Mark Tunick

Hegel criticizes revenge (Rache), which he contrasts with justice: revenge provides only subjective satisfaction and leads to destructive cycles of violence, whereas justice is objective, meted out with due process by a rational modern state to vindicate right (Recht). I defend Hegel’s position against two recent criticisms: Shai Lavi argues that revenge can be used positively to overcome a history of victimization and assert a new national identity, pointing to the use of violence by Jews against Nazis after WWII; and Christian Uwe challenges Hegel’s claims that a state has a monopoly of ‘full rationality’ and objectively metes out justice. I argue that Hegel recognizes that a modern state may fail to live up to its ideals and may be imperfectly just, but this does not undermine his view that revenge is not justice and is destructive.

Hegel conceptualizes freedom as ‘being at home’ in the practices and institutions that are one’s ‘ethical substance’. His Rechtsphilosophie also defends both (1) individual rights and a principle of subjectivity which holds that I am not free obeying laws unless I recognize them as valid, and (2) an objective account of right, according to which laws are right for reasons independent of our consenting to them. Hegel’s discussion of criminal accountability crucially rests on all these features in ways not yet fully recognized. For Hegel, punishment is consistent with the criminal’s freedom if they violated the demands of a system of ethical life that constituted their ethical substance. But what if the criminal was raised in a different culture, or was shaped by other factors (such as the natural external forces discussed in Hegel’s Encyclopedia)? And if the criminal is insane, can they be held accountable for the objective consequences of their actions regardless of their subjective intent? In critically analyzing Hegel’s answers I illustrate how the Rechtsphilosophie is a political philosophy to guide practice.

What moral consideration would we owe future AI that had human-level intelligence? I address this question by drawing on philosophy and science fiction. The works of science fiction invite us to form intuitions about how we should treat AI, that can be tested against rational criteria identified by philosophers, but also help us evaluate those criteria. I draw on Mary Anne Warren’s multi-criterial framework that focuses on sentience, personhood status, and relationship value—but in addition, I propose a criterion of “non-replicability”: “bottom-up programmed” entities that are unique due to their distinct, irreplicable experiences are owed special moral consideration. I apply these rational criteria to Robbie from Asimov’s I, Robot, Klara from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, and Ethan from the science fiction television series Extant. I argue that intuitively we give greater moral consideration to Ethan and Klara than Robbie and that this is supported by rational criteria including that of non-replicability. I also address who is owed greater moral consideration between either Klara and Ethan, and a human being, if Klara or Ethan are replicable after all.

Hegel criticizes revenge (Rache), which he contrasts with justice: revenge provides only subjective satisfaction and leads to destructive cycles of violence, whereas justice is objective, meted out with due process by a rational modern state to vindicate right (Recht). I defend Hegel’s position against two recent criticisms: Shai Lavi argues that revenge can be used positively to overcome a history of victimization and assert a new national identity, pointing to the use of violence by Jews against Nazis after WWII; and Christian Uwe challenges Hegel’s claims that a state has a monopoly of ‘full rationality’ and objectively metes out justice. I argue that Hegel recognizes that a modern state may fail to live up to its ideals and may be imperfectly just, but this does not undermine his view that revenge is not justice and is destructive.

In an age of smartphones, Facebook and You Tube, privacy may seem to be a norm of the past. This book addresses ethical and legal questions that arise when media technologies are used to give individuals unwanted attention. Drawing from a broad range of cases within the US, UK, Australia, Europe, and elsewhere, I ask whether privacy interests can ever be weightier than society’s interest in free speech and access to information. Taking a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, and drawing on the work of political theorist Jeremy Waldron concerning toleration, the book argues that we can still have a legitimate interest in controlling the extent to which information about us is disseminated. The book begins by exploring why privacy and free speech are valuable, before developing a framework for weighing these conflicting values. By taking up key cases in the US and Europe, and the debate about a ‘right to be forgotten’, I discuss the potential costs of limiting free speech, and point to legal remedies and other ways to develop new social attitudes to privacy in an age of instant information sharing.

A liberal pluralist state recognizes that its members exercise a variety of religions or hold diverse comprehensive doctrines, and strives for neutrality so that none is favored. Neutrality can come into tension with the demands of individuals to express their religion in public spaces. I focus on a display of a “finals tree,” that many regard as a Christmas tree, on the campus of a public university, a display objected to by a small minority of non-Christian faculty and students who claim it makes them ‘outsiders’ and should be removed. While display of a Christmas tree doesn’t violate the First Amendment because the Court has ruled it is a secular symbol, resolving that legal issue doesn’t resolve the ethical issue of which side should accommodate the other. To address that, I turn to traditional theories of Kant and Mill, who would side with the tree displayers, who are causing no harm and restricting no one else’s liberty. Finding this resolution wanting, I develop a modified version of Jeremy Waldron’s ‘adequacy’ principle, which has us be sensitive to the aims of others when our actions keep them from adequately pursuing their legitimate aims, so long as accommodating them does not keep us from adequately pursuing our own. I depart from Waldron in arguing that in assessing each side’s claims we should sometimes conduct a limited inquiry into the sincerity of one’s religious reasons, and this inquiry would not be incompatible with liberal pluralism’s requirement that we appeal to public reason.

J.S. Mill argues against licensing or forced medical examinations of prostitutes even if these would reduce harm, for two reasons: the state should not legitimize immoral conduct; and coercing prostitutes would violate Mill's harm principle as they do not risk causing non-consensual harm to others, their clients do. There is nothing puzzling about Mill opposing coercive restrictions on self-regarding immoral conduct while also opposing state support of that conduct. But why does Mill oppose restrictions on prostitutes’ liberty if those restrictions could prevent harm to third parties? Mill's position is not puzzling once we recognize that his harm principle is not a harm-prevention principle that warrants restrictions on liberty to prevent harm no matter who caused it (as David Lyons famously argued) but instead warrants restrictions on liberty only of individuals who are the morally relevant cause of that harm. Mill's discussion of prostitution shows he prioritizes both individuality and moral progress over harm reduction.

Mass surveillance involves the collection and storage of vast amounts of information, such as DNA samples from the general population, or location data from cell phones towers, aerial surveillance, and other sources, to then be used when a future crime occurs. For example, DNA from a crime scene could be checked against the database to identify a suspect; location data could identify suspects who were at the scene of a crime. Mass surveillance implicates important privacy interests, but it would surely reduce crime and therefore has been defended by those who reject “privacy at all costs.” I also reject “privacy at all costs.” However, while agreeing that privacy is a value that must be balanced against competing values, I argue that requiring everyone to provide a sample of their DNA or keeping track of everyone’s movements would limit the autonomy of vast numbers of people who there is no reason to suspect will pose a threat, and though such policies would make society safer, that is not worth the cost to individual autonomy. After explaining why individuals can have a substantial interest in privacy even if they are not guilty of a crime, by linking that interest to the value of individual autonomy, and drawing on a political theory of liberal pluralism to restrict what counts as a legitimate public interest that might justify mass surveillance, I articulate a method of balancing these competing interests that is more feasible than a utilitarian approach.

Mill didn't resolve this puzzle: if prostitution must be tolerated according to his principle of liberty as it doesn't non-consensually harm others, why punish the accessory – the pimp? Yet in On Liberty's passage on pimps (CW 18:296–7) Mill seriously considers restricting pimps’ speech for reasons other than preventing harm: pimps’ speech undermines decisional autonomy for purposes the state regards as immoral, and in response the state may use coercion to counteract such immoral influences. In light of this, I argue that we need to rethink the standard view that Mill opposes restrictions on speech that does not harm others.

When mature minors face a decision with important consequences, such as whether to undergo a risky but potentially life-saving medical procedure, who should decide? Relying on liberal political theory’s account of the importance of decisional autonomy for adults, and given the scalar nature of the capacities needed to exercise decisional autonomy, I argue that mature minors with the requisite capacities and commitments have a right to decisional autonomy though they are not yet 18. I argue for this right using a ‘balancing of interest’ account of rights: the interest mature minors have in decisional autonomy outweighs their parents’ interest in shaping their children as a means of ‘creative self-extension’. But I propose two limitations on this right: requests for waivers of the rule that one must be at least 18 to decide cannot be so numerous as to make adjudication impractical; and though a competent adult’s voluntary decision to refuse medical treatment should generally be respected, the state may reject a mature minor’s decision upon review by an indifferent judge of the minor’s capacities and reasons. The judge reviews not the substantive merits or prudence of the decision, but whether the decision promotes the interest in decisional autonomy, by asking among other things whether the decision is the minor’s own, is tethered to core commitments rather than based on arbitrary preferences, and could be regarded as reasonable to the minor’s ‘future self’.

Through a series of texts and phone calls, Michelle Carter encouraged her boyfriend Conrad Roy to act on his suicidal thoughts, and after Roy killed himself, Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The case has received widespread attention, generating reactions ranging from rage at Ms. Carter to disbelief that she was convicted. An issue emphasized up to now is what it might mean for the First Amendment right of free speech if we hold that words can kill. In presenting the case against punishing Ms. Carter, I show how the free speech issue intertwines with several others: Should the intimate exchanges between Carter and Roy have remained private? While privacy is valuable, it should not be a shield for harmful conduct, but did Ms. Carter, through her words, cause harm? If she believed that suicide would relieve Conrad of unbearable suffering, did she even act badly? And should the fact that society judges an individual’s actions to be immoral mean that the individual should be legally punished? The case serves as a touchstone for addressing fundamental issues of political, moral and legal theory with implications broader than whether Ms. Carter goes to prison.

There are many studies of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Philip Kain does not break new ground in Hegel and Right. Nor does he deal with the German scholarship that did, by posing the possibility of an esoteric Hegel belying the exoteric author caving to censorship pressure. Still, he has provided us a worthwhile book that touches on some controversial issues. Kain professes to be a Marxian and social democrat who opposes capital punishment and supports same-sex marriage and, perhaps not coincidentally, his Hegel is open to at least the latter three positions. Some scholars of Hegel may be dismayed that there is little reference to Hegel's Logic, though they should appreciate Kain emphasizing how the Absolute is the...

Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie is metaphysical, to be sure; but it is also political. To help show this I will make sense, and show the plausibility and relevance, of what appears to be one of the most metaphysical (and bizarre) claims to be found in Hegel's political philosophy: his justification of hereditary monarchy. While among Hegel scholars Hegel's theory of constitutional monarchy has been a focus of heated debate over whether Hegel is a liberal or a conservative; and has recently become a focus in the debate over whether Hegel accommodated himself to the Prussian government out of fear of censorship by publishing an exoteric view endorsing hereditary monarchy that belies his �genuine�, more democratic view, to the nonspecialist Hegel's argument will seem to be of little relevance -- hereditary monarchy is not a live option for us in the 1990s. My intention in giving it serious consideration is not to have us entertain hereditary monarchy as an undeservedly neglected possibility, but rather to put the brakes on a tendency to dismiss Hegel as too much the idealist to dirty his hands with politics

Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator”(2006-08) involved NBC staff working with police and a watchdog group called “Perverted Justice” to televise “special intensity” arrests of men who were lured into meeting adult decoys posing as young children, presumably for a sexual encounter. As reality television, “To Catch a Predator” facilitates public shaming of those caught in front of the cameras, which distinguishes it from fictional representations. In one case, a Texas District Attorney, Louis Conradt, shot himself on film, unable to bear the public humiliation of cameras airing his arrest. The show engenders conflicting responses: Did the show fulfill a public service by informing the public about real dangers and deterring potential predators, or was it an insensitive effort to garner ratings by taking advantage of human weaknesses? Is the sort of public shaming it imposes an appropriate form of punishment given the legitimate purposes of punishment? Did the show portray justice, or did it entrap victims? How did NBC’s working relationship with local police bear on the answer to that question? This paper addresses these questions and develops three objections to the show: that NBC in effect metes out unjust punishment; that it invades privacy; and that it entraps.

I argue that Hegel is an immanent critic: he adduces the principles immanent in our practices in order to criticize actual practices when they diverge from these principles. Hegel uses the principle he understands to underlay the practice of legal punishment, retribution, to guide practitioners who must justify why we punish for certain actions; why the state may punish; why we punish this person; why we punish in this way. Each of these problems arises within "subpractices" of the practice--lawmaking, "clutching" of suspects, determination of guilt, sentencing, and infliction of punishment. Hegel guides us by pointing to the purpose of and principle immanent in the practice to which these subpractices belong. ;Hegel's strategy of immanent criticism is promising but problematic, in part because legal punishment is an essentially-contested practice: at least two conflicting principles are immanent in it , so any account that brackets either is inadequate. At times in the practice we must choose between the two principles. I argue that Hegel persuasively shows the costs of ignoring the retributive principle. ;Hegel often is said to give up social criticism, to accommodate himself to existing practices. Others have challenged this claim. By distinguishing two sorts of criticism--immanent and radical--I resolve this dispute: Hegel is an immanent critic; rather than uncritically accept actual practices, he subjects them to the standards he finds immanent in them. But as immanent critic, Hegel seems to presuppose the justice of the practices from which he adduces his standard of criticism--Hegel is a positive justifier who avoids radical criticism. While Hegel's general project is to reconcile us to existing practices, he also leaves open the possibility for radical criticism when our practices are bad root and branch. To establish this I make use of recently published but as of yet untranslated lecture notes of Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie lectures. Some argue Hegel was unable to publish his genuine political views in his Philosophy of Right on account of Prussia's censorship laws, and so the lecture notes are a crucial source of Hegel's political views

The Philosophy of Right is an enormously complex work, and any short treatment of it has to set limits for itself. Harry Brod, in this highly readable and useful new book, chooses to focus only on the last third of the Philosophy of Right, in which Hegel discusses civil society and the state, and also limits his scope by avoiding engagement with much of the relevant secondary literature. This is not to say Brod avoids larger interpretive questions; on the contrary, he focusses on the concrete political institutions in the last third of the Philosophy of Right in order to advance his general thesis that Hegel’s analysis of history, as the development of human beings’ consciousness of their freedom, shapes the philosophic enterprise and structure of the Philosophy of Right. In Brod’s view, Hegel intends to show how the practices and institutions discussed in the Philosophy of Right “engender in the citizens of the Hegelian state an ever-more-conscious awareness of their roles as political agents”. In Hegel’s view, “people and institutions in succeeding historical periods display increasingly greater consciousness of their freedom”. This is due to appropriate political institutions that have developed in history - “for Hegel, subjective freedom follows the institutionalization of objective freedom, not the reverse”. Brod suggests that for Hegel we can judge and criticize our political institutions according to whether they fulfill the principles toward the realization of which history is aiming. These principles - “subjective freedom,” “universality,” and “rationality” - are reflected in the modern consciousness of Hegel’s day, as a result largely of the French Revolution but also of Protestantism. Part of Brod’s thesis is that Hegel insists on drawing on these principles precisely because they contribute to the modern consciousness of Hegel’s own time. There is one other “primary principle of the modern world,” though, one shunned by the Revolutionaries and their liberal theorists of abstract individualism, namely, “being part of the world in which one feels at home”, and Brod repeatedly shows how Hegel invokes this additional “principle” to criticize modern liberal thought. I shall have more to say about these principles later.

Hegel criticizes Kant's categorical imperative and what he takes to be Kant's social contract theory of political obligation, but these criticisms miss the mark, for Kant is not really a consent theorist, nor is his categorical imperative empty. The most distinct break Hegel makes with Kant's philosophy of right is rather his rejection of a theory of natural rights, a theory central to Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. While Hegel offers a theory of natural right in some sense, he does not think individuals have natural rights.

Mill's harm principle declares that one's liberty of action may be interfered with by the state only if one has caused harm to others. Cases of culture clash involve unassimilated subjects, be they citizens, aliens, immigrants or national minorities, who violate the law while engaging in a practice that is a prevalent and legitimate part of their native culture or religion and which they do not regard as harmful. A Millian approach to the punishment of unassimilated subjects is explored by examining Mill's views on whether there is an objective standard of harm and Mill's discussions of free will, moral responsibility and the respect due to native cultures.

Hegel criticizes Kant's categorical imperative and what he takes to be Kant's social contract theory of political obligation, but these criticisms miss the mark, for Kant is not really a consent theorist, nor is his categorical imperative empty. The most distinct break Hegel makes with Kant's philosophy of right is rather his rejection of a theory of natural rights, a theory central to Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. While Hegel offers a theory of natural right in some sense, he does not think individuals have natural rights.

New technologies of surveillance such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are increasingly used as convenient substitutes for conventional means of observation. Recent court decisions hold that the government may, without a warrant, use a GPS to track a vehicle’s movements in public places without violating the 4th Amendment, as the vehicle is in plain view and no reasonable expectation of privacy is violated. This emerging consensus of opinions fails to distinguish the unreasonable expectation that we not be seen in public, from the reasonable expectation that we not be followed. Drawing on a critical discussion of the plain view doctrine, analysis of privacy interests in public places, and distinguishing privacy from property interests, the article contends that government use of GPS to track our movements should require a warrant.

In the Phenomenology Hegel insists there are no presupposed standards of truth: standards are internal. "Consciousness provides its own criterion from within itself, so that the investigation becomes a comparison of consciousness with itself"(PhdG 84). We need only contemplate "the matter in hand as it is in and for itself"(PhdG 84). The Phenomenology is a characterisation of consciousness taking on increasingly adequate forms, testing its own internal standards against experience. The Philosophy of Right is a search for right, not, as in the Phenomenology, for the reality of cognition; but one of the methods Hegel adopts and which helps make sense of the structure of Philosophy of Right is the method he uses in the Phenomenology. This paper offers an alternative, though not necessarily conflicting, interpretation to that given in recent accounts of Philosophy of Right that emphasize its "logical spirit." While the phenomenological account is not necessarily incompatible with these others, it will point to a nonfoundational interpretation of Hegel's phenomenological method that is.

Some critics of Mill understand him to advocate the forced assimilation of people he regards as uncivilized, and to defend toleration and the principle of liberty only for civilized people of the West. Examination of Mill’s social and political writings and practice while serving the British East India Company shows, instead, that Mill is a ‘tolerant imperialist’: Mill defends interference in India to promote the protection of legal rights, respect and toleration for conflicting viewpoints, and a commercial society that can cope with natural threats. He does not think the principle of liberty is waived for the uncivilized, or that the West should forcibly reshape them in its own monistic image. Mill’s tolerant imperialism reflects a tension between liberty and moral development that surfaces also when Mill thinks about the scope of government in civilized societies.

Edmund Burke characterizes the state as consecrated, or sacred. There is a sense in which Hegel, too, consecrates the state: Hegel says the state is based on religion and that to preserve the state, religion “must be carried into it, in buckets and bushels.” This paper discusses the sense in which Hegel’s state is consecrated by juxtaposing his views with Burke’s. Both Burke and Hegel reject the theory of the divine right of kings, while recognizing religion’s ability to connect people to a totality transcending their particular lives. But the similarities nearly end there. Burke sees religion as a tie that binds people and helps create an ethical community, at least in England; for Hegel religion does not have that function in a modern state. Where Burke thinks commitment to religion is a stabilizing influence, Hegel worries that religion can lead to fanaticism and destroy a state. Consequently, where Burke supports an establishment of religion, Hegel thinks church and state must remain separate. Both Burke and Hegel think the state must tolerate the free exercise of different religions, but Burke is unwilling for the state to tolerate atheists, who he regards as outlaws of the human race. But as Hegel sees the function of religion in a modern state as providing an answer to the existential question of how one’s existence has meaning given that it is inevitably extinguished, and if philosophy can also provide an answer to that question, Hegel’s consecrated state could be a home for atheists. The paper draws on, among other works, Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of History, early theological writings, and for Hegel’s views on state-sponsored religious education, the Nürnberg School Addresses and letters to Niethammer.

Thom Brooks criticizes utilitarian and retributive theories of punishment but argues that utilitarian and retributive goals can be incorporated into a coherent and unified theory of punitive restoration, according to which punishment is a means of reintegrating criminals into society and restoring rights. I point to some difficulties with Brooks’ criticisms of retributive and utilitarian theories, and argue that his theory of punitive restoration is not unified or coherent. I argue further that a theory attempting to capture the complex set of rules and behaviors that constitute the practice of legal punishment cannot persuasively be unified and coherent: legitimate features of the practice advance goals and promote values that in some cases conflict.

Retributivists are often thought to give 'deontological' theories of punishment, arguing that we should punish not for the beneficial consequences of doing so such as deterrence or incapacitation, but purely because justice demands it. Kant is often regarded as the paradigmatic retributivist. In some passages Kant does appear to give a deontological theory of punishment. For example, Kant insists that on an island where all the people were to leave the next day, forever dissolving and dispersing the community, the last murderer in jail would have to have his execution carried out before the diaspora--justice demands it. In other passages, however, Kant defends punishment by appealing to its beneficial consequences. For example, after supposing that one man on a life raft pushes the other off to save his own life, Kant says that the former man should not be legally punished "because that punishment would have to be death, and it would be an absurd law that threatened death to one who refuses to die voluntarily in a dangerous situation." In this passage Kant's reasoning is that state laws, by threatening us with sanctions, are intended to prevent us from violating rights--the point of these laws is to deter. A law that imposes a punishment that could not deter is an absurd law. I argue that while Kant rejects consequentialism in thinking about moral actions, he distinguishes law and morality, and in the sphere of law, an action we take is to be justified by appealing to the good it yields. The point of legal punishment is to deter violations of rights and protect us from a state of nature in which no one's freedom is assured. Kant's theory of legal (as opposed to moral) punishment is not deontological. Nevertheless we can characterize his consequentialist theory of legal punishment as retributive in some sense. The paper then considers how the passages about punishment in which Kant invokes consequentialist thinking can be reconciled with other passages where he insists on punishment regardless of the consequences.

In light of technology that may reveal the content of a person’s innermost thoughts, I address the question of whether there is a right to ‘brain privacy’—a right not to have one’s inner thoughts revealed to others–even if exposing these thoughts might be beneficial to society. I draw on a conception of privacy as the ability to control who has access to information about oneself and to an account that connects one’s interest in privacy to one’s interests in autonomy and associated reputational interests, and preserving one’s dignity. Focusing on the controversial case of Gilberto Valle, known as the ‘cannibal cop’, who faced legal punishment and moral reproach for deeply disturbing thoughts of doing violence to women, thoughts he claimed were mere fantasies, I argue that Valle has a right to brain privacy if he has a legitimate privacy interest that is not outweighed by competing societal interests in avoiding harm. Our weighing of competing privacy and societal interests will depend on the magnitude of the privacy interests in autonomy and dignity, and on how reliable the technology used to expose inner thoughts is in predicting future harmful behavior and identifying true threats.