Gary Chartier

Many anarchists believe that a stateless society could and should feature laws. It might appear that, in so believing, they are caught in a contradiction. The anarchist objects to the state because its authority does not rest on actual consent, and using force to secure compliance with law in a stateless society seems objectionable for the same reason. Some people in a stateless society will have consented to some laws or law-generating mechanisms and some to others – while some will have consented to none. Someone’s obedience to a legal requirement could be justly enforceable absent the state, nonetheless, given either her actual consent to the requirement or to a mechanism responsible for generating it or the coextensiveness of the legal requirement with a moral requirement. And it could thus be just on the anarchist’s own terms to enforce a narrow range of positive legal requirements even against outlaws who had declined to consent to them

Mark Murphy contends that, whatever the merits of any philosophical argument for anarchism, most people are obligated to obey the law. Murphy defends a moral argument designed to show that most people in reasonably just political communities are obligated to obey the law. And he advances epistemological arguments calculated to support two key claims. First, people who believe they are obligated to obey the law are entitled to retain their belief in the face of anarchist criticism. Second, a credible account of political obligation can accommodate the concerns that drive anarchist arguments in such a way that no anarchist argument against political obligation could, in principle, be successful. I argue that Murphy's moral argument yields relatively limited results, and that his epistemological arguments do not succeed in showing that anarchists could not convict folk-believers in political obligation of unreasonableness

I argue that that the suffering of non-human animals poses some potentially knotty difficulties for process theodicy. To respond satisfactorily to the problem of evil as it involves animals, process theists will, I argue, need either to defend some form of consequentialism or make a number of potentially plausible but certainly contestable empirical claims. I begin this internal critique by explaining the nature of the process response to the problem of evil. I explain how process thought can respond with reasonable effectiveness to the general problem of the suffering of non-human animals while highlighting the special difficulty predation might be thought to pose for the process thinker. Then, I elaborate alternative consequentialist and non-consequentialist process accounts of divine goodness in the face of the harm to non-human animals caused by predation. After summarizing my analyses in the conclusion, I underscore the costs associated with these alternatives.

Gary Chartier elaborates a particular version of economic justice rooted in the natural law tradition, explaining how it is relevant to economic issues and developing natural law accounts of property, work, and economic security. He examines a range of case studies related to ownership, production, distribution, and consumption, using natural law theory as a basis for staking positions on a number of contested issues related to economic life and highlighting the potentially progressive and emancipatory dimension of natural law theory.

In Christianity and the Nation-State, Gary Chartier provocatively offers readers unexpected critical distance from some familiar ways of understanding, justifying, and navigating existing political arrangements. People in multiple societies are posing important questions about the authority and functions of the contemporary nation-state and about potential alternatives to this seemingly inescapable institution. Chartier seeks to develop a distinctive theological response to the conditions prompting these questions. Affirming liberalism and cosmopolitanism, he reflects critically on nationalism, localism, religious establishment, and theological accounts of political authority. He highlights links between sin and state power and underscores deficiencies in democratic rhetoric and theory. He rejects the idea of a global government, advocating a nonterritorial alternative he labels 'radical consociationalism. Moreover, he presents concrete suggestions for life under the rule of the state.

Marriage is ordinarily a public practice, supported by, as well as supportive of, society. But it need not fall within the purview of the state. Public Practice, Private Law articulates a conception of marriage as a morally rich and important institution that ought to be subject to private rather than legislative or judicial ordering. It elaborates a robust understanding of marriage that captures what both different-sex and same-sex couples might see as valuable about their relationships. It explains why sexual ethics won't yield a normative model of marriage, and why the kind of marital love worth wanting, can. It goes on to show how an understanding of marriage as rooted in demanding commitments can allow for divorce before arguing that the state should cease to sponsor marriages. It concludes by suggesting that both state and non-state institutions should acknowledge the marriages of same-sex couples.

This book develops and defends a conception of commitment and explores its limits. Gary Chartier shows how commitment serves to resolve conflicts between ordinary moral intuitions and the reality that the basic aspects of human well-being are incommensurable. He outlines a variety of overlapping and mutually reinforcing rationales for making commitments, explores the relationship between commitment and vocation and the relevance of commitment to love, and notes some reasons why it might make sense to disregard one’s commitments. The Logic of Commitment will appeal to ethicists interested in the connection between commitment and personal well-being, and to anyone who wonders why and when it might make sense to make or keep commitments.

This book develops an account of freedom of expression rooted in a broader understanding of human flourishing. It is intended to highlight reasons for not only political institutions but also noncoercive social institutions—employers, churches, clubs—to value and safeguard expressive freedom. It emphasizes a set of overlapping and mutually reinforcing considerations supportive of this kind of freedom, including property rights, class-analytic and public-choice-theoretic understandings of state and institutional decision-making, the limits on the capacity of expressive activity to injure or cause injury, the independent importance of autonomy, and the various ways in which expressive freedom can foster insight, discovery, and various other aspects of flourishing. It stresses the importance of a social ecosystem as the necessary precondition for many of the benefits yielded by freedom of expression.

This collection seeks to excavate the tradition of radical liberal class analysis, which predated and inspired Marx's reflections on class. Liberal class theory is distinctive because it regards relationship with the state as constitutive rather than just indicative of social class membership. Along with an introduction that frames the discussion historically and conceptually, Social Class and State Power provides readers with easy access to provocative texts from the early modern period to the present

This book elaborates, illuminates, and illustrates a confident and attractive account of social and political liberalism in light of a rich understanding of flourishing and fulfilment rooted in a version of natural law theory. Examining issues in ethics, law, and politics - including consumer responsibility, the assignment of grades by teachers, deception by lawyers, war and empire, and the use of victim-impact statements in parole decisions - Gary Chartier shows how natural law theory can effectively support pluralism, diversity, social equality, integrity, peace, and freedom.

Is it true that all we need is love? Does love capture the essence of Christian ethics? Does a love-centered ethic need to be impartial in a way that leaves no room at ground-level for relationships and projects? What is the place of well-being in an ethic of love? Loving Creation: The Task of Moral Life seeks to answer these questions by showing how a love-ethic and an ethic of creation are not at odds but rather reinforce each other. Gary Chartier articulates a love-centered creation ethic--or a creation-centered love-ethic--and applies it to such issues as sex, economic life, love for enemies, and political order. In the book, Chartier offers a powerful alternative both to natural-law theories that seem to lose sight of the welfare of actual people and to the accounts of Christian love that embrace an alienating impartiality. He develops an understanding of Christian love as focused on creation that can contribute effectively to enriching both social practices and personal lives. Loving Creation is unabashedly theological. But the theological considerations it adduces are ones that will allow Christians to engage in the public sphere with adherents of other religious traditions and of none. It is a contribution not only to theological understanding but also to personal moral reflection, to church practice, and to Christian participation in public life.