We argue that human rights are best conceived as norms arising from a fiduciary relationship that exists between states and the citizens and noncitizens subject to their power. These norms draw on a Kantian conception of moral personhood, protecting agents from instrumentalization and domination. They do not, however, exist in the abstract as timeless natural rights. Instead, they are correlates of the state's fiduciary duty to provide equal security under the rule of law, a duty that flows from the state's (...) institutional assumption of irresistible sovereign powers. (shrink)

The prevailing view in Canada of the Crown-Native fiduciary relationship is that it arose as a consequence of the Crown taking on the role of intermediary between First Nations and British settlers eager to acquire Aboriginal lands. First Nations are sometimes deemed to have surrendered their sovereignty in exchange for Crown protection. The author suggests that the sovereignty-for-protection argument does not supply a compelling account of how Aboriginal peoples lost their sovereignty to the Crown. Furthermore, Aboriginal treaties compel the courts (...) to take seriously Aboriginal peoples' sovereign authority to treat with the Crown. First Nations did not intend to surrender their sovereignty through the treaty process, but courts assume that this is the result. Against this background, the author argues that the Supreme Court of Canada has imposed fiduciary obligations on the Crown in order to legitimise the Crown's assertions of sovereignty over Canada's Aboriginal peoples. (shrink)

Parliamentary privilege immunises certain activities of legislative bodies and their members from the ordinary law and judicial scrutiny. The rule of law, on the other hand, insists that everyone - including public officials - is subject to the law. Moreover, the rule of law is usually understood to involve judicial review of executive rather than legislative action. Thus, parliamentary privilege seems to establish a public sphere that is beyond the rule of law. Notwithstanding the tension that appears between these two (...) ideas, I argue that parliamentary privilege and the rule of law, properly understood, support rather than oppose one another. However, the ideas can be reconciled only if we reject the jurisdictional and categorical approach to parliamentary privilege adopted recently by the Supreme Court of Canada in Canada (House of Commons) v. Vaid [2005] 1 S.C.R. 667, 2005 SCC 30. This approach should be rejected because it trades on an unsustainable distinction between review of the scope of an asserted privilege and review its actual exercise, with the Court finding that only issues of scope are subject to review, even if important human rights are at stake. (shrink)

The self-ownserhip thesis claims that people are the rightful owners of themselves, and that as a consequence that are entitled to do as they please, and appropriate what they will, just so long as they do not harm others. I argue that this no-harm proviso is problematic in that our best conception of harm is not that A harms B if, and only if, A makes B worse off, but rather that A harms B if, and only if, A's action (...) makes B worse off than B ought to be under the lights of our best political and moral theory. A consequence of this analysis of harm is that the self-ownership thesis turns out to be too crude to serve as a foundational principle of any political theory concerned with the distribution of scarce resources. (shrink)

Arguing that the state and its people stand in a fiduciary relationship, Sovereignty's Promise puts forward a bold new account of political authority and its legal limits. In doing so it presents a fresh argument for common law constitutionalism and a novel theoretical framework for understanding the requirements of the rule of law.

The relationship between Canadian administrative law and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is complex and still unfolding. If a decision touches a Charter right, frontline decision-makers and reviewing courts alike determine the requirements of legality using the Charter, administrative law principles, or some combination of the two. There is an emerging consensus that the Charter does not replace the common law, but rather embodies and supplements fundamental legal principles contained within it.This chapter sets out various ways in which (...) judicial review at common law has influenced understandings of the Charter, as well as the manner in which the Charter has influenced review of administrative decisions when a Charter right is clearly at stake. The influence runs in both directions, and has significant implications for judicial review of both the procedure and substance of administrative action. In the realm of procedure, the courts rely on the common law doctrine of procedural fairness to interpret the principles of fundamental justice set out in s. 7 of the Charter. However, when courts review the substance rather than the procedural aspects of a decision that engages a Charter right, they tend to review the decision using the analytical framework developed in R. v. Oakes for testing the validity of legislation. Taken together, these general features of the relationship between Charter jurisprudence and administrative law suggest that each is porous and open-textured to the other. Put another way, the relationship between the Charter and administrative law exhibits a cross-fertilization of principles and approaches which inform judicial review of administrative action. (shrink)

The fundamental interaction that triggers a fiduciary obligation is the exercise by one party of discretionary power of an administrative nature over another party's interests, where the latter party is unable, as a matter of fact or law, to exercise the fiduciary's power. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that there is something "deeply fiduciary" about the interaction between a state and its subjects. The fiduciary nature of this relationship provides the justification for the state's legal authority and (...) its obligation to act in the interests of its subjects. The practical manifestation of the state's overarching fiduciary obligation to its subjects is the rule of law. (shrink)

A broad range of scholars contend that the rule of law is indifferent to human rights. I call this view the "no-rights thesis," and attempt to unsettle it. My argument draws on the work of Lon L. Fuller and begins with the idea that the fundamental justification of the rule of law rests on a juridical conception of human agency, one that finds expression in the legal and moral claims that can arise from human agency within the context of legal (...) relationships. I argue that the state and its legal subjects are in a particular kind of legal relationship with one another, a fiduciary relationship, and that the content of the state's ensuing fiduciary obligation is the rule of law. Because the rule of law is intelligible in terms of the right, and independently of the good, it follows that compliance with the rule of law necessarily makes a moral difference regardless of how poorly the state lives up to the demands of the good. This is a conceptual rather than an empirical claim, and it leads to the conclusion that respect for human agency in the context of the state-subject fiduciary relationship necessarily entails respect for human dignity, respect for human dignity entails respect for human rights, and therefore a commitment to the rule of law entails a commitment to human rights. (shrink)

In international law, the term "jus cogens" refers to norms that are considered peremptory in the sense that they are mandatory and do not admit derogation. Although the jus cogens concept has achieved widespread acceptance, international legal theory has yet to furnish a satisfying account of jus cogens's legal basis. We argue that peremptory norms are inextricably linked to the sovereign powers assumed by all states. The key to understanding international jus cogens lies in Immanuel Kant 's discussion of the (...) innate right of children to their parents' care. Drawing on Kant 's account, our theory of jus cogens posits that states exercise sovereign authority as fiduciaries of the people subject to their power. An immanent feature of this state-subject fiduciary relationship is that the state must comply with jus cogens. The fiduciary theory clarifies jus cogens's content by generating discrete criteria for identifying peremptory norms. (shrink)

For several decades, international law has recognized certain norms such as the prohibitions against genocide, slavery, and military aggression as "jus cogens"- peremptory law which supersedes conflicting international treaties and customs. Despite widespread acceptance of the jus cogens concept, legal theorists continue to debate whether peremptory norms derive their legal authority from state consent, natural law, or the demands of international public order. Anxiety over peremptory norms' legal basis has frustrated efforts to clarify the scope and content of jus cogens, (...) as well as placing peremptory norms on a collision course with inherited notions of state sovereignty. Drawing on Immanuel Kant 's conception of fiduciary relations, this Article develops a new theory of jus cogens based on the idea that states are fiduciaries of their people. According to the fiduciary theory, peremptory norms do not stand in opposition to state sovereignty; rather, they are constitutive of state sovereign authority because all states owe their subjects a fiduciary obligation to comply with such norms. The fiduciary model of the state resolves the longstanding tension in international legal theory between peremptory norms and state sovereignty and points to discrete formal and substantive criteria for identifying peremptory norms. (shrink)

We explore two special challenges indigenous peoples pose to the idea of sovereigns as trustees for humanity. The first challenge is rooted in a colonial history during which a trusteeship model of sovereignty served as an enabler of paternalistic colonial policies. The challenge is to show that the trusteeship model is not irreparably colonial in nature. The second challenge, which emerges from the first, is to specify the scope and nature of indigenous peoples’ sovereignty within the trusteeship model. Whereas the (...) interaction between states and foreign nationals is the locus of cosmopolitan law, the relationship between states and indigenous peoples is distinctive. In the ordinary cosmopolitan case, foreign nationals do not purport to possess legal authority. Indigenous peoples often do make such a claim, pitting their claim to authority against the state’s. We discuss how international law has attempted to come to grips with indigenous sovereignty by requiring states to include indigenous peoples in decision-making processes that affect their historical lands and rights. A crucial fault line in the jurisprudence, however, separates a duty to consult indigenous peoples from a duty to acquire their free, prior and informed consent. The latter but not the former recognizes that indigenous peoples possess a veto over state projects on their lands, in effect recognizing in them a limited co-legislative power. We focus on recent jurisprudence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and consider whether either the duty to consult or FPIC are enough to dispel the shadow of the trusteeship model’s colonial past. We suggest that they are a move in the right direction, and that implicitly they represent international law’s recognition that states are no longer the sole bearers of sovereignty at international law. In limited circumstances, international law recognizes indigenous peoples as sovereign actors. (shrink)

Clinical psychologists describe decentering as the mental operation in which a subject “moves out” of immersion in a mental state. Such decentering is philosophically puzzling. It involves that a subject attends to her mental state to distance herself from it. That is, she attends to the state to make it less determining of her processing. This paper provides a philosophical explanation of the nature of decentering. It analyses decentering as a complex mental operation composed of two (...) sub-operations: introspection and detachment. Drawing on this analysis, the paper argues that decentering involves certain dynamics of attention and attention control that pose an important challenge to a selection for action theory of attention. This challenge concerns adequately describing the workings of detachment in decentering. The paper discusses how a selection for action theory might reply, yet it argues that all the available replies involve unattractive aspects. The paper closes with broader perspectives, suggesting that decentering might also pose a puzzle for other theories of attention. (shrink)

Background Although research has established that the work environment significantly shapes nurses’ ethical behavior, it’s less clear whether decent work could influence ethical ideologies of nurses. Aim To investigate the decent work conditions and ethical ideologies of nurses, and to analyze whether decent work influences their ethical ideologies. Methods A multicenter cross-sectional survey was conducted among 203 nurses working in three tertiary governmental hospitals across two cities in Egypt. We utilized the Scale of Decent Work, which consists of 15 items (...) distributed across five dimensions, to assess the level of decent work conditions. Additionally, the Ethics Position Questionnaire, containing 20 items divided into two categories—idealism and relativism—was used to evaluate the ethical ideologies of nurses. Pearson correlation and linear regression analyses were applied to analyze the data. Ethical considerations Ethical approval from the ethics committee, institutional permission, and informed consent from the participants were obtained for data collection. Results The findings indicated that the levels of decent work conditions were moderate, while the ethical ideologies of nurses were relatively high. Stepwise multiple linear regression analyses revealed that the idealism of nurses was significantly predicted by two dimensions of decent work—organizational values, and hours allowing for free time and rest—along with the overall decent work score. Meanwhile, the relativism of nurses was significantly predicted by the presence of physically and interpersonally safe working conditions. Conclusions Nurses experiencing decent work conditions characterized by high organizational values and adequate hours for free time and rest are more inclined to adopt idealistic ethical ideology. Meanwhile, those experiencing physically and interpersonally safe working conditions tend to embrace relativistic ethical ideology. Implications for clinical practice Identifying the relationship between decent work conditions and the ethical ideologies of nurses can assist hospital administrators in fostering work conditions that promote appropriate ethical ideologies among nurses. (shrink)

Decentering Rushdie argues that postcolonial studies has consistently underestimated the investment of the English-language Indian novel in the nation by focusing on a handful of texts that conform to Western assumptions about the bankruptcy of the postcolonial nation-state. Taking Salman Rushdie’s work as the sign of a presumed homology between postcolonialism and a postmodern distrust of totality, Jani demonstrates that his novels are hardly representative of the range of Indian writing in English. Instead, in a series of expert readings (...) of less well-known texts, he demonstrates the commitment to the decolonising project that exists even within the inevitably cosmopolitan worldview of Indians writing in a colonial language. Situating his work within foundational debates in postcolonial studies, this review demonstrates the fresh light he sheds on the vexed relations among historical location, political ideology and literary form. (shrink)

Many recent theorists have argued that the self is socially constituted, or “decentered” by its social world. With surprising consistency, and in various ways, this decentered self has been gendered feminine, by feminists and non‐feminists alike. In this paper I explore whether there is any special link between femininity and decenteredness. I distinguish between two different ways that the self might be decentered – by its position within a cultural order, or by its interactions and relations with particular others. I (...) then ask whether either of these potential forms of decenteredness bear a specific connection to femininity, and I try to spell out several such connections that are suggested by contemporary feminist theoretical writings. I argue that most of these cannot be made plausible or coherent. However, I conclude that there are some senses in which feminine selves are especially decentered, although it appears that the link depends upon women's disempowered social position, and not upon anything to do with femininity as a distinctive identity. (shrink)

This article will argue that a decentering process occurs in the intersubjective connections between individuals, and that through the acknowledgement of this process researchers can better understand the potential for distortions to occur in the development of self-understanding. The concept of decentered intersubjectivity discussed in this article is the result of prior research on happiness and contentment, yet a range of emotions such as trust, guilt, shame, and disappointment could also be considered. In each case, the concept of a (...) decentered intersubjectivity can connect the personal and emotional experiences of the individual, with a shared social experience that is deeply sociological in nature. (shrink)

Natalie Zemon Davis’s work has decentered the identities of her subjects as part of seeing their complexity. This essay, inspired by Davis’s rich thought and scholarship, looks at the ways in which the Romantics in the arts decentered their thought and practices away from the West. Their decentering involved serious study of non-Western thought and its incorporation into their art, and the regular use of opium to shape their creative works. One borrowed theme was transcendence to a higher mode (...) of existence, often through sexual union with a woman. So influential did Romantic tropes, themes, and images derived from outside the West become that they persisted in Western culture long after the Romantics themselves had lost interest in the body of non-Western culture from which they drew. Examples include the work of Samuel Coleridge, Walter Scott, Hector Berlioz, the Schlegel brothers, Caroline Günderode, Sidney Owenson, and others. (shrink)

This essay outlines an argument for fostering the conditions for civil society to emerge in conflict or post-conflict situations. Only where a ‘civil’ society and ‘decent’ society exist together can democratic engagement flourish in the long term. The essay explores the possibilities for decency in social and political conduct where conflict and rupture have been the norm. In establishing decency in social relations and in institutions, trust must be generated where distrust has prevailed as a result of the recent past (...) and memories of a longer past. Common in the contemporary period have been the interventions of humanitarian organizations — such as international and local human rights organizations. How can we assess this activity in relation to the establishment or re-establishment of a civil society and to practices and institutions that reflect decency? What occurs in ‘transitional’ times to foster social relations and institutions that reflect decency in actions between people? The essay looks briefly at the example of the Palestinian West Bank in this context. (shrink)

A Decent Proposal: Ethical Review of Clinical Research Donald Evans and Martyn Evans Centre for Philosophy and Health Care University of Wales Swansea, UK The investigation and development of modern medicines and medical technology can create numerous ethical dilemmas both for clinical researchers and research ethics committees. A Decent Proposal: Ethical Review of Clinical Research seeks to facilitate and encourage good clinical research by exploring the concerns, responsibilities, general issues and particular pitfalls associated with ethical aspects of research. It provides (...) practical guidelines for researchers on how to improve the quality of research design, while for those appointed to scrutinise research proposals it offers advice on how to apply consistent, careful and critical reasoning to the process of assessing ethical standards. As such, it will provide invaluable assistance to clinical researchers and ethics committees alike in understanding the moral challenges posed by modern health care. (shrink)

Are there any coherent and defensible alternatives to liberal democracy? The author examines the possibility that a reformed democratic centralism-the principle around which China's current polity is officially organized-might be legitimate, according to both an inside and an outside perspective. The inside perspective builds on contemporary Chinese political theory; the outside perspective critically deploys Rawls's notion ofa "decent society " as its standard. Along the way, the author pays particular attention to the kinds and degree of pluralism a decent society (...) can countenance, and to the specific institutions in China that might enable the realization of a genuine and/or decent democratic centralism. The author argues that by considering both inside and outside perspectives, and the degrees to which they inter-penetrate and critically inform one another, we can engage in a global philosophy that neither pre-judges alternative political traditions nor falls prey to false conceptual barriers. (shrink)

The Bishop of Questoriana has recently asked for a pontifical document ‘furnishing a doctrinal foundation of love and respect for life existing on the earth’. Mainstream moralists have urged, since the Axial Era, that it is human life that most demands love and respect. We realize and perfect our own humanity by recognizing humanity in every other, of whatever creed or race. Realizing that biological species are not natural kinds, more recent moralists have hoped to found moral decency either on (...) a respect for ‘rationality’ which excludes many of our conspecifics, or on simple loyalty to our immediate kin. Neither option is without its costs, and Catholic moralists in particular have often been suspicious of a morality that seems to lead to contempt for ordinary human life. Neither advocacy of ‘animal rights’ nor utilitarian calculation of animal pains and pleasures sit well with a traditional Catholic morality. Conversely, many of those who defend traditional practices such as hunting, farming or goading animals to fight, themselves suppose that ‘human’ and ‘animals’ may sometimes inhabit the same moral universe, that there are virtues that both may display in ‘noble action’. Developing this thought, it is possible to locate decency elsewhere than in an over-intellectual respect for ‘reason’. Decent treatment of animals (as of others) is that form of life which lets us live together ‘humanely’, in appreciation of the actual beings they are. Virtue, as Aristotle argued, lies less in acting nobly than in appreciating nobility. Those who claim to appreciate such nobility in beasts must learn to live humanely. (shrink)

Near the end of his target article, Baron argues that we need to address the question of how to conduct education in consequentialist decision making. However, recent trends in education have deemphasized and denigrated decentered and decontextualized thought. It is argued here that perspective decentering and decontextualized thinking are absolutely essential to the development of consequentialist reasoning.

This article explores whether the notion of the decent society as a normative concept is applicable under late modern conditions of normative pluralization and individualization. My argument is that the strength of the concept does not primarily lie in its descriptive value. It is rather a ‘utopian horizon’ against which aspects of societies can be analysed. This analytical value can tell us something about the state of various facets of social life. Having to cope with pluralization, individuals are increasingly required (...) to negotiate ambiguous and contradictory norms. It is this negotiation process that defines to a large extent various aspects of contemporary individualization. However, the fact that an individualized negotiation process occurs neither means that this process is characterized by decency nor produces by default a decent society nor a genuine sense of social integration. Thus, I argue that the concept ‘decency’ can make a qualitative addition to normative negotiation processes and thus in terms of social integration. (shrink)

Cindy Holder and Bruce Landesman pose several interesting challenges for my account of Global Justice. In this article I address their concerns by discussing the content of what we owe one another. When we appreciate all the components of what it is to have a decent life, this will commit us to a much richer picture of what we owe one another than is commonly assumed when talking of decent lives. There is also considerable scope for concern with inequality when (...) that fuller picture is presented. I discuss and clarify the importance of a shared state in securing global justice and also how, in the absence of shared state structures, we are to see our options for ensuring that our institutions treat all human beings as having equal moral worth. There is scope for compatriot partiality and appropriate attention to non-compatriots. I explain how these can readily be combined. (shrink)

: This essay addresses the difficulties that sociology as a discipline continues to experience in grasping the relations between technology, science and the social. I argue that these difficulties stem from a resolute centering of sociology on the social, which follows a generically Durkheimian blueprint. I elaborate a response to these difficulties which derives from recent lines of work in science and technology studies, and which entails a decentering of the social relative to the material and the conceptual, in (...) terms of both objects of analysis and explanatory formats. In order to display the direct sociological relevance of this approach, I move to the macro level, developing the conceptual apparatus of a decentered social theory via the discussion of a historical example of major sociological significance—the systematic gearing together of scientific research, technological innovation and industrial production that originated in the synthetic dye industry in the second half of the nineteenth century. Besides the interest of the topic itself, the aim is thus to exemplify in some detail what a decentered sociology might look like, both empirically and conceptually. (shrink)

In 1999, Susan Wolf diagnosed what was missing in bioethics: “an analysis that places race, ethnicity, and gender at the center.” Since then, not enough progress has been made in “decentering” whiteness in bioethics. The use of assisted reproductive technologies in the United States, and the bioethical discussion surrounding it, provides a window into the problem. Recent surveys of ART usage show racial disparities in access to ART and treatment outcomes. A personal testimony about egg freezing suggests a perceptual (...) blindness when white experience is taken to be the norm. Nevertheless, bioethics, including feminist bioethics, has largely framed ART within the parameters of “normative whiteness.” This paper will argue that feminist bioethics needs to put race at the center of analysis and will suggest pathways for doing so. Decentering whiteness requires a consideration of epistemic limits and privilege, a reevaluation of the goals of feminism, and an embrace of empathy in service of a more responsive and flexible worldview. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 7, Page 24-25, July 2011.

In Decent People, Norman Care explores how we may understand and be reconciled to the fragility of our moral nature. In his highly original vision of what it means to be a decent person, Care claims that our moral-emotional nature pressures us to seek relief from moralized pain - pain that comes from our awareness of our own wrongdoing, the suffering of current or future people, and our experience of indifference to moral imperatives. Care argues that decent people are neither (...) 'pure' nor self-righteous and that they are vulnerable to the need for forgiveness. Decent people may take morality seriously, but they are not guaranteed success at its challenges. (shrink)

This article reviews some recent research on the development of temporal cognition, with reference to Weist's (1989) account of the development of temporal understanding. Weist's distinction between two levels of temporal decentering is discussed, and empirical studies that may be interpreted as measuring temporal decentering are described. We argue that if temporal decentering is defined simply in terms of the coordination of the temporal locations of three events, it may fail to fully capture the properties of mature (...) temporal understanding. Characterizing the development of mature temporal cognition may require, in addition, distinguishing between event-dependent and event-independent thought about time. Experimental evidence relevant to such a distinction is described; these findings suggest that there may be important changes between 3 and 5 years in children's ability to think about points in time independently of the events that occur at those times. (shrink)

What I want to argue is that when we talk about contemporary crisis in culture, the one way of beginning to come to terms with this is having to historicize and pluralize and contextualize the postmodernism debate. How does that relate to the vocation of the intellectual, given the challenge of the technical intelligentsia, given the challenge of the middlebrow journalist? What kind of role and function can the humanistic intellectual have in advanced capitalist society, given his or her placement (...) within the academic’s life of the professional managerial class of this particular society? (shrink)

This article tries to analyze the meaning of a decent minimum of health care, by confronting the idea of decent care with the concept of justice. Following the ideas of Margalith about a decent society, the article argues that a just minimum of care is not necessarily a decent minimum. The way this minimum is provided can still humiliate individuals, even if the end result is the best possible distribution of the goods as seen from the viewpoint of justice. This (...) analysis is combined with an analysis from the perspective of solidarity, particularly of reflective solidarity, as a way to develop decent care, which is care that does not humiliate individuals and maintains their dignity. (shrink)

The Mexican Network of Women Philosophers has devoted its 2024 Permanent Seminar to reflect upon the slogan “Decentering the Canon to think ourselves today”. The idea supporting the slogan is partly motivated by a concern regarding how the necessary critiques to the Philosophical Canon have often been formulated in terms of the indispensability to add voices to it, or as a recommendation to stop reading some of the texts that have traditionally made it up. Even while these positions have (...) a lot going on for their plausibility, we claim that it is essential not to give it up, and that subverting it requires more than just adding voices to it. The Philosophical Canon is part of our inheritance. If we accept that we are partly constituted by what we inherit, then canceling it means eliminating part of who we are. We claim that a better option to overturn the Canon is to Decenter it. That is, to acknowledge that there is not a single way of dealing with it, that it is mobile and open, that it is there to be transformed, to help us think of those problems that actually matter to us in our present lives. (shrink)

De Synthèse breaks with the concept of the organic body as a producer of meaning. By dividing identity and opening it up to the transcendent, the novel challenges the fundamental Cartesian distinction between a singular body and a soul. Using everything in her power, the protagonist-narrator aspires to complete liberation from her organic body. For the protagonist, blood and flesh gradually become more abstract than the virtual augmented bodies she creates for herself. Instead of defining her individuality through her organic (...) body, the protagonist transfers her existence to a virtual place, degrading her organic body into a body-machine that is definitively outside her subjectivity. In the end, the protagonist’s effort to transform herself into an image merely distracts from the fact that the story in fact follows the most classic pattern of novels, that of the family quest. (shrink)

Analyses of embodied interaction still appear to explicitly or implicitly defend a human-centered approach to language and body in the material world. In this article, we propose to decenter our analytical position by acknowledging what artifacts, tools and architectural elements contribute to human activities and practices. Starting from a ‘ventriloqual’ perspective on communication, we demonstrate that the accountable character of people’s activities presupposes a form of material agency that tends to be neglected in our analyses. Far from neglecting human beings’ (...) contributions to their own activities, we show that this approach allows us to acknowledge their capacity to skillfully react and respond to what things indicate, say, or tell them to do. It is, we contend, in this back-and-forth process of actions and reactions that a certain dialogicity of things can be recognized. Decentering the analytical position by focusing on how things traceably contribute to shaping human interactions has, we contend, dramatic theoretical and methodological consequences. In the discussion we argue that resistance in taking a ventriloqual perspective to analyze the social life of things partially depends on its impact on the sensitive notion of responsibility. (shrink)

The essays in this volume bring to their focuses on philosophical issues the new angles of vision created by the multicultural, global, and postcolonial feminisms that have been developing around us.

It is hard to disagree with the idea of responsible innovation (henceforth, RI), as it enables policy-makers, scientists, technology developers, and the public to better understand and respond to the social, ethical, and policy challenges raised by new and emerging technologies. RI has gained prominence in policy agenda in Europe and the United States over the last few years. And, along with its rising importance in policy-making, there is also a burgeoning research literature on the topic. Given the historical context (...) of which RI emerges, it should not be surprising that the current discourse on RI is predominantly based on liberal democratic values. Yet, the bias towards liberal democratic values will inevitably limit the discussion of RI, especially in the cases where liberal democratic values are not taken for granted. As such, there is an urgent need to return to the normative foundation of RI, and to explore the notion of ‘responsible innovation’ from nonliberal democratic perspectives. Against this background, this paper seeks to demonstrate the problematic consequences of RI solely grounded on or justified by liberal democratic values. This paper will cast the argument in the form of a dilemma to be labelled as The Decent Nonliberal Peoples’ Dilemma and use it to illustrate the problems of the Western bias. (shrink)

This essay was first presented at the 2010 Ludwig Holberg Prize Symposium in Bergen, Norway, where I, as the prize recipient, was asked to describe my work and its import for our period of globalization. The essay first traces the interconnected processes of “decentering” history in Western historiography in the half century after World War II: the move to working people and “subaltern classes”; to women and gender; to communities defined by ethnicity and race; to the study of non-Western (...) histories and world or global history, in which the European trajectory is only one of several models. Can the historian hold onto the subjects of “decentered” social and cultural history, often local and full of concrete detail, and still address the perspectives of global history? To suggest an answer to this question, I describe my own decentering path from work on sixteenth-century artisans in the 1950s to recent research on non-European figures such as the Muslim “Leo Africanus” . I then offer two examples in which concrete cases can serve a global perspective. One is a comparison of the literary careers of Ibn Khaldun and Christine de Pizan in the scribal cultures on either side of the Mediterranean in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The other is the transmission and transformation of practices of divination, healing, and detection from Africa to the slave communities of Suriname in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (shrink)

This article tries to analyze the meaning of a decent minimum of health care, by confronting the idea of decent care with the concept of justice. Following the ideas of Margalith about a decent society, the article argues that a just minimum of care is not necessarily a decent minimum. The way this minimum is provided can still humiliate individuals, even if the end result is the best possible distribution of the goods as seen from the viewpoint of justice. This (...) analysis is combined with an analysis from the perspective of solidarity, particularly of reflective solidarity, as a way to develop decent care, which is care that does not humiliate individuals and maintains their dignity. (shrink)