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225Inclusive dignityPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 23 (1): 22-46. 2024.The idea of dignity is pervasive in political discourse. It is central to human rights theory and practice, and it features regularly in conceptions of social justice as well as in the social movements they seek to understand or orient. However, dignity talk has been criticized for leading to problematic exclusion. Critics challenge it for undermining our recognition of the rights of non-human animals and of many human individuals (such as children, the elderly, and people with disabilities). I …Read more
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496Self-esteem and competitionPhilosophy and Social Criticism 49 (6): 711-742. 2023.This paper explores the relations between self-esteem and competition. Self-esteem is a very important good and competition is a widespread phenomenon. They are commonly linked, as people often seek self-esteem through success in competition. Although competition in fact generates valuable consequences and can to some extent foster self-esteem, empirical research suggests that competition has a strong tendency to undermine self-esteem. To be sure, competition is not the source of all problematic…Read more
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46Human Dignity and Social JusticeOxford University Press. 2023.Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is it, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights and social justice? Pablo Gilabert offers a systematic defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of justice. In Human Dignity and Human Rights (OUP 2019), he advanced an account of human dignity for the context of human rights discourse, which co…Read more
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30Defending human dignity and human rightsJournal of Global Ethics 16 (3): 326-342. 2020.I am very grateful to Christian Barry, Michael Blake, Adam Etinson, and Cristina Lafont for their essays on Human Dignity and Human Rights.1 I admire and have learnt from their own philosophical wo...
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14Précis of Human Dignity and Human RightsJournal of Global Ethics 16 (3): 283-287. 2020.ABSTRACT This précis offers a summary of key claims in my book Human Dignity and Human Rights.
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561Perfectionism and DignityEuropean Journal of Philosophy 30 (1): 259-278. 2022.Perfectionism about well-being is, at a minimum, the view that people’s lives go well when, and because they realize their capacities. It is common to link perfectionism with an idea of human essence or nature, to yield the view that what constitutes people’s well-being is the development and exercise of characteristically human capacities. The first part of this paper considers the very serious problems associated with the idea of human nature or essence, and argues that perfectionism would be …Read more
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223The two principles of justice (in justice as fairness)In Jon Mandle and David Reidy (ed.), The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon, Cambridge University Press. pp. 845-850. 2015.
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125Amartya SenIn Jon Mandle and David Reidy (ed.), The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon, Cambridge University Press. pp. 765-767. 2015.
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117Fundamental IdeasIn Jon Mandle and David Reidy (ed.), The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon, Cambridge University Press. pp. 306-307. 2015.
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642Alienation, Freedom, and DignityPhilosophical Topics 48 (2): 51-80. 2020.The topic of alienation has fallen out of fashion in social and political philosophy. It used to be salient, especially in socialist thought and in debates about labor practices in capitalism. Although the lack of identification of people with their working lives—their alienation as workers—remains practically important, normative engagement with it has been set back by at least four objections. They concern the problems of essentialist views, a mishandling of the distinction between the good an…Read more
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385Exploitation, Solidarity, and DignityJournal of Social Philosophy 50 (4): 465-494. 2019.This paper offers a normative exploration of what exploitation is and of what is wrong with it. The focus is on the critical assessment of the exploitation of workers in capitalist societies. Such exploitation is wrongful when it involves a contra-solidaristic use of power to benefit oneself at the expense of others. Wrongful exploitation consists in using your greater power, and sometimes even in making other less powerful than you, in order to get them to benefit you more than they ought to. T…Read more
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140Human Dignity and Human RightsOxford University Press. 2019.Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is human dignity, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights? This book offers a sophisticated and comprehensive defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of human rights. First, it clarifies the network of concepts associated with dignity. Paramount within this network is a core notion of human…Read more
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55Facts, norms, and dignityCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22 (1): 34-54. 2019.
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433A Broad Definition of Agential PowerJournal of Political Power 11 (1): 79-92. 2018.Can we develop a definition of power that is satisfactorily determinate but also enables rather than foreclose important substantive debates about how power relations proceed and should proceed in social and political life? I present a broad definition of agential power that meets these desiderata. On this account, agents have power with respect to a certain outcome (including, inter alia, the shaping of certain social relations) to the extent that they can voluntarily determine whether that out…Read more
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30An intellectual laboratory for the democratic and cosmopolitan leftPhilosophy and Social Criticism 43 (3): 329-330. 2017.
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2245Kantian Dignity and Marxian SocialismKantian Review 22 (4): 553-577. 2017.This paper offers an account of human dignity based on a discussion of Kant's moral and political philosophy and then shows its relevance for articulating and developing in a fresh way some normative dimensions of Marx’s critique of capitalism as involving exploitation, domination, and alienation, and the view of socialism as involving a combination of freedom and solidarity. What is advanced here is not Kant’s own conception of dignity, but an account that partly builds on that conception and p…Read more
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1380Dignity at WorkIn Hugh Collins, Gillian Lester & Virginia Mantouvalou (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Labour Law, Oxford University Press. pp. 68-86. 2018.This paper offers a justification of labor rights based on an interpretation of the idea of human dignity. According to the dignitarian approach, we have reason to organize social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable capacities of human beings that give rise to their dignity. That dignity is a deontic status in virtue of which people are owed certain forms of respect and concern. Dignity at work involves the treatment of people in accordance to the ideal of solidarist…Read more
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2568Human Rights, Human Dignity, and PowerIn Rowan Cruft, Matthew Liao & Massimo Renzo (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Oxford University Press. pp. 196-213. 2015.This paper explores the connections between human rights, human dignity, and power. The idea of human dignity is omnipresent in human rights discourse, but its meaning and point is not always clear. It is standardly used in two ways, to refer to a normative status of persons that makes their treatment in terms of human rights a proper response, and a social condition of persons in which their human rights are fulfilled. This paper pursues three tasks. First, it provides an analysis of the conten…Read more
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150Review of Gillian Brock, Global Justice (review)Philosophy and Social Criticism 38 (3): 333-338. 2012.
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548Comparative Assessments of Justice, Political Feasibility, and Ideal TheoryEthical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (1): 39-56. 2012.What should our theorizing about social justice aim at? Many political philosophers think that a crucial goal is to identify a perfectly just society. Amartya Sen disagrees. In The Idea of Justice, he argues that the proper goal of an inquiry about justice is to undertake comparative assessments of feasible social scenarios in order to identify reforms that involve justice-enhancement, or injustice-reduction, even if the results fall short of perfect justice. Sen calls this the “comparative …Read more
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226Does Global Egalitarianism Provide an Impractical and Unattractive Ideal of Justice?International Affairs 84 (5): 1025-1039. 2008.In his important new book National responsibility and global justice, David Miller presents a systematic challenge to existing theories of global justice. In particular, he argues that cosmopolitan egalitarianism must be rejected. Such views, Miller maintains, would place unacceptable burdens on the most productive political communities, undermine national self-determination, and disincentivize political communities from taking responsibility for their fate. They are also impracticable and quite…Read more
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600Ability and Volitional IncapacityJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 10 (3): 1-8. 2016.The conditional analysis of ability faces familiar counterexamples involving cases of volitional incapacity. An interesting response to the problem of volitional incapacity is to try to explain away the responses elicited by such counterexamples by distinguishing between what we are able to do and what we are able to bring ourselves to do. We argue that this error-theoretic response fails. Either it succeeds in solving the problem of volitional incapacity at the cost of making the conditional an…Read more
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43Solidarity, equality, and freedom in Pettit’s republicanismCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18 (6): 644-651. 2015.This article discusses Pettit’s views of social justice and political legitimacy in On the People’s Terms. Although Pettit’s book presents a powerful account of the ideal of nondomination, this article probes some deficiencies regarding important questions about solidarity, equality, and feasibility.
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1676Global Justice and Poverty Relief in Nonideal CircumstancesSocial Theory and Practice 34 (3): 411-438. 2008.
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377Kant and the Claims of the PoorPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (2): 382-418. 2010.Do we have positive duties to help others in need or are our moral duties only negative, focused on not harming them? If these positive duties exist, are they strong and strict demands or are they weak and discretionary? Can we say that at least some positive duties of assistance are also duties of justice worthy of institutionalization and coercive enforcement by legal institutions? Can the scope of some of such duties be cosmopolitan or should all of them be circumscribed to what we owe to our…Read more
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474This is a revised version of a Licenciatura Thesis (defended at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1997).
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Normative Ethics |
Value Theory |