily racist, only contingently so, that is that his racism does not follow from any of his fundamental claims about spirit. Hegel's account of spirit makes his racism possible, not necessary. The source of his racism can be traced to the general ideology of the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, understanding how Hegel could hold racist views is important for understanding features of his political philosophy. It shows both the problems of the Hegelian conception of person hood and exemplifies the conservative bias built into his method of political philosophy generally

Habermas asserts that his discourse ethics rests on two main commitments: (1) Moral judgments have cognitive content analogous to truth value; and (2) moral justification requires real-life discourse. Habermas elaborates on the second claim by making actual consensus a necessary condition of normative validity. I argue that Habermas's two commitments sit uneasily together. The second entails that his cognitivism is revisionist in the sense that it must reject the law of the excluded middle. Moreover, Habermas's argument in defence of the need for real-life discourse is unconvincing and his derivation of the principle which requires consensus is fallacious

In the first part of this article, we considered how Thandi, a 15-year-old girl, was treated when taken by her mother to their GP, Dr Randera. Dr Randera notified them that Thandi was pregnant, HIV positive, and had syphilis and herpes. Dr Randera also informed them that there was a substantial risk that the baby would be born HIV positive. Both Thandi and her mother wanted an abortion. However, Dr Randera, who was morally opposed to abortions, refused to provide the service and did not refer Thandi to another doctor who would perform the abortion.The saga continues:

Treaty Norms and Climate Change MitigationDarrel MoellendorfCurrently the international community is discussing the regulatory framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. The unveiling of the new framework is scheduled to occur at the December 2009 COP in Copenhagen. The stakes are high, since any treaty will affect the development prospects of per capita poor countries and will determine the climate change–related costs borne by poor people for centuries to come. Failure to arrive at an agreement would have grave effects on the development prospects of poor countries, many of which will experience the most severe effects of climate change. The original UNFCCC treaty recognizes these kinds of concerns and requires that further treaty negotiation pay them heed. Any agreement will be required to conform to UNFCCC norms related to sustainable development and the equitable distribution of responsibilities. In this paper I argue that UNFCCC norms tightly constrain the range of acceptable agreements for the distribution of burdens to mitigate climate change. I conclude that any legitimate treaty must put much heavier mitigation burdens on industrialized developed countries. Of the various proposals that have received international attention, two in particular stand out as possibly satisfying UNFCCC norms regarding the distribution of responsibilities.

This paper examines the UN provisions concerning the legitimate use of force, which justified the 1991 Gulf War, and Michael Walzer's arguments, which can be read as a justification of the UN provisions. After a brief historical sketch of the approach to internationalism of Marx, Lenin, and the early Bolshevik regime, alternative internationalist criteria of Jus ad Bellum are proposed, which assume certain forms of common oppression among peoples of different states. If certain forms of common oppression can be defended (in the case of Marxist theory, exploitation and imperialism), and if one shares Walzer's concern for individual rights, then the internationalist criteria for Jus ad Bellum are morally superior to the UN's and Walzer's.