Julian Culp

This collected volume addresses issues pertaining to education and migration from a variety of philosophical and ethical perspectives. It is high time to critically analyze ethical issues in education under conditions of globalization, not only because migration and globalization are topical issues, but also because dominant academic approaches in the ethics and political philosophy of education have a tendency to narrow their focus on the education of sedentary citizens. However, many learners and educators experience high levels of both voluntary and constrained mobility. The contributions to Education and Migration address issues pertaining to migration-related education from a variety of ethical and philosophical perspectives, including analytic applied ethics, continental philosophy, care ethics, Hegelian philosophy, the capability approach and theories of distributive justice. Distinguished scholars, as well as younger researchers, from a variety of disciplines (educational scholars, lawyers, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists) tackle in these eight essays core issues in the ethics and political philosophy of education, such as citizenship education or justice in access to education, from a perspective that takes human mobilities into account. The collection puts a special emphasis on the diversity of migratory experiences, on the significance of education for citizens and non-citizen migrants, long-term residents and undocumented children, immigrants and return migrants.

The article shows the interlacement of political philosophy and philosophy of education by justifying educational justice as central normative ground for analyzing educational policies as well as by defending a democratic conception of educational justice. In order to ground the importance of the concept of educational justice, the article explains the shortcomings of the alternative – functionalist and liberal perfectionist – normative grounds of educational policy. Then, the article develops a democratic conception of educational justice by first of all criticizing the liberal conception of equal educational opportunity on the ground that it implicitly accepts as valid the socially existing understanding of educational success. Based on this critique the article defends a democratic conception of educational justice that demands the institutionalization of educational practices that prepare students to define themselves as democratic citizens what educational success should mean.

The actual uses of the concept of justice in social and political conflicts refer to a variety of different understandings of justice. These different understandings include fair cooperation, equality of opportunity for welfare and justified coercion. In this paper I will argue, however, that at a more fundamental level the core meaning of social or political justice – its universal grammar, so to speak – is that of justifiable rule. This means that a social or political order can only be deemed just if it is justifiable to those who are subject to that order. The paper will further explain this universal grammar of justice by way of identifying the ways in which it is connected to a justification-based conception of moral respect. In conclusion, the paper will defend this understanding of social or political justice as justifiable rule against the critique that it is parochial or Western-centric.

Due to the economic and social effects of globalization democracy is currently in crisis in many states around the world. This book suggests that solving this crisis requires rethinking democratic education. It argues that educational public policy must cultivate democratic relationships not only within but also across and between states, and that such policy must empower citizens to exercise democratic control in domestic as well as in inter- and transnational politics. Democratic Education in a Globalized World articulates and defends democratic conceptions of global citizenship education and educational justice on the basis of a democratic understanding of global justice. It will be of interest to researchers across the fields of education, political theory, philosophy, development and postcolonial studies.

Lyotard defines being postmodern as an ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’. Such incredulity includes, in particular, skepticism vis-à-vis Enlightenment ideals like autonomy. Motivated by such skepticism, several educational scholars put into question education for autonomy as it is practiced in the formal settings of national school systems. More specifically, they criticize that practices of autonomy education can have certain normalizing and ideological eects that undermine the aim of creating autonomous subjects. This article examines these critiques of education for autonomy and argues that they are best understood as calls for reforming educational practices, and not as outright rejections of education for autonomy. Thus, since the allegedly ‘postmodern’ critiques of autonomy education cannot be plausibly understood as radical ruptures with Enlightenment ideals, the article concludes that these critiques represent (merely) constructive self-critical reflections on what Habermas dubbed the ‘unfinished project of modernity’.

Rising powers are fundamentally shifting the relations of power in the global economic and political landscape. International political theory, however, has so far failed to evaluate this nascent multipolarity. This article fills this lacuna by synthesizing empirical and normative modes of inquiry. It examines the transformation of sovereignty exercised by emerging democracies and focuses especially on the case of Brazil. The paper shows that – in stark contrast to emerging democracies’ foreign policy rhetoric – the ‘softening’ of sovereignty, which means that emerging powers gain as well as lose certain aspects of sovereignty, has become the norm. The paper explores this softening of sovereignty from the perspective of global justice by assessing it on the basis of globalist, statist, and internationalist conceptions of global justice. We find that the emergent multipolarity contributes in various ways to the realization of the distinct socioeconomic and political criteria of these three conceptions of global justice. However, we also point out that the transformation of sovereignty generates particular problems for the realization of all three conceptions.

Power is a key concern of international politics, one that the discipline of International Relations has been carefully examining for decades. Political theorists, by contrast – or at least those working within the analytical tradition – have devoted comparatively little attention to the question of which exercises of power beyond borders are problematic. Instead, they have focused on global material deprivation and have elaborated increasingly sophisticated accounts of which principles should govern the distribution of natural and socio-economic resources across borders. But why should we care so much about the distribution of material resources per se, when news that makes the headlines is all about power?

This special issue deals with anthropogenic climate change, which represents an urgent normative challenge. Carbon emissions that humans produce mainly through their consumption of relatively cheap fossil fuels are causing dangerous climate change, that is, climate change that threatens present and future people’s ability to lead decent lives. While the international community has been acknowledging the existence of dangerous climate trends since 1990 (when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its first report), various initiatives designed to launch a coherent international climate policy have systematically been failing until very recently. The UN climate change conference – which concluded its work in Paris in December 2015 – does, however, give us some grounds for hope. The Paris Agreement, published on December 12th 2015, consists in a global commitment to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius. The pact will become binding once 55 parties who produce over 55% of the world’s greenhouse gases ratify it. The Paris Agreement is the first global pact on climate change to enjoy unanimous consensus, yet doubts about its effectiveness and success conditions remain. Furthermore, to determine the shape that our global climate policies should take, persistent normative disagreements need to be settled. These include, crucially, disagreements on how the burdens and costs of climate change mitigation, as envisaged by the Paris Agreement, should be distributed. After all, how to go about addressing dangerous climate change touches upon several disputed normative questions. And this is where this special issue intervenes. The issue includes contributions from Elizabeth Cripps, Dale Jamieson, Anja Karnein, Darrel Moellendorf, and Henry Shue.

The evidence of laboratory experiments of behavioral economists shows that individuals behave reciprocally. These data put into question the pure self-interest thesis of human motivation of the homo oeconomicus model and call for alternative models. Focusing on the explanation of reciprocal behavior in Trust Games, this article proposes two directions that economists and other social scientists might want to consider in order to establish a more solid foundation for economic theory. First, it presents models that economic theorists developed to explain the laboratory evidence of reciprocal behavior. It highlights that all of these models subscribe to the Humean view that desires are at the source of any human motivation and suggests an alternative Kantian model where reasons have the capacity to motivate human action. Second, it emphasizes that a supplementary examination of the social background conditions would illuminate the analysis of the findings because of the connection between the 'local' and society-wide demands of reciprocity.

In this article I argue that G.A. Cohen is mistaken in his belief that the concept of justice needs to be rescued from constructivist theorists of justice. In doing so, I rely on insights of John Rawls’ later work Political Liberalism and Rainer Forst’s discourse theory of justice. Such critical engagement with Cohen’s critique of constructivism is needed, because Cohen bases his critique of constructivism almost exclusively on Rawls’s arguments and positions in A Theory of Justice. He thus neglects - at least by and large - that Rawls had further developed his constructivist method of justification in his later work Political Liberalism, as well as that Forst’s discourse-theoretical works offer elaborate versions of constructivism. These refined versions of constructivism recognize a plurality of reasonable conceptions of ideal justice and draw an important distinction between moral and political constructivism. Because of these features these advanced constructivist theories are not in need of Cohen’s rescue.

Meyer and Sanklecha's elaborate article1 addresses an issue of practical importance for all of us who are living in highly industrialized countries, and who are formulating or revising our life plans and long-term projects. It examines whether the expectation of people living in highly industrialized countries to be able to continue to emit greenhouse gases at their current average level in the future (Expectation E) is epistemically and politically legitimate, and morally permissible. Such an investigation is directly relevant for any formulation or revision of a life plan or long-term project, since any such plan or project should take into consideration whether it is accessible both from an empirical and from a normative point of view. Thus, as many potential life plans and long-term projects are based upon Expectation E, people living in highly industrialized countries must determine whether Expectation E is realistically achievable and consistent with relevant normative standards. For if Expectation E turned out to be either epistemically illegitimate, politically illegitimate, or morally impermissible, then certainly prima facie people living in highly industrialized countries would have good reason to formulate and revise their life plans and long-term projects in such a way that these would avoid being based upon Expectation E. Therein lies the crucial practical import of Meyer and Sanklecha's article. This comment engages with two aspects of Meyer and Sanklecha's relatively brief discussion of the political legitimacy of Expectation E and leaves aside for the most part their analyses of the epistemic legitimacy and moral permissibility of Expectation E.

Nussbaum’s moral cosmopolitanism informs her capability-based theory of justice, which she uses in order to develop a distinctive model of cosmopolitan democratic education. I characterize Nussbaum’s educational model as a ‘statist model,’ however, because it regards cosmopolitan democratic education as necessary for realizing democratic arrangements at the domestic level. The socio-cultural diversity of virtually every nation, Nussbaum argues, renders it mandatory to educate citizens in a cosmopolitan fashion. Citizens must develop empathy and sympathy towards all co-citizens of their domestic polities and cope effectively with socio-cultural diversity. I criticize Nussbaum’s statist model, because it neglects that due to the ways in which international institutions already constrain national decision-making, citizens will not fully enjoy the human freedom of co-determining the political choices that affect their lives unless international affairs are further democratized. Therefore I suggest extending Nussbaum’s statist model and outline an ‘internationalist model’ of cosmopolitan democratic education.

Global Justice and International Affairs is a helpful collection of papers published in the Journal of Moral Philosophy. The collection is a testament to the Journal of Moral Philosophy’s quality and commitment to publishing work on important topics. The book is divided into four parts and brings together key articles from the journal on sovereignty and self-determination, cosmopolitanism and nationalism, global poverty and international distributive justice, and war and terrorism. On one way of looking at the book – the first and second parts are concerned with which groups of people are the proper subjects of justice and what kinds of rights and duties they have. The third and fourth parts consider what the content is of what we owe to people and how we musttreat the poor and those with whom we are in conflict.

Pluralistic theories of global distributive justice aim at justifying a plurality of principles for various subglobal contexts of distributive justice. Helena de Bres has recently proposed the class of disaggregated pluralistic theories, according to which we should refrain from defending principles that apply to the shared background conditions of such subglobal contexts. This article argues that if one does not justify how these background conditions should be regulated by principles of a just global basic structure, then the realization of the principles that are justified for the subglobal contexts of distributive justice can erode and undermine justice over time. For example, the realization of justice in international trade might undermine climate justice, at least if climate justice requires increasing tariffs but justice in international trade calls for reducing tariffs. Principles of a just global basic structure would have to ensure that such justice-eroding spillover effects from one to another context of justice do not occur. Finally, the article responds critically to de Bres’ objections that an account of a just global basic structure is too idealistic, not action guiding, and superfluous.

Contexts of violent, intractable conflict such as those present in Israel, Nigeria, or Iraq represent times of severe crisis. Reducing the high indices of violence is very urgent, but the attempts of establishing peaceful arrangements in the short- or medium-term usually fail. Peace education, by contrast, is a long-term endeavor to resolve violent, intractable conflicts that aims at affecting moral stances that the conflicting parties take vis-à-vis each other. Unfortunately, however, peace education in times of severe crisis also faces many impediments. These impediments concern the agential, cultural, financial, and legal aspects of educative institutions within context of violent and intractable conflicts. Although these impediments strongly put into question the practice of peace education, this article shows that four reasons nevertheless strongly support this practice. These reasons refer to humanity’s natural goodness, the symbolic importance of peace education, the peace-promoting experiences facilitated through peace education, and peace education’s contribution to overcoming prejudices.

This introduction expounds educational problems that arise from transnational migration. It argues that it is high time to critically analyze normative issues of and in education under conditions of globalization because dominant approaches in normative philosophy of education tend to suffer from both a nationalist bias and a sedentary bias. The contributions to this special issue address normative problems pertaining to migration-related education from a variety of ethical and philosophical perspectives, including analytic applied ethics, continental philosophy, care ethics, Hegelian philosophy, the capability approach and theories of distributive justice. They discuss the education of both citizens and migrants in the receiving society as well as in the country of origin, focusing on ethical issues pertaining to access to education as well as to the content of educational programs.

Rising powers like India and Brazil have recently been gaining considerable economic and political power. This has led to the emergence of a nascent multipolarity in global affairs. Theorists of global distributive justice, however, continue to focus almost exclusively on the responsibility of the established powers for combating global poverty and neglect whether there is a similar responsibility of rising powers. That focus neglects that great shifts have occurred in the distribution of the economically severely poor over the past three decades. According to recent work by Andy Sumner, 74% of those who live in extreme economic poverty resided in middle-income countries in 2008. This paper explores this lacuna and shows that there are several grounds for attributing a similar responsibility to rising powers. These grounds are familiar from discussions of the established powers' responsibility for global distributive injustice in the writings of John Rawls, Peter Singer and Thomas Pogge. They are the capa..

The practice-independent approach to theorizing justice holds that the social practices to which a particular conception of justice is meant to apply are of no importance for the justification of such a conception. In this paper I argue that this approach to theorizing justice is incompatible with the method of reflective equilibrium because the MRE is antithetical to a clean separation between issues of justification and application. In particular I will be maintaining that this incompatibility renders Simon Caney’s cosmopolitan theory of global justice inconsistent, because Caney claims to endorse both a humanity-centered PIA and the MRE.

Axel Honneth’s most recent book, Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, is an ambitious and thought-provoking work of social and political theory. Its main impetus is to provide a Hegelian reading of contemporary Western societies – and thus, so to speak, an actualisation of Hegel’s Philosophy of right. Readers of Honneth’s writings will recognise the hallmark of his previous work. He is committed, more than ever, to a Hegelian lens through which he pursues a methodology that explicitly blends normative argumentation and social theory, a method Honneth refers to as normative reconstruction. Similarly to his approach in The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflict (Honneth, 1996), Honneth (2014: 125) focuses on a single notion – this time it is freedom – through which he develops a theory of justice on the basis of an adaptation of Hegel’s three ‘ethical spheres’ (the family, the market, and the state).