This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Liberalism and Communitarianism: An Abstract Debate Multiculturalism/Identity Politics: Non‐Neutrality and Structural Injustice Liberal Individuals and Their Identities Liberal Rules and Structural Injustices: Rules‐and‐Exemptions Liberal Toleration and Structural Injustice: Equality as Recognition Structural Injustice and Jurisdictional Authority Conclusion Notes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toleration and Justice in the Laozi:Engaging with Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early ChinaAi Yuan (bio)IntroductionThis review article engages with Tao Jiang's ground-breaking monograph on the Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China with particular focus on the articulation of toleration and justice in the Laozi (otherwise called the Daodejing).1 Jiang discusses a naturalistic turn and the re-alignment of values in the Laozi, resulting in (...) a naturalization of justice (impartiality) by rejecting artificial humaneness and rigid hierarchical moral-political structures. In this Laozian just world, there is no room for human intervention and rigid top-down enforcement of values, thus leaving justice to naturalized Heaven or Dao as the ultimate source of the cosmos.Based on Jiang's interpretative context, I show that there is a twofold justification for the "paradoxical" and "elusive"2 value of political toleration.3 A negative expression of toleration focuses on non-interference with choices, and non-enforcement of values toward those whom one reasonably disagrees with and regards as morally wrong. Such an attitude of toleration results in practical advantages such as avoiding entrenchment in bloodshed, abandonment, and deprivation.A positive expression of toleration operating in the Laozian ideal world requires equal protection of people as capable knowers, including those to whom we object. Such protection includes their ways of expression and an unbiased recognition of them as equally capable knowers so that they are heard without bias and prejudice. Such a kind of toleration is revealed as a constituent component of justice since it enables equal contribution toward the shaping of society without discrimination. In other words, toleration is seen as naturalized justice in a Laozian world within which no one is "being wronged with the capacity as a knower"—a kind of epistemic justice articulated by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007).4 [End Page 466]This article discusses how Jiang's political reconstruction of Laozian philosophy contains the seeds for a discussion of toleration, a value associated with distributive justice and against epistemic injustice. First, it introduces Jiang's arguments on a naturalization of justice and impartiality as Heavenly attributes in the Laozi. Second, it articulates the value of tolerance in the Laozi. Finally, I compare Laozian toleration with Confucian toleration using youwei- wuwei metaethical criticism.Moral-Political Philosophy in the LaoziJiang's interpretative framework about the origins of distributive justice in the Laozi starts with a discussion of the cosmogonic-mystical worldviews that signal "a new understanding of the nature of the cosmos, as well as a broad reorientation in the Heaven-human relationship in the mid-Warring States period" (p. 192). Differing from the interests in the origins of human culture or civilization in the Ru and Mo traditions, Jiang agrees with Franklin Perkins and identifies a "cosmogonic turn" in the late fourth century b.c. that reveals a demotion of anthropomorphic Heaven. By paring Heaven with earth and accordingly decentering human beings in the intellectual discourse, the Laozi directs equal values to the ten thousand things, with humans as just one among them (Perkins 2016, quoted in Jiang 2021, p. 196).5 Laozi's philosophy thus stands out by rejecting Heaven as caring for human affairs while taking Dao as the ultimate origin of the cosmos, as claimed in chapter 5 of the received text: "Heaven and earth are not humane; they treat ten-thousand things in the world as straw dogs; the sage is not humane; he treats people as straw dogs" (p. 199).With Jiang's reading of a naturalistic heaven, we see a re-alignment between cosmos and the human since sage-rulers follow the Heaven-Dao. The Laozian Dao is "self-so-ing" (ziran 自然), "accommodating" (rong 容), and "impartial" (gong 公), and thus marks a sharp contrast to Confucian familial bias resulting in "actively intervening in human affairs on behalf of the (certain) humans by appointing them to carry out its mission" (p. 200). With the sage emulating the ultimate Dao, the Laozi replaces the Confucian anthropocentric Heaven, which focuses on partiality (qin 親) and humaneness (ren 仁).This Laozian understanding of the cosmos also grounds its philosophical departure from Mohism despite both having a political... (shrink)

In this 2002 book, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti examines the most intractable problems which toleration encounters and argues that what is really at stake is not religious or moral disagreement but the unequal status of different social groups. Liberal theories of toleration fail to grasp this and consequently come up with normative solutions that are inadequate when confronted with controversial cases. Galeotti proposes, as an alternative, toleration as recognition, which addresses the problem of according equal respect (...) to groups as well as equal liberty to individuals. She offers an interpretation that is both a revision and an expansion of liberal theory, in which toleration constitutes an important component not only of a theory of justice, but also of the politics of identity. Her study will appeal to a wide range of readers in political philosophy, political theory, and law. (shrink)

The author asks: Is there a case for redefining toleration as the recognition of excluded identities? He is inclined to answer no. Liberal democratic states, should of course recognise disfavoured groups by registering the normality of their members and the justice of their claims but must resist recognition in any stronger sense. Appropriate recognition consists in confronting the live contemporary issues of exclusion and of ethnic and national injustice by compensatory policies and constitutional innovations.

In this 2002 book, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti examines the most intractable problems which toleration encounters and argues that what is really at stake is not religious or moral disagreement but the unequal status of different social groups. Liberal theories of toleration fail to grasp this and consequently come up with normative solutions that are inadequate when confronted with controversial cases. Galeotti proposes, as an alternative, toleration as recognition, which addresses the problem of according equal respect (...) to groups as well as equal liberty to individuals. She offers an interpretation that is both a revision and an expansion of liberal theory, in which toleration constitutes an important component not only of a theory of justice, but also of the politics of identity. Her study will appeal to a wide range of readers in political philosophy, political theory, and law. (shrink)

Toleration and respect are often thought of as compatible, and indeed complementary, liberal democratic ideals. However, it has sometimes been said that toleration is disrespectful, because it necessarily involves a negative evaluation of the object of toleration. This article shows how toleration and respect are compatible as long as ‘ respect ’ is taken to mean recognition respect, as opposed to appraisal respect. But it also argues that recognition respect itself rules out certain (...) kinds of evaluation of persons, and with these, certain bases for toleration : if recognition respect is really distinct from appraisal respect, and if the fundamental rights assigned to people on the basis of recognition respect are to be equal rights, then recognition respect must itself involve a refusal to evaluate certain basic agential capacities of persons when deliberating about how to treat them. Even where ‘ respect ’ means recognition respect, then, there is some truth both in the thesis that toleration and respect are compatible, and in the thesis that they are incompatible. The different truths in these two theses help to shed light on the nature of toleration considered specifically as a liberal democratic virtue. This point can be illustrated by showing how the foregoing analysis provides a plausible solution to the so-called ‘paradox of the tolerant racist’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Globalization: The Quest for AlternativesAmy LevadCatholic Social Teaching and Economic Globalization: The Quest for Alternatives John Sniegocki Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2009. 335 pp. $37.00.John Sniegocki’s dense volume argues for rethinking development policies in light of widespread poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation that have resulted from these policies over the last century. This argument does not mark Sniegocki’s text as particularly original. (...) However, the dialogue that he constructs between Catholic social teaching (CST) and three schools of thought on development, which he describes as “neoconservative,” “radical,” and “grassroots” views, provides a compelling argument for new directions for both CST and economic globalization.Sniegocki’s book begins with three chapters that provide an overview of development theory (beginning with calls for “modernization” of the “Third World” beginning in the 1950s), examine failures of this theory in practice, and discuss the growth of CST concerning development. While these chapters provide important groundwork for understanding the context of Sniegocki’s argument, the heart of the argument comes in the fourth chapter, where he places CST in dialogue with neoconservative and radical approaches to development (represented, respectively, by Michael Novak [End Page 209] and Mary Hobgood). Neoconservatism is clearly incompatible with CST, as any denial of structural inequality or whole-hearted embrace of capitalism— even “democratic capitalism”—would be. However, radical approaches maintain that CST does not sever itself completely from the economic liberalism that underlies neoconservatism. As a result, even when CST recognizes the pitfalls of capitalism and the realities of structural injustice, it still often resorts to liberal assumptions. Radicals maintain that if CST were more consistent, it would more adamantly call for social struggle resulting in “democratic socialism.”Sniegocki finds resources for CST in radicalism but also introduces a third perspective from grassroots critics of development, exemplified by Vandana Shiva. These critics question whether “development equals Westernization via industrialization” (242, quoting Herb Addo), as maintained by both neoconservatives and radicals; they instead call for revitalization of local economies and traditional cultures. Sniegocki concludes that this vision could enhance CST in several ways: resolving the tension in CST between modernization and respect for local cultures, improving its framework for understanding ecological issues, encouraging recognition of grassroots action and social struggle for change, and attending to the role of women in economic and social processes. In the two concluding chapters, Sniegocki proposes that radical and grassroots perspectives together provide a basis for critiquing neoconservatism and improving CST.At least two issues deserve more attention in Sniegocki’s text. First, the principle of subsidiarity, “which asserts that issues should be dealt with at the most decentralized level appropriate to the issue at hand” (121), would seem to offer a strong grounding in CST for many grassroots arguments, yet Sniegocki gives this principle little attention. Second, Sniegocki criticizes the decision-making practices within many international development organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), for suppressing democratic participation. In many ways, this critique could also be leveled against the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Could deficiencies of CST concerning development be an outgrowth of the decision-making practices of the hierarchy, just as problems with IMF, WB, and WTO policies are an outgrowth of their decision-making practices? Sniegocki seems to recognize this possibility in a single sentence: “The resurgence within the Catholic Church in recent years of more top-down, centralized, and secretive ecclesiastical practices, while the church at the same time recommends to the broader world the importance of grassroots participation, dialogue, and human rights, makes ongoing attention to these issues especially urgent” (331). Although this sentence touches on an important question, Sniegocki leaves it here. It seems that addressing this question, however, may be crucial for [End Page 210] bringing about the enhancement of CST by radical and grassroots views that Sniegocki envisions.Amy LevadUniversity of St. Thomas St. Paul, MinnesotaCopyright © 2012 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

A Theory of Freedom and Government has provided a systematic basis for republican theory in the idea of freedom as non-domination. Can a pure republican view, which confines itself to the normative resources thus afforded, adequately address the full range of issues of social justice? This article argues that while there are many sorts of structural injustice with which a pure republican view can well cope, unfair disparities in political influence, of the kind that Rawls labeled failures of (...) the ‘fair value’ of the equal political liberties, cannot be well addressed by a pure republican view. In arguing the point, the article assesses the reach not only of the core ideal of freedom as non-domination itself, but also of three further layers in Pettit’s republican theory: its suggestion that domination is to be minimized, its account of a set of institutions needed to restrict domination, and its requirement that, to prevent governments from having the power to act arbitrarily and so to dominate, they be made responsive to the common good. Some of these further conceptual resources are shown to be of no help in addressing unfair disparities in political influence, while the ones that are promising are so only because they rely on distinctively liberal ideals, and so depart from a pure republican basis. Key Words: republicanism • liberalism • justice • common good • non-domination • fair value • Philip Pettit • John Rawls. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation by Cynthia Moe-LobedaKiara A. JorgensonReview of Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation CYNTHIA MOE-LOBEDA Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. 309 pp. $22.00The factors that have contributed to today’s perilous global economy and ecology originate in structures that predate recent implosions of international banks or measurements of rising climates. These structures—systemic and social while also personal—are the focus of Moe-Lobeda’s (...) work, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation. Convinced that sin and violence is “uncreating” the beauty of God’s interdependent community and can only be countered and alleviated by a moral vision structured around “justice-seeking love,” Moe-Lobeda provides a compelling theological critique and reconstruction of the Christian concept of love by way of a fresh retrieval of the classical Christian doctrine of vocation.The book’s argument consists of a tapestry of sobering statistics, theological analysis, and narrative prose. Early on Moe-Lobeda takes great care to explain how the moral crises of today relate to the embedded social structures of yesterday. Here her attention to the globalization of economies and subsequent ecological injustice is particularly helpful since few contemporary texts make explicit this critical connection. In a chapter titled “Countering Moral Oblivion” she also devotes attention to why seemingly good people, particularly good Christians, passively and ignorantly participate in systems of oppressive power. This portion of her book, coupled with her discussion of how Christian theology can be a resource of hope, is empowering and particularly attentive to the role of biblical theology in the ecological conversation. Unlike many other theoretical books on the topic, Moe-Lobeda’s book can be appropriated as a tool for lifestyle appraisal useful to the academician, pastor, and lay reader alike. Indeed, Moe-Lobeda can evoke discomfort with her compelling vision and challenging call for a change in our current practices.Pivoting her argument on the promise of hope, the second half of Resisting Structural Evil discusses what can and must be realized. And it is here that Moe-Lobeda’s voice makes a contribution not only to Christian ecological ethics but also to Christian social ethics at large. Vocation, she argues, encompasses more than what traditional renderings of vocare have sought to connote. The human call to life is a call to love in compassion and justice both the neighbor [End Page 208] and the self, and must be made manifest in the public sphere. What is more, one must fulfill one’s vocation not only for the sake of the human other but also for the benefit of the oikos (household) present within all economic and ecological communities. To this end, Moe-Lobeda’s attention to love as vocation uniquely characterizes her approach to ecological ethics, thereby transcending traditional deontolological or teleological classifications. Unique within Protestant work on ecological ethics, Resisting Structural Evil provides a fresh depiction of character ethics wherein the pursuit of moral aptitude is fundamentally rooted in biotic community.This very strength may also foster some critique since Moe-Lobeda’s schema is so thoroughly corporate in scope that it affords little time and attention to what some virtue and character ethicists would call the inward journey. Yet Moe-Lobeda, aligned with the liberal and feminist traditions from which she hails, views love and power as inseparable. “What is needed,” she argues, “is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic” (169). Hence, on a very fundamental level Resisting Structural Evil is a book arguing for a radically new paradigm, one where the enormity of today’s crises is met with an equally comprehensive dose of transformative loving power.Kiara A. JorgensonLuther SeminaryCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Drawing on Courtney Jung’s structural theory of obligation, this article proposes a novel interpretation of the relationship between liberal democratic justice and identity politics. This interpretation, in turn, justifies an anti-racist curriculum in the context of liberal democratic education. According to Jung’s theory, the liberal state has an obligation to improve the status of oppressed identity groups in society in so far as the state itself has participated in the formation of their identities through historical and (...) continuing structural injustices. Based on this theory, the article argues that anti-racist education should be understood as receiving its justification not from the recognition of particularistic identities as such, but from the state’s obligation to compensate for the structural injustices, which have contributed to the formation of the identities in question, and which are incompatible with liberal democratic justice. Furthermore, the article elaborates on a form of anti-racist curriculum broadly compatible with the liberal democratic aim of fostering political and personal autonomy of students. (shrink)

The Protestant conception of religion as a private matter of conscience organized into voluntary associations informed early liberalism's conception of religion and of religious toleration, assumptions that are still present in contemporary liberalism. In many other religions, however, including Hinduism (the main though not only focus of this article), practice has a much larger role than conscience. Hinduism is not a voluntary association, and the structure of its practices, some of which are inegalitarian, makes exit very difficult. This makes (...) liberal religious toleration an awkward fit for Hinduism; granting religious toleration in India undermines equality and autonomy in severe ways. Yet Hinduism is not without its virtues, and has historically been what I call externally tolerant-it has been relatively tolerant of other religions. Liberal toleration, by contrast, is internally tolerant-it is tolerant of religions that fit the Protestant model, while its tolerance of others is considerably more qualified. I briefly speculate at the end of the article about how to combine these two models of toleration. (shrink)

The question of toleration matters more than ever. The politics of the twenty-first century is replete with both the successes and, all too often, the failures of toleration. Yet a growing number of thinkers and practitioners have argued against toleration. Some believe that liberal democracies are better served by different principles, such as respect of, or recognition for, people's ways of life. Others argue that because the liberal state should be entirely neutral or indifferent (...) towards people's ways of life, it can no longer be tolerant - it has no grounds on which it can object, and so there is nothing left to tolerate.Respecting Toleration provides a new, original, and provocative take on the question of toleration and its application to the politics of contemporary diversity. The volume demonstrates how toleration - despite its critics - is essential to any liberal political order. Peter Balint argues that from a conceptual viewpoint, toleration is entirely compatible with liberal politics; and from a normative viewpoint, it is utterly essential. The volume argues that if one cares about people living divergent lives, then it is liberal toleration that should be respected by legislators and policy makers, and not people's differences. It is a book that will shape the debate and demand a response from all who are interested in which political structures most fairly accommodate the competing ways of life that characterise contemporary diversity.Key Features:Develops a new framework of political tolerationProvides a clear demonstration and analysis of complex concepts and argumentsProvides extensive practical and theoretical examples. (shrink)

We typically think of resentment as an unjustifiable and volatile emotion, responsible for fostering the worst political divisions. Recognizing Resentment argues instead that sympathy with the resentment of victims of injustice is vital for upholding justice in liberal societies, as it entails recognition of the equal moral and political status of those with whom we sympathize. Sympathizing with the resentment of others makes us alive to injustice in a way no rational recognition of wrongs alone (...) can, and it motivates us to demand justice on others' behalves. This book rehabilitates arguments for the moral and political worth of resentment developed by three influential thinkers in the early liberal tradition - Joseph Butler, David Hume, and Adam Smith - and uses these to advance a theory of spectatorial resentment, discussing why we should be indignant about the injustice others face, and how such a shared sentiment can actually bring liberal citizens closer together. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to consider the question of whether respect for persons requires toleration of the expression of any extremist political or religious viewpoint within public discourse. The starting point of my discussion is Steven Heyman and Jonathan Quong’s interesting defences of a negative answer to this question. They argue that respect for persons requires that liberal democracies should not tolerate the public expression of extremist speech that can be regarded as recognition-denying or respect-denying (...) speech – that is, speech or other expressive conduct that expresses viewpoints that explicitly reject that all persons should be regarded and treated as free and equal persons or citizens. According to Heyman and Quong, recognition-denying speech falls outside the scope of the right to participate in public discourse (i.e. what it is a right to). In contrast to Heyman and Quong, one can argue that a strong case can be made for viewpoint neutrality on the basis of what can be called a libertarian or Nozickean status-based theory of rights. According to this theory, toleration in a liberal democracy requires respect for the status of persons as thinking agents, and respect for thinking agents and their sovereignty over their own mind requires viewpoint neutrality – that is, a basic right to participate in public discourse as speakers and listeners free from state-imposed viewpoint-based restrictions. All persons should have a basic right to express, hear and consider any viewpoint within public discourse. This doctrine of viewpoint neutrality requires that citizens in liberal democracies ought to have a legal free speech right to do moral wrong – that is, a legal right to express and defend any viewpoint within public discourse, even if it is morally wrong to express, or expose others to, such views. (shrink)

The past five years have seen a dramatic increase in scholars working to supplement or challenge accounts of structural injustice. Almost without exception, scholars in this area assume that the move from personal responsibility to political or public responsibility will represent a net gain in justice, at least in modern liberal regimes. In this essay, I challenge this assumption and introduce the concept of “structural hobbling” as a parallel cause of injustice, but one whose origins (...) derive from neutral state activities rather than from intentional bad faith or diffuse private action (as in structural injustice). Using health-care regulations as a lens, I offer two narratives of individuals navigating health-care regulations that demonstrate how seemingly neutral regulatory decisions create regressive hobbling effects. Structural hobbling challenges structural-injustice theorists to take more seriously the complex and often subtle ways in which apparently benevolent state activity can create downstream injustice, while adding complexity to existing narratives around public responsibility and what it demands. (shrink)

The conviction that political recognition is accomplished through the extension and completion of the Enlightenment project of toleration is shared by some of the most influential political theorists of our time. John Rawls, Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka all formulate the issue of recognition as if it were a corollary of the principle of toleration based in equal liberty or dignity. This raises important issues which political thought must confront and engage with. Above all, it means (...) reconsidering the primacy of Enlightenment critique for our understanding of ourselves, our world and our encounter with others. In this article I examine the liberal conviction that tolerance (in the sense of a commitment to individual autonomy) best promotes recognition of cultural diversity. I argue that two weaknesses haunt the liberal project and undermine this belief. They prevail because of a failure adequately to address the question of recognition in its normative, ontological and symbolic aspects. In contrast, I argue that philosophical hermeneutics affords a critical perspective on democratic theory and practice that must be taken up and extended following the experience of identity politics. Key Words: hermeneutics • Kymlicka • multicultural democracy • normativity • Rawls • ontology • symbolic • Taylor. (shrink)

Structural injustice broadly refers to objectionable outcomes produced by generally accepted social structures for members of particular social groups. But theorists of structural injustice have said relatively little about why certain outcomes are objectionable, and many theorists suggestively connect structural injustice to a worry about oppression without explaining their precise normative concerns. I provide a normative analysis of structural injustice that addresses this gap and clarifies its connection to oppression. On this view, (...) there are two kinds of structural injustice, each grounded in a distinct moral concern. One is a freedom-based concern for how social structures harmfully constrain members of a social group, depriving them of the means to develop and exercise their capacities. The other is an equality-based concern for how social structures subordinate a social group to others in hierarchies of power, standing, and esteem. By disentangling these concerns, this account shows that our social structures contain multiple kinds of injustice that do not necessarily travel together; some social groups experience unfreedom without being subordinated to others, and indeed their unfreedom is intertwined with their dominant position over subordinated groups. Furthermore, against prevailing philosophical accounts, this analysis shows that there are good reasons to understand oppression primarily as an issue of inequality rather than an issue of unfreedom. (shrink)

In this dissertation I seek to answer the question, “What are the virtues of the excellent citizen in a liberal democracy?" This question is important on three levels. First, if civic virtue is as important to the perpetuation of liberal democratic community as neo-liberal and communitarian thinkers have argued, then curiosity alone should motivate us. Second, if projects to foster the virtues are critical, then we must understand the virtues in order to foster them effectively and appropriately. (...) Third, those who wish to attain greater excellence in citizenship need to know what the virtues are so that they may pursue them. In Chapters One and Two, I argue that current accounts of civic virtue are deficient because they fail to explore its basis, nature, and constituents. To better understand civic virtue, we must explore specific citizen virtues. To fulfill this aim, we require a citizen virtue catalog structured by an explanatory framework that is anchored in the role-based nature of citizen virtue. Such a framework provides the rationale for determining which virtues should be included in the catalog and which should not as well as a basis for comparing competing catalogs. As the role of citizen is to assist his state, the citizen virtues are those qualities that enable the citizen to assist the state in achieving its aims” in protecting, promoting, and realizing the liberal democratic ideals (namely, freedom, equality, self-government, collective cooperation, and stability). In the remaining chapters, I survey neo-liberal accounts of citizen virtue proposed by Richard Dagger, William Galston, David Jones, Mark Kingwell, Stephen Macedo, and Thomas Spragens, Jr. I apply the Chapter Two framework to assess the virtue candidates they propose. These chapters share a common format but differ in focus. Chapter Three takes up the citizen virtues that treat political community: cooperation, participation, vigilance, deliberative excellence, and obedience to law. Chapter Four, the liberal citizen virtues: allegiance to liberal democratic community, tolerance, and respect for rights. And Chapter Five, the citizen virtues relating to self-governance: autonomy, responsibility, and restraint. Chapter Six concludes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Liberating Sexuality: Justice Between the Sheets by Miguel A. De La TorreSimeiqi HeLiberating Sexuality: Justice Between the Sheets Miguel A. De La Torre SAINT LOUIS: CHALICE PRESS, 2016. 232 pp. $27.99What lies at the heart of Miguel De La Torre's provocative and refreshing collection of essays Liberating Sexuality is his lifelong commitment to a justice-based society. He is deeply concerned with "how oppressive social structures, [End Page 191] (...) rooted in a two-thousand-year-old misunderstanding of Christian sexuality, prevent us from a more just social order" (vii).De La Torre rigorously engages with the biblical literature and considers it a vital ground for ethical reflection. He first returns to Genesis and successfully argues that "God blesses sex and declares it good" (4). He closely examines the story of the first man and woman and proposes the concept of "cleave to" in Genesis 2:24–25 as the guiding definition for a healthy marriage in our modern society. By revisiting and creatively retelling the stories of women in the Bible—Lot's wife, Sarah, Dinah, Rebekah, and Tamar—he restores the humanity and dignity of women and calls for our responsibility to dismantle the patriarchal structures that foster sexual abuse. He also provides alternative interpretations of the troubling biblical texts for LGBTQ communities to consider. After thoroughly surveying the biblical justification of patriarchy and the subjugation of women in the Hebrew Bible, he proposes that "the entire Bible should be read through the lens of the Gospel message, specifically passages like John 10:10" (13). Though a creative attempt to liberate the sacred text from oppression, this approach requires caution, as there may be possible anti-Semitic ramifications for reading the Hebrew Bible through a New Testament lens.One of the major contributions of De La Torre to the field of sexual ethics is the proposal of "orthoeros" through a liberative method that seriously considers liberation theology and goes beyond the inadequate approaches of both conservatives' sexual legalism and liberals' permissiveness toward sexual ethics. "Orthoeros" promotes a "familial relationship based on mutual giving and vulnerability" (21) and is made up of five biblically based principles: safe, consensual, faithful, mutually pleasing, and intimate.As an ethicist who is invested in the public discourse, De La Torre actively and boldly engages with issues of various sexual practices. He critiques Fifty Shades of Grey and envisions an ethical, Christian-based sadomasochism by employing "orthoeros" principles. He also examines the historical reasons against masturbation and argues for its constructive role in the sexuality of Christians.Deeply disturbed by the prevailing injustice that corrupts our society, De La Torre focuses much of the volume on exposing the sources and the detrimental effects of sexism, heterosexism, and racism. He reveals misogynist legislation by mapping out the "war on women," specifically the issues of equal pay, rape, reproduction rights, and global sexism. He reflects on his own "sin of heterosexuality" of being a macho man, conquering, and celebrating cojones. He also examines the Euro-American history of owning black bodies and critiques the stereotyping of Latino bodies in Hollywood.Another major contribution of De La Torre is the indecent approach to justice-based praxis—an ethics para joder—that "screws" with the prevailing power structures by utilizing a nonviolent survival strategy based on love, designed to liberate the abused and the abusers from the death-dealing social structure. [End Page 192]Liberating Sexuality, situated at the intersection between Christian ethics, biblical hermeneutics, and cultural studies, is a successful interdisciplinary endeavor. The essays gathered here remain highly engaged with the public reality and should benefit both general readers and scholars. Furthermore, this volume provides much-needed guidance on how a sexual ethics should be implemented and is, hence, a vital resource for those engaged in the practices of ministry.Simeiqi HeDrew UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke, is widely recognized as one of the seminal sources of the modern liberal tradition. _Liberty, Toleration and Equality_ examines the development of Locke’s ideal of toleration, from its beginnings, to the culmination of this development in Locke’s fifteen year debate with his great antagonist, the Anglican clergyman, Jonas Proast. Locke, like Proast, was a sincere Christian, but unlike Proast, Locke was able to develop, over time, a perspective on toleration (...) which allowed him to concede liberty to competing views which he, personally, perceived to be "false and absurd". In this respect, Locke sought to affirm what has since become the basic liberal principle that liberty and toleration are only meaningful when they are accorded to views to which we ourselves are profoundly at odds. John William Tate seeks to show how Locke was able to develop this position on toleration over a long intellectual career. Tate also challenges some of the most prominent contemporary perspectives on Locke, within the academic literature, showing how these fall short of perceiving what is essential to Locke’s position. (shrink)

The author outlines a conception of toleration as recognition of differences which she argues to be more adequate than current liberal views in order to face issues arising from contemporary pluralism. The liberal conception of toleration as freedom from government's interference in certain areas is appropriate if pluralism is conceived of as a plurality of conflicting conceptions of the good. By contrast, if pluralism is understood as the plurality of groups and cultures, asymmetrically situated in (...) democratic society, then the issues underlying toleration are seen as the contested claim of minorities for asserting their different identity in the public space. Public toleration of differences is thus viewed as a symbolic public gesture of inclusion of the different identities and their bearers into democratic citizenship on an equal footing as members of minority groups. The argument supporting public toleration is so founded on reason of justice. (shrink)

There is abundant evidence that most people, often in spite of their conscious beliefs, values and attitudes, have implicit biases. 'Implicit bias' is a term of art referring to evaluations of social groups that are largely outside conscious awareness or control. These evaluations are typically thought to involve associations between social groups and concepts or roles like 'violent,' 'lazy,' 'nurturing,' 'assertive,' 'scientist,' and so on. Such associations result at least in part from common stereotypes found in contemporary liberal societies (...) about members of these groups. Implicit Bias and Philosophy brings the work of leading philosophers and psychologists together to explore core areas of psychological research on implicit bias, as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume 2: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics is comprised of three sections. 'Moral Responsibility for Implicit Bias' contains chapters examining the relationship of implicit biases to concepts that are central to moral responsibility, including control, awareness, reasons-responsiveness, and alienation. The chapters in the second section--'Structural Injustice'--explore the connections between the implicit biases held by individuals and the structural injustices of the societies in which they are situated. And finally, the third section--'The Ethics of Implicit Bias: Theory and Practice'--contains chapters examining strategies for implicit attitude change, the ramifications of research on implicit bias for philosophers working in ethics, and suggestions for combatting implicit biases in the fields of philosophy and law. (shrink)

The idea of toleration (or tolerance—the terms are mostly used interchangeably) plays a paramount role in liberal theorizing with regard to the normative characterization of the relations between the state and citizens and between majority and minority groups in society. Toleration occurs when an agent A refrains from interfering negatively with an agent B’s practice x or belief y despite A’s opposition to B’s x-ing or y-ing, although A thinks herself to be in the position of interfering. (...) So, the notion of toleration necessarily incorporates the three following elements: (1) negative judgment—whether grounded in moral disapproval or “mere” dislike; (2) power to interfere—whether actual, perceived, or counterfactual; (3) reasons for noninterference—whether epistemological (fallibilism, skepticism), practical (balance of forces), or moral (value commitments). Is the forbearance of what one finds objectionable a strong enough normative ideal when it comes to establishing what we owe to each other in circumstances of moral disagreement? Does the request that we (possibly grudgingly) put up with someone’s objectionable lifestyle and convictions render toleration a condescending concession rather than the consequence of the recognition of everyone’s equal rights? In response, some have argued that we should interpret demands of toleration not as mere claims for noninterference but for the public recognition of the equal legitimacy of someone’s lifestyles and convictions (toleration as recognition). A recent line of debate concerns the kinds of relation that the ideal of toleration is apt to inform: is toleration primarily a political ideal qualifying the way in which liberal institutions should treat those who live under them or should toleration be invoked also to characterize horizontal relations between citizens? Whatever response is given to this question, limits to toleration must be established. As toleration is required of us vis-à-vis what we find objectionable, does it entail relativism? Liberals tend to think that reference to the harm principle should work as a limit for toleration: but what does count as a relevant (physical or symbolic) harm? Such questions acquire importance as the domain of toleration extends from the realm of religious conflicts, out of which it originated in the 16th and 17th centuries, to include a number of culture and ethics-related issues: should a liberal state permit pornography? What is the appropriate response to such cultural practices as female circumcision? Should neutral institutions prohibit the exhibition of religious symbols in public spaces? (shrink)

Democratic legitimacy is often grounded in proceduralist terms, referring to the ideal of political equality that should be mirrored by fair procedures of decision-making. The paper argues (§1) that the normative commitments embedded in a non-minimalist account of procedural legitimacy are well expressed by the ideal of co-authorship. Against this background, the main goal of the paper is to argue that structural forms of epistemic injustice are detrimental to the overall legitimacy of democratic systems. In §2 I (...) analyse Young’s notion of political powerlessness and claim that in structurally unjust social contexts members of powerless groups often are not properly acknowledged as functioning members of the polity, hence being jeopardized in their ability to develop part of their personal identity. In §III, I define gerrymandering as an example of political disempowerment that involves an epistemic harm for oppressed citizens, namely, to be prejudicially excluded from the community of epistemic trust. My thesis is that being epistemically disempowered has a negative impact on the way in which citizens understand themselves as political actors, since they suffer a lack of social recognition that may impede a proper development of their reflexive agency. In §IV, I discuss the proposal of granting epistemic privilege to members of oppressed groups, given their specific experience of social injustices. I introduce two concerns about this proposal, one morally grounded and one pragmatically oriented. Finally, in §V, I briefly sketch some institutional remedies that can be employed in order to politically fight systemic forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

I propose to criticize two strands of argument - contractarian and utilitarian – that liberals have put forth in defense of economic coercion, based on the notion of justifiable paternalism. To illustrate my argument, I appeal to the example of forced labor migration, driven by the exigencies of market forces. In particular, I argue that the forced migration of a special subset of unemployed workers lacking other means of subsistence cannot be redeemed paternalistically as freedom or welfare enhancing in the (...) long run. I further argue that contractarian and utilitarian approaches are normatively incapable of appreciating this fact because the kinds of reasons that they adduce for justifying the long-term freedom-enhancing consequences of forced migration are not ones that would be acceptable to the migrants themselves. I conclude that only a discourse ethical approach, which mandates direct, empathetic communication between would-be migrants and members of potential host communities, captures the full range of reasons that would be acceptable to both migrants and members of these communities. These reasons – appealing both to agency-enhancing communal attachments as well as to agency-enhancing freedom of choice – fully reveals the extent to which a global capitalist system composed of relatively closed national communities coerces the world’s poorest migrants. (shrink)

This essay considers the tension between political liberalism and gender equality in the light of social construction and multiculturalism. The tension is exemplified by the work of Martha Nussbaum, who tries to reconcile a belief in the universality of certain liberal values such as gender equality with a political liberal tolerance for cultural practices that violate gender equality. The essay distinguishes between first? and second?order conceptions of autonomy, and shows that political liberals mistakenly prioritise second?order (...) autonomy. This prioritisation leads political liberals to seek to limit state interference in individuals' choices. However, the essay argues that if options, choices and the preferences which lead to them are socially influenced or constructed, it is no longer clear that state non?interference secures autonomy. Instead, it becomes a matter of justice what the content of the social or state influence is, which options are open to people, and political liberalism cannot deal with many forms of injustice. Rather than emphasising state neutrality, liberals should endorse state prohibition of practices which cause significant harm to those who choose them, if they are chosen only in response to unjust norms. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore and examine the implied commitment to the premises of recognition in Rawls’s account of redistributive justice. It attempts to find out whether or not recognition relations that produce humiliation and cultural injustice can be followed to their logical conclusion in his theory of redistribution. This paper makes two claims. Firstly, although Rawls does not disregard the harms of misrecognition as demonstrated in his notion of self-respect being the most important primary good, he (...) cannot liberally accommodate the idea of humiliation as a case of injustice without compromising the basic premises of his theory. Secondly, while resource distribution produces indirect side effects that can impact upon cultural injustice, addressing recognition issues through the prism of redistribution can inadvertently result in further misrecognition. The paper concludes that in the final analysis Rawls wrongly takes redistribution as the overarching principle of justice to which recognition is but a subservient principle. (shrink)

The article entitled "Multiculturalism is the main philosophical concept of social and political development in modern society" is devoted to the analysis of cultural and political problems occurring in modern societies in the context of globalization from a socio-philosophical aspect. The necessity of approaching the issue from the point of view of the current needs of the time and era, respect for other cultural identities, non-actualization of acts of radicalism, terrorism, extremism, religious fundamentalism, and racism, which may cause imbalance in (...) the system of ethnic-political relations of polyethnic societies in the era of globalization, and taking complex measures calculated for a safe future in relation to ethnic-political subjects is reflected in the article. In a philosophical sense, the term multiculturalism is a generalized expression of the cultures to which social subjects belong, having a broad meaning and incorporating different values.. It is known that culture and spirituality are historical philosophical systems, and depending on the rules of time and the form of the social structure at each stage of historical development, the culture and spirituality change and renew. Multiculturalism is a form of tolerance in which representatives of different national cultures coexist in conditions of equal rights and self-affirmation within a single country. The philosophical-theoretical basis of the multiculturalism paradigm is precisely the mutual understanding of parallel cultures in global society, joint activity, and even their equal dialogue. The article analyzes the concept of multiculturalism from a philosophical perspective and primarily explains it as a synthesis of communitarianism and liberalism. It was especially noted that multiculturalism, as a humanist ideology, reflects the equality promoted by communitarianism and respect for individuality and other cultures and religions, as liberals say. The article draws attention to the transformation of the multiculturalism paradigm into the main philosophical and political concept of modern societies against the background of globalization and the formation of the political doctrine of many developed countries, including the Republic of Azerbaijan, in the context of state policy. (shrink)

This paper argues that the four most plausible arguments compatible with public reason for an outright legal ban on all forms of polygamy are unvictorious. I consider the types of arguments political liberals would have to insist on, and precisely how strongly, in order for a general prohibition against polygamy to be justified, while also considering what general attitude towards "marriage" and legal recognition of the right to marry are most consistent with political liberalism. I argue that a (...) class='Hi'>liberal state should get out of the "marriage business" by leveling down to a universal status of "civil union" neutral as to the gender and affective purpose of domestic partnerships. I then refute what I regard as the four most plausible rational objections to offering this civil union status to multi-member domestic partnerships. The most common objection to polygamy is on grounds of gender equality, more specifically, female equality. But advancing this argument forcefully often involves neglecting the tendency of political liberalism (by whatever name it goes in contemporary, complex, multicultural societies) to tolerate a certain amount of inequality in private, within the bounds of robust and meaningful freedoms of choice and exit. Properly understood, polygamy involves no inherent statement about the essential inferiority of women, and certainly not more than many other existing practices and institutions (including many expressions of the main monotheistic religions) which political liberals regard as tolerable, even reasonable. Arguments from the welfare of children, fairness in the spousal market, and the abuse of family subsidies are also considered and found insufficient for excluding polygamy. (shrink)

This paper provides a theoretical discussion with point of departure in the case of Denmark of some of the theoretical issues concerning the relation liberal states may have to religion in general and religious minorities in particular. Liberal political philosophy has long taken for granted that liberal states have to be religiously neutral. The paper asks what a liberal state is with respect to religion and religious minorities if it is not a strictly religiously neutral state (...) with full separation of church and state and of religion and politics. To illuminate this question, the paper investigates a particular case of an arguably reasonably liberal state, namely the Danish state, which is used as a particular illustration of the more general phenomenon of “moderately secular” states, and considers how one might understand its relations to religion. The paper then considers the applicability to this case of three theoretical concepts drawn from liberal political philosophy, namely neutrality, toleration and recognition, while simultaneously using the case to suggest ways in which standard understandings of these concepts may be problematic and have to be refined. (shrink)

Toleration is one of the fundamental principles that inform the design of a democratic and liberal society. Unfortunately, its adoption seems inconsistent with the adoption of paternalistically benevolent policies, which represent a valuable mechanism to improve individuals’ well-being. In this paper, I refer to this tension as the dilemma of toleration. The dilemma is not new. It arises when an agent A would like to be tolerant and respectful towards another agent B’s choices but, at the same (...) time, A is altruistically concerned that a particular course of action would harm, or at least not improve, B’s well-being, so A would also like to be helpful and seeks to ensure that B does not pursue such course of action, for B’s sake and even against B’s consent. In the article, I clarify the specific nature of the dilemma and show that several forms of paternalism, including those based on ethics by design and structural nudging, may not be suitable to resolve it. I then argue that one form of paternalism, based on pro-ethical design, can be compatible with toleration and hence with the respect for B’s choices, by operating only at the informational and not at the structural level of a choice architecture. This provides a successful resolution of the dilemma, showing that tolerant paternalism is not an oxymoron but a viable approach to the design of a democratic and liberal society. (shrink)

A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament. Building on his (...) unique position as a philosopher and politician, Vattimo takes on some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is it still possible, long after Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, to talk of moral imperatives, individual rights, or political freedom? Are these values still relevant in today's world? Tackling these crucial issues, Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of a plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism, as a philosophical principle, is far less sensational--it is the ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws, that "truth" is inescapably subjective. Because the conditions for equality and liberty are not "naturally" given, society must actively create these ideals or it will inevitably fall prey to irrationality, prejudice, and oppression. Vattimo contends that the infighting, timidity, and confusion that have overtaken contemporary liberal thought and politics are the products a prolonged and indulgent mourning over the loss of the transcendental father figure--any institution or power structure that defines truth, knowledge, and reality. Until humanity overcomes its need for external authority--whether it be organized religion, the nation-state, or free-market capitalism--emancipation will remain unattainable. Collecting fourteen of Vattimo's most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law, _Nihilism and Emancipation_ is a provocative reevaluation of meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that equal respect-based accounts of the normative basis of tolerance are self-defeating, insofar as they are unable to specify the limits of tolerance in a way that is consistent with their own commitment to the equal treatment of all conceptions of the good. I show how this argument is a variant of the long-standing ‘conflict of freedoms’ objection to Kantian-inspired, freedom-based accounts of the justification of systems of norms. I criticize Thomas Scanlon’s defence of ‘pure (...) tolerance’, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti’s work on the relationship between tolerance, equal respect and recognition, and Arthur Ripstein’s recent response to the ‘conflict of freedoms’ objection. The upshot of my argument is that, while valuing tolerance for its own sake may be an appealing ideal, it is not a feasible way of grounding a system of norms. I close with a thumbnail sketch of two alternative, instrumental (i.e. non-Kantian) approaches to the normative foundations of tolerance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation by Daniel PhilpottGlen StassenJust and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation Daniel Philpott New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 365pp. $29.95Just and Unjust Peace deals with an important question: What does a holistic framework of justice consist of in the wake of its massive despoliation? The wounds of political injustice include the following: violation of the victim’s (...) human rights, harms to the victim’s person, the victim’s ignorance of the source and circumstances of political injustices, the lack of acknowledgment of the suffering, the standing victory of the wrongdoer’s political injustice, and harm to the person of the wrongdoer. In such situations, Philpott argues, “what the government and community withhold is... an acknowledgment not only that a victim has rights but also that his rights were violated and that he suffered because of this violation” (37).The definition of justice in this context of wounds is reconciliation. It “encompasses peace settlements, human rights, democracy, and other key goals of negative and positive peace [as well as]... a broad restoration of right relationship involving a multiplicity of practices that each redress wounds of injustice in a particular way” (48–49).Daniel Philpott affirms peace as human rights, equality, and the rule of law, plus actors and institutions like the United Nations that spread this justice. He presents a fair summary of contending positions on human rights and works to develop overlapping agreement. “What is most essential to right relationship in the political order is human rights, their popular legitimacy, and their corresponding virtues” (55). But also, “It is in redressing wrong conduct—the other dimension of justice—that political reconciliation becomes far more distinctive” (55). This requires a deeper understanding of just peacemaking with restorative justice based in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and in insightful assessment of the burgeoning practices of truth commissions and restorative justice in the transitions from dictatorship to democracy.Philpott’s “rooted reason” invites different religions to speak from their depths but also encourages them to speak with reasons that can convince in public discourse (18, 20). Envisioning the incorporation of reconciliation into the modern state “is the life’s work of Rabbi Marc Gopin. In today’s Middle East, [End Page 211] Gopin argues, Jews as well as Christians and Muslims cannot afford to ignore the peacebuilding potential of traditional religious concepts” (132). Philpott also exhibits sensitive understanding of Islam, asking, “Do Islamic texts and traditions contain the materials for the construction of the ethic of political reconciliation that I am proposing? Can Muslims, on the basis of their religious convictions, join in an overlapping consensus on such an ethic?” His answer is a clear yes (153).He identifies and assesses six practices of a politics of reconciliation. The first involves building socially just institutions and relations between states: “Since 1974, some ninety societies... have sought to replace dictatorships with democracies.... A similarly intense global wave of peace operations sponsored by the United Nations... has sought to foster human rights and democratic institutions in states that have seen civil war” (175–76). The second has to do with the practices of political acknowledgment of wrongs: “Human rights are the standard that gives truth commissions and other public forms of acknowledgment form and direction” (188). The third pertains to reparations, with attention to the ongoing effects of historical injustices for descendants (195 and 201). The fourth addresses judicial punishment: “In practicing judicial punishment, a state redresses the violation of the victim’s rights insofar as it expresses, reaffirms, and thereby strengthens human rights as the legally valid values of its realm or of relations between it and another state” (237). The fifth is apology: “Like all of the other practices, apologies performed in political contexts have grown in frequency” (198). Finally, there is forgiveness. “Political injustices harm victims by robbing them of their agency and of their ability to pursue their own and others’ flourishing.... Forgiveness... re-empowers the victim as agent... [and liberates] from anger and resentment” and can also lead to recognition of the victim’s suffering, and to mutual respect for human rights (266–68... (shrink)

This chapter conducts a structural epistemic injustice investigation, inquiring into institutionalised frames of intelligibility, to identify pathological patterns of recognition in administrative categorisation. This allows me to discern a form of misrecognition, where I understand ‘misrecognition’ as obtaining whenever administrative systems prevent people from participating in and benefiting from such systems due to institutionalised frames of intelligibility. One way such misrecognition operates is through categorisation-related administrative violence. I suggest that one particular form of this violence is (...) class='Hi'>recognition bluffs. Recognition bluffs are a form of misrecognition where administrative systems enable new categories of legibility promising recognition for certain populations while, at the same time, they limit that category in ways that harm those populations as well. As an example, I look into how ‘gender’ was recognised and administered through the social group category in asylum administration in the U.S.A. (shrink)

Can multiculturalists be egalitarians and should egalitarians be multiculturalists? Is the absence of cultural recognition an injustice in the same way as the absence of individual rights or basic resources? These are some of the questions considered in this wide-ranging series of essays inspired by the political philosopher Brian Barry. Multiculturalist political theorists and policy-makers argue that liberal egalitarianism fails to take seriously the role of culture and group identity in defining harms and cases of injustice. (...) Because liberal egalitarians adopt a culturally neutral account of what principles and institutions of justice should distribute, they ignore an important way in which these norms actually reinforce injustice rather than eradicate it. A whole host of thinkers have used liberal egalitarianism's neutrality on issues of culture to criticize contemporary theories of justice. This multicultural challenge to liberal egalitarianism has recently received a forceful response from Barry in his book Culture and Equality. Drawing on an international cast from Britain, the USA, Canada and Australia, Multiculturalism Reconsidered puts Barry's challenge to the test. With contributions from Chandran Kukathas, James Tully, Bhikhu Parekh, Susan Mendus and Ian Shapiro, amongst others, and a response from Brian Barry, this book ranges widely over the issues raised by multiculturalism and egalitarianism. This book will prove an indispensable resource for all those who wish to locate themselves in debates about equality, culture, identity and group rights. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice and remedies for this injustice are widely debated. This article adds to the existing debate by arguing that theories of recog- nition can fruitfully contribute to Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice and can provide a framework for structural remedy. By pairing Fricker’s theory of hermeneutical injustice with theories of recognition, I bring forward a modest claim and a more radical claim. The first concerns a shift in our vocabulary; (...) recognition theory can give a name to the seriousness of the long-term effects of hermeneutical injustice. The second claim is more radical: thinking of hermeneutical injustice as preventing what I call “self-recogni- tion” provides a structural remedy to the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice. Because hermeneutical injustice is first and foremost a structural injustice, I contend that every virtue theory of hermeneutical justice should be complemented by structural remedies in terms of recognition. Finally, what I argue sheds light on the seriousness of cases of exclusion of and discrimination against women in academia and helps to draw our attention to new ways to combat such problems. (shrink)

Social inclusion/exclusion involves just/unjust social relations and social structures enabling or constraining opportunities for participation and health. In this paper, social inclusion/exclusion is explored as a dialectic. Three discourses – discourses on recognition, capabilities, and equality and citizenship – are identified within Canadian literature. Each discourse highlights a different view of the injustices leading to social exclusion and the conditions supporting inclusion and social justice. An Integrated Framework for Social Justice that incorporates the three discourses is developed and (...) used to critique the dominant focus on distributive justice within foundational Canadian nursing documents. We propose a broader conceptualization of social (in)justice that includes both relational and structural dimensions. Opportunities for multilevel interventions to promote social justice are identified. This framework is congruent with nursing's moral imperative to promote health equity and with the multiple roles played by nurses to promote social justice in everyday practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the links between liberal political theory and the evaluative nature of medical classification, arguing for stronger recognition of those links in a liberal model of medical practice. All judgments of medical or psychiatric "dysfunction," I argue, are fundamentally evaluative, reflecting our collective willingness or reluctance to tolerate and/or accommodate the conditions in question. Illness, then, is "socially constructed." But the relativist worries that this loaded phrase evokes are unfounded; patients, doctors, and communities (...) will agree in the vast majority of cases about what counts as illness. Where they cannot come to agreement, however, we are faced with precisely the sort of dispute about values and ways of life that the institutions of the liberal state are designed to accommodate. I accordingly sketch a model of medical practice, based loosely on Jürgen Habermas's political theories, designed to maximize both our awareness and our understanding of these disputes. (shrink)

This chapter examines some central features to liberal conceptions of toleration and liberty of conscience. The first section briefly examines conceptions of toleration and liberty of conscience in the traditions of Locke, Rawls, and Mill. The second section considers contemporary controversies surrounding toleration and liberty of conscience with a focus on neutrality and equality. The third section examines several challenges, including whether non-religious values should be afforded the same degree of accommodation as religious values, whether (...) liberty of conscience requires a secular state, and how bias impedes understandings of toleration and liberty of conscience. The chapter concludes with brief comments on future directions for research on toleration and liberty of conscience. One is exploring toleration and liberty of conscience in non-Western contexts; another is exploring ways that varieties of religious and political identity impact conceptions of toleration and liberty of conscience. (shrink)

Nassim Noroozi proposes a juxtaposition of pedagogy with and a characterization of it as justice. The term pedagogical here is not limited to “the educational,” nor is pedagogy limited to the methods of teaching. At the same time, the term justice will not be framed in terms of liberal conceptual grounds. Noroozi defines pedagogy as an arrangement of meaning so that it becomes impossible not to see injustice. Noroozi argues that “pedagogy-as-justice” concerns itself with exposing injustice in (...) transformative ways, and as such it is an ethical undertaking. She explores how philosophizing for struggle is inherently pedagogical and, because of our perception of “the pedagogical,” how it is inherently transformative. Furthermore, she argues that seeing pedagogy as justice will consequentially deem “the arrangements of meanings to engage others in the issues pertaining to injustice” as equally important to writing or thinking about those struggles. To illustrate the above points, Noroozi analyzes a case of public philosophical engagement against war. By expanding on this case, she proposes some central attributes of pedagogy-as-justice, namely its preoccupation with grounding abstract and anonymous concepts in their contested historical realities; its commitment to wrestling with an “opacity of concepts” or with “dishonest reasonings” that end up promoting suffering and injustice; and its recognition of the precarities inherent in undertaking pedagogy-as-justice. Noroozi traces a genealogy of the concept of pedagogy-as-justice going back to Socratic public philosophical engagements. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Women on the Global Market: Irigaray and the Democratic StateNicole Fermon (bio)Best known for her subtle interrogation of philosophy and psychoanalysis, Luce Irigaray clearly also conducts a dialogue with the political, proposing that women’s erasure from culture and society invalidates all economies, sexual or political. Because woman has disappeared both figuratively and literally from society [see Sen, “More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing”], Irigaray conceives the contemporary ethical (...) project as a recall to difference rather than equality, to difference between women and men—that is, sexual difference. She characterizes relations between men and women as market relations in which women are commodities, objects, but never subjects of exchange, objects to men but not to themselves: women do not belong to themselves but exist “to keep relationships among men running smoothly” [TS 192]. Women under these conditions require imaginative ways to reconfigure the self, to subvert the melancholy and regression of masculinist economies and envisage a future in which women would not be ashamed of the feminine, would experience it as a positivity worth emulating.Irigaray contends that after the gains of egalitarian politics are carefully examined, the inclusion of women in the political arena has failed to take into account women’s distinct and different position from men, and from each other, as well as perpetuating the fiction of the “neutral” citizen, the ahistorical individual citizen of the nation-state. It is that fiction Irigaray dispels in her critique of liberal democratic politics and its creation, “citizens who are neuter in regard to familial singularity, its laws, and necessary sexual difference” [SG 112] in order to benefit the State and its laws. The subject is male; the citizen is neuter. Who is the female citizen in contemporary society? What is the ethical elaboration of the contractual relations between women and men, and between sexed individuals and the community? How do women imagine a distinct set of rights and responsibilities based on self-definition and autonomy, given the particular strictures of contemporary politics—that is, the market-driven, antidemocratic nature of the current economic national and global forces? Irigaray suggests that “the return of women to collective work, to public places, to social relations, demands linguistic mutations” and profound transformations, an embodied imagination with force and agency in civil life [TD 65].Irigaray warns that if civil and political participation is construed in overly narrow terms, if focus is on economic or judicial “circuits” alone, we overlook the symbolic organization of power—women risk losing “everything without even being acknowledged” [TD 56]. Instead an interval of recognition can expand the political to include the concerns and activities of real women, lest silence imply consent to sexual neutrality, or more likely, to women’s obliteration under men’s interests and concerns. Women’s insistence on self-definition and wage labor, on love and justly remunerated work, [End Page 120] testifies to the obduracy of women’s difference, one that is not likely to disappear. The patriarchal family is still the legal norm, even when certain exceptions are made, while enduring questions regarding women’s health and children’s physical welfare as priorities beyond market considerations are consigned to legislative obfuscation, still a political afterthought. Instead, in the US the liberal state removes the slender welfare net specific to women and children, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and fails to provide medical coverage to those who are among the most vulnerable of its citizens. Women without access to the legal protection of sex-neutral citizenship, poor working women without language (the money for an effective “mouthpiece” to represent their distress in a court of law), are further disempowered by liberal politics’ insistence on sexual neutrality—that is, on repression or amnesia regarding the lived experiences of women.Sexual difference is key to any project of self-definition by women. Irigaray insists on the sexual nature of this self-definition, not solely for its obvious procreative necessity, but because the natural world is a source of renewal and fecundity which requires attentive interrogation and respect [SG 15]. This rebirth seems alien to the structure of male politics, which instead seem to provoke disasters (Bhopal, Chernobyl, or the current runaway... (shrink)

Igniting a long-overdue dialogue about how the legacy of racial injustice and white supremacy plays out in society at large and Buddhist communities in particular, this urgent call to action outlines a new dharma that takes into account the ways that racism and privilege prevent our collective awakening. The authors traveled around the country to spark an open conversation that brings together the Black prophetic tradition and the wisdom of the Dharma. Bridging the world of spirit and activism, they (...) urge a compassionate response to the systemic, state-sanctioned violence and oppression that has persisted against black people since the slave era. With national attention focused on the recent killings of unarmed black citizens and the response of the Black-centered liberation groups such as Black Lives Matter, Radical Dharma demonstrates how social transformation and personal, spiritual liberation must be articulated and inextricably linked. Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah represent a new voice in American Buddhism. Offering their own histories and experiences as illustrations of the types of challenges facing dharma practitioners and teachers who are different from those of the past five decades, they ask how teachings that transcend color, class, and caste are hindered by discrimination and the dynamics of power, shame, and ignorance. Their illuminating argument goes beyond a demand for the equality and inclusion of diverse populations to advancing a new dharma that deconstructs rather than amplifies systems of suffering and prepares us to weigh the shortcomings not only of our own minds but also of our communities. They forge a path toward reconciliation and self-liberation that rests on radical honesty, a common ground where we can drop our need for perfection and propriety and speak as souls. In a society where profit rules, people's value is determined by the color of their skin, and many voices--including queer voices--are silenced, Radical Dharma recasts the concepts of engaged spirituality, social transformation, inclusiveness, and healing. (shrink)

The idea of equality in political thought is often approached from a distributive perspective that entails a rethinking of institutional arrangements. In this paper I present an approach to conceived as a complement to the common institutional approach in liberal theory. The foundational claim is that blacks do not come into view for a wide range of people as worthy of full human recognition, that is, persons in possession of human vulnerabilities that require responses and in possession (...) of warrants to rights that demand respect. The central argument is that this problem of diminished social value can be addressed by imagination and that imagination is crucially important to bridge the experiential divide between white and black Americans. I deploy two ideas I claim are essential for leveraging imagination: attentiveness and skill. When we are attentive we provide the imagination range to sense the more difficult aspects of others’ lives under inequality; when we are skilled we deploy a finer sensibility in taking the proper ethical stance towards others’ experiential difficulties under a regime of racial inequality. To achieve this, I provide a schematic of three pairs of concepts that provide a foundation though not full accounting of the necessary skills in response to ethical challenges: narrative/receptivity, reasons/responsibility, affect/compassion. (shrink)

The freedom of expression is ‘the great bulwark of liberty’ and a ‘cornerstone upon which the very existence of a democratic society rests.’ It constitutes one of the ‘basic conditions for [a democratic society’s] progress,’ encapsulating ideas that may even ‘offend, shock or disturb.’ In his Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that free speech is of paramount importance, particularly in the form of a ‘robust public discourse as a means to promote citizen awareness and vigilance.’ To this end, freedom of expression is (...) a central tenet of democratic checks and balances as it allows for an ‘informed consent of the governed.’ Despite the recognition of this freedom since classical times, and the repeated proclamations of support by a variety of institutions, such as the Council of Europe, what is demonstrated, hereinafter, is that the freedom of expression is in a state of severe recession (regardless of the ‘openness’ of a society). This has resulted from a set of interrelated challenges, namely, the stark demise of Internet freedom within the general ambit of a widening conceptualization of hate, and the systematic strategy of moderating ‘hateful’ content. Whilst these challenges are inextricably interconnected with the technological revolution of our times, the authors hold that the fragile positioning of the freedom of expression in the framework of the Council of Europe and, particularly, the approach adopted by the major regional human rights court of the world, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), has facilitated the systematic erosion of the central agora of expression, namely, the Internet and its fora. It is argued that the current _status quo_, as described hereinafter, is marked by a corrosion of _parrhesia_ or free speech itself and, also, of _isigoria,_ namely, the equal right of all to free speech. In light of the above, and for purposes of extrapolating on the challenges to this fundamental freedom, this paper will commence with a normative assessment of the legitimacy and impact of restricting the freedom of expression, followed by an overview of its position in the Council of Europe, with a focus on the concept of hate. Further, and emanating from the ECtHR’S position in _Delfi v Estonia,_ on the liability of Internet intermediaries, it will conduct an analysis of the status of speech online, extrapolating on the issue of ‘hate speech’ and the horizontalization of responsibility _vis-à-vis_ content moderation through the structural juxtaposition of private, profit-making companies deciphering on issues of freedom of expression through, inter alia (yet increasingly) the use of Artificial Intelligence. (shrink)

Recognition is one of the most ambivalent concepts in political and social thought. While it is a condition for individual freedom, the subject’s demand for recognition can be exploited as an instrument for reproducing domination. Axel Honneth addresses this issue and offers the concept of ideological recognition: Recognition is ideological when the addressees accept it from their subjective point of view but is unjustified from an objective point of view. Using the examples of the recognition (...) of femininity, I argue that Honneth’s account fails not only to offer the objective normative standard that delineates between morally justified and unjustified recognition, but also to descriptively explain why the addressees of ideological recognition accept their identities as having positive qualities. To overcome these problems, I provide an alternative, epistemic structural account. First, my account offers the concept of epistemic trust and identifies the objective injustice that Honneth’s account cannot capture. Second, my account offers the concept of structural power and discusses the problem of internalization of problematic identities. Furthermore, I argue that epistemic structural account has theoretical and practical benefits for analyzing domination and advancing the task of critique by explaining the ideological recognition in the case of racial identity, for example. (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential risks’ to humanity. Nuclear wars, (...) natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

We analyze a frequent but undertheorized form of structural injustice, one that arises due to the difficulty of reaching numerically equitable representation of underrepresented subgroups within a larger group. This form of structural injustice is significant because it could occur even if it were possible to completely eliminate bias and overt discrimination from hiring and recruitment practices. The conceptual toolkit we develop can be used to analyze such situations and propose remedies. Specifically, based on a simple (...) mathematical model, we offer a new argument in favour of quotas, explore implications for policy-making, and consider the wider philosophical significance of the problem. We show that in order to reach more equitable representations, quota-based recruitment may often be practically unavoidable. Assuming that members of groups in statistical minority are more likely to quit due to their marginalization, their proportions can stabilize at a low level, preventing a shift towards more equal representation and conserving the minority status of the subgroup. We show that this argument has important implications for addressing, preventing, and remediating the structural injustice of unfair representation. (shrink)

Nassim Noroozi proposes a juxtaposition of pedagogy with and a characterization of it as justice. The term pedagogical here is not limited to “the educational,” nor is pedagogy limited to the methods of teaching. At the same time, the term justice will not be framed in terms of liberal conceptual grounds. Noroozi defines pedagogy as an arrangement of meaning so that it becomes impossible not to see injustice. Noroozi argues that “pedagogy-as-justice” concerns itself with exposing injustice in (...) transformative ways, and as such it is an ethical undertaking. She explores how philosophizing for struggle is inherently pedagogical and, because of our perception of “the pedagogical,” how it is inherently transformative. Furthermore, she argues that seeing pedagogy as justice will consequentially deem “the arrangements of meanings to engage others in the issues pertaining to injustice” as equally important to writing or thinking about those struggles. To illustrate the above points, Noroozi analyzes a case of public philosophical engagement against war. By expanding on this case, she proposes some central attributes of pedagogy-as-justice, namely its preoccupation with grounding abstract and anonymous concepts in their contested historical realities; its commitment to wrestling with an “opacity of concepts” or with “dishonest reasonings” that end up promoting suffering and injustice; and its recognition of the precarities inherent in undertaking pedagogy-as-justice. Noroozi traces a genealogy of the concept of pedagogy-as-justice going back to Socratic public philosophical engagements. (shrink)

At The paper analyzes the problems of cultural diversity and universality as elaborated in the concepts of “intercultural philosophy” (Ra 1 Fornet-Betancourt), “transculture” (Mikhail Epstein), and “discourse ethics” (Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, and Seyla Benhabib). In the postmodern theories of culture, there is an internal tension between multiculturalism and deconstruction. Multiculturalism implies an essentialist connection between cultural production and ethnic or physical origin. In contrast, the paper argues for a concept of cultural diversity free from determinism and representation. The paper (...) articulates a criticalphilosophical-methodological approach at the heart of which is Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy and the idea of “vnenakhodimost” (“outsidedness”). According to Mikhail Epstein’s concept of “transculture,” each culture is incomplete, thus needs to transcend its borders in dialogue with other cultures. Transculture is a path of liberation of the individual from the symbolic dependencies of culture itself and self-imposed identities. It is a state of virtual belonging of one individual to many cultures. Critical universality means diversity as a property of a single individual or a single culture insofar as they can include the diversity of others. It is viewed as an internal diversity of individuals, their dialogical openness to others and self-identification primarily as members of humanity. The paper focuses on Jürgen Habermas’s analysis of the problem of cultural identity and diversity in terms of the liberal conception of equality and cultural rights. Multiculturalism itself is not immune from knowledge/power relations. Its paradox is that individual basic liberties are restricted in the name of the securing collective rights of culture groups. Habermas argues that these problems can be solved only from the perspective of “the difference-sensitive egalitarian universalism of equal rights.” Mutual recognition requires a transformation of interpersonal relations through discourse and public debates over identity politics. Attention is paid to David Rasmussen’s analyses of conflict and toleration within the confines of a post-secular society. (shrink)