Thom Brooks on "Global Justice and Politics"

Thom Brooks (Newcastle) has posted a new paper on SSRN:

"Global Justice and Politics" [pdf]

Abstract
"The history of political philosophy has been largely focused on the problem of justice within borders. Contemporary political philosophers have only begun more recently to draw greater attention to problems of global justice rather than to domestic justice alone: they are concerned about identifying a just international distributive justice. The most important issue has been how best to address severe poverty. Are there duties to provide support for those in severe poverty and, if so, who has these duties? What support may be justified? These are the most pressing and challenging questions confronting political philosophers today.
This chapter examines three different approaches to how global justice and politics might address the problem of severe poverty. The first approach argues that we have positive duties to assist those in need. They argue that we have a duty to assist where there are others in need irrespective of whether or not we contributed to their situation. A second approach claims that we have negative duties to those in need that arise because we have contributed to their severe poverty. Finally, a third approach argues that our responsibilities to those in need are not a matter of choosing between our positive or negative duties, but that these duties should be understood within a wider context of our remedial responsibilities. Our focus should be on identifying who has a responsibility to remedy suffering elsewhere and this requires a wider perspective to cover all cases. Each approach is considered in turn in a sympathetic analysis where the focus is on presenting each in its best light and allowing readers to judge for themselves which is most worth defending."

The paper will be published in Fred D'Agostino and Jerry Gaus (eds.) - "Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy" (Routledge, April 2012). Further information here.

Thom Brooks is Reader in Political and Legal Philosophy at Newcastle University. He is the author of "Hegel’s Political Philosophy" (Edinburgh University Press, 2007). See his web blog here.

Companion to Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia"

The Cambridge Companion to Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia

edited by Ralf M. Bader & John Meadowcroft

(Cambridge University Press, December 2011)

332 pages


Description

Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) is recognised as a classic of modern political philosophy. Along with John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971), it is widely credited with breathing new life into the discipline in the second half of the twentieth century. This Companion presents a balanced and comprehensive assessment of Nozick's contribution to political philosophy. In engaging and accessible chapters, the contributors analyse Nozick's ideas from a variety of perspectives and explore neglected areas of the work such as his discussion of anarchism and his theory of utopia. Their detailed and illuminating picture of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, its impact and its enduring influence will be invaluable to students and scholars in both political philosophy and political theory.

Contents

Introduction - Ralf M. Bader & John Meadowcroft
[preview]

Part I. Morality

1. Side Constraints, Lockean Individual Rights, and the Moral Basis of Libertarianism - Richard Arneson
2. Are Deontological Constraints Irrational? Michael Otsuka
3. What We Learn from the Experience Machine - Fred Feldman [draft]

Part II. Anarchy

4. Nozickian Arguments for the More-than-Minimal State - Eric Mack
5. Explanation, Justification, and Emergent Properties - Gerald Gaus

Part III. State

6. The Right to Distribute - David Schmidtz
7. Nozick's Libertarian Theory of Justice - Peter Vallentyne
8. Does Nozick have a Theory of Property Rights? Barbara Fried
9. Nozick's Critique of Rawls - John Meadowcroft

Part IV. Utopia

10. The Framework for Utopia - Ralf M. Bader [link here]
11. E Pluribus Plurum – How to Fail to Get to Utopia in Spite of Really Trying - Chandran Kukathas [abstract].

Further information on the book here.

Ralf M. Bader is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, New York University

John Meadowcroft is Lecturer in Public Policy at King's College London. He is the author of "James M. Buchanan" (Continuum, 2011).

Benhabib on Democratic Sovereignty and International Law

In her Straus Public Lecture on November 28, 2011, Professor Seyla Benhabib analyzed the clash between democratic sovereignty and international law.

See her lecture:
"Democratic Sovereignty and International Law: The Contemporary Debate" (video)
[1 hour & 28 minutes]

Seyla Benhabib is Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University. For the academic year 2011-2012, she is a fellow at the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law & Justice, New York University.

(Thanks to Reza Javaheri for the pointer!)

Four Papers on Deliberation, Tolerance, Citizenship, and Self-Grounding

Papers from the 6th ECPR General Conference (European Consortium for Political Research) at the University of Iceland, August 25-27, 2011:

Marcos Engelken (Basque Country):
"A Collective Learning Perspective on Public Deliberation" [pdf]

Abstract
Research on mini-publics, as well as in experimental settings, has produced ambiguous results for deliberative democracy. It has helped to demonstrate the “epistemic dimension” (Habermas) of public debate, that is, its inherent potentiality to change discursively citizens’ preferences and to promote collective learning processes. Furthermore, according to these results genuine public deliberation promotes the consideration of common interests, the revision of prejudices and respect towards political opponents. On the other hand, recent research has also highlighted the extremely selective conditions under which genuine deliberation can take place, thus spreading skepticism about the prospects of turning democratic deliberation into a real deliberative democracy. Besides, it has also revealed the inherent tension that exists between some of the core values constitutive of deliberative democracy – for instance, between the principle of publicity and the disposition of political actors to modify their initial opinions; between citizens’ empowerment and citizens’ disposition to revise their pre-deliberative preferences; or between deliberation and representation. This implies that no mini-public, irrespective of its institutional design, manages to satisfy simultaneously all the normative requirements of deliberative democracy. Systemic conceptions of, and rhetorical approaches to, deliberative democracy have been prompted by these considerations. A third way to conceptualize deliberative democracy is provided by the work of cognitive sociologists such as Klaus Eder, Max Miller, Piet Strydom or Bernhard Peters. Their work advances a sociologically realist, and complex, conception of public (macro) deliberation. This paper assesses the potentialities, but also possible pitfalls, of this sociological approach.

Sune Lægaard (Roskilde) & Maria Paola Ferretti (Darmstadt):
"A Multirelational Account of Tolerance and Respect" [pdf]

Abstract
Political theorists such as Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Rainer Forst and Peter Jones have advanced toleration and respect both as theoretical concepts for understanding the place of minorities and as normative ideals for how minorities’ requests for accommodation should be met. The paper addresses a number of complications that arise in applying concepts and ideals of toleration and respect to concrete cases involving several different subjects of toleration and respect. It offers a framework for understanding the status of minorities that locates toleration and respect at the intersection of a vertical (toleration and respect from government towards its subjects) and horizontal relationship (among citizens). The paper notes how toleration and respect may mean different things in the vertical and horizontal dimensions. It further argues that the two dimensions often intersect in ways affecting both the understanding of minorities' position and how minorities' requests should be handled in light of normative ideals of toleration and respect. These theoretical and normative points are illustrated by reference to cases concerning the construction of Mosques in Europe.

Pablo C. Jiménez Lobeira (Australian National):
"Exploring an Analogical Citizenship for Europe" [pdf]

Abstract
The cultural, economic and political crisis affecting the European Union (EU) today is manifested in the political community’s lack of enthusiasm and cohesion. An effort to reverse this situation – foster ‘EU identity’ – was the creation of EU citizenship. Citizenship implies a people and a polity. But EU citizens already belong to national polities. Should EU citizenship override national citizenship or coexist with it? Postnationalists like Habermas have suggested EU citizenship can overcome nationalisms, grounding political belonging on the body of laws that members of the post-national polity generate in the public sphere. Cosmopolitan communitarianists like Bellamy, by contrast, think that EU citizens should form a mixed commonwealth, with political belonging based on national citizenship. I will argue in favour of the second option, and submit an analogical reading of the ensuing ideas of citizenship, identity and polity. Cosmopolitan communitarianist EU citizenship promises to better foster the great richness of European national cultural, religious, historical, political, legal and linguistic diversity in a ‘mixed’ polity. Its main challenge is how to keep the diverse, mixed polity together.

James Gledhill (LSE):
"The Democratic Rechtsstaat and the Problem of Self-grounding" [pdf]

Abstract
According to the realist critique of political moralism, contemporary political theory has neglected the idea of the state, and the coercive power of the state exercised through positive law, in favour of ideal theories of justice and democracy developed independently of political practice. The work of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas is often seen as paradigmatic of such political moralism. In this paper I take the realist critiques of Raymond Geuss and Bernard Williams as an opportunity for reassessing the methodological approaches of Rawls and Habermas. I begin by distinguishing William’s idea of vindicatory genealogy from Geuss’s, I argue untenable, attempt to separate the method of genealogy as critique from the project of normative justification and I claim that Rawls and Habermas can be seen as employing the methods of reflective equilibrium and rational reconstruction for just such vindicatory purposes. I proceed to offer a genealogy of the idea of the democratic Rechtstaat, to situate Rawls and Habermas within this tradition and to argue that this tradition overcomes the unsatisfactory methodological dualism of realism versus moralism. The problem of offering a self-grounding justification of the modern democratic Rechtsstaat reflects the fundamental problem for philosophy in modernity of creating its normativity out of itself, of finding immanent normative foundations within existing social practices rather than appealing to transcendent ideal principles. I conclude that Rawls fails ultimately to meet this challenge but that Habermas’s project shows how a project of normative philosophical justification can be maintained that is consistent with realist strictures.

A debate between Jürgen Habermas and Fritz Scharpf

In "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (November 30, 2011), Maximilian Steinbeis reports from a discussion between Jürgen Habermas and Fritz Scharpf in Berlin:

"Man kann Rührei nicht wieder trennen"

Excerpt
"Während der Sozialphilosoph Jürgen Habermas dafür focht, jetzt sei die Stunde der europäischen Verfassungsgebung, nahm Fritz Scharpf (Köln), der emeritierte Direktor des Kölner Max-Planck-Instituts für Gesellschafts-forschung, den Gegenstandpunkt ein. Die Euro-Krise, so Scharpf, tauge nicht als Vehikel zur Demokratisierung Europas. Im Gegenteil, dieser Weg führe in ein autoritäres, expertokratisches Super-Europa, wenn nicht gar in einen europäischen Bürgerkrieg.
Die Integration Europas, so Scharpf, habe bisher darin bestanden, politische Handlungsfähigkeit um der ökonomischen Freiheit willen zu beschränken. Die Vision eines demokratischen Europas, um die politische Handlungsfähigkeit zu stärken, liege überhaupt nicht in der Logik dieser Integration - und täte sie es, dann würde das Europa nur auseinandersprengen."

See my posts on Habermas's new book "Zur Verfassung Europas" (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2011) and his article on "Europe's post-democratic era" (The Guardian, November 10, 2011).

Justice Between Generations (podcast)

At the University of Oxford on September 17, 2011, Simon Caney, Mark Philp, and Adam Swift discussed the issue of intergenerational justice and asked questions like how do we allocate resources intergenerationally accross areas like welfare, pensions, higher education and environmental costs?

Podcast: "Justice Between Generations" [49 minutes]

See the program here [pdf].

Der Spiegel: "Habermas, the Last European"

In the German weekly "Der Spiegel" (November 21, 2011), Georg Diez writes about Jürgen Habermas's struggle for a democratic EU - "Schluss jetzt!"

An English translation of the article is available on "Der Spiegel"s international website:

"Habermas, the Last European: A Philosopher's Mission to Save the EU"

Excerpts:
"I'm speaking here as a citizen," he says. "I would rather be sitting back home at my desk, believe me. But this is too important. Everyone has to understand that we have critical decisions facing us. That's why I'm so involved in this debate. The European project can no longer continue in elite modus." (....) " I condemn the political parties. Our politicians have long been incapable of aspiring to anything whatsoever other than being re-elected. They have no political substance whatsoever, no convictions."

Habermas wants to get his message out. That's why he's sitting here [at a debate in Paris]. That's why he recently wrote an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, in which he accused EU politicians of cynicism and "turning their backs on the European ideals." That's why he has just written a book -- a "booklet," as he calls it -- which the respected German weekly Die Zeit promptly compared with Immanuel Kant's 1795 essay "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch."

"Sometime after 2008," says Habermas over a glass of white wine after the debate, "I understood that the process of expansion, integration and democratization doesn't automatically move forward of its own accord, that it's reversible, that for the first time in the history of the EU, we are actually experiencing a dismantling of democracy. I didn't think this was possible. We've reached a crossroads."

The debate took place at the Goethe Institute in Paris on November 12. See my post here.

Charles Taylor on the "Post-Secular" (video)

On June 15, 2011, Professor Charles Taylor gave a lecture at Frankfurt University on "The Meaning of "Post-Secular".

The lecture is now available on video:
"The Meaning of "Post-Secular" (73 minutes).

Charles Taylor was introduced by Professor Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (11 minutes).

Eight Papers on Public Reason

Jonathan Quong (Manchester University):
"On The Idea of Public Reason" [pdf]

Gillian K. Hadfield (University of Southern California) & Stephen Macedo (Princeton University):
"Rational Reasonableness: Toward a Positive Theory of Public Reason" [pdf]

Stephen Macedo (Princeton University):
"Political Education and Public Reason"

Chad W. Flanders (Saint Louis University):
"The Mutability of Public Reason" [pdf]

Funda Gençoğlu Onbaşı (Baskent University):
"Democracy, Pluralism and the Idea of Public Reason: Rawls and Habermas in Comparative Perspective"

Wojciech Sadurski (University of Sydney):
"Reason of State and Public Reason"

Sean Ingham (Harvard University):
"When is Public Reason Possible?"

Mark Redhead (California State University):
"How Global Can Global Public Reason Be?"

IEP Entry on the Frankfurt School

Claudio Corradetti has posted an entry to "The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy" (IEP) on

"The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory"

Claudio Corradetti is Senior Researcher at The European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC). He is the author of "Relativism and Human Rights. A Theory of Pluralistic Universalism" (Springer, 2009) and the editor of "Philosophical Dimensions of Human Rights" (Springer, forthcoming 2012) [see a preview here].

Paper on Rawlsian Liberalism Versus Libertarianism

Barbara H. Fried (Stanford Law School) has posted a new paper on SSRN:

"The Unwritten Theory of Justice: Rawlsian Liberalism Versus Libertarianism".

Forthcoming in Jon Mandle and David Reidy (eds.) - "The Blackwell Companion to Rawls" (Blackwell, 2012).

Abstract:
When A Theory of Justice was published in 1971, utilitarianism was the game to beat in political philosophy, and Rawls made clear his intention to beat it. The appearance of Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia three years later singlehandedly enshrined libertarianism rather than utilitarianism in the popular imagination as the chief rival to Rawls’s two principles of justice. Ever since, Rawlsian liberalism has had two parallel lives in political theory. The first - the version Rawls wrote - is a response to utilitarian’s failure to take seriously the separateness of persons. The second - the unwritten version ‘received’ by its general audience - is a response to libertarianism’s failure to take seriously our moral obligations to the well-being of our fellow citizens. This article considers how, had he written the second version, Rawls might have dealt with libertarians’ critique of ‘justice as fairness’ as fundamentally illiberal, and how his two principles might have been transformed in the process.

Barbara F. Fried is Professor of Law at Standford Law School, Stanford University.

New book by Michel Rosenfeld on Pluralism

Law, Justice, Democracy, and the Clash of Cultures

by Michel Rosenfeld

(Cambridge University Press, 2011)

320 pages



Description

The Cold War ideological battle with universal aspirations has given way to a clash of cultures as the world concurrently moves toward globalization of economies and communications and balkanization through a clash of ethnic and cultural identities. Traditional liberal theory has confronted daunting challenges in coping with these changes and with recent developments such as the spread of postmodern thought, religious fundamentalism, and global terrorism. This book argues that a political and legal philosophy based on pluralism is best suited to confront the problems of the twenty-first century. Pointing out that monist theories such as liberalism have become inadequate and that relativism is dangerous, the book makes the case for pluralism from the standpoint of both theory and its applications. The book engages with thinkers, such as Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Rawls, Berlin, Dworkin, Habermas, and Derrida, and with several subjects that are at the center of current controversies, including equality, group rights, tolerance, secularism confronting religious revival, and political rights in the face of terrorism.

Content [preview]

Part I. Liberal Justice and Fleeting Specters of Unity

1. Reframing Comprehensive Pluralism: Hegel versus Rawls
2. Equality and the Dialectic Between Identity and Difference
3. Human Rights and the Clash Between Universalism and Relativism

Part II. E Pluribus Unum?

4. Spinoza's Dialectic and the Paradoxes of Tolerance
5. The Clash Between Deprivatized Religion and Relativized Secularism
6. Dworkin and the One Law Principle

Part III. Can Pluralism Thrive in Times of Stress?

7. Rethinking Political Rights in Times of Stress
8. Derrida's Deconstructive Ethics of Difference Confronts Global Terrorism
9. Habermas's Discourse Ethics of Identity and Global Terror
10. Conclusion: the Hopes of Pluralism in a More Unified and More Fragmented World

Michel Rosenfeld is Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. He is Co-Editor (with Andrew Arato) of "Habermas on Law and Democracy: Critical Exchanges" (University of California Press, 1998).

Related papers by Michel Rosenfeld:
* The Rule of Law and the Legitimacy of Constitutional Democracy (pdf, 2001)
* Spinoza's Dialectic and the Paradoxes of Tolerance (2003)
* A Pluralist Theory of Political Rights in Times of Stress (2005)
* Habermas's Call for Cosmopolitan Constitutional Patriotism in an Age of Global Terror (2006)
* Derrida's Ethical Turn and America (2006)
* Equality and the Dialectic Between Identity and Difference (2006)
* Unveiling the Limits of Tolerance (2010) [w. Susanna Mancini]

See also a panel discussion between Michel Rosenfeld, Jeremy Waldron, Tracy Higgins and Ruti Teitel on "What is Human Rights? Universals and the Challenge of Cultural Relativism" (pdf, 1999).