Pauline Kleingeld and Marcus Willaschek, in a co-authored article, declare that their purportedly new interpretation of Immanuel Kant's writings on autonomy reveals that his moral philosophy is neither realist nor constructivist. However, as I explain here, John Rawls already occupies the area of intellectual territory to which Kleingeld and Willaschek attempt to lay claim: Rawls interprets Kant's moral philosophy as neither realist, as Kleingeld and Willaschek evidently construe this term, nor constructivist, as they evidently construe this term. Contra Kleingeld and (...) Willaschek, the moral constructivism attributed to Kant by Rawls is not voluntarist, and Rawls's account of Kant's concept of autonomy is not paradoxical. In order to understand autonomy, it is necessary to understand Kant's complex conception of the will, which structures his moral philosophy (as Rawls, unlike Kleingeld and Willaschek, explains). Rawls, like Kant, but unlike Kleingeld and Willaschek, clearly distinguishes between certain importantly different questions about normativity and obligation. Kant's moral philosophy, according to Rawls's insightful interpretation, is a form of objective moral constructivism. (shrink)

How can respect for cultural and religious differences be reconciled with the conviction that everyone has basic human rights that must be secured? Should liberal states require that non-liberal states secure human rights, and can they do so without being intolerant and oppressive? Is there a human right to democracy, and should a liberal hold that all states must become modern liberal democracies and may be pressured to reform their traditional practices and institutions? Do human rights include only the classical (...) liberal civil and political rights, and no economic rights? ;In this dissertation I defend a conception of human rights derived from John Rawls's Political Liberalism, which comprises both Justice as Fairness, the view he presented in A Theory of Justice , and the Law of Peoples, the view he presented in The Law of Peoples . According to this conception, human rights are binding on all societies, and cannot be rejected as peculiarly liberal or politically parochial. Outlaw states that violate them are to be condemned and may in grave cases be subjected to sanctions or intervention. Moreover, human rights include not only basic civil and political rights but also basic economic rights. However, while there may be a human right to live under a procedurally democratic government, it would not be a basic right but a derivative one. ;The conception of human rights that I here defend is a rational reconstruction of Rawls's view. In Chapters 1--3 I argue against the most natural interpretation of The Law of Peoples, defend a different interpretation, and expose and bridge a logical gap in that text. I then develop new responses to objections by Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge, who hold that liberals who endorse Justice as Fairness must reject the Law of Peoples as insufficiently egalitarian. I also respond to the additional objection that the set of human rights cannot include economic rights. As I show, endorsing Justice as Fairness requires endorsing the Law of Peoples, and public reason can reconcile respect for cultural and religious differences with the conviction that everyone has basic human rights that must be secured. (shrink)

Obstacles to achieving a global climate treaty include disagreements about questions of justice raised by the UNFCCC's principle that countries should respond to climate change by taking cooperative action "in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions". Aiming to circumvent such disagreements, Climate Change Justice authors Eric Posner and David Weisbach argue against shaping treaty proposals according to requirements of either distributive or corrective justice. The USA's climate envoy, Todd Stern, takes (...) a similar position. In this article I explain the practical and theoretical drawbacks of Posner & Weisbach's welfarist perspective and propose an alternative. I show that their arguments fail to rule out John Rawls' non-utilitarian, political conception of international justice and human rights, the Law of Peoples. On this basis I develop a conception of climate justice that highlights implications of some of Rawls' principles and adds a principle for determining fair shares of climate -treaty-related benefits and burdens. I propose this conception as a moral framework for negotiating a treaty that would promote human welfare consistently with requirements of justice, and I argue that a treaty proposal satisfying these requirements could best satisfy Posner & Weisbach's own feasibility criteria. (shrink)

As awareness of global warming has spread during the past couple of decades and developed into the realization that humanity faces an existential threat, a number of more or less Kantian liberal or cosmopolitan moral and political theorists have attempted to address questions of justice raised by the climate crisis. David Held was among the most prolific and influential of them. Here I discuss Held's cosmopolitan perspective on climate governance and consider its bearing on certain recent proposals for new institutions, (...) including in particular a proposal offered by John Broome and Duncan Foley for establishing a World Climate Bank. I argue that such a WCB may be endorsable from Held's perspective, depending how the initial proposal may get further developed. Held's approach to politics is similar to Kant's in certain significant respects, including the role of hope. Both approaches are valuable and important in relation to the climate crisis. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Basic Human Rights Public Reason Sovereignty and Self‐determination The DNSL Argument and the Minimum Respect‐for‐Justice Condition Adequate Justification Rights of Political Participation Post‐war Nation Building Promoting Political Reform Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes.

The urgent importance of dealing with the climate crisis has led some influential theorists to argue that at least some demands for justice must give way to pragmatic and strategic considerations. These theorists (Cass Sunstein, Eric Posner, and David Weisbach, all academic lawyers, and John Broome, an academic philosopher) contend that the failures of international negotiations and other efforts to change economic policies and practices have shown that moral exhortations are worse than ineffective. Although Broome's position is similar in these (...) respects to that of Sunstein, Posner and Weisbach, it differs in other important respects, including his understanding of the idea of justice, his disagreement with the policy approach (which he calls "efficiency with sacrifice") favored by the economists Nicholas Stern and William Nordhaus, and his proposal for establishing a new international financial institution, a World Climate Bank, in addition to putting a price on carbon. Elsewhere I offer a critical analysis of the position taken by Posner and Weisbach in their book, Climate Change Justice. Their arguments against allowing principles of distributive justice (narrowly understood) to constrain treaty negotiations fail to rule out the principles of John Rawls' Law of Peoples (which is a conception of the moral basis of a just international order, including states' obligations to secure basic human rights for all). Therefore their arguments against shaping climate treaties to reflect any principles of justice do not succeed in supporting their position. Here I offer a critical analysis of Broome's position. I raise and discuss objections to Broome's proposal for a WCB, and I argue that the continued relevance of these objections is contingent on how the proposal for a WCB may get developed. (shrink)

Although Andrius Gališanka’s well-written book is interesting as a work of psychological and intellectual history based on archival research as well as speculation, and although it has considerable merits, it appears to overreach the limits of the author’s expertise. Since he has published a book on Wittgenstein and normative inquiry, and also an article on game theory in relation to Rawls, he seems well qualified to write chapters 2, 3, and 4, which I found informative and helpful. However, the shortcomings (...) of the last chapters of the book prevent the achievement of some of its main... (shrink)

Pauline Kleingeld argues that according to Kant it would be wrong to coerce a state into an international federation, due to the wrongness of paternalism. Although I agree that Kant opposes the waging of war as a means to peace, I disagree with Kleingeld's account of the reasons why he would oppose coercing a state into a federation. Since she does not address the broader question of the permissibility of interstate coercion, she does not properly address the narrower question of (...) whether coercion to compel a state to join a federation can be permissible. I revise and supplement her arguments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political PhilosophyAlyssa R. BernsteinArthur Ripstein. Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy. Cambridge, MA-London: Harvard University Press, 2009. Pp. xiii + 399. Cloth, $49.95.This superb, exemplary account of Immanuel Kant’s legal and political philosophy is essential reading not only for Kant scholars, but also for political philosophers and philosophers of law. Lucidly reasoned and written with crystalline clarity, the book is (...) both accessible to non-specialists and a pleasure to read. Ripstein reveals the coherent, systematic structure of thought in Kant’s obscurely written Doctrine of Right, and goes beyond illumination to defense and development of Kant’s conception of equal freedom. In the course of doing all of this, he not only presents Kant in historical context, but also brings to light important differences between Kant’s views and those of other political philosophers and philosophers of law, including John Locke, John Stuart Mill, H. L. A. Hart, and Ronald Dworkin, often enriching the discussion by referring to decisions or arguments made by courts in the U.S. or elsewhere. Ripstein shows that it is unjustifiable to exclude Kant from the primary canon of political philosophy, as is typical of current English-language teaching and scholarship.State governments both tell people what to do and force them to do as they are told; they also claim rights to do these things. Yet people claim the right to be free. Can these claims be consistent? Ripstein argues that Kant shows that they can. By working out the implications of the entitlement to be independent, one’s own master, and free from domination by others, Kant develops answers to the basic questions of political philosophy, addressing state legitimacy, the rule of law, political obligation, revolution, punishment, private property, taxation, and redistribution.The book begins with an overview chapter, followed by a chapter on what Kant calls the “innate right of humanity” in one’s own person, which is the right to be independent. Topics of private right are then addressed in three chapters, with topics of public right in five subsequent chapters, building on the previous ones. A central, bridging chapter explains Kant’s account of the transition from private right to public right, thus his account of political authority, which takes the form of arguments about the state of nature, its defects, and the need for the legal and political institutions of a state. The book ends with an appendix in which Ripstein explains the relation between the Universal Principle of Right and the Categorical Imperative.The right to independence is an original right in the sense that it does not require establishment by any affirmative act, Ripstein explains. Persons capable of acquiring rights through their actions must have the capacity to act in ways that have consequences for rights and thus for others’ conduct. Therefore, any system of rights must presuppose some basic moral capacities that do not depend on antecedent acts on the part of the person exercising them, and thus must presuppose the “innate right” to one’s own person. Each person’s entitlement to independence from another’s choice is the basis of all further rights. It sets restrictions on the capacity to acquire new rights and structures the rights [End Page 531] that each person can acquire. It also imposes duties on the state and restricts the means it can use for achieving its purposes. Equal freedom, understood in terms of restrictions on coercion, governs both private right and public right.In a system of equal freedom, each person is free to use his or her own powers, individually or cooperatively, in order to pursue his or her own purposes, and each person decides what ends to pursue with his or her own means. The right to such independence is an aspect of one’s status as a person in relation to other persons; within a system of reciprocal limits on freedom, it is an entitlement that restricts the conduct of others, consistent with everyone being subject to the same restrictions. It can be violated only by others’ conduct. The sole point of a system of equal freedom is... (shrink)

This volume is fourth in the series of annuals created under the auspices of The Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory . The topics covered herein_from peacekeeping and terrorism, to sex trafficking and women's paid labor, to poverty and religious fundamentalism_are vital to women and to feminist movements throughout the world.

Non-suicidal self-injury is a complex behaviour, routinely engaged for emotion regulatory purposes. As such, a number of theoretical accounts regarding the aetiology and maintenance of NSSI are grounded in models of emotion regulation; the role that cognition plays in the behaviour is less well known. In this paper, we summarise four models of emotion regulation that have repeatedly been related to NSSI and identify the core components across them. We then draw on social cognitive theory to unite models of cognition (...) and models of emotion in developing a new cognitive-emotional model of NSSI. Our model articulates how emotion regulation and cognition can work in concert to govern NSSI, and offers several new research questions that can be addressed within this framework. (shrink)

In this interview with Michael Lazarus, Jay Bernstein reflects on the history of his intellectual friendship with Gillian Rose—until her early death, his dearest friend. It was a friendship rooted in a shared passion for Hegel's philosophy as the ground origin and abiding source of Marxist Critical Theory. In the course of the interview, Bernstein comments on the role of speculative propositions in Rose's reading of Hegel; her modernist understanding of the meaning of style even after (...) her critique of Adorno on style; on her obsession with critiquing post-structuralism; her continuing allegiance to Marxism; his understanding of her turn to political theology; the significance of Marx's “On the Jewish Question” for her and him; the meaning of law in Rose's thought as well as in his; the power and courage of her last book, Love's Work, its work of affirmation. He concludes with a reflection on his sense that she is a thinker whose fate is to be loved, studied, forgotten, and then discovered anew. (shrink)

In this essay I reply to Alyssa Bernstein and Helga Varden's comments on my book, Kant and Cosmopolitanism. In response to Bernstein, I argue that Kant's opposition to the coercive incorporation of states into an international federation should be interpreted as permitting no exceptions. In response to Varden, I clarify Kant's conception and defence of patriotism as a duty, and I show how Kantian cosmopolitans can rebut Bernard Williams's objection. I also explicate why, given a specific feature (...) of Kant's defence of the state's duty to provide poverty relief, an international federation can be seen to have an analogous duty. (shrink)

This essay compares Rawls's and Nozick's theories of justice. Nozick thinks patterned principles of justice are false, and offers a historical alternative. Along the way, Nozick accepts Rawls's claim that the natural distribution of talent is morally arbitrary, but denies that there is any short step from this premise to any conclusion that the natural distribution is unjust. Nozick also agrees with Rawls on the core idea of natural rights liberalism: namely, that we are separate persons. However, Rawls and Nozick (...) interpret that idea in different ways-momentously different ways. The tension between their interpretations is among the forces shaping political philosophy to this day. Footnotesa For comments, I thank Alyssa Bernstein, Geoffrey Brennan, Jason Brennan, Tom Christiano, Andrew I. Cohen, Andrew Jason Cohen, Tyler Cowen, Teresa Donovan, David Estlund, Jerry Gaus, Allen Habib, Alex Kaufman, Mark LeBar, Loren Lomasky (especially Loren, for insight and inspiration over a period of many years), Cara Nine, Ellen Frankel Paul, Guido Pincione, Thomas Pogge, Dan Russell, Michael Smith, Horacio Spector, and Matt Zwolinski. I thank the Earhart Foundation for financial support in the fall of 2002 and Australian National University's Research School of Social Sciences for its wonderful hospitality during a ten week stay in 2002. The support of the folks at Liberty Fund in Indianapolis during the final stages of this project goes beyond anything I will ever be able properly to thank them for. (shrink)

Their important exegetical and philosophical disagreements notwithstanding, Pauline Kleingeld and Marcus Willaschek, on the one hand, and Alyssa Bernstein, on the other, seem to agree that Kant’s Categorical Imperative transcends the contemporary dichotomy between moral realism and ethical constructivism. My contribution is an attempt to further elaborate on the third, unique, conceptual option that they have identified. I employ the notion of an “enabling condition,” introduced in epistemology and action theory by Jonathan Dancy, in order to show that (...) the Categorical Imperative enables action and is enabled by action. The Categorical Imperative (as distinct from specific categorical imperatives and moral laws) is discussed as a structural, but still normative, coherence and consistence norm of practical reasoning. As such it is two things at the same time, namely, first, the most fundamental normative background condition of practical deliberation, choice, and action. Second, however, the mutual enabler-enablee-relationship between action and Categorical Imperative points in the other – “not-so-Kantian” – direction as well: individual practical deliberation, understood as the mundane phenomenon that penetrates the lives of agents, is the (existence) condition that enables the Categorical Imperative in normatively-structured action. (shrink)

For Hegel, modern selfhood is an implicitly poetic, normative capacity for actions that could not be empirically explained. Thus it eludes the “clarification” offered by classical tragedy, but modernity’s apparent loss of tragedy conceals the dialectical refinement of tragic into comic form that most defines modern selfhood. If Aristotle contrasted poetry and history, Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit derives a modern, comic ethical poetics from the form of historical contingency itself. Focusing on Hegel’s reading of Antigone, I solicit Gillian (...) class='Hi'>Rose and Dieter Henrich to defend this account against tragic assessments of modern selfhood by J. M. Bernstein, Patricia Jagentowicz Mills, and Judith Butler. (shrink)

How do we determine whether some candidate causal factor is an actual cause of some particular outcome? Many philosophers have wanted a view of actual causation which fits with folk intuitions of actual causation and those who wish to depart from folk intuitions of actual causation are often charged with the task of providing a plausible account of just how and where the folk have gone wrong. In this paper, I provide a range of empirical evidence aimed at showing just (...) how and where the folk go wrong in determining whether an actual causal relation obtains. The evidence suggests that folk intuitions of actual causation are generated by two epistemically defective processes. I situate the empirical evidence within a background discussion of debunking, arguing for a two-pronged debunking explanation of folk intuitions of actual causation. I conclude that those who wish to depart from folk intuitions of actual causation should not be compelled to square their account of actual causation with the verdicts of the folk. In the dispute over actual causation, folk intuitions deserve to be rejected. (shrink)

Marcus Willaschek and I have argued against the widespread assumption that Kant claims the Moral Law—the supreme principle of morality—is (or must be regarded as) ‘self-legislated’. We argue that Kant instead describes the Moral Law as an _a priori_ principle of the will. We also argue that his conception of autonomy concerns not the Moral Law but substantive moral laws such as the law that requires promoting the happiness of others. In the present essay, I respond to the commentary by (...) Alyssa Bernstein and Christoph Hanisch. In response to Bernstein, I clarify the relation between our interpretation of Kant and those proposed by John Rawls and Allen Wood. In response to Hanisch, I argue, among other things, that Kant’s defense of the thesis that the Moral Law is an a priori principle of pure practical reason does not mean that practical reasoning and reasons-based action are impossible without it. It means rather that _morally good_ and _morally evil_ reasons-based action are impossible without it. (shrink)

Based on the findings of research conducted as part of a doctoral study aimed at obtaining an understanding of what it means to be an assessor in higher education, this paper outlines the experience of an individual lecturer at a South African university and describes the meaning he makes of his practice as an assessor within the context of a changing understanding of the nature and purpose of higher education. Making a case for personal agency and innovation as critical qualities (...) in the assessment endeavour, the researcher suggests that, in contrast to a view of education increasingly focused on standardization, accountability and outcomes, student assessment is essentially a human encounter in which the humanity and emotions of both lecturer and student need to be acknowledged. (shrink)

Social theory has much to gain from taking up the challenges of conceptualizing ‘mental health’. Such an approach to the stunting of human mental life in conditions of adversity requires us to open up the black box of ‘environment’, and to develop a vitalist biosocial science, informed by and in conversation with the life sciences and the neurosciences. In this paper we draw on both classical and contemporary social theory to begin this task. We explore human inhabitation – how humans (...) inhabit their ‘ecological niches’ – and examine a number of conceptual developments that ‘deconstruct’ the binary distinction between organism and environment. We argue that we must understand the neurological, ecological and social pathways and mechanisms that shape human (mental) life if we are to address the central concerns of our discipline with inequity and injustice as these are inscribed into the bodies and souls of human beings. (shrink)

Introduction. Dying to see -- The anthropomorphic image : negotiations of space between body and landscape -- The imperfect replica : departures and arrivals from Naples to Nagasaki -- The visionary image : the return of the image from Brazil to Rome -- The utopic image : unsettling circuits between Chile and Rome -- Epilogue : The proliferation of the body : Francis Xavier in Goa.

Human ecology - the study and practice of relationships between the natural and the social environment - has gained prominence as scholars seek more effectively to engage with pressing global concerns. In the past seventy years most human ecology has skirted the fringes of geography, sociology and biology. This volume pioneers radical new directions. In particular, it explores the power of indigenous and traditional peoples' epistemologies both to critique and to complement insights from modernity and postmodernity.

In this paper I attempt to trace some entanglements of an event documented in my PhD research, which contests dominant modes of enquiry. This research takes place with a group of Grade 2 learners in a government school in Cape Town, South Africa. It is experimental research which resists the human subject as the most important aspect of research, the only one with agency or intentionality. In particular, the analysis focuses on the process of the making of the circle, and (...) how integral it is in contributing to building the Community of Enquiry, the pedagogy of Philosophy with Children. A critical posthuman analysis is offered which engages with the material-discursive entanglements of the making of the circle. Also, how this making of a circle can be a democratising practice, by including in the concept of democracy, the more-than-human. The analysis also focuses on the placing of the chairs by the children, as a deliberate pedagogical practice, and how this works to disrupt the adult /child binary. There is a move beyond the linguistic turn by paying attention to not only the discursive in the transcriptions but also the intra-actions in between human and more-than-human, the circle, the chairs and the materiality of place. (shrink)

This paper argues that liberationist ethics can contribute method and content to religious discourse on peace and war. The christological grounding for this ethic forces us to take more seriously the will toward peace as capable of being progressively realized in the face of structural sin. Moreover, it seeks to address a Christian audience first that may then join others in prophetic denunciation of cultural attitudes that embody social sin by masking structural violence. Directives for state action may be modified (...) through cultural actors; the state is not usually the immediate addressee. Liberationists move through the social to the political dimension, thus avoiding a tendency to absorb political functions. (shrink)

Fern Logan’s collection of photographic portraits documents the emergence of the African American artist into mainstream American art. The Artist Portrait Series captures sixty significant artists from the late twentieth century.

Significant advances have recently been made in our understanding of the mechanisms of activation of proteins that require processing. Often this involves endoproteolytic cleavage of precursor forms at basic residues, and is carried out by a group of serine endoproteinases, termed the proprotein convertases. In mammals, seven different convertases have been identified to date. These act in both the regulated secretory pathway for the processing of prohormones and proneuropeptides and in the constitutive secretory pathway, in which a variety of proproteins (...) are activated endoproteolytically. The recently completed sequence of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans genome affords a unique opportunity to examine the entire proprotein convertase family in a multicellular organism. Here we review the nature of the family, emphasising the structural features, characteristic of the four nematode genes, that supply all of the necessary functions unique to this group of serine endoproteinases. Studies of the C. elegans genes not only provide important information about the evaluation of this gene family but should help to illuminate the roles of these proteins in mammalian systems. BioEssays 22:545–553, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The purpose of the work is to compare aquinas and merleau-Ponty and see whether the thought of thomas is relevant today. It is, As presenting a different insight into being. They agree in their purposes, But seek reality differently. Thomas looks for ultimate cause, Eternal truths, And claims the soul of man is an independent, Spiritual entity; merleau-Ponty looks to phenomena to find essences, Sees truth as elusive, And claims the soul is developmental. Both affirm the unity of man, However.

Based on the experiences of anthropologists and others who document abuses and serve as expert witnesses, case studies from around the world offer insight into reparations proceedings; the ethical struggles associated with attempts to secure reparations; the professional and personal risks to researchers, victims, and human rights advocates; and how to come to terms with the political compromises of reparations in the face of the human need for justice.".