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12Partisanship and Political Obligation: Some Sceptical ThoughtsRes Publica 25 (4): 475-486. 2019.In Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies, Matteo Bonotti argues that the problem of political obligation can be solved for at least a sub-set of citizens, namely, for political partisans. Bonotti claims that the benefits that accrue to partisans in virtue of a principle of fair play warrant their observing a duty to obey the law. In this paper, I first point to the strength of the argument: it purports to generate a duty of all partisans to obey all laws, not just laws to do…Read more
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86On the possibility of principled moral compromiseCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 16 (4): 537-556. 2013.No abstract
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44Otfried Höffe, Principes du droit, , Paris, Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993Philosophiques 23 (1): 196-198. 1996.
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86National PartialityThe Monist 82 (3): 516-541. 1999.Recent defenders of nationalism have pointed to the fact that most people feel that their obligations towards their compatriots are either more numerous or more stringent than those which bind them to people from other countries. They point to this fact as evidence that something is seriously amiss with the universalism which allegedly underpins liberal theory. That people believe quite strongly that they have such special obligations is taken as a datum for which different theories of justice m…Read more
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98Neutralizing PerfectionDialogue 38 (1): 45-62. 1999.RÉSUMÉ: Je maintiens dans cet essai que l'argument développé par Thomas Hurka sur la base de son perfectionnisme aristotélicien en faveur d'une forme modérée de perfectionnisme d'État échoue. Je tente de démontrer que son perfectionnisme sousdétermine les types d'activités que l'État aurait à promouvoir afin de réaliser les valeurs perfectionnistes qu'il défend. Je soutiens également que Hurka opère avec une conception caricaturale de la doctrine de la neutralité libérale. Selon lui, l'État libé…Read more
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25National PartialityThe Monist 82 (3): 516-541. 1999.Recent defenders of nationalism have pointed to the fact that most people feel that their obligations towards their compatriots are either more numerous or more stringent than those which bind them to people from other countries. They point to this fact as evidence that something is seriously amiss with the universalism which allegedly underpins liberal theory. That people believe quite strongly that they have such special obligations is taken as a datum for which different theories of justice m…Read more
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84Natural Law and Public Reason in Kant’s Political PhilosophyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (3): 389-411. 1996.My intention in this essay will be to explore the role that consent-based arguments perform in Kant's political and legal philosophy. I want to uncover the extent to which Kant considered that the legitimacy of the State and of its laws depends upon the outcome of intersubjective deliberation. Commentators have divided over the following question: Is Kant best viewed as a member of the social contract tradition, according to which the legitimacy of the state and of the laws it promulgates derive…Read more
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29Making Sense of Mill (review)Dialogue 35 (4): 791-804. 1996.Wendy Donner'sThe Liberal Self: John Stuart Mill's Moral and Political Philosophyis an important and thought-provoking addition to the growing body of literature seeking to rescue Mill's practical philosophy from the rather lowly place it occupied in the estimation of many philosophers earlier this century, and to present him as a philosopher whose views form a coherent, systematic whole that can still contribute significantly to numerous moral and political debates. The book proposes an interpr…Read more
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57Motivating the global DemosMetaphilosophy 40 (1): 92-108. 2009.Abstract: Debates about the possibility of global democracy and justice are plagued by a fallacious assumption made by all parties. That assumption is that there is a "naturalness" to relations among fellow nationals to which a global demos could never aspire. In fact, nation builders employed a great many tools that mobilized the psychological and moral susceptibilities of individuals in order to create a sense of solidarity out of initially heterogeneous elements. Two such tools are described …Read more
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37Multiculturalism as Harm ReductionRes Publica 29 (4): 611-627. 2023.Multicultural theory and practice have in recent years been subjected to substantial criticism. While some of these criticisms can be dismissed as grounded in discriminatory attitudes, others are less easily swept aside, as they are underwritten by values that multiculturalists tend to affirm. A harm reduction approach, that recognizes that reasonable citizens can disagree about some multicultural practices while at the same time acknowledging that attempts at prohibition are either exceedingly …Read more
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38Libéraux et communautariens (review)Dialogue 37 (4): 844-846. 1998.Le débat entre libéraux et communautariens a fait coulé des fleuves d’encre depuis le début des années 1980 dans le domaine de la philosophie politique d’expression anglaise. Le coup d’envoi de ce débat fut sans doute la Théorie de la justice de John Rawls, publiée en 1971. Le livre suscita de la part des auteurs communautariens une vive réaction, dont les moments les plus forts furent probablement Liberalism and the Limits of Justice de Michael Sandel, Spheres of Justice de Michael Walzer, et A…Read more
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29Just Talk?Dialogue 37 (1): 107-. 1998.Mark Kingwell’s A Civil Tongue is a particularly striking example of this recent trend. Kingwell argues that, for diverse societies, justice reduces to vigorous public debate governed by the conversational virtue of civility, or politeness. According to Kingwell, “Whatever passes through a set of conversational constraints can be expected to be the valid norms or principles of justice”.
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14Just Talk?Dialogue 37 (1): 107-116. 1998.One of the most prominent themes of recent political philosophy, at least in the English-speaking world, has been the challenge which the cultural and moral diversity of modern Western societies poses for traditional liberal theories of justice. Given that these theories, in their classical formulations, either ignored the issue of social heterogeneity, or operated on the tacit assumption that the societies to which they would be applied were essentially homogeneous, what changes should a new ap…Read more
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37Integrating Intermediate Goods to Theories of Distributive Justice: The Importance of PlatformsRes Publica 21 (2): 171-183. 2015.There is an underappreciated disconnect between the ultimate values that lie at the heart of contemporary theories of distributive justice, and the practice of state institutions. State institutions deliver “intermediate goods” – goods such as health-care, education, housing, transportation, and the like – that are instrumental to a society being distributively just, but that do not in an of themselves constitute criteria of justice. Researchers who have emphasized the “social determinants of he…Read more
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63How Should Political Philosophers Think of Health?Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (4): 424-435. 2011.The political philosophy of health care has been characterized by considerable conceptual inflation in recent years. First, the concept of health that lies at its core has come to encompass ever-increasing aspects of individuals’ existences. And second, the emergence of the public health perspective has increased the range of resources relevant to health equity. This expansion has not been without cost. The decision to include more rather than less within the ambit of "health" is ultimately a mo…Read more
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36For a political philosophy of parent–child relationshipsCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 21 (3): 351-365. 2018.
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18Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights, Alan Patten , 344 pp., $45 cloth $29.95 paperEthics and International Affairs 30 (2): 278-281. 2016.
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28Disagreement, Unenforceability, and Harm ReductionHealth Care Analysis 28 (4): 314-323. 2020.Talk of harm reduction has expanded horizontally, to apply to an ever-widening range of policy domains, and vertically, becoming part of official legal and political discourse. This expansion calls for philosophical theorization. What is the best way in which to characterize harm reduction? Does it represent a distinctive ethical position? How is it best morally justified, and what are its moral limits? I distinguish two varieties of harm reduction. One of them, technocratic harm reduction, is p…Read more
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58Dissidents and Innocents: Hard Cases for a Political Philosophy of BoycottsJournal of Applied Philosophy 36 (4): 560-574. 2018.In this article, I distinguish boycotts from other kinds of superficially similar types of actions, and argue that boycotts involve at least coordinated activity on the part of the members of a group to abstain on moral grounds from otherwise normal interaction with the members of another group. Boycotts in their minimal forms do not face high justificatory hurdles, since they involve the exercise of freedom of speech, along with the exercise by members of the boycotting group of basic rights an…Read more