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243The institutional theory of property is that view that property rights are entirely and essentially conventional and are the creatures of states and coercively backed legal systems. In this paper, I argue that, although states and legal systems have a valuable role in defining property rights, the institutional story is not the whole story. Rather, the property rights hat we have reason to recognize as part of justice are partly conventional in character and partly rooted in universal human inter…Read more
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157Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Rousseau and the Social ContractRoutledge. 2003.Rousseau's _Social Contract _is a benchmark in political philosophy and has influenced moral and political thought since its publication. _Rousseau and the Social Contract _introduces and assesses: *Rousseau's life and the background of the _Social Contract _*The ideas and arguments of the _Social Contract _*Rousseau's continuing importance to politics and philosophy _Rousseau and the Social Contract _will be essential reading for all students of philosophy and politics, and anyone coming to Rou…Read more
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137Jean Jacques RousseauStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. forthcoming.Jean-Jacques Rousseau remains an important figure in the history of philosophy, both because of his contributions to political philosophy and moral psychology and because of his influence on later thinkers. Rousseau's own view of philosophy and philosophers was firmly negative, seeing philosophers as the post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, as apologists for various forms of tyranny, and as playing a role in the alienation of the modern individual from humanity's natural impulse to compassio…Read more
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131Political justification, theoretical complexity, and democratic communityEthics 107 (4): 563-583. 1997.
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104Justifications for state authority are typically directed towards the good of those subject to that authority. But, because of their territorial nature, states exercise coercion not only towards insiders but also towards non-members. Such coercion can take the form of denying outsiders the right to enter a territory or to settle in it permanently, as well as various restraints on trade and association. When coercion is directed at insiders, it often comes packaged with various claims about distri…Read more
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96It is often claimed that states enjoy, as a consequence of their sovereign status, the right to control the passage of outsiders through their territory and that they have a discretion to admit or to refuse to admit outsiders, whether those outsiders be tourists, business travelers, would-be economic migrants, or even refugees. Or, to be more exact, such limitations on that right to control are derived from the agreement of states to treaties and conventions, agreement which they could have with…Read more
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89Book Review: Debating the Ethics of Immigration: Is There a Right to Exclude, by Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip ColeDebating the Ethics of Immigration: Is There a Right to Exclude, by WellmanChristopher HeathColePhillip. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 340 pp (review)Political Theory 43 (4): 567-570. 2015.
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78Why Rousseau still mattersThe Philosophers' Magazine 47 (47): 34-42. 2009.It would be a mistake to draw the conclusion that Rousseau believes that we should simply disregard what others think and depend entirely and narcissistically on our own evaluation of ourselves and our merits. Once self-love is loose in the world, it is an inescapable feature of our psychology. It is something that it is difficult to tame, but it has to be done.
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78Do States Have the Right to Exclude Immigrations?Polity. 2018.States claim the right to choose who can come to their country. They put up barriers and expose migrants to deadly journeys. Those who survive are labelled ‘illegal’ and find themselves vulnerable and unrepresented. The international state system advantages the lucky few born in rich countries and locks others into poor and often repressive ones. In this book, Christopher Bertram skilfully weaves a lucid exposition of the debates in political philosophy with original insights to argue that migr…Read more
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76Principles of distributive justice, counterfactuals and historyJournal of Political Philosophy 1 (3). 1993.
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47The Openness-Rights Trade-off in Labour Migration, Claims to Membership, and JusticeEthical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (2): 283-296. 2019.This paper looks at a recent challenge to the liberal inclusivist view that everyone on the state’s territory should have a path to citizenship. Economists have argued that giving immigrants an inferior legal status would persuade wealthy countries to admit more, with beneficial consequences for global justice. Whilst this trade-off might seem appealing from the impersonal perspective of the policymaker it generates incoherence from the perpective of the collective of democratic citizens, since …Read more
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45Property in the moral life of human beingsSocial Philosophy and Policy 30 (1-2): 404-424. 2013.Liberal egalitarian political philosophers have often argued that private property is a legal convention dependent on the state and that complaints about taxation from entitlement theorists are therefore based on a conceptual mistake. But our capacity to grasp and use property concepts seems too embedded in human nature for this to be correct. This essay argues that many standard arguments that property is constitutively a legal convention fail, but that the opposition between conventionalists a…Read more
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44Competing methods of territorial control, migration and justiceCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 17 (1): 129-143. 2014.No abstract
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42Rousseau and GenevaTrans/Form/Ação 38 (s1): 93-110. 2015.RESUMO:Os estudiosos vêm se dividindo acirradamente sobre a relevância da política e da história de Genebra na filosofia política de Rousseau. Eu busco chegar a uma visão coerente do compromisso de Rousseau com Genebra, uma que rejeita tanto a ideia de que ela é simplesmente irrelevante ao núcleo das doutrinas políticas do autor, quanto a que essencialmente lê tudo como uma intervenção na política genebrina. Nenhuma dessas concepções parece correta. De fato, Genebra, como Rousseau a concebeu, é …Read more
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40Rousseau and ethicsIn Roger Crisp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2013.This chapter demonstrates that Rousseau sets out no systematic moral theory of his own but rather a series of theories about other matters which contain remarks and opinions relevant to ethics, beginning with a discussion of his theory of psychological development. It then explores a number of possible answers to the questions: what, according to Rousseau is morality, and why should we be moral? Next, the chapter explains the meaning of Rousseau's natural goodness thesis. It presents two main ac…Read more
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28Self-Effacing HobbesianismProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94. 19934.Christopher Bertram; II*—Self-Effacing Hobbesianism†, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 19–34, https://doi.org/10.
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28Christopher BertramIn Gerald F. Gaus & Fred D'Agostino (eds.), The Routledge companion to social and political philosophy, Routledge. pp. 82. 2013.
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25Justice for People on the Move, by Gillian BrockMind 132 (528): 1167-1175. 2021.Philosophical argument about migration justice, as with any such argument about applied policy, faces difficult methodological choices. On the one hand we can s.
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22Stumbling into Revolution: Analytical Marxism, Rationality and Collective ActionPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 60 277-298. 1998.
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21Why Rousseau still mattersThe Philosophers' Magazine 47 34-42. 2009.It would be a mistake to draw the conclusion that Rousseau believes that we should simply disregard what others think and depend entirely and narcissistically on our own evaluation of ourselves and our merits. Once self-love is loose in the world, it is an inescapable feature of our psychology. It is something that it is difficult to tame, but it has to be done.
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16Democracy and the Representation of the Interests of Temporary Migrant WorkersLaw, Ethics and Philosophy 9 170-179. 2023.
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14An Inadequate Human Rights Regime: On Gillian Brock’s Unjustified OptimismPhilosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche. forthcoming.Download.
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |