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71Licensed to Kill (review)Analysis 71 (3): 523-532. 2011.Book review of McMahan J. "Killing in War." Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2009. --- Jeff McMahan’s "Killing in War" is, among many other things, a brief against the traditional just war doctrine of the moral equality of combatants – i.e. the doctrine that all combatants ‘have the same moral status, hence the same moral rights, immunities, and liabilities’, including ‘an equal right to kill’, irrespective of whether the war they fight is just or unjust.1 This book is a powerfully argued, nuanc…Read more
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62A Rejoinder to Fischer and TognazziniThe Journal of Ethics 14 (1): 37-42. 2010.In Otsuka ( 1998 ), I endorse an incompatibilist Principle of Avoidable Blame. In this rejoinder to Fischer and Tognazzini ( 2009 ), I defend this principle against their charge that it is vulnerable to Frankfurt-type counterexample.
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61How to guard against the risk of living too long: the case for collective pensionsIn David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne & Steven Wall (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, v. 3, Oxford University Press. 2017.This chapter provides a defense of a type of occupational pension, known as “collective defined contribution”, which is based on the idea that it is possible to limit the employer’s liability to nothing more than a set contribution while retaining many of the benefits of the collectivization of risks of a traditional defined benefit pension. CDC can be defended against a freedom-based objection from the right via an appeal to the following Hobbesian voluntarist justification: CDC constitutes a “…Read more
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52Making the unjust provide for the least well offThe Journal of Ethics 2 (3): 247-259. 1998.I propose that liberal egalitarians and libertarians can find common ground in support of an unfamiliar means of forcing well off individuals to come to the assistance of the least well off. Such means would not, as is typically the case, involve the taxation of the income of all well off individuals. Rather, assistance would be provided by the taxation of only those well off individuals who have been properly convicted of performing justifiably criminalized acts that they had no right to commit…Read more
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46Can an incompatibilist outfox a compatibilist hedgehog?Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 19 (4): 456-469. 2014.This article raises some incompatibilist challenges for, and queries some of the implications of, Ronald Dworkin’s arguments in his "Justice for Hedgehogs" (2011), that responsibility is compatible with both determinism and epiphenomenalism
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44Liberty, equality, envy, and abstractionIn Justine Burley (ed.), Dworkin and His Critics: With Replies by Dworkin. Philosophers and their Critics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 70-78. 2004.Dworkin's reconciliation of liberty and equality in chapter 3 of 'Sovereign Virtue' presupposes the compossibility of the satisfaction of the envy test and the realization of the principle of abstraction. It is, however, impossible to realize a distribution that is both envy-free and maximally sensitive to plans and preferences. When this conflict between the envy test and the principle of abstraction is brought to light, it will become apparent that Dworkin falls short of a complete reconciliat…Read more
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40RepliesIyyun 55 325-336. 2006.All left-libertarians believe that natural resources should be governed by an egalitarian principle of distribution. In my own case, this belief gains its support from what I take to be the most defensible interpretation of the Lockean principle of justice in acquisition, according to which one may privatize land and other worldly resources in a state of nature so long as one leaves enough and as good for others. Axel Gosseries is right to press the question of the moral status of worldly resour…Read more
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39If One Can’t Lose Such a Right in These Circumstances, One Never Had It in the First PlaceCriminal Law and Philosophy 16 (3): 503-509. 2022.In this article, I press a line of objection to Jonathan Quong's moral status account of liability to defensive harm. The claim on which I rest my critique is captured by the article's title: if one can’t lose such a right in these circumstances, one never had it in the first place.
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35Discussione su "If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?" di G.A. CohenIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 14 (3): 609-634. 2001.Discussion held in April at a Political Studies Association Roundtable in Manchester, England, on G. A. Cohen’s book If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?. --- Michael Otsuka's contribution sub-titled: "Il personale e politico? Il confine tra pubblico e private nella sfera della giustizia distributiva" = "Is the personal political? The boundary between the public and the private in the realm of distributive justice."
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30The moral responsibility account of liability to defensive killingIn Christian Coons & Michael Weber (eds.), The Ethics of Self-Defense, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.Some are blameless for posing a threat to the live of another because they are not morally responsible for being a threat. Others are blameless in spite of their responsibility. On what has come to be known as the "moral responsibility account" of liability to defensive killing, it is such responsibility, rather than blameworthiness, for threatening another that renders one liable to defensive killing. Moreover, one's lack of responsibility for being a threat grounds one's nonliability to defens…Read more
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26Prioritarianism, Population Ethics, and Competing ClaimsIn Jeff McMahan, Tim Campbell, James Goodrich & Ketan Ramakrishnan (eds.), Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit, Oxford University Press. 2022.In his restriction of prioritarianism to cases in which the same people would exist in all the possible outcomes, Parfit stakes out an unstable position, both for himself and more generally. There is no plausible rationale for a prioritarianism that is so restricted, which is consistent with the key features of Parfit’s elaboration and defence of this view and his other commitments. The principles that might be appealed to, in an attempt to justify such a restriction, give rise to a different vi…Read more
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25Owning persons, places, and thingsIn Stephen De Wijze, Matthew H. Kramer & Ian Carter (eds.), Hillel Steiner and the Anatomy of Justice: Themes and Challenges, Routledge. pp. 16--132. 2009.
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24Double effect, triple effect and the trolley problem: squaring the circle in looping casesUtilitas 20 (1): 92-110. 2008.In the Trolley Case (Figure 1), as devised by Philippa Foot and modified by Judith Jarvis Thomson, a runaway trolley (i.e. tram) is headed down a main track and will hit and kill five unless you divert it onto a side track, where it will hit and kill one.
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19How to be a Libertarian without being inegalitarian: English version of ‘Comment être libertarien sans être inégalitaire’Raisons Politiques 23 (3): 9-22. 2006.The aim of this article is to display the main lines of a left-libertarian argument I defend in my book Libertarianism without Inequality. I argue that left-libertarian theory can coherently combine robust rights to self-ownership and egalitarian rights to world-ownership. This allows us to oppose paternalism and consequentialism while defending a strongly egalitarian conception of justice. The model I advocate is one of equality of opportunity for welfare, and I show what justifies this choice.…Read more
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16On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy (edited book)Princeton University Press. 2011.G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here for the first time. In these pieces, Coh…Read more
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11How to Pool Risks Across Generations: The Case for Collective PensionsOxford University Press. 2023.How to Pool Risks across Generations makes the case for the collective provision of pensions, on fair terms of social cooperation. Through the insurance of a mutual association which extends across society and over multiple generations, we share one another's fates by pooling risks across both space and time. Resources are transferred, not simply between different people, but also within the possible future lives of each person: from one's more fortunate to one's less fortunate future selves. Th…Read more
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10Property Theory : Legal and Political Perspectives (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2018.Property, or property rights, remains one of the most central elements in moral, legal, and political thought. It figures centrally in the work of figures as various as Grotius, Locke, Hume, Smith, Hegel and Kant. This collection of essays brings fresh perspective on property theory, from both legal and political theoretical perspectives, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the nature of property. Edited by two of the world's leading theorists of property, James Penner and Michael …Read more
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7Discussione su "If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?" di G.A. CohenIride 14 (34): 609-634. 2001.Discussion held in April at a Political Studies Association Roundtable in Manchester, England, on G. A. Cohen’s book If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000). --- Michael Otsuka's contribution sub-titled: "Il personale e politico? Il confine tra pubblico e private nella sfera della giustizia distributiva" = "Is the personal political? The boundary between the public and the private in the realm of distributive justice."
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6Liberty, Equality, Envy, and AbstractionIn Justine Burley (ed.), Dworkin and His Critics, Blackwell. 2004-01-01.This chapter contains section titled: I II III IV Acknowledgement.
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4The Kantian Argument for ConsequentialismIn Jussi Suikkanen & John Cottingham (eds.), Essays on Derek Parfit's On what matters, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.
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2Il personale è politico? Il confine fra pubblico e privato nella sfera della giustizia distributivaIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 14 (34): 617-623. 2001.
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Appropriating Lockean Appropriation on Behalf of EqualityIn James Penner & Michael Otsuka (eds.), Property Theory: Legal and Political Perspectives, Cambridge University Press. pp. 121-137. 2018.I argue that the Lockean 'enough and as good' proviso provides support for egalitarian as opposed to libertarian or sufficientarian claims over worldly resources. These egalitarian claims apply to contemporary advanced industrial societies with money-based economies as well as primitive agrarian barter economies. But the full 'luck egalitarian' complement of equality of opportunity for welfare cannot be derived from a Lockean approach that focuses on our egalitarian claims to unowned bits of the…Read more