Steinar Bøyum

In this chapter, the relationship between inheritance and equality of opportunity is examined within the context of the increasing socioeconomic inequality in recent years. While equality of opportunity is often cited as a justification for inheritance taxation, the relationship between inheritance and equality of opportunity is quite complex, depending both on how equality of opportunity is interpreted and how it is integrated with other normative ideals. The chapter begins by outlining the main versions of equality of opportunity and then turns its attention to John Rawls’ notion of fair equality of opportunity. This allows for a discussion of the tension between equality of opportunity and family autonomy, a central topic in debates on inheritance taxation. Next, the chapter examines Anne L. Alstott’s resource egalitarian treatment of inheritance taxation and her views on the implications for inheritance taxation of a single-minded focus on equality of opportunity. Finally, the chapter outlines Thomas Piketty’s recent proposal for a broader institutional scheme. Piketty’s work is here viewed as developing Rawlsian ideas, emphasizing how equality of opportunity must be integrated with other normative ideals and inheritance taxation with other forms of taxation.

Inherited wealth will be of increasing importance in years to come. Yet inheritance taxation is unpopular, and part of this unpopularity is due to family concerns. Such taxation is seen by many as morally problematic because it is taken to violate important family values. In this article, we explore five family arguments against inheritance taxation: firstly, whether we have a right to benefit our children; secondly, whether it is a virtue to benefit one's children; thirdly, whether children have a right to their parent's belongings, due to common ownership; fourthly, whether inheritance taxation may impair a vital sense of continuity and belonging; and lastly, an argument from incentives that appeals specifically to the relation between parents and children. We conclude that none of the arguments provide strong objections against a moderate or even a high inheritance tax rate, at least not when special provisions are made for things like family houses or farms. However, since the arguments all introduce concerns that should be assigned some weight, it would be unjust to abolish inheritance entirely.

I argue that democratic citizens have a duty to educate themselves politically. My argument proceeds in two stages. First, I establish a case for the moral importance of individual competence for voting, but also maintain that the substantial content of the required competence must remain open. I do this by way of an assessment of Jason Brennan's provocative defense of epistocracy. I try to show that there is no notion of political competence that can meet with reasonable agreement among citizens and that voter qualification exams are therefore illegitimate. Second, I maintain that the basic premise of Brennan's argument, the right to a competent electorate, is valid and that it corresponds to an individual duty to educate oneself politically. This duty is, in Kant's terminology, a wide and imperfect duty that we owe to our fellow democratic citizens. Yet since the content of competence must be left open, this moral duty cannot be transformed into a legal obligation.

John Rawls is often seen as the archetypal abstract Theoretician within political philosophy. Some will also find his theory utopian and rationalist, in the negative sense. In this paper, though, the aim is to demonstrate that Rawls’ political philosophy is deeply practical. This is done by an interpretation of three different elements in his thought: Philosophical method, the original position, and publicity. The interpretations of Richard Rorty and Burton Dreben are criticized, whereas the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Pierre Hadot, and Stanley Cavell are used to clarify Rawls’ project.

In the present essay, I aim to accentuate an analogy between the patterns of thought articulated by Berkeley's Hylas and those of Nagel in his philosophy of bats and aliens. The comparison has a critical purpose, with Philonous playing a role similar to that of Wittgenstein. I argue that Nagel's central claim comes down to statements that are marked by a peculiar form of emptiness. Towards the end, though, I will concede that this kind of Wittgensteinian criticism runs up against certain limits. The fantasies produced by Hylas or Nagel have as counterparts genuine philosophical expressions of experience, which are not vulnerable to the charges levelled at their theoretical parallels.

This essay examines the political-philosophical legitimacy of critical thinking as an aim of compulsory education. Although critical thinking is given an important role in Norwegian educational policy, the right to demand a critical attitude from all citizens has been extensively debated in political and pedagogical philosophy the last two decades. This debate stems in large part from the late work of John Rawls. In this essay, I start by stating the case for critical thinking as an educational aim, focusing on democratic education. Next, I give an account of the challenge that Rawls’ later philosophy puts to education for critical thinking. Finally, I discuss some possible ways of responding to the Rawls. The upshot will be that some aspects of critical thinking can and must be defended as politically legitimate. However, any such defence must include a reply to the Rawlsian argument – if not, it will simply be naïve. In that sense, much Norwegian educational policy has been naïve.

In the present essay, I attempt to develop a distinction between moral and political theories of education, inspired by the work of Amy Gutmann. The main idea is that whereas a moral theory of education gives an account of an ideal (or at least good) education, a political theory gives an account of how to structure education in a democracy where there is deep disagreement on what constitutes an ideal (or good) education. Unfortunately, we sometimes speak as though our moral theories can be unproblematically translated into the political realm, but in doing so, we are either being outright undemocratic or we underestimate the significance of the world-view pluralism in modern, liberal democracies. In order for a political theory of education to be democratically acceptable, it must fulfill the criterion of being capable of democratic translation into a society characterized by deep pluralism.

We usually think of philosophy as the production of theories and arguments. Yet there are other sides to philosophy, the recognition of which is necessary to understand its wider personal and cultural significance. Some of these sides are seldom acknowledged as philosophical at all, perhaps because literature has appropriated what professional philosophy unfortunately has lost. One philosophical activity often overlooked is the construction of philosophical allegories: to describe one's life in explicit philosophical terms or philosophically suggestive ways. Reading life allegorically is to recognize philosophy in what seems merely details of the whole picture and to develop a sense for how philosophical constellations are mirrored in one's life, no matter how ordinary that life may seem. As a theoretical position skepticism is sometimes stated by saying that we are in a prison from which we cannot escape. What if one had actually been in some kind of prison, say, a home or a university, and then described that episode so that the skeptical picture is revealed in the description? That would be what I call an autobiographical philosophical allegory: a part of one's life is sublimated into a picture of the human condition. To attain as much, the episode need not be imbued with philosophical significance at the time—it may have felt utterly ordinary or utterly private. Yet the telling of it can make it extraordinary and promote it into a philosophical piece. In the following, I shall elucidate the concept of philosophical allegory through a reading of some episodes in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's autobiographical works.

Wittgenstein often refers to matters of learning, and there have been efforts to extract a social conception of learning from his writings. In the first half of this article, I look at three such efforts, those of Meredith Williams, Christopher Winch, and David Bakhurst, and I say why I think these efforts fail. As I go on to argue, though, there is a fairly trivial sense in which learning is a social rather than a psychological phenomenon: ordinarily, there are public criteria for whether someone has learned something. Yet, in the second half of the article, I point to an exception to this general rule. Taking a cue from Wittgenstein, I call this ‘intransitive learning’, as it refers to learning experiences where we cannot say what we have learned or where there simply isn't anything in particular that we have learned. This is a use that is not easily accommodated by received definitions of learning. It also represents a genuinely psychological use of the word ‘learn’. In contrast to ordinary cases of learning, claims about intransitive learning function like expressions and are marked by first-person authority.