Diana Piroli

Questo articolo sostiene che il cambiamento climatico antropogenico rappresenti una minaccia fondamentale alle condizioni oggettive di giustizia e alla stabilità delle istituzioni politiche future in modo diretto, e solo indirettamente agli individui futuri. Nello spirito della teoria rawlsiana, difende una posizione di sufficientarismo istituzionale intergenerazionale, secondo cui le istituzioni politiche a cui partecipano le generazioni attuali hanno un dovere di giustizia di prevenire future catastrofi politiche attraverso azioni immediate a favore del clima. Le misure volte a garantire le condizioni oggettive di giustizia per le istituzioni future possono avere implicazioni distributive e politiche significative per le democrazie liberali, soprattutto in termini di costi socioeconomici. Pertanto, sosteniamo politiche climatiche che affrontino le disuguaglianze socioeconomiche rafforzando al contempo l’inclusività e l’efficacia delle istituzioni democratiche.

It is widely recognized that urgent and multiple institutional efforts are needed to mitigate anthropogenic climate change in time. This transformation requires not just technological and infrastructural factors but also socio-cultural ones. For the ecological transition to be realistically possible, institutions must be read to rearticulate economic, political, and cultural structures to contain climate change and adapt to a greener and more sustainable society in the coming years. On the one hand, it is undeniable that institutional power must be much more incisively used than before to contain human-induced climate change. But, on the other hand, it needs to be clarified if freedoms might be affected and, in case of a positive answer, how they might be affected. Given the pertinence and urgency of the problem, the paper proposes to explore the conflicts between, on the one hand, the requirement to use institutional power more ambitiously to contain anthropogenic climate change before it reaches its tipping points and, on the other, the commitments from liberal democracies to guarantee the most comprehensive scheme of liberties and freedoms to people, such as the political, economic, and civil one.

Among the so-called “immaterial aspects” of poverty is the shame traditionally attached to this condition. Our paper starts from empirical researches that registered the voice of poor people with regard to this aspect and proceeds to discuss how these experiences can be descriptively categorized and normatively evaluated. A first major distinction between humiliation and shame will be necessary in order to better understand what precisely people experience and under which circumstances. We will then differentiate between different forms of institutional humiliation: being labelled as a poor or as a person who is not capable to fully care for oneself; being disrespected by the very way in which a social policy is implemented; being disrespected by public officials and by other representative of state institutions; being silenced by politicians and bureaucrats when it comes to taking decisions about social policies. We will discuss how shame and shaming relate to these different forms of humiliation and how both shame and humiliation affect one’s self-esteem by eroding what Rawls called the social basis for self-respect. Finally, we will discuss possible strategies for transforming the poor from object of policies into subject of politics. E. Renault, A. Margalit, M. Nussbaum, A. Honneth, M. Fricker and R. Walker will serve as theoretical references in our analyses.

People often perceive the green transition as over-demanding. Some find the associated economic burdens both very high and unfairly shared. Some find unacceptable the use of coercion to prohibit certain unsustainable lifestyles. Using a familiar Rawlsian terminology, this paper articulates the problem into two main questions, one about justice and one about stability. These are, respectively, 1) when do people have sound reasons to say that their scope of freedom is being illegitimately restricted for the sake of green goals, and 2) what reasons do we have to believe that citizens will have a positive attitude towards green values, at least as a default position? In the first two sections, the paper analyzes and assesses some trends of Kant scholarship devoted to these questions. It then suggests (§§ 3 and 4) to look at Kantian themes so far insufficiently mobilized. It concludes by rejecting the common view according to which Kant is helplessly bound to an anthropocentric view of value and by construing his position as a form of moderate ecocentrism (of a special kind). This is achieved through the exploitation of Kant’s account of natural beauty, properly reinterpreted as revealing a universal sense of closeness to nature and “being at home” in it. While probably insufficient to answer fully the question of stability, this form of moderate aesthetic ecocentrism is likely to be the best one can find in Kant.

People often perceive the green transition as over-demanding. Some find the associated economic burdens both very high and unfairly shared. Some find unacceptable the use of coercion to prohibit certain unsustainable life styles. Using a familiar Rawlsian terminology, this paper articulates the problem into two main questions, one about justice and one about stability. These are, respectively: 1) when do people have sound reasons to say that their scope of freedom is being illegitimately restricted for the sake of green goals; 2) what reasons do we have to believe that citizens will have a positive attitude towards green values, at least as a default position? In the first two parts, the paper analyzes and assesses some trends of Kant scholarship devoted to these questions. It then suggests (part 3 and 4) to look at Kantian themes so far insufficiently mobilized. It concludes by rejecting the common view according to which Kant is helplessly bound to an anthropocentric view of value and by construing his position as a form of moderate ecocentrism (of a special kind). This is achieved through the exploitation of Kant’s account of natural beauty, properly reinterpreted as revealing a universal sense of closeness to nature and ‘being at home’ in it. While probably insufficient to answer fully the question of stability, this form of aesthetic moderate ecocentrism is likely to be the best one can find in Kant.

This paper argues that the democratic legitimacy of the Green Transition depends on acknowledging the plurality and conflictual nature of contemporary climate politics in the public sphere. While youth-led movements have revitalized climate justice discourse, emerging forms of dissent—such as No Farmers, No Food, No Future—show that many ordinary citizens are concerned about the heavy interference of political institutions into their daily lives in pursuit of climate targets. Drawing on McKinnon’s political conception of climate justice (Section I) and Habermas’s model of the public sphere (Section II), the paper contends that public reason must be complemented by communicative spaces in which citizens can contest and shape the meaning of a just transition. Incorporating post-Habermasian insights (Section III), it introduces the idea of climate counterpublics to capture the ambivalent yet democratically significant role of alternative voices, from a normative perspective. The paper concludes with institutional strategies for communicating the Green Transition, thereby fostering a more inclusive and legitimate path toward green transformation (Section IV).

The sixth IPCC report states that a proper conception of climate justice that can address the complexity of the phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change as a whole requires considering not only one but rather three dimensions of justice today: redistributive, procedural, and recognition dimensions. In this article, my focus is on exploring the latter dimension, drawing special attention to climate policies addressing cultural-identity issues. In the first section, I illustrate how climate policies can be connected to discriminatory practices against minority cultures and their identities. To do so, I take the struggles of Black movements against environmental racism and the struggles of Indigenous peoples against a colonialist cultural heritage as case studies. In the second section, I look into the most advanced normative model to address the dimension of recognition, its advantages, and how it addresses the so-called ‘institutionalization of cultural patterns’ in climate policies: the Nancy Fraser model. Finally, in the third section, I investigate an aspect that remains open. It concerns the matter of how to use institutional authority to ‘deinstitutionalize’ non-ecological cultural patterns, while respecting pluralism and avoiding falling into the risks of institutional paternalism.

This paper argues that the future of capabilities approach lies on the theoretical development of the democratic political structure. For this purpose, we take into account Martha Nussbaum’s late theoretical works. Firstly, we argue that the capability approach can be divided into two main models: the top down and the bottom up. Nussbaum, for example, endorses a top-down model, which it begins from an abstractive theory of partial justice and then draws the issue of institutional implementation. On the other hand, Amartya Sem advocates the bottom-up model, which starts from the immanent demands of justice from public sphere and then up to normative and abstract questions (like his “idea of justice”). In the second part of this paper, we present Nussbaum’s partial theory of justice, arguing that it is mainly composed by four issues: (a) the elaboration of the list of capabilities, (b) the process of normative evaluation, (c) arguments for stability, (d) the implementation of the model. About this last topic, we argue in the third part that the current theoretical advance of the capabilities approach lies on the issue of the democratic political structure. In other words, the future of capabilities approach depends on the interaction between its own theory and a theory of democracy. Finally, in the last section we provide a re-elaboration of Nussbaum’s threshold level of capabilities (the list) in order to make it more adherent with the democratic political structure.

Não é novidade no ambiente acadêmico as reticências da teórica crítica Nancy Fraser para com a teoria da justiça de John Rawls. Mais especificamente, sua desconfiança é que a justiça rawlsiana não seja capaz de capturar devidamente a complexidade das desigualdades sociais nas sociedades contemporâneas: seja porque sua teoria moral (da justiça) é presumidamente descolada de uma teoria social de fundo; seja porque sua teoria moral (da justiça) é considerada reducionista (ou “monista”). Porém, o espírito do presente artigo não é de aprofundar suas diferenças metodológicas, mas sim colocar as bases para se pensar possíveis “semelhanças de família” entre suas concepções de justiça. Afinal, ambas as formulações se apresentam como abordagens “deontológicas”, ou seja, que priorizam o correto (o justo) sobre o bem. Na primeira seção, retorna-se ao célebre debate redistribuição e reconhecimento, onde Fraser apresenta as novas abordagens liberais – com destaque à de Rawls - como as principais representantes do paradigma redistributivo no cenário contemporâneo. Ao mergulhar nessas passagens, é possível revelar precisamente quais os pontos de concordância e discordância de Fraser para com a teoria deontológica de Rawls. Dando continuidade, na segunda seção é explorado sua principal discordância: o presumido “reducionismo” da teoria da justiça rawlsiana à dimensão redistributiva (econômica), aqui chamada de crítica do reducionismo redistributivo. Se essa objeção procede ou não é objeto da terceira e última seção. Nela, é argumentado que mesmo que as preocupações normativas de Fraser (quanto ao problema do reducionismo) sejam válidas, ainda assim, esse problema não se aplica à teoria rawlsiana. Ao contrário, é argumentado que é possível encontrar “semelhanças de família” entre as concepções de Fraser e Rawls: (a) no seu alicerce e compromisso com o pluralismo, (b) na sua investigação e defesa do status igualitário entre as pessoas e, finalmente, (c) na constatação que o ideal normativo da igualdade democrática entre as pessoas (ou paridade de participação) requer dos arranjos institucionais não somente a redistribuição de recursos e bens econômicos, como também elementos de qualidades diferentes.

The thesis aims to provide an interpretation of John Rawls’ social bases of self-respect from the debate on redistribution and recognition in the current state of the art of theories of justice. The first chapter reenacts the reception of Rawlsian theory in the debate based on three critiques: (a) Iris Young's critique of the allocative-distributive paradigm, (b) Axel Honneth’s critique of the legal-political limitation, (c) Nancy Fraser's critique of the redistributive-reductionism. Far from considering the conception of ‘justice as fairness’ as an insensitive terrain for dealing with matters of recognition, criticisms point out, on the contrary, the attempts of liberal Rawlsian theory to move into these issues, mainly taking the social bases of self-respect into account. However, these criticisms agree that Rawls' theory of justice would fail for several reasons. In the following chapters, each of these criticisms is addressed. The second chapter replies to Young's criticism. Contrary to what the author have supposed, ‘justice as fairness’ is better understood as a relational conception of justice rather than an allocative-distributive one. The third chapter addresses Honneth's criticism. On the one hand, the Critical Theorist is right in stating the limitations of Rawls' theory of justice; however, on the other hand, a deontological theory of justice – like the Rawlsian one – conceives these limitations as a normative advantage rather than as a theoretical flaw. The fourth chapter focuses on Fraser's critique. Likewise in her deontological model, it is argued that ‘justice as fairness’ would also have taken the cultural dimension of justice duly into account as well as, more specifically, status inequalities and cultural conflicts. Given the compatibility between their normative models, in the fifth and last chapter, a return to Fraser's deontological recognition via Rawls is advocated.

O debate fomentado nos anos oitenta entre liberais e “comunitaristas” tende a contrastar radicalmente as concepções teóricas de John Rawls e Charles Taylor, sendo o primeiro o representante principal da vertente liberal e o segundo do “comunitarismo”. Ao contrário do que sustenta essa distinção, neste artigo proponho ir para além dela, a fim de defender que há convergências dos autores no que tange à discussão sobre o pluralismo. Em um primeiro momento, apresento os diagnósticos de Rawls e de Taylor quanto ao fato do pluralismo nas sociedades modernas como uma característica contextual irreversível (I). Em um segundo momento, diante da tensão ética insuperável entre divergentes concepções bem, a saída mais viável caminha para a justiça. Para tanto, desenvolvo a concepção de “justiça política” de Rawls em “O Liberalismo Político” e as publicações mais recentes de Charles Taylor como em “Secularism and Freedom of Conscience”, “A Secular Age” e “Why We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism?”, que parecem sustentar certa “virada liberal-rawlsiana” no pensamento do autor (II). Em um terceiro momento, efetuo uma distinção entre o fato do pluralismo (razoável) e o valor do pluralismo, para finalmente concluir o artigo argumentando que tanto Rawls como Taylor tendem a defender o pluralismo como um valor político para as instituições e não como um valor moral abrangente para os indivíduos.

É amplamente reconhecido que para mitigar a mudança climática antropogênica são necessários urgentes esforços institucionais em várias dimensões: tecnológicos, infraestruturais, mas também socioculturais. Isso significa que, para que haja a transição ecológica para uma sociedade mais verde e sustentável, um conjunto de mudanças estruturais econômicas, políticas e culturais deverão ser rearticuladas nos próximos anos. Por um lado, ao passo que é inegável que, para conter a mudança antropogênica, o uso do poder institucional deve ser usado de modo mais incisivo nas mais diversas esferas que estruturam o social. Por outro lado, não fica evidentemente se as liberdades serão afetadas e, em caso positivo, como elas serão afetadas. Diante da urgência do problema, o artigo propõe normativamente explorar o conflito entre, por um lado, a exigência do uso do poder institucional para conter a mudança climática antropogênica em tempo e, por outro, a garantia pelo mais amplo esquema de liberdades políticas, econômicas e civis nas sociedades democráticas liberais.

O artigo desafia certa interpretação da teoria da justiça rawlsiana que a concebe como um paradigma distributivo-alocativo concentrado na “distribuição de coisas” para pessoas entendidas como “portadoras de coisas”, como objeta Iris Young na sua obra magna. Dada a influência da objeção da filósofa nos debates em teorias da justiça, na primeira seção é reconstruída sua crítica do paradigma distributivo-alocativo dos trabalhos de Rawls. Na segunda seção, com base no artigo divisor de águas de Elisabeth Anderson, é argumentado em que sentido a intuição original de Young acerta no diagnóstico das desventuras dos debates distributivos da época, momento no qual se disputava o sentido do “igualitarismo social” da justiça rawlsiana. Em congruência com o diagnóstico descrito pelas autoras, Rainer Forst condensa suas intuições na célebre distinção das duas “imagens da justiça”: a distributiva-alocativa e a relacional. Ao passo que Forst concorda que no cenário contemporâneo concorre uma imagem da justiça – e do igualitarismo rawlsiano – como uma teoria distributiva-alocativa focada estritamente em distribuir recursos e bens pelas instituições; todavia, Forst argumenta que a justiça rawlsiana melhor se encaixa com a imagem relacional. Para mostrar seus aspectos relacionais, na quarta seção, são reconstruídas três ideias fundamentais de “justiça como equidade”: sociedade, pessoa e sociedade bem-ordenada.