Andre Santos Campos

Morality can be adaptive or maladaptive. From this fact come polarizing disputes on the meta-ethical status of moral adaptation. The realist tracking account of morality claims that it is possible to track objective moral truths and that these truths correspond to moral rules that are adaptive. In contrast, evolutionary anti-realism rejects the existence of moral objectivity and thus asserts that adaptive moral rules cannot represent objective moral truths, since those truths do not exist. This article develops a novel evolutionary view of natural law to defend the realist tracking account. It argues that we can identify objective moral truths through cultural group selection and that adaptive moral rules are likely to reflect such truths.

The place of the State in Spinoza's ontology has emerged in scholarly literature as one of the most complex issues involving Spinoza's political thought. At issue is whether Spinoza's State is an actual individual with its own conatus . Some consider it a completely real individual, others say that its individuality can only be metaphoric, whilst others point out the conceptual insufficiency of this polarity for explaining the ontological status of political aggregates and try to overcome it through new concepts, such as the multitude, transindividuality, and figuration. In this paper, each of these interpretations is analyzed and dismissed in favour of a new one stating that Spinoza's State is actually a dynamic network of political concepts operating in resemblance of individuality and reflecting the main characteristics of the modern Nation-State.

Traditional institutions are often considered inadequate to govern for the long term as their politicians promote short-term thinking which can harm the future. This book proposes a novel theory of social time perception to address the short-term thinking of traditional institutions which threaten to stifle liberal democracies. The semi-future reconfigures liberal democracies’ franchises, representative instruments, deliberative practices, accountability mechanisms, and policymaking to include in the demos all citizens, regardless of age, and holders of representable objective interests in the future. The result is not only a way to legitimise long-term governance but also to improve the quality of current democracies.

A theory of intergenerational justice consists in the study of the moral and political status of the relations between present and past or future people, more specifically, of the obligations and entitlements they can potentially generate. The challenges that justify talking about responsibilities between generations are myriad. And the disputes they prompt can focus on the past just as much as on the present, even though the fact that the human species has reached a state of technological progress that enables it to have an irredeemable impact on the planet and perhaps even endanger future human existence tends to make concerns about the future more pressing. Debates on intergenerational justice are twofold. The first revolves around the issue of whether claims of justice across generations whose members' lifetimes do not necessarily overlap could be justified. And the second revolves around the specific conception of justice in play, that is, around the nature of the standard that must be applied as well as around the identification of the contents of the duties that present generations supposedly have vis-à-vis past or future generations. This survey article depicts the conceptual and argumentative framework in which these debates are set. It aims to outline certain of the main features shared by the most influential contemporary theories of intergenerational justice, and the problems inherent in them. It concludes by suggesting that, even though the idea of succeeding generations is merely an abstraction, there are specific empirical states of affairs that require different theoretical responses to intergenerational justice.

In the debate between the Historische Rechtschule (Hugo and Savigny) and Hegel about who is legitimately entitled to develop legal theory, the former considered philosophy of law to be inherent to systematic science of law, whereas the latter considered the concept of Law in a necessary transdisciplinary dialectic – there would then be a difference between ‘the jurists’ philosophy of law’ and ‘the philosophers’ philosophy of law’. I will demonstrate that such distinction cannot stand. A ‘jurists’ philosophy of law’ does not exist precisely because legal norms and their application are merely one of the law’s moments. The law’s attitude is one of inclusion: philosophy of law’s disciplinary autonomy occurs in the law’s interdisciplinary immanence

This paper aims at answering some of the objections to the NIP’s criticism of the idea of rights of future persons. Those objections usually adopt different perspectives depending on how they understand differently the nature of the correlativity between rights and duties – some adopt a present-rights-of-future-persons view, others a future-rights-of-future-persons view, others a transitive present-rights-of-present-persons view, and others still an eternalist view of rights and persons. The paper will try to show that only a non-transitive present-rights-of-present-persons view can survive the challenges posed by the notion of correlativity inherent in the NIP, and thus preserve rights language when discussing the future. This view is proved also more suitable for the legal and political realms, where policies and law-making are usually more concerned with present addressees and short term effects.

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 368-389, April 2022. Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants from political agency. One of the suggestions to bypass the epistemic requirement of political agency and to encourage the inclusion of infants in representative democracies is to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be coincidental with their interests. However, this solution is far from desirable, given that it privileges the political agency of parents, guardians and trustees over other adult citizens. This article offers an alternative to this conceptual frame of reference by making a case for the political agency of infants. Firstly, it maintains that political agency can be understood in terms of the several facets involved in political representation. Secondly, it claims that the all-affected principle can be reformulated as an ‘infant-affected-interests principle’ in light of which infants are members of the class of the represented. Thirdly, it explores the ways through which this political agency can occur without having to resort to alternative conceptions of representation. The conclusion ascertains that infant enfranchisement is highly undesirable and that there are more viable forms to promote infant political agency, such as virtual representation, infant-beneficial principles of political action and ombudspersons for infants.

Legal positivism understands natural law as performing classifying connections between morality and law as tests of legal validity: if a norm with some pretence to legality contradicts a moral good, it cannot be called a legal norm. The new natural law school, however, claims that natural law develops qualifying connections between morality and law: tests of legal validity are performed by non-moral criteria such as due enactment or efficacy, and morality determines not what the law is, but rather which law is legally binding and which is legally defective. This article will demonstrate that Aquinas's endorsement of the lexeme lex iniusta non est lex cannot be interpreted in any of these senses. Rather, Aquinas's strong version of natural law indicates clearly that it can indeed be a classifying criterion of positive law, and that it cannot be the only and exclusive criterion of legal validity

There is a gap between Rand 'sethical egoism and today's global capitalism on at least six points. Since her version of " capitalism : the unknown ideal" addresses none of these points, it cannot resemble the reality of today's global capitalism. The connection between Objectivist ethics and politics is preserved by a possible change in her minarchical political philosophy. This will mean that there is no necessary connection between ethical egoism and minarchism or between ethical egoism and minimal government intervention. An ethically hard Objectivism determining the unknown ideal of capitalism leaves room for a politically soft Objectivism.

This paper adopts justificatory moral pluralism – a multilevel framework for justifying the choice by different agents of the most appropriate norms and values to guide their decisions and actions – to climate change. Its main objective is to investigate how ethics may effectively help achieve a better result in deciding how to mitigate, adapt, or compensate by enhancing the moral acceptability of the available policies or actions that are most likely to counter the effects of climate change. JMP presents agents – individuals, nonstate, and state – with a thorough yet flexible process of matching policies and actions with ethical theories, raising the robustness of moral reasons for politically efficient and individually motivating courses of action against climate change. JMP triggers climate responsibility and sensibility in agents, engaging them in discussing and finding out individually and collectively the most acceptable paths for the decarbonisation transition that is fast approaching.

Spinoza studies have paid little attention to the concept of justice for centuries. However, he refers to it quite often in different contexts, especially in his mature texts. More specifically, he defines it as synonymous with suum cuique tribuere, even though he fails to provide a reasonable account of how this traditional legal expression fits into his philosophical system. This article shows that there is a relevant philosophical dimension in Spinoza’s treatment of the suum cuique that emerges out of his notion of equality. The main section identifies the connection between Spinoza’s references on justice as suum cuique and the different conceptions of equality that are inherent in his system (an ontological, a metaphysical, a productive (ethical), a legal, and a political equality). The conclusion tries to answer the question of whether such an understanding of the suum cuique as equality constitutes a theory of justice or not.

Moral reasoning typically informs environmental decision-making by measuring the possible outcomes of policies or actions in light of a preferred ethical theory. This method is subject to many problems. Environmental pragmatism tries to overcome them, but it suffers also from some pitfalls. This paper proposes a new method of environmental pragmatism that avoids the problems of both the traditional method of environmental moral reasoning and of the general versions of environmental pragmatism. We call it ‘justificatory moral pluralism’ – it develops the intuition that normative ethical theories need not be mutually exclusive. This leaves room for important forms of pluralist environmental ethics that do not require a once-and-for-all prior commitment to an ethical theory when deciding about policies or courses of action related to the protection of the environment. Justificatory moral pluralism offers a viable solution to the recurrent conflicts between efficient environmental decisions and the need for moral reasoning.

This paper engages with Suárez’s writings on the origins of political power in order to ascertain whether he can be considered a social contract theorist at all. It focuses on specific details of his consent theory, namely the ‘who’, the ‘what’, the ‘how’ and the ‘what for’ of the agreements that originate government. The conclusion shows that even though his systematic treatment of contracts falls short of becoming a social contract theory in the same way as modern contractualist thinkers, he can still be considered a social contract theorist in the tradition of the School of Salamanca.

Spinoza is among the most pivotal thinkers in the history of philosophy. He has had a deep and enduring influence on a wide range of philosophical subjects, and his work is encountered by all serious students of Western philosophy. His _Ethics_ is one of the seminal works of metaphysical, moral, religious and political thought; his _Theological-Political Treatise_ inaugurated a novel method of biblical exegesis; and both his political works developed the pre-eminence of democracy above all other regimes. Nevertheless, the significance of Spinoza's philosophy is matched by its complexity. His system presents a considerable challenge for the modern student; his language is frequently opaque, while the esoteric themes explored in his work often require elucidation. _Spinoza: Basic Concepts_ intends to overcome most of such difficulties. Each essay in this collection explores a key concept involved in Spinoza’s thinking, relating it to his understanding of philosophy, outlining the arguments and explaining the implications of each concept. Together, the chapters cover the full range of Spinoza’s interdisciplinary system of philosophy.

In representative democracies, the absence of responsiveness by elected officials to the interests of the represented often generates problems of legitimacy, accountability and effectiveness. However, responsiveness also tends to narrow the time horizons of democratic decision-making and promote short-termism. This paper advances the notion that responsiveness to interests involving distant time horizons is possible by reconfiguring the franchise in a time-sensitive and future-oriented way. It is divided into two parts. The first pinpoints a few inconsistencies in the available proposals for making responsiveness and the long term compatible (e.g., promoting youth turnout, narrowing the franchise to robust epistemic fitness, establishing future-oriented institutions). The second advances the creation of temporal electoral circles operating alongside territorial electoral circles in order to prompt responsiveness to multitemporal interests. The conclusion asserts that this kind of franchise design is the best available option for introducing temporal aspects into the character of democratic representation.

This paper develops a future-oriented and person-centred normative argument based on expectancies that is immune to most of the problems identified in the rights of future persons. The argument unfolds in four parts. The first draws on the notion of expectancies present in inheritance law and maintains that it is possible to formulate a rule of prospective beneficiaries that correlates with entitlements and legitimate claims without necessarily acquiring the status of rights. The second extends expectancies to future persons and concludes that the latter can be considered present holders of such currently binding entitlements. The third section raises the question of whether democracies are bound to a principle of fidelity towards expectancies in such a way that outweighs current people’s rights in cases of conflicts. The response does not prove particularly future-beneficial in such cases. However, section four clarifies why expectancies still carry a crucial moral weight in democracies, one that is not sufficiently established by depersonalised forms of future-oriented ethics.

Epistemic impairment has been the decisive yardstick when excluding infants from political agency. One of the suggestions to bypass the epistemic requirement of political agency and to encourage the inclusion of infants in representative democracies is to resort to proxies or surrogates who share or advocate interests which may be coincidental with their interests. However, this solution is far from desirable, given that it privileges the political agency of parents, guardians and trustees over other adult citizens. This article offers an alternative to this conceptual frame of reference by making a case for the political agency of infants. Firstly, it maintains that political agency can be understood in terms of the several facets involved in political representation. Secondly, it claims that the all-affected principle can be reformulated as an ‘infant-affected-interests principle’ in light of which infants are members of the class of the represented. Thirdly, it explores the ways through which this political agency can occur without having to resort to alternative conceptions of representation. The conclusion ascertains that infant enfranchisement is highly undesirable and that there are more viable forms to promote infant political agency, such as virtual representation, infant-beneficial principles of political action and ombudspersons for infants.

A recent trend in futures studies has called for strengthening the inclusion of future generations in constitutional law. This is problematic from a practical and a normative viewpoint. This paper introduces a future-oriented theory of democratic constitutionalism that overcomes originalism (which privileges the past) and living constitutionalism (which privileges the present) without resorting to the explicit constitutional protection of the yet unborn. It is divided into five sections. The first challenges the notion that the constitutional entrenchment of the non-overlapping future is the best means of implementing long time horizons in democratic legal systems. The second maintains that constitutions are substantive normative expressions of the ultimate justification of authority. The third demonstrates that the substantive dimension of constitutions is cross-temporal and includes what I call ‘the objective interests in the future’ of all members of the people. The fourth connects such objective interests with rights to political participation. The final section focuses on the cross-temporal role of constitutional adjudication. Because rights to political participation include objective interests in the future and necessarily hold the status of constitutional rights in any legitimate democratic constitution, constitutional adjudication must guarantee their enforcement over government action.

The political conception makes sense of human rights strictly in light of their role in international human rights practice, more specifically by describing how they justify interventions against states that engage in or fail to prevent human rights violations. This conception is, therefore, normative and fact-dependent. Beyond this, it does not seem to have much to say about the actual nature of international human rights practice. The argument sustained here reinterprets the political conception by resorting to a heuristic device that explains how normativity can be fact-dependent: the Hartian model. The characteristics of H.L.A. Hart’s rule of recognition are useful to determine the characteristics of human rights practice from the viewpoint of the political conception. Also, they help to overcome some of the problems typically faced by the political conception, such as whether there is only one practice or many, whether the notion of human rights becomes too contingent on the way the world is currently organised, how agents can violate content-changing practices, or how reliance on current states of affairs leaves room for criticism of those states of affairs.

This essay argues that legal efficacy understood as existent binding force and as dominance of a system of coercion vis-à-vis competing systems is not strictly a matter of fact, but involves what can be termed justified normativity in a factual context. The argument is divided into four sections. The first three sections describe different dimensions of a normative concept of legal efficacy applied to legal systems: efficacy as persuasiveness, as indirect communication, and as constitutive obedience. The final section focuses on the efficacy of individual norms and adds a new criterion – membership – which establishes a multi-layered test of efficacy.