Sunday, March 29, 2015

A Festschrift for John Broome


Weighing & Reasoning
Themes from the Philosophy of John Broome

Ed. by Iwao Hirose & Andrew Reisner

(Oxford University Press, March 2015)

272 pages




Description

John Broome has made major contributions to, and radical innovations in, contemporary moral philosophy. His research combines the formal method of economics with philosophical analysis. Broome's works stretch over formal axiology, decision theory, philosophy of economics, population axiology, the value of life, the ethics of climate change, the nature of rationality, and practical and theoretical reasoning. 

Weighing and Reasoning brings together fifteen original essays from leading philosophers who have been influenced by the work and thought of John Broome. It aims to offer a comprehensive evaluation of Broome's wide-ranging and far-reaching philosophical works over the past thirty years. 

Contents [preview]

My Long Road to Philosophy - John Broome 

Part I: Weighing

1. Liberty, Preference Satisfaction, and the Case Against Categories - Geoffrey Brennan 
2. Challenges to the Principle of Personal Good - Doug MacLean 
3. Metasemantics out of Economics? - Anandi Hattiangadi
4. Separability - Iwao Hirose
5. The Social Disvalue of Premature Deaths [pdf] - Hilary Greaves 
6. Being and Well-Being - Krister Bykvist 
7. On the Social and Personal Value of Existence [pdf] - Marc Fleurbaey & Alex Voorhoeve
8. The Affirmative Answer to the Existential Question and the Person Affecting Restriction - Gustaf Arrhenius

Part II: Reasoning

9.   The Meaning of 'Darn It!' [pdf] - Luc Bovens & Wlodek Rabinowicz 
10. Keeping Things Simple - Roger Crisp
11. Moral Requirements - Michael J. Zimmerman
12. Reasons for Broome - Jonathan Dancy
13. Normative Conflicts and the Structure of Normativity - Andrew Reisner 
14. Reasons and Rationality: the Case of Group Agents - Lara Buchak & Philip Pettit
15. Weighing Explanations - Stephen Kearns & Daniel Star 

Saturday, March 28, 2015

New Book: "Reclaiming Democracy"


Reclaiming Democracy
Judgment, Responsibility and the Right to Politics

Ed. by Albena Azmanova & Mihaela Mihai

(Routledge, March 2015)

230 pages




Description

Democracy is in shambles economically and politically. The recent economic meltdown in Europe and the U.S. has substituted democratic deliberation with technocratic decisions. In Athens, Madrid, Lisbon, New York, Pittsburgh or Istanbul, protesters have denounced the incapacity and unwillingness of elected officials to heed to their voices.

While the diagnosis of our political-economic illness has been established, remedies are hard to come. What can we do to restore our broken democracy? Which modes of political participation are likely to have an impact? And what are the loci of political innovation in the wake of the crisis? It is with these questions that Reclaiming Democracy engages. We argue that the managerial approach to solving the crisis violates ‘a right to politics’, that is, a right that our collective life be guided by meaningful politics: by discussion of and decision among genuinely alternative principles and policies. The contributors to this volume are united in their commitment to explore how and where this right can be affirmed in a way that resuscitates democracy in the wake of the crisis. Mixing theoretical reflection and empirical analysis the book offers fresh insights into democracy’s current conundrum and makes concrete proposals about how ‘the right to politics’ can be protected.

Contents [preview]

Introduction [preview] - Albena Azmanova & Mihaela Mihai 

Part 1: Loci of Democracy 

1. Agonism and the Crisis of Representative Democracy - Paulina Tambakaki 
2. Freedom, Democracy, and Working Life - Keith Breen 
3. Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism - Jodi Dean 
4. Ungovernability - Claus Offe 

Part 2: Modes of Democratic Politics 

5. Democracy, Law and Global Finance - Tamara Lothian 
6. Democracy and the Absolute Power of Disembedded Financial Markets - Alessandro Ferrara 
7. Success and Failure in the Deliberative Economy - Arjun Appadurai 
8. The Promise of Global Transparency - Matthew Fluck 

Part 3: Democratic Critique 

9. Neoliberalism, the Street, and the Forum - Noëlle McAfee 
10. Founding Political Critique in a Post-Political World - Nikolas Kompridis 
11. From the Assembly to the Agora - David Chandler

Monday, March 23, 2015

Conference on "Religion and Liberal Political Philosophy"

An international conference on Religion and Liberal Political Philosophy will be held at the University College London, June 10-12, 2015.

The conference is arranged by the Religion and Political Theory Centre at UCL. The centre is led by Professor Cécile Laborde.

Conference themes include secularism, liberal neutrality, religious exemptions, the rights of conscience, and public reason and religious arguments.

Among the speakers are: 

Corey Brettschneider - Brown University 
Jean L. Cohen - Columbia University 
Maeve Cooke - University College Dublin 
Rainer Forst - Goethe University Frankfurt 
Peter Jones - Newcastle University 
Andrew Koppelman - Northwestern University 
Chandran Kukathas - London School of Economics
Cécile Laborde - University College London 
Cristina Lafont - Northwestern University 
Alan Patten - Princeton University 
Enzo Rossi - University of Amsterdam 
Kevin Vallier - Bowling Green State University 
Daniel Weinstock - McGill University 

More information on the conference here.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Rawls' "Politischer Liberalismus" (Klassiker Auslegen)



John Rawls: Politischer Liberalismus

Hrsg. von Otfried Höffe

(De Gruyter, 2015)

204 S.






Kurzbeschreibung

John Rawls’ zweites Hauptwerk "Politischer Liberalismus" (1993) widmet sich der Frage, wie eine liberale Gesellschaft angesichts des gesellschaftlichen Pluralismus in Gerechtigkeitsfragen zu einem Konsens gelangen kann. In den Beiträgen des Klassiker Auslegen-Bandes wird das Werk von international renommierten Forschern systematisch interpretiert und zugleich Rawls’ Argumentation hinsichtlich ihrer Tragweite, aber auch ihrer Grenzen erörtert.

Inhalt

Vorwort - Otfried Höffe

1. Einführung - Otfried Höffe
2. Gerechtigkeit, Stabilität und Legitimität - Wilfried Hinsch
3. Grundlegende Ideen des Politischen Liberalismus - Peter Koller
4. Die Vermögen der Bürger und ihre Darstellung - Alessandro Pinzani & Denilson L. Werle
5. Politischer Konstruktivismus - Dirk Brantl
6. Die Idee eines übergreifenden Konsenses - Otfried Höffe
7. Der Vorrang des Rechten und die Ideen des Guten - Elif Özmen
8. Grundlagen und Grenzen der öffentlichen Vernunft - Charles Larmore
9. Die Grundstruktur als institutionelle Ausprägung von John Rawlsʼ Gerechtigkeit als Fairness - Lukas H. Meyer
10. Zur Rechtfertigung des Vorrangprinzips - Christoph Horn
11. Ausblick: Das Recht der Völker - Otfried Höffe

Friday, March 13, 2015

Jeremy Waldron on Human Equality

In January/February 2015 Professor Jeremy Waldron delivered six Gifford lectures on "One Another's Equals: The Basis of Human Equality" at the University of Edinburgh:

1. "More than merely equal consideration"

2. "Everyone to count for one" - the logic of basic equality

3. Looking for a range property: Hobbes, Kant, and Rawls

4.  A load-bearing idea: The work of human equality

5. Human dignity and our relation to God

6. Hard and heart-breaking cases: The profoundly disabled as our human equals.

See videos of Waldron's lectures here.

See also a short interview with Jeremy Waldron on his Gifford lectures here.

Tuesday, March 03, 2015

Public Reasoning in a Post-Secular Society

From the new issue of "Polity" (January 2015), an article by Mark Redhead on Habermas's view on public reasoning in a post-secular society:

"Reasoning between Athens and Jerusalem" [pdf]

Abstract
"Jürgen Habermas, in his recent work on post-secular public reasoning, attempts to craft a model of democratic deliberation in which theistic and non-theistic selves can learn from each other and develop bonds of democratic solidarity. His proposed model raises questions about the abilities of democratically oriented individuals in the twenty-first century to reflect critically upon their own cherished beliefs, to comprehend the beliefs of others, and then to engage critically with the beliefs of others during deliberations about matters of common concern. I argue that these questions are best addressed by focusing on how individuals reason from within and through (rather than independently of) the cultural and ethical forces that make the subjects what they are. The work of many grassroots organizers today illustrates this lesson."

Mark Redhead is Associate Professor of Political Science at California State University. He is the author of "Charles Taylor: Thinking and Living Deep Diversity" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) and "Reasoning with Who We are" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

See also Jürgen Habermas's "Notes on Post-Secular Society" (pdf, 2008) and "A Post-Secular World Society?" (pdf, interview).