bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Very Idea of Popular Sovereignty: “We the People” Reconsidered
Authors: Morris Christopher W.
Published: January 2009

The sovereignty of the people, it is widely said, is the foundation of modern democracy. The truth of this claim depends on the plausibility of attributing sovereignty to “the people” in the first place, and I shall express skepticism about this possibility. I shall suggest as well that the notion of popular sovereignty is complex, and that appeals to the notion may be best understood as expressing several different ideas and ideals. This essay distinguishes many of these and suggests that greater clarity at least would be obtained by focusing directly on these notions and ideals and eschewing that of sovereignty. My claim, however, will not merely be that the notion is multifaceted and complex. I shall argue as well that the doctrine that the people are, or ought to be, sovereign is misleading in potentially dangerous ways, and is conducive to a misunderstanding of the nature of politics, governance, and social order. It would be well to do without the doctrine, but it may be equally important to understand its errors. Our understandings and justifications of democracy, certainly, should dispense with popular sovereignty.
Quasi-Rights: Participatory Citizenship and Negative Liberties in Democratic Athens
Authors: Ober Josiah
Published: January 2009

The relationship between participatory democracy (the rule of and by a socially diverse citizenry) and constitutional liberalism (a regime predicated on the protection of individual liberties and the rule of law) is a famously troubled one. The purpose of this essay is to suggest that, at least under certain historical conditions, participatory democracy will indeed support the establishment of constitutional liberalism. That is to say, the development of institutions, behavioral habits, and social values centered on the active participation of free and equal citizens in democratic politics can lead to the extension of legally enforced immunities from coercion to citizens and noncitizens alike. Such immunities, here called “quasi-rights,” are at least preconditions for the personal autonomy and liberty in respect to choice-making that are enshrined as the “rights of the moderns.” This essay, which centers on one ancient society, does not seek to develop a formal model proving that democracy will necessarily promote liberal constitutionalism. However, by explaining why a premodern democratic citizenry of free, adult, native males—who sought to defend their own interests and were unaffected by Enlightenment or post-Enlightenment ideals of inherent human worth—chose to extend certain formal protections to slaves, women, and children, it may point toward the development of a model for deriving liberalism from democratic participation. Development of such a model could have considerable bearing on current policy debates.
Democratic Epistemology and Accountability
Authors: Hardin Russell
Published: January 2009

Most of the knowledge of an ordinary person has a very messy structure and cannot meet standard epistemological criteria for its justification. Rather, a street-level epistemology makes sense of ordinary knowledge. Street-level epistemology is a subjective account of knowledge, not a public account. It is not about what counts as knowledge in, say, physics, but deals rather, with your knowledge, my knowledge, the ordinary person's knowledge. I wish not to elaborate this view here, but to apply it to the problems of representative democracy. I will briefly lay out the central implications of a street-level epistemology and then bring it to bear on democratic citizenship, especially on the problem of the citizen's holding elected officials accountable for their actions.
Political Quality
Authors: Estlund David
Published: January 2009

Political equality is in tension with political quality, and quality has recently been neglected. My thesis is that proper attention to the quality of democratic procedures and their outcomes requires that we accept substantive inequalities of political input in the interest of increasing input overall. Mainly, I hope to refutepolitical egalitarianism, the view that justice or legitimacy requires substantive political equality, specifically equal availability of power or influence over collective choices that have legal force. I hope to show that political egalitarianism exaggerates individual rights in the conduct of political procedures, and neglects the substantive justice of the decisions made through those procedures. Some unequal distributions of influence may better promote just decisions, and without reliance on any invidious comparisons such as the relative wisdom of the wealthy or the educated.
The Institutions of Deliberative Democracy
Authors: Nelson William
Published: January 2009

A theory of democratic institutions should provide us with a coherent combination of definition and justification. It should explain how it defines democratic institutions and also how they will or should function; but it also should explain why democracy, so understood, is desirable. We are all familiar with stories about the fiscal excesses to which democracies are prone, stories about the ignorance of voters, and stories about the venality of legislators. Some of us may also be suspicious of concepts such as “consent” or “the will of the people” associated with traditional arguments for democracy. Against this background, the current interest in deliberative democracy seems promising. This conception of democracy does not rely, for example, on the idea of rational and knowledgeable voters satisfying preferences they have independent of the political process. Nor does it rely on any notion of an independent popular will. Instead, it offers a picture of the democratic process as one in which men and women engage in constructive discussion, seeking a principled resolution of their differences and developing, over time, a conception of the terms on which they will live with one another.
Democracy as aTelos
Authors: Minogue Kenneth
Published: January 2009

My aim in this essay is to distinguish and comment on a specific movement of thought which I shall call “democracy as atelos.” This expression refers to a conception of democracy, cultivated by normative political philosophers, in which all democratic potentialities have at last been realized. The result is thought to be a perfected political community. Democracy as atelosmust thus be distinguished from the actual liberal democracies we enjoy at the end of the twentieth century. Indeed, democracy as atelostakes off from a specific rejection of such familiar institutions as elections, political parties, oppositions, a free press, and the rest, which are regarded, according to taste, as individualistic, bourgeois, atomistic, formal, and abstract. Democracy as atelosrefers to the theories of reformers who, dissatisfied with our present condition, argue that only a radically transformed democracy can generate a real political community.
Radical Democracy, Personal Freedom, and the Transformative Potential of Politics
Authors: Wall Steven
Published: January 2009

In recent years, theorists of radical democracy have criticized the liberal pluralist model of politics, a model which views the political forum primarily as a space for bargaining and the aggregation of individual preferences. While conceding that some measure of bargaining and preference aggregation is probably an ineliminable feature of democratic politics, radical democrats have charged that this model underestimates or ignores the transformative effects of democratic political interaction. In particular, liberal pluralism does not allow for the possibility that democratic politics can generate new forms of solidarity, enhance personal freedom, and inculcate virtue.
Democracy and Value Pluralism
Authors: Galston William A.
Published: January 2009

My intention in this essay is to open up a question I cannot fully resolve: the relationship between democracy and value pluralism. By “value pluralism” I mean the view propounded so memorably by the late Isaiah Berlin and developed in various ways by thinkers including Stuart Hampshire, Steven Lukes, Thomas Nagel, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Stocker, Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, John Kekes, and John Gray, among others. I shall define and discuss this view in some detail in Section III. For now, suffice it to say that value pluralism is the view that what we (rightly) value in our lives turns out to be multiple, heterogeneous, not reducible to a common measure, and not hierarchically ordered with a single dominant value or set of values binding on all persons in all circumstances. I use the phrase “value pluralism” rather than “moral pluralism” to indicate that this view encompasses nonmoral as well as moral goods.
The Problem of Russian Democracy: Can Russia Rise Again?
Authors: Shlapentokh Dmitry
Published: January 2009

While Western political scientists have a variety of opinions on democracy and how its institutions could be improved, they almost never argue about the validity of democracy as a form of government. Of course, it would be unfair here to ignore the presence of an authoritarian streak in Western thought. Thomas Hobbes comes to mind most immediately. Yet the views of those thinkers with an authoritarian bent have become marginalized in present-day discourse; or, to be more precise, it is assumed that their views on the importance of a strong government are irrelevant to the present. The assumption that a strong regime might be necessary in non-Western societies is thought to be the product of these authoritarian/totalitarian societies' elite classes—that is, a justification for imposing the power of the elite upon the people. Most Western political scientists are convinced that democracy is the best of all possible forms of government.
Entrepreneurs, Profits, and Deserving Market Shares
Authors: Christman John
Published: January 2009

The question I wish to take up in this paper is whether competitive markets, as mechanisms that initiate the distribution of scarce goods, allocate those goods in accordance with what participants in those markets deserve. I want to argue that in general people do not in fact deserve what they get from market interactions, when “what they get” is determined by the competitive forces coming to bear on the market (the laws of supply and demand). This more general claim is meant to apply to all participants in the market (workers and their wages as well as capitalists and their profits). However, my strategy here is to focus on the particular case of the role of entrepreneurs, as I will define them, and whether they deserve the profits they reap in a competitive capitalist market. In particular, I will argue that the claim that entrepreneurs deserve their profits, when spelled out precisely, is indeed not plausible. Generalizing from this claim, I want to suggest how moral desert is inappropriate as a justification of market shares whenever competition determines the magnitude of those shares.

I should stress, though, the particularity of my central claim: it is that “(strictly speaking) entrepreneurs do not (strictly speaking) deserve their (strictly speaking) profits.” This is not to say that, forotherreasons (for example, reasons of entitlement or utility), people should not receive the rewards doled out by a market. My claim is only that desert has nothing directly to do with it.

I am deviating significantly here from the usual strategy for denying the relevance of desert claims to principles of distributive justice.
Luck
Authors: Epstein Richard A.
Published: January 2009

John Donne's song was hardly written in the tradition of political philosophy, but it has a good deal to say about the theme of luck, both good and bad, which I want to address. There is no doubt but that bad luck has bad consequences for the persons who suffer from it. If there were a costless way in which the consequences of bad luck could be spread across everyone in society at large, without increasing the risk of its occurrence, then most of us would pronounce ourselves better off for the change. In this sense it can be said, for example, that there is a utilitarian grounding for a moral obligation to care and provide for those persons who suffer the fortunes of bad luck. For the sake of argument I do not wish to contest this particular starting point, although there are many who would. Instead, I want to ask the question of whether this moral obligation should be converted into a legal obligation, backed by public force. The dominant answer to that question today is yes. Even those who think that markets should determine decisions on production find that the state has a proper role to reduce the adverse consequences of bad luck. My cast of mind is more skeptical. In life, or, in this instance, politics, “come bad chance, and we do join to it our strength.” In general the effort to use coercion to counter the adverse effects of luck tends only to make matters worse.
Capitalism and the Democratic Economy
Authors: Dymski Gary A. , Elliott John E.
Published: January 2009

Mainstream economics evaluates capitalism primarily from the perspective of efficiency. Social philosophy typically applies other or additional normative criteria, such as equality, democracy, and community. This essay examines the implications of these contrasting sets of criteria in the evaluation of capitalism. Its first two sections consider the criteria themselves, assuming that a trade-off exists between them. The last three sections question whether such a trade-off necessarily occurs, and explore the claim that improvements in nonefficiency dimensions of capitalist society may enhance, rather than conflict with, efficiency.
Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral Realism
Authors: Copp David
Published: January 2009

Moral realismandantirealist-expressivismare of course incompatible positions. They disagree fundamentally about the nature of moral states of mind, the existence of moral states of affairs and properties, and the nature and role of moral discourse. The central realist view is that a person who has or expresses a moral thought is thereby in, or thereby expresses, acognitivestate of mind; she has or expresses abeliefthat represents a moral state of affairs in a way that might be accurate or inaccurate. The view of antirealist-expressivism is that such a person is in, or expresses, aconativestate of mind, one that consists in a certain kind of attitude or motivational stance toward something, such as an action or a person. Realism holds that moral thoughts have truth conditions and that in some cases these truth conditions are satisfied so that our moral thoughts are true. Antirealist-expressivism holds, to a first approximation, that the distinctive moral content of a moral thought does not have truth conditions.
“Because I Want It”
Authors: Darwall Stephen
Published: January 2009

How can an agent's desire or will give him reasons for acting? Not long ago, this might have seemed a silly question, since it was widely believed that all reasons for acting are based in the agent's desires. The interesting question, it seemed, was not how what an agent wants could give him reasons, but how anything else could. In recent years, however, this earlier orthodoxy has increasingly appeared wrongheaded as a growing number of philosophers have come to stress the action-guiding role of reasons in deliberation from the agent's point of view. What a deliberating agent has in view is rarely his own will or desires as such, even if taking something as a reason is intimately tied to desire. Someone who wants to escape a burning building does not evaluate her options by considering which is likeliest to realize what she wants or wills. She is focused, rather, on her desire's object: getting out alive. The fact that a successful route would realize something she wants is apt to strike her as beside the point or, at best, as a trivial bonus.
Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action
Authors: Sobel David
Published: January 2009

These days, just about every philosophical debate seems to generate a position labeledinternalism. The debate I will be joining in this essay concerns reasons for action and their connection, or lack of connection, to motivation. The internalist position in this debate posits a certain essential connection between reasons and motivation, while the externalist position denies such a connection. This debate about internalism overlaps an older debate between Humeans and Kantians about the exclusive reason-giving power of desires. As we will see, however, while these debates overlap, the new debate is importantly different from the old debate.
Moral Knowledge as Practical Knowledge
Authors: Annas Julia
Published: January 2009

In the area of moral epistemology, there is an interesting problem facing the person in my area, ancient philosophy, who hopes to write a historical paper which will engage with our current philosophical concerns. Not only are ancient ethical theories very different in structure and concerns from modern ones (though with the rapid growth of virtue ethics this is becoming less true), but the concerns and emphases of ancient epistemology are very different from those of modern theories of knowledge. Some may think that they are so different that they are useful to our own discussions only by way of contrast. I am more sanguine, but I am quite aware that this essay's contribution to modern debates does not fall within the established modern traditions of discussing moral epistemology.
Is Virtue Its Own Reward?
Authors: Sumner L. W.
Published: January 2009

If I lead a life of virtue, that may well be good for you. But will it also be good for me? The idea that it will—or even must—is an ancient one, and its appeal runs deep. For if this idea is correct then we can provide everyone with a good reason—arguably the best reason—for being virtuous. However, for all the effort which has been invested in defending the idea, by some of the best minds in the history of philosophy, it remains unproven. Worse, in this skeptical age hardly anyone really believes it. I don't really believe it either, at least not in its strongest forms, but I think that the question is nonetheless worth examining. Even if we cannot show that virtue and self-interest coincide, we can at least measure the breadth of the gap between them.
Virtue Ethics and Environs
Authors: Griffin James
Published: January 2009

My aim is to map some ethical ground. Many people who reject consequentialism and deontology adopt virtue ethics. Contemporary forms of virtue ethics occupy quite a variety of positions (as did ancient forms), and we do not yet have any satisfactory view of the whole territory that we call “virtue ethics.” Also, I think that there is a lot of logical space outside consequentialism and deontology not occupied by virtue ethics. In fact, I am myself rather more attracted to the environs of virtue ethics than to virtue ethics itself, which particular environs I shall come to later. But, first, we have roughly to locate virtue ethics.
The Practice of Pride
Authors: Smith Tara
Published: January 2009

Pride has been denounced as one of the seven deadly sins and praised as the crown of the virtues. Perhaps because of the difficulty of navigating between these appraisals, pride has not been paid very much attention by ethicists. Moreover, pride is so familiar as a feeling that the suggestion that it could be a virtue may seem misplaced.
The Virtues of a Passionate Life: Erotic Love and “the Will to Power”
Authors: Solomon Robert C.
Published: January 2009

I would like to defend a conception of life that many of us in philosophy practice but few of us preach, and with it a set of virtues that have often been ignored in ethics. In short, I would like to defend what philosopher Sam Keen, among many others, has called the passionate life. It is neither exotic nor unfamiliar. It is a life defined by emotions, by impassioned engagement and belief, by one or more quests, grand projects, embracing affections. It is also sometimes characterized (for example, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Faust, by Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche) in terms of frenzy, vaulting ambition, essentially insatiable goals, impossible affections. I want to contrast this conception of life with ordinary morality and “being a good person,” although for obvious reasons I do not want to say that one must give up the latter in pursuing the former. This is a mistake that Nietzsche often suggests with his “immor-alist” posturing and warrior metaphors, but I am convinced—on a solid textual basis—that he intended no such result. Nor do I want to dogmatically assert any superiority of a passionate, engaged life over a life that is more calm and routine (“bourgeois” in the standard cant of Bohemian rebellion). On the other hand, I do want to raise the question whether mere proper living, obedience to the law, utilitarian “rational choice” calculations, respect for others' rights and for contracts, and a bit of self-righteousness is all there is to a good life, even if one “fills in” the nonmoral spaces with permissible pleasures and accomplishments. Even a greatly enriched version of Kant, in other words, such as that recently defended by Barbara Herman, unfairly denigrates a kind of life that many of us deem desirable.
Concrete Kantian Respect
Authors: Sherman Nancy
Published: January 2009

When we think about Kantian virtue, what often comes to mind is the notion of respect. Respect is due to all persons merely in virtue of their status as rational agents. Indeed, on the Kantian view, specific virtues, such as duties of beneficence, gratitude, or self-perfection, are so many ways of respecting persons as free rational agents. To preserve and promote rational agency, to protect individuals from threats against rational agency, i.e., to respect persons, is at the core of virtue. No doubt, part of the appeal of the Kantian notion of respect is that it offers an intuitive way of talking about the wrongness of manipulation and coercion, and in general, the wrongness of unfairly taking advantage of another. For to respect persons is to take seriously their status as persons, and to forswear, at some level, actions and attitudes that would compromise their dignity. Talking about respect has become shorthand for signaling deontological concerns. More formally, within recent Kantian exegesis, respect is viewed as yielding a more accessible and less contrived account of the Categorical Imperative than the more traditional criterion of universalizability and the contradictions tests applied to it. Within the Kantianinspired political theory of John Rawls, respect is also a core notion, representing a pervasive good, the bases of which, just states have an obligation to distribute to their members. Yet, for all its appeal, respect is an odd feature of Kantian ethics. For it is an emotion in a theory that prides itself in grounding morality in principles of reason alone. In this essay, I draw attention to the importance of respect in Kant's account in order to show just how he makes room for the emotions. Indeed, I shall argue that on Kant's account of full moral agency, we are emotional as well as rational creatures. Although Kant often portrays respect as an abstract emotional attitude mysteriously connected to our rationality, I argue that on a suitable revision, respect can be transformed into a more concrete attitude, cultivated and expressed alongside other emotions requisite for full virtue.
The Reflexivity of Evil
Authors: Kekes John
Published: January 2009

The aim of this essay is to argue for the following claims: evil is prevalent; its prevalence is mainly the result of habitual and predictable patterns of action; these actions follow from the vices of their agents; in many cases, neither the evil actions nor the vices from which they follow are autonomous; it is nevertheless justified to hold the agents who perform these actions morally responsible for them; the widespread denial of this claim rests on the principle “ought implies can”; two versions of this principle must be distinguished; neither version can be used to exempt agents from moral responsibility for their nonautonomous actions and vices; this has fundamental implications for how morality and responsibility should be conceived.
The Unity of Virtue
Authors: Cooper John M.
Published: January 2009

Philosophers have recently revived the study of the ancient Greek topics of virtue and the virtues—justice, honesty, temperance, friendship, courage, and so on as qualities of mind and character belonging to individual people. But one issue at the center of Greek moral theory seems to have dropped out of consideration. This is the question of the unity of virtue, the unity of the virtues. Must anyone who has one of these qualities have others of them as well, indeed all of them—all the ones that really do deserve to be counted as virtues? Even further, is there really no set of distinct and separate virtuous qualities at all, but at bottom only a single one—so that the person who has this single condition of “virtue” (and only he) is entitled also to the further descriptions “honest” and “well-controlled” and “just” and “friendly” and “courageous” and “fostering” and “supportive,” and so on, as distinguishable aspects or immediate effects of his unitary “virtue”?
Shaftesbury and the Modern Problem of Virtue
Authors: Den Uyl Douglas J.
Published: January 2009

Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713), the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, was the grandson of the First Earl of Shaftesbury (also Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1621–1683). The First Earl, along with John Locke, was a leader and founder of the Whig movement in Britain. Locke was the First Earl's secretary and also the tutor of the Third Earl. Both the First and Third Earls were members of parliament and supporters of Whig causes. Although both the First and Third Earls were involved in politics, the Third Earl is better known for intellectual pursuits. Indeed, the Third Earl (henceforth simply “Shaftesbury”) is second only to Locke in terms of influence during the eighteenth century. Yet if one takes into account effects upon literature, the arts, and manners, as well as upon philosophical trends and theories, Shaftesbury might be even more influential. Even if we restrict ourselves to philosophy, Shaftesbury's ideas were admired by thinkers as different as Leibniz and Montesquieu—something which could obviously not be said about Locke. Within ethics, Shaftesbury influenced Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Samuel Butler, and Adam Smith and is credited with founding the “moral sense” school of thought.
What's Morally Special about Free Exchange?
Authors: Gibbard Allan
Published: January 2009

Is there anything morally special about free exchange? In asking this, I am asking not only about extreme, so-called “libertarian” views, on which free exchange is sacrosanct, but about more widespread, moderate views, on which there is at least something morally special about free exchange. On these more compromising views, other moral considerations may override the moral importance of free exchange, but even when rights of free exchange are restricted for good reason, something morally important is lost. For some, free exchange may preserve liberty, in some morally significant sense, or realize some such moral value as “to each his own.” Alternatively, a system of free exchange may have a special moral status by virtue of the kinds of pragmatic arguments that economists give, arguments that free exchange produces good social results. Whether free exchange has any such virtues as these is the broad question I address in this paper. I offer what I have to say somewhat in the spirit of an overview. Philosophical scrutiny and economic analysis combine, it seems to me, to delineate fairly clearly what is, and what is not, morally special about free exchange.
Prospects for the Elimination of Tastes from Economics and Ethics
Authors: Rosenberg Alexander
Published: January 2009

De gustibus non est disputandum. This maxim reflects a fundamental problem both for the study of markets and for the concern with morals. The problem is the intractability of tastes coupled with their indispensability for both positive and normative economics. Tastes are indispensable in positive microeconomic theory because, under the label ‘preferences,’ they, together with expectations, determine choice and behavior. Tastes are equally indispensable to welfare economics' conception of morally permissible arrangements, because these arrangements must reflect compromises between competing and conflicting preferences.
Rule Utilitarianism, Equality, and Justice
Authors: Harsanyi John C.
Published: January 2009

Utilitarianism and the Concept of Social Utility

In this paper I propose to discuss the concepts ofequalityandjusticefrom a rule utilitarian point of view, after some comments on the rule utilitarian point of view itself.

Let me start with the standard definitions.Act utilitarianismis the theory that a morally right action is one that in the existing situation will produce the highest expected social utility. (I am using the adjective “expected” in the sense of mathematical expectation.) In contrast,rule utilitarianismis the theory that a morally right action is simply an action conforming to the correct moral rule applicable to the existing situation. The correct moral rule itself is that particular behavioral rule that would yield the highest expected social utility if it were followed by all morally motivated people in all similar situations.
Morality, Reason, and Management Science: The Rationale of Cost-Benefit Analysis
Authors: Copp David
Published: January 2009

The Problem

Economic efficiency is naturally thought to be a virtue of social policies and decisions, and cost-benefit (CB) analysis is commonly regarded as a technique for measuring economic efficiency. It is not surprising, then, that CB analysis is so widely used in social policy analysis. However, there is a great deal of controversy about CB analysis, including controversy about its underlying philosophical rationale. The rationales that have been proposed fall into three basic, though not mutually exclusive categories. There aremoralistviews to the effect that an acceptable CB analysis would provide, or contribute to, anethicalappraisal of proposed policies or projects. There arerationalistviews to the effect that an acceptable CB analysis would contribute to the selection of social policies and projects that are “socially rational.” Finally, there are so-calledmanagement scienceviews to the effect that the purpose of CB analysis is to promote the achievement of objectives held by the policy maker, whatever they may be. Different positions are available within each of these categories. But there is also the possibility that CB analysis lacksanyviable rationale. I will examine some of the major rationales for CB analysis in this paper, and I will suggest that the last view is close to the truth.
On Dworkinian Equality
Authors: Narveson Jan
Published: January 2009

1. INTRODUCTION

Professor Dworkin's writings on moral and political subjects have never failed to interest me in the past, and the two-part article “What is Equality” which is the subject of this paper, is no exception. Its wealth of relevant distinctions is bound to be useful to every serious student of the subject, whatever – or, in view of the range of opinions on these matters now current, perhaps I should sayalmostwhatever – his (or, of course, her) ideological proclivities, and whether or not he is sympathetic to Dworkin's position. The present treatment will be devoted, needless to say, primarily to disagreements, criticisms, and the raising of further questions, most of them designed to call in question either the general idea that equality should be regarded as a legitimate and important goal of social institutions or Dworkin's particular formulations of that equality. This largely negative-seeming consideration, I need scarcely add, is not intended to discount or detract from the positive contributions of Dworkin's work, which are very substantial indeed. It's just that having been ably set forth by Dworkin himself, they scarcely need seconding from this source.
Reply to Dworkin
Authors: Narveson Jan
Published: January 2009

My main complaint about Dworkin's papers on equality was that he had not said much by way of arguing for it. His intriguing response to this request provides a good start, and I shall confine this brief, further comment to what he says on that basic subject. Space considerations, alas, require me to ignore the other parts of his discussion (most of them well-taken, I should say in passing).

Dworkin distinguishes what he calls the “abstract egalitarian thesis” from his particular version of equalitarianism, equality of resources. His strategy is to argue, first, that the latter is the best realization or version of the former, and then to argue for the general thesis itself. In my comments, I shall reverse this order, however, for reasons that will be clear as we proceed.

1. The Abstract Egalitarian Thesis

Dworkin states this as follows: “From the standpoint of politics, the interests of the members of the community matter, and matter equally.” (24) The statement is intended to be abstract in the sense that it would “embrace various competing conceptions of equality,” so that in principle we can divide the discussion the way Dworkin has done into the two questions, “Should we accept equality as a principle at all?” and “What is the best version of equality, at what we might call the constitutional level?” But can we really do this? I am not entirely clear that we can. In order to appreciate the difficulty here, at any rate, consider Dworkin's suggestion that ”in order to sharpen the question” – the question whether to accept equality as a principle at all, that is –“I ask you to suppose that the abstract egalitarian principle does provide a good argument for subsidized medicine…” Now, some might think that such a program is paradigm case of what ought to be rejected at the public level, and yet his reasons for such rejection might very well be based on a principle that its proponent would regard as abstractly egalitarian.
Distributive Justice
Authors: Fried Charles
Published: January 2009

1. John Rawls' A Theory of Justice represented a rare intellectual event. It advanced a fresh, detailed and powerful conception of political economy, and rooted that conception in an elaborately worked out political and moral philosophy. Rawls' two principles of justice, with the celebrated maximin standard of distributive justice, represent the point of departure for any serious discussion of this subject. The details of Rawls' proposal are too well known to require summary. Instead, I shall call attention to the basic premise of his work and to a significant anomaly in it, as setting the stage for my own proposal.
Comment on Fried on Getting What we Don't Deserve
Authors: Ackerman Bruce A.
Published: January 2009

I hope to persuade Charles Fried to think again about his developing views on distributive justice. Since I live at a certain remove from Cambridge, the best I can offer is a hypothetical dialogue with an imaginary person whose views seem, to me at least, of a Friedian inspiration.

My central question deals with the way Fried establishes his rights to things he candidly concedes he does not deserve. To present my problems, I shall begin with a simpler case than those – involving kidneys and talents – that Fried makes central to his discussion. Rather than starting with these rather special goods, I find it clarifying to focus first on more garden variety commodities – which, to emphasize their character, I shall call apples.
Comment on Brody “Redistribution Without Egalitarianism”
Authors: Friedman David
Published: January 2009

1. A NOTE ON INTERPRETATION

It became clear in the discussions at the conference at which Professor Brody's paper was given that he and I had slightly different interpretations of his paper. He apparently regards the rights violations to be justified (having to do with the initial appropriation of land) as events in the distant past, and any resulting compensation as being due to our contemporaries only as heirs of people injured in the distant past. To me, one of the attractions of his analysis is that it allows one to dispense with such tenuous arguments and consider rights violations occuring at this very moment, and the compensation due for them. If every individual has the right to use all uncreated resources, then when I use force to keep you out of my living room I am violating your rights; although (according to Professor Brody) that may be an appropriate rights violation, it still imposes on me the obligation to compensate you. These comments were originally written on the assumption that Professor Brody intended the argument to be interpreted in this way; since I believe it is a more interesting argument in that form than in the form apparently intended by its author, I will maintain that interpretation throughout my comments.

2. CRITIQUE

Professor Brody's solution to the problem of Lockean entitlements is ingenious and in some ways attractive, but I find it unsatisfactory in the form presented here. The problem is that, in spite of the author's claims to the contrary, it seems impossible, in principle, to decide how much compensation each person is entitled to.
Justice: A Funeral Oration
Authors: Matson Wallace
Published: January 2009

1. THRENODY

Is it any longer possible to talk seriously about justice and rights? Are these words corrupted and debased beyond redemption? There is no need to multiply examples of how anything that any pressure group has the chutzpah to lay claim to forthwith becomes a right,nemine contradicente. Nor is this Newspeak restricted to the vulgar. The President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association has granted permission to misuse words likerightsandjusticeif you do so in the service of desirable political ends. Our most universally acclaimed theoretician of justice has shown at length that justice is a will perpetual and constant to forcibly take goods from those who have earned them and give them to those who have not; and the leading light of Anglo-American jurisprudence has constructed a “straightforward” argument proving that a citizen's right to equal protection of the laws is fully satisfied if only the bureaucrat denying him or her a public benefit on racial grounds shows “respect and concern” while processing the forms.
Property Rights and Technological Innovation
Authors: Pejovich Svetozar
Published: January 2009

The economist Armen Alchian said once that ever since the fiasco in the Garden of Eden, we have been living in a world in which what we want exceeds what is available. The desire for more satisfaction is a predictable behavioral implication of the fact of scarcity. In fact, it might have helped mankind to survive against competition from other forms of life. Man's desire for more utility gives rise to two interdependent issues that each and every society has to face: (i) how to increase the value of the community's wealth, and (ii) how to allocate the increment in wealth. We generalize those issues as the demand for economic development.
Medicine, Animal Experimentation, and the Moral Problem of Unfortunate Humans
Authors: Frey R. G.
Published: January 2009

We live in an age of great scientific and technological innovation, and what seemed out of the question or at least very doubtful only a few years ago, today lies almost within our grasp. In no area is this more true than that of human health care, where lifesaving and life-enhancing technologies have given, or have the enormous potential in the not so distant future to give, relief from some of the most terrible human illnesses. On two fronts in particular, xenograft or cross-species transplantation and genetic engineering of animals on behalf of gene therapy in humans, such relief appears very promising, if not actually on the horizon. Certainly, extensive research work on both fronts is underway both in the United States and abroad.
Equality and Exploitation in the Market Socialist Community
Authors: Arnold N. Scott
Published: January 2009

Historically, critics of capitalism have had a great deal to say about the defects and social ills that afflict capitalist society and correspondingly little to say about how alternative institutional arrangements might solve these problems. One can only speculate about why this has been so. One reason might be a simple matter of priorities. Bertolt Brecht once said that when a man's house is on fire, one does not inquire too closely into alternative arrangements for shelter. The analogy between capitalism and a burning house may seem overwrought today, but in the dark days of the Depression of the 1930s it probably seemed more apt. Another explanation for the scant attention paid to alternatives to capitalism has to do with both the factual and ideological beliefs of capitalism's critics. If one believes (as, for example, Marx and Engels did) that the existing order would be destroyed by a mass movement, that new institutions would be constructed by the people in a democratic spirit, and that furthermore all of this would be a good thing, it would be unwise and counterproductive to try to spell out exactly where history is headed. After all, a genuine mass movement has little use for self-proclaimed prophets of history. Finally, men and women of modest intellectual pretensions might be humbled by the prospects of trying to spell out in any detail social institutions that should exist or might exist but are not as yet found anywhere in the world.
Democracy and Economic Rights
Authors: Narveson Jan
Published: January 2009

We have long been accustomed to thinking of democracy as a major selling point of Western institutions. That a set of political institutions should be democratic is widely regarded as thesine qua nonof their legitimacy. So widespread is this belief that even those whose institutions do not look very democratic to us nevertheless insist on proclaiming them to be such (though the number taking this gambit dropped dramatically around the end of 1989). Meanwhile, an adulatory attitude toward democracy has arisen in many quarters, and many theorists have taken up anew the idea that if democracy is the way to go in political institutions, then it must also be the way to go in “other” areas, notably in economic and social institutions. So there has arisen a call for “economic democracy” — which is taken to mean, especially, that the “means of production” should be managed by their constituent workers in concert rather than by some few who own, or act for the owners of, those enterprises. Robert Dahl, in his influentialPreface to Economic Democracy, sums it up nicely when he proclaims a “stronger justification” for worker participation: “Ifdemocracy is justified in governing the state, then it mustalsobe justified in governing economic enterprises; and to say that it isnotjustified in governing economic enterprises is to imply that it is not justified in governing the state.”
Property Rights in Persons
Authors: Arneson Richard J.
Published: January 2009

In contemporary market societies, the laws (generally speaking) do not place individuals under enforceable obligations to aid others. Perhaps the most striking exception to this broad generalization is the practice of conscription of able-bodied males into military service, particularly in time of war. Another notable exception is the legal enforcement in some contemporary societies of “Good Samaritan” obligations — obligations to provide temporary aid to victims of emergencies, such as car accident victims. The obligation applies to those who are in the immediate vicinity of the emergency and who can supply aid of great value to the victim at small risk and tolerable cost to themselves. The fact that not all contemporary societies have enacted such Good Samaritan laws underscores the point that the general rule is that individuals are under no legal obligation to help others. According to some moral views, this legal situation approximately accords with the moral fact that persons who have not voluntarily incurred obligations to aid others should not be coerced into tendering such aid. Moreover, it is worth noting that these two prominent exceptions to the tendency of legal systems to eschew enforcement of positive obligations to aid others are plausibly in everyone'sex anteinterest and not notably redistributive in intent.
Disability and the Right to Work
Authors: Kavka Gregory S.
Published: January 2009

It is, perhaps, a propitious time to discuss the economic rights of disabled persons. In recent years, the media in the United States have re-ported on such notable events as: students at the nation's only college for the deaf stage a successful protest campaign to have a deaf individual ap-pointed president of their institution; a book by a disabled British physicist on the origins of the universe becomes a best seller; a pitcher with only one arm has a successful rookie season in major league baseball; a motion-picture actor wins an Oscar for his portrayal of a wheelchair-bound person, beating out another nominee playing another wheelchair-bound person; a cancer patient wins an Olympic gold medal in wrestling; a paralyzed mother trains her children to accept discipline by inserting their hands in her mouth to be gently bitten when punishment is due; and a paraplegic rock climber scales the sheer four-thousand-foot wall of Yosemite Valley's El Capitan. Most significantly, in 1990, the United States Congress passed an important bill – the Americans with Disabili-ties Act – extending to disabled people employment and access-related protections afforded to members of other disadvantaged groups by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Varieties of Self-Interest
Authors: Epstein Richard A.
Published: January 2009

In this paper, I want to explore the relationship between the various forms of individual self-interest and the appropriate structures of government. I shall begin with the former, and by degrees extend the analysis to the latter. I do so in order to mount a defense of principles of limited government, private property, and individual liberty. The ordinary analysis of self-interest treats it as though it were not only a given but also a constant of human nature, and thus makes few allowances for differences between persons. Yet common experience tells us that personality and behavior are as unique as fingerprints. The positive inquiry, therefore, is how we find what is constant about self-interest in a world of natural human diversity. The normative inquiry must take into account both the constant and variable features of human nature in order to determine what forms of social arrangements hold the greatest prospect of long-term social advantage. The gulf between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ must be overcome here, as it must be in all normative discourse. Yet we cannot make sensible judgments of what ought to be the case in the domain of rules unless we first have some idea of what is the case in the domain of behavior.

The initial inquiry asks why self-interest (to be suitably qualified to take into account inclusive fitness) is regarded as a constant of human behavior. The explanation derives more from the biological and less from the social. The powerful pressures of natural selection weed out any organisms for whom (genetic) selfinterest is not the paramount consideration.