Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.1177/1743453x0600200201
{"title":"Notes on Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/1743453x0600200201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1743453x0600200201","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132086323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.1177/1743453X0600200208
A. Dobson
In Life’s Dominion, Ronald Dworkin argues that the controversy over whether or not abortion should be legalized is confused and once this is recognized ‘we will see that a responsible legal settlement of the controversy, one that will not insult or demean any group, one that everyone can accept with full self-respect is indeed available’ (Dworkin, 1993: 10). Similarly David Boonin more recently wrote, ‘the moral case against abortion can be shown to be unsuccessful on terms that critics of abortion can, and already do, accept’ (Boonin, 2003: 2). Whether such reasonable resolutions are possible is the central concern of this paper, but these issues also have wider resonance for the dominant version of contemporary American liberalism, and for those who hold to it. John Rawls (1971 and 1996) confronts the problem of governance in pluralism. He tries to establish impartial rules, which will allow individuals maximum freedom to pursue their own visions of the good life with the proviso that they do not constrain others pursuing theirs. Rawls draws a distinction between ‘comprehensive doctrines’, which could lead to irresolvable disputes among citizens, and political conceptions, or those values that they can all consent to in order to run their affairs. Rawls apparently does not rule out the possibility of substantive goods for the state to promote, for example, ‘the virtues of fair social cooperation such as the virtues of civility and tolerance, of reasonableness and the sense of fairness’ (Rawls, 1993: 193-4), but they have to be values upon which there is widespread consensus.
{"title":"Abortion and the Neutrality of the Liberal State","authors":"A. Dobson","doi":"10.1177/1743453X0600200208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1743453X0600200208","url":null,"abstract":"In Life’s Dominion, Ronald Dworkin argues that the controversy over whether or not abortion should be legalized is confused and once this is recognized ‘we will see that a responsible legal settlement of the controversy, one that will not insult or demean any group, one that everyone can accept with full self-respect is indeed available’ (Dworkin, 1993: 10). Similarly David Boonin more recently wrote, ‘the moral case against abortion can be shown to be unsuccessful on terms that critics of abortion can, and already do, accept’ (Boonin, 2003: 2). Whether such reasonable resolutions are possible is the central concern of this paper, but these issues also have wider resonance for the dominant version of contemporary American liberalism, and for those who hold to it. John Rawls (1971 and 1996) confronts the problem of governance in pluralism. He tries to establish impartial rules, which will allow individuals maximum freedom to pursue their own visions of the good life with the proviso that they do not constrain others pursuing theirs. Rawls draws a distinction between ‘comprehensive doctrines’, which could lead to irresolvable disputes among citizens, and political conceptions, or those values that they can all consent to in order to run their affairs. Rawls apparently does not rule out the possibility of substantive goods for the state to promote, for example, ‘the virtues of fair social cooperation such as the virtues of civility and tolerance, of reasonableness and the sense of fairness’ (Rawls, 1993: 193-4), but they have to be values upon which there is widespread consensus.","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127246823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.1177/1743453x0600200210
A. Beattie
Roger Ruston’s Human Rights and the Image of God examines what it is to be an individual in the liberal and natural law traditions. He seeks to compare the natural image of a social being, imbued by nature and grace with a teleological spirit with the more traditional liberal rights-bearing agent characteristic of the twenty-first century. Moving beyond the particular account of creation in the Book of Genesis, Ruston first criticizes the notion of universal human rights in the contemporary era including an examination, and open questioning of, the interrelated notion of rights in the institution of the Catholic Church. Aware of the distinctly Christian framework in which he is writing, Ruston seeks to bring into the fold those who divorce religion from politics and theology from philosophy by way of an alternative understanding of justice and liberty, intermingling the works of Aquinas and the Scholastics with the dominant secular liberal international paradigm. Aquinas’s account of liberty originates in the status naturae integrae, an incorrupt state of nature. He envisions a politics of paradise and, contra Hobbes, does not theorize from the opposing state of nature. For Aquinas and the Scholastics grace does not corrupt nature but rather helps to perfect it. Through one’s connaturality one can initiate the transition from a latent to an active intellect and build on one’s dominion naturale (natural dominion) and pursue one’s natural teleology. Natural dominion is, in contemporary discourses, akin to philosophical and political notions of agency. Guided by the intellect and will, component parts of the individual’s potential intellect, natural dominion is integrally tied to the natural freedom of nature’s creatures. It is this conception of naturalness that Vitoria was to pick up on in his Relectionnes on the American Indians arguing that as God’s and therefore nature’s creation, the Indians demonstrated a degree of dominion over their affairs thereby evincing the necessary capacity and capability to know God. Ruston seeks to illustrate that through this particular conception of nature, Vitoria synthesizes Aristotelian and Thomist assumptions offering to the Indians the protection of the natural law. Aided and
{"title":"Book Review: Human Rights and the Image of God","authors":"A. Beattie","doi":"10.1177/1743453x0600200210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1743453x0600200210","url":null,"abstract":"Roger Ruston’s Human Rights and the Image of God examines what it is to be an individual in the liberal and natural law traditions. He seeks to compare the natural image of a social being, imbued by nature and grace with a teleological spirit with the more traditional liberal rights-bearing agent characteristic of the twenty-first century. Moving beyond the particular account of creation in the Book of Genesis, Ruston first criticizes the notion of universal human rights in the contemporary era including an examination, and open questioning of, the interrelated notion of rights in the institution of the Catholic Church. Aware of the distinctly Christian framework in which he is writing, Ruston seeks to bring into the fold those who divorce religion from politics and theology from philosophy by way of an alternative understanding of justice and liberty, intermingling the works of Aquinas and the Scholastics with the dominant secular liberal international paradigm. Aquinas’s account of liberty originates in the status naturae integrae, an incorrupt state of nature. He envisions a politics of paradise and, contra Hobbes, does not theorize from the opposing state of nature. For Aquinas and the Scholastics grace does not corrupt nature but rather helps to perfect it. Through one’s connaturality one can initiate the transition from a latent to an active intellect and build on one’s dominion naturale (natural dominion) and pursue one’s natural teleology. Natural dominion is, in contemporary discourses, akin to philosophical and political notions of agency. Guided by the intellect and will, component parts of the individual’s potential intellect, natural dominion is integrally tied to the natural freedom of nature’s creatures. It is this conception of naturalness that Vitoria was to pick up on in his Relectionnes on the American Indians arguing that as God’s and therefore nature’s creation, the Indians demonstrated a degree of dominion over their affairs thereby evincing the necessary capacity and capability to know God. Ruston seeks to illustrate that through this particular conception of nature, Vitoria synthesizes Aristotelian and Thomist assumptions offering to the Indians the protection of the natural law. Aided and","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127637654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.1177/1743453X0600200209
M. Berman
Political philosophy must be able to give an account of action and judgment. The relation between the two is a product of concrete history. In this instance, action and judgment appropriate the past and future in different manners, yet both their meanings and senses (sens) are grounded in temporality. For Arendt (particularly in her late work), action takes up the past and uses it as a (metaphysical) tool in order to create the future – this is the ‘new order of ages’; judgment, however, concerns itself with the future by reappropriating and reappraising the past in order to provide the future with meaning (or meaningful values). Merleau-Ponty’s approach to action and judgment shares similar characteristics, except that under his late experiential notions of the flesh and reversibility, the role of ambiguity plays a more central role in understanding these human projects. That is not to say that Arendt does not consider the opaque characterisitics of action (d’Entreves, 1994: 80) 2 and judgment, but her prescriptive ideas tend to gloss over this inherent problem. This is due to the idealistic and utopian influences of Greek thought and civilization on her conception of politics; she is just as guilty of ‘crossing the rainbow bridge of concepts’ (Arendt, 1978: 149-58) in her quest for the origins and legitimacy of political institutions and power, as the German idealists of the nineteenth century. Unlike her historical counterparts, she does not reappropriate these concepts by treating them as static and worthy of strict emulation. These two political philosophers developed their thought after the end of World War II. Arendt attempted to come to grips with two major aspects of the war. The first was her investigation of the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1978: 3). The trial of Eichmann initiated a line of questioning which led her to formulate various conceptions of the faculty of judgment; actually in Eichmann’s case, it was the lack of judgment or critical self-evaluation that prompted her thinking.
{"title":"The Situatedness of Judgment and Action in Arendt and Merleau-Ponty","authors":"M. Berman","doi":"10.1177/1743453X0600200209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1743453X0600200209","url":null,"abstract":"Political philosophy must be able to give an account of action and judgment. The relation between the two is a product of concrete history. In this instance, action and judgment appropriate the past and future in different manners, yet both their meanings and senses (sens) are grounded in temporality. For Arendt (particularly in her late work), action takes up the past and uses it as a (metaphysical) tool in order to create the future – this is the ‘new order of ages’; judgment, however, concerns itself with the future by reappropriating and reappraising the past in order to provide the future with meaning (or meaningful values). Merleau-Ponty’s approach to action and judgment shares similar characteristics, except that under his late experiential notions of the flesh and reversibility, the role of ambiguity plays a more central role in understanding these human projects. That is not to say that Arendt does not consider the opaque characterisitics of action (d’Entreves, 1994: 80) 2 and judgment, but her prescriptive ideas tend to gloss over this inherent problem. This is due to the idealistic and utopian influences of Greek thought and civilization on her conception of politics; she is just as guilty of ‘crossing the rainbow bridge of concepts’ (Arendt, 1978: 149-58) in her quest for the origins and legitimacy of political institutions and power, as the German idealists of the nineteenth century. Unlike her historical counterparts, she does not reappropriate these concepts by treating them as static and worthy of strict emulation. These two political philosophers developed their thought after the end of World War II. Arendt attempted to come to grips with two major aspects of the war. The first was her investigation of the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1978: 3). The trial of Eichmann initiated a line of questioning which led her to formulate various conceptions of the faculty of judgment; actually in Eichmann’s case, it was the lack of judgment or critical self-evaluation that prompted her thinking.","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122435898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.3366/PER.2006.2.2.224
G. Grandis
{"title":"The Impact of the Internet on Our Moral Lives R. J. Cavalier (ed.),The Impact of the Internet on Our Moral Lives(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 249 pp., $26.95/£16.75 paperback.","authors":"G. Grandis","doi":"10.3366/PER.2006.2.2.224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/PER.2006.2.2.224","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127903591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.1177/1743453x0600200211
Giovanni De Grandis
This collection of essays has a very promising, but slightly misleading, title. The Internet is becoming the medium for a large variety of activities and relations, is transforming our perception of time and distance, and is spreading new ways of communicating and cooperating while undermining old ones. No doubt it is transforming our lives, but how much and how deeply is it transforming our values and demanding new principles and virtues? Such are the issues broached by this book. With the exception of the first essay – which in my view remains rather alien to the project – the contributions in Part I tackle some familiar moral problems and the way in which they present themselves in cyberspace. The essays are recognizable instances of applied ethics: they illustrate concrete problems and try to suggest possible solutions. In so doing they show how moral and legal questions such as copyright, plagiarism, pornography and trust present themselves in the online world. The first two issues have admittedly gained new prominence by the advent of the Internet, and they are very good examples of how a new, powerful and widespread medium can bring back to the fore ethical issues that might have looked more or less morally settled and hence ‘cold’. Both Spinello’s chapter on copyright and Hinman’s on plagiarism among students offer a good deal of factual information about the impact of the Internet on these issues, and do so with clarity. I am less convinced by their normative solutions. Spinello takes too much of a conservative approach and fails to appreciate how practices and possibilities that emerge with the digital media do in fact challenge our intuitions and sensibility and remind us that our normative horizon might be neither timeless nor unquestionable. In this respect, the more historically and socially aware approach taken by Nissembaum in her chapter on hackers (in Part II) shows how important it is to have a bigger picture in order to appreciate and reveal the ethical implications of new technologies. Hinman adopts a strongly Aristotelian position in putting forward a list of virtues that would support an effective fight against students’ plagiarism. I don’t have any objection in using an ethical theory for analytical purposes, to highlight the moral issues and stakes raised by digital technologies, but when ancient ethical theories are used as sources of normative prescriptions many serious questions arise. Our world and Book Reviews
{"title":"Book Review: The Impact of the Internet on Our Moral Lives","authors":"Giovanni De Grandis","doi":"10.1177/1743453x0600200211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1743453x0600200211","url":null,"abstract":"This collection of essays has a very promising, but slightly misleading, title. The Internet is becoming the medium for a large variety of activities and relations, is transforming our perception of time and distance, and is spreading new ways of communicating and cooperating while undermining old ones. No doubt it is transforming our lives, but how much and how deeply is it transforming our values and demanding new principles and virtues? Such are the issues broached by this book. With the exception of the first essay – which in my view remains rather alien to the project – the contributions in Part I tackle some familiar moral problems and the way in which they present themselves in cyberspace. The essays are recognizable instances of applied ethics: they illustrate concrete problems and try to suggest possible solutions. In so doing they show how moral and legal questions such as copyright, plagiarism, pornography and trust present themselves in the online world. The first two issues have admittedly gained new prominence by the advent of the Internet, and they are very good examples of how a new, powerful and widespread medium can bring back to the fore ethical issues that might have looked more or less morally settled and hence ‘cold’. Both Spinello’s chapter on copyright and Hinman’s on plagiarism among students offer a good deal of factual information about the impact of the Internet on these issues, and do so with clarity. I am less convinced by their normative solutions. Spinello takes too much of a conservative approach and fails to appreciate how practices and possibilities that emerge with the digital media do in fact challenge our intuitions and sensibility and remind us that our normative horizon might be neither timeless nor unquestionable. In this respect, the more historically and socially aware approach taken by Nissembaum in her chapter on hackers (in Part II) shows how important it is to have a bigger picture in order to appreciate and reveal the ethical implications of new technologies. Hinman adopts a strongly Aristotelian position in putting forward a list of virtues that would support an effective fight against students’ plagiarism. I don’t have any objection in using an ethical theory for analytical purposes, to highlight the moral issues and stakes raised by digital technologies, but when ancient ethical theories are used as sources of normative prescriptions many serious questions arise. Our world and Book Reviews","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125542706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.3366/PER.2006.2.2.221
A. Beattie
{"title":"Human Rights and the Image of God Roger Ruston ,Human Rights and the Image of God(SCM Press, 2004), 288 pp., $29.99/£18.99 paperback.","authors":"A. Beattie","doi":"10.3366/PER.2006.2.2.221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/PER.2006.2.2.221","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132659555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.1177/1743453X0600200206
Matthew S. Weinert
Despite the truism that grave humanitarian crises shock the human conscience, when – if ever – states may act to protect populations from genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes remains contested. Inaction (Rwanda), inadequate response (Darfur and the Congo), and military intervention (Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo) invite criticism – from moralists who decry the international community’s uneven, selective, and generally ineffective response to humanitarian nightmares, and from sovereigntists, who reify sovereignty’s corollary, non-intervention. Morality and sovereignty appear hopelessly contradictory; common ground seems as elusive as it is necessary. Substantial movement towards common ground came on two recent occasions. At the behest of United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Canadian government, with input from major foundations, multiple non-state actors, and the UN General Assembly (UNGA), established the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2000 to wrestle with the legal, moral, and logistical issues bound with humanitarian intervention. Its 2001 final report, published under the title The Responsibility to Protect, single-handedly changed the terms of the debate from ‘the right to intervene’ (which too often ‘focuses attention on the claims, rights, and prerogatives of the potentially intervening states’) to a ‘responsibility to protect’ communities from egregious acts of violence, including ‘mass killing ... systematic rape and ... starvation’ (ICISS, 2001: 16ff.). World leaders adopted in principle a ‘responsibility to protect’ during the September 2005 world summit honouring the UN’s 60th anniversary and called upon the UNGA to continue consideration of it and its implications (World Summit Outcome, 2005: ¶139). Adoption of the principle opens up at least two avenues of inquiry. First, it signifies willingness on the part of states to delimit sovereignty practices visà-vis minimal standards of decency, order and human rights. Placed in a wider historical context, this agreement constitutes part of a seismic, yet under-
{"title":"Democratic Sovereignty and The Responsibility to Protect","authors":"Matthew S. Weinert","doi":"10.1177/1743453X0600200206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1743453X0600200206","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the truism that grave humanitarian crises shock the human conscience, when – if ever – states may act to protect populations from genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes remains contested. Inaction (Rwanda), inadequate response (Darfur and the Congo), and military intervention (Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo) invite criticism – from moralists who decry the international community’s uneven, selective, and generally ineffective response to humanitarian nightmares, and from sovereigntists, who reify sovereignty’s corollary, non-intervention. Morality and sovereignty appear hopelessly contradictory; common ground seems as elusive as it is necessary. Substantial movement towards common ground came on two recent occasions. At the behest of United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Canadian government, with input from major foundations, multiple non-state actors, and the UN General Assembly (UNGA), established the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2000 to wrestle with the legal, moral, and logistical issues bound with humanitarian intervention. Its 2001 final report, published under the title The Responsibility to Protect, single-handedly changed the terms of the debate from ‘the right to intervene’ (which too often ‘focuses attention on the claims, rights, and prerogatives of the potentially intervening states’) to a ‘responsibility to protect’ communities from egregious acts of violence, including ‘mass killing ... systematic rape and ... starvation’ (ICISS, 2001: 16ff.). World leaders adopted in principle a ‘responsibility to protect’ during the September 2005 world summit honouring the UN’s 60th anniversary and called upon the UNGA to continue consideration of it and its implications (World Summit Outcome, 2005: ¶139). Adoption of the principle opens up at least two avenues of inquiry. First, it signifies willingness on the part of states to delimit sovereignty practices visà-vis minimal standards of decency, order and human rights. Placed in a wider historical context, this agreement constitutes part of a seismic, yet under-","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122058631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.1177/1743453X0600200207
D. Munro
The fact of pluralism generates what appears to be a dichotomous choice for those seeking to develop and justify a conception of justice for a democratic society: A moral rigorist approach would ignore the pluralism of ethical, religious, and philosophical views and insist on standards of justice untainted by the demands of pluralism. But pluralism is a permanent, and perhaps attractive, feature of democratic societies that should not be ignored. Moreover, the rigorist approach fails to solve the problem of doctrinal compatibility – namely, that there is often a gap between what justice demands and what human beings regard themselves as having reason to do. By contrast, a more pragmatic approach would adjust principles of justice to accommodate pluralism thereby ensuring that they play a role in practical political life. But while accommodating pluralism might solve the problem of doctrinal compatibility, a pragmatist approach risks making concessions to unattractive and objectionable features of determinate worldviews. The challenge is to find some alternative to the moral rigorist and pragmatist options. How can we accommodate pluralism without giving up on the normative and critical value of a shared conception of justice? Rawls offers an approach to pluralism which relies on the idea of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines. In a well-ordered society a ‘publicly recognized conception of justice establishes a shared point of view from which citizens’ claims on society can be adjudicated’ (Rawls, 1996: 35). His hope is that those who endorse different comprehensive doctrines can reach an overlapping consensus on a shared conception of justice and thereby accommodate reasonable pluralism. An overlapping consensus obtains when citizens with different, albeit reasonable, comprehensive doctrines endorse the conception for reasons which they find within their own comprehensive doctrines. If achieved, an overlapping consensus would solve the problem of doctrinal compatibility and it would ensure that a democratic society has a shared conception of justice to which all can appeal in political discourse.
{"title":"A More Democratic Overlapping Consensus: On Rawls and Reasonable Pluralism","authors":"D. Munro","doi":"10.1177/1743453X0600200207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1743453X0600200207","url":null,"abstract":"The fact of pluralism generates what appears to be a dichotomous choice for those seeking to develop and justify a conception of justice for a democratic society: A moral rigorist approach would ignore the pluralism of ethical, religious, and philosophical views and insist on standards of justice untainted by the demands of pluralism. But pluralism is a permanent, and perhaps attractive, feature of democratic societies that should not be ignored. Moreover, the rigorist approach fails to solve the problem of doctrinal compatibility – namely, that there is often a gap between what justice demands and what human beings regard themselves as having reason to do. By contrast, a more pragmatic approach would adjust principles of justice to accommodate pluralism thereby ensuring that they play a role in practical political life. But while accommodating pluralism might solve the problem of doctrinal compatibility, a pragmatist approach risks making concessions to unattractive and objectionable features of determinate worldviews. The challenge is to find some alternative to the moral rigorist and pragmatist options. How can we accommodate pluralism without giving up on the normative and critical value of a shared conception of justice? Rawls offers an approach to pluralism which relies on the idea of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines. In a well-ordered society a ‘publicly recognized conception of justice establishes a shared point of view from which citizens’ claims on society can be adjudicated’ (Rawls, 1996: 35). His hope is that those who endorse different comprehensive doctrines can reach an overlapping consensus on a shared conception of justice and thereby accommodate reasonable pluralism. An overlapping consensus obtains when citizens with different, albeit reasonable, comprehensive doctrines endorse the conception for reasons which they find within their own comprehensive doctrines. If achieved, an overlapping consensus would solve the problem of doctrinal compatibility and it would ensure that a democratic society has a shared conception of justice to which all can appeal in political discourse.","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126122130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2006-10-01DOI: 10.1177/1743453X0600200205
R. Eckersley
I am most grateful for this opportunity to reflect upon three thought-provoking commentaries on The Green State from three very distinguished scholars. I shall start with Carol Gould’s critique of my state-centred approach because it tackles the very raison d’être of The Green State. I shall then turn to James Meadowcroft’s challenges regarding the appropriate sites of democratic deliberation and the relationship between green theory and liberalism and capitalism. Finally, I shall turn to John Vogler’s queries regarding the status of the European Union and the relevance of my theory to developing countries and a future characterized by rapid and dangerous alterations to the world’s climate. Transnational ecological problems, as Carol Gould reminds us, require transnational solutions. She therefore wonders why my book should be so ‘resolutely’ preoccupied with the state. Indeed, her main argument is that my ‘defence of the centrality and adequacy of the state as a way of dealing with contemporary ecological issues fails’. Gould also finds ‘astonishing’ my claim that the social structures of international anarchy, global capitalism and the liberal democratic state are not necessarily anti-ecological and mutually reinforcing. However, this claim, along with my general focus on the state, must be understood in the context of my method of inquiry, which is to draw out the positive trajectories in these three contradictory and interlocking social structures. As Gould notes, I acknowledge and take as my starting point the many ways in which each of these overarching social structures have been responsible for producing environmental degradation, often in mutually reinforcing ways. However, the particular task that I set myself is to explore the circumstances under which these social structures might be made to work, both individually and collectively, to prevent environmental degradation, or better still, promote ecologically sustainable development and environmental justice. I single out the development of environmental multilateralism, reflexive ecological modernization and new discursive
我非常感谢有这个机会来思考三位非常杰出的学者对《绿色之州》的三篇发人深省的评论。我将从卡罗尔•古尔德(Carol Gould)对我以国家为中心的方法的批评开始，因为它解决了“绿色之国”(the Green State)成立être的真正原因。然后我将转向詹姆斯·梅多克罗夫特关于民主审议的适当地点以及绿色理论与自由主义和资本主义之间关系的挑战。最后，我将转向约翰·沃格勒(John Vogler)对欧盟现状的质疑，以及我的理论与发展中国家的相关性，以及以世界气候迅速而危险的变化为特征的未来。正如卡罗尔•古尔德提醒我们的那样，跨国生态问题需要跨国解决方案。因此，她想知道为什么我的书应该如此“坚决”地关注国家。事实上，她的主要论点是，我“对国家作为处理当代生态问题的一种方式的中心性和充分性的辩护失败了”。古尔德还发现，我关于国际无政府状态、全球资本主义和自由民主国家的社会结构并不一定是反生态的、相互加强的说法“令人惊讶”。然而，这一主张，以及我对国家的总体关注，必须在我的研究方法的背景下理解，我的研究方法是在这三个相互矛盾和环环相扣的社会结构中找出积极的轨迹。正如古尔德所指出的，我承认并以这些总体社会结构中的每一种对环境退化负有责任的许多方式作为我的出发点，这些方式往往是相互加强的。然而，我给自己设定的特别任务是探索在什么情况下，这些社会结构可以单独和集体地发挥作用，以防止环境退化，或者更好地促进生态上可持续的发展和环境正义。环境多边主义的发展、反思性生态现代化的发展和新话语的发展
{"title":"The State as Gatekeeper: A Reply","authors":"R. Eckersley","doi":"10.1177/1743453X0600200205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1743453X0600200205","url":null,"abstract":"I am most grateful for this opportunity to reflect upon three thought-provoking commentaries on The Green State from three very distinguished scholars. I shall start with Carol Gould’s critique of my state-centred approach because it tackles the very raison d’être of The Green State. I shall then turn to James Meadowcroft’s challenges regarding the appropriate sites of democratic deliberation and the relationship between green theory and liberalism and capitalism. Finally, I shall turn to John Vogler’s queries regarding the status of the European Union and the relevance of my theory to developing countries and a future characterized by rapid and dangerous alterations to the world’s climate. Transnational ecological problems, as Carol Gould reminds us, require transnational solutions. She therefore wonders why my book should be so ‘resolutely’ preoccupied with the state. Indeed, her main argument is that my ‘defence of the centrality and adequacy of the state as a way of dealing with contemporary ecological issues fails’. Gould also finds ‘astonishing’ my claim that the social structures of international anarchy, global capitalism and the liberal democratic state are not necessarily anti-ecological and mutually reinforcing. However, this claim, along with my general focus on the state, must be understood in the context of my method of inquiry, which is to draw out the positive trajectories in these three contradictory and interlocking social structures. As Gould notes, I acknowledge and take as my starting point the many ways in which each of these overarching social structures have been responsible for producing environmental degradation, often in mutually reinforcing ways. However, the particular task that I set myself is to explore the circumstances under which these social structures might be made to work, both individually and collectively, to prevent environmental degradation, or better still, promote ecologically sustainable development and environmental justice. I single out the development of environmental multilateralism, reflexive ecological modernization and new discursive","PeriodicalId":381236,"journal":{"name":"Politics and Ethics Review","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125097719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：