Shopping cartJournal of Moral Philosophy
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Notes on Contributors
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The Evolution of Rawls's Justification of Political Compliance: Part 1 of The Problem of Political Compliance in Rawls's Theories of Justice
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As Rawls's thought evolved from his 1958 article ‘Justice as Fairness’ to the 1996 edition of his book Political Liberalism, his response to the problem of political compliance would seem to have undergone a number of changes. This article critically evaluates the development of Rawls's various explicit or implied arguments that serve to justify compliance to just social arrangements, and concludes that the problem of political compliance remains without any cogent solution within the vast corpus of Rawls's work.
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Rawls's Practical Conception of Justice: Opinion, Tradition and Objectivity in Political Liberalism
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In Political Liberalism, Rawls emphasizes the practical character and aims of his conception of justice. Justice as fairness is to provide the basis of a reasoned, informed and willing political agreement by locating grounds for consensus in the fundamental ideas and values of the political culture. Critics urge, however, that such a politically liberal conception of justice will be designed merely to ensure the stability of political institutions by appealing to the currently-held opinions of actual citizens. In order to evaluate this concern, I suggest, it is necessary to focus on the normative character of Rawls's analysis. Rawls argues that justice as fairness is the conception of justice that citizens of modern democratic cultures should choose in reflective equilibrium, after reflecting fully upon their considered judgments regarding justice. Since judgments in reflective equilibrium are grounded in considered judgment, rather than situated opinions, I argue that the criticism fails.
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A Paradox of Sovereignty in Rousseau's Social Contract
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One unique part of Rousseau's Social Contract is his argument that a just society must have a specific constitutional arrangement of powers centred around what he calls the Sovereign and the Prince. This makes his philosophy different from other contractualists, such as Hobbes and Locke, who think that the principles of good government are compatible with any number of institutional structures. Rousseau's constitutional theory is thus significant in a way that has no parallel in Hobbes or Locke. More to the point, any problems that exist in his constitutional theory will have consequences for his political thought as a whole. This article argues that there is a contradiction at the center of Rousseau's theory of institutions that threatens the cogency of the Social Contract.
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Standards, Advice, and Practical Reason
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Is there a mode of sincere advice in which the standards of the adviser are put aside in favor of the standards of the advisee? I consider two sorts of cases that appear to be such that the adviser is evaluating things from within the advisee's system of standards even though this system conflicts with her own; and I argue that these cases are best interpreted in ways that dissolve this appearance. I then argue that the nature of sincere advice precludes an adviser's putting aside her own system of standards in favor of a competing system of standards. It follows that, contrary to what some have suggested, it cannot be that practical reason judgments– which are concerned with what an agent has reason to do or not to do and which can figure as advice–evaluate actions from within the agent's (as opposed to the judger's) system of standards.
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More on Blameworthiness and Alternative Possibilities
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The derivation of the generally held Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), roughly ‘you are morally responsible only if you could do otherwise’, from an even more generally held moral principle, K (for Kant), that roughly speaking ‘ought implies can’, has recently been the focus of significant debate. In this paper I shall argue that by focusing on PAP interpreted in terms of commissions alone an alternative derivation of PAP interpreted in terms of omissions is being overlooked. The advantage of the new derivation is that it avoids many of the criticisms directed at the original derivation.
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Raz on the Social Dependence of Values
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Book Review: Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Patriotism
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Book Review: One World: The Ethics of Globalization
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Book Review: World Poverty and Human Rights
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Book Review: Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory
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Book Review: Terrorism and International Justice
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Book Review: Ethics and Foreign Intervention
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Book Review: An Introduction to Rights
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Book Review: Dworkin and his Critics
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Book Review: The Practice of Liberal Pluralism
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Book Review: Weighing Lives
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Book Review: Ethics Without Principles
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Book Review: Foucault and the Art of Ethics
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Books Received
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