Circumstances Of Justice Research Articles

Transgenerational Frontiers: The Capabilities Approach And the New Challenge of Justice

ABSTRACT The aim of the paper is to confront some challenges raised by intergenerational justice from the perspective of Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. After having sketched her account, the essay deals with some objections to it from an environmental perspective, arguing that, contrary to some critics, it can be a valuable basis for reflecting on our duties towards future generations. More precisely, I focus on how the CA provides promising insights to address two central problems of intergenerational ethics: 1) the so-called ‘circumstances of justice;’ 2) the problem of the asymmetry between present and future generations. In both cases, I argue that the philosophical anthropology underlying the CA is better suited than the contractualist one to include future generations into the realm of justice and ground our motivation to care for them. After underlining the potential of the CA, in the concluding remarks I will underline a potential flaw of this theory, i.e. the lack of guidance when it comes to the trade-offs between our rights and well-being and those of the unborn.

Expanding the role of justice in secondary research using digital psychological data.

Secondary analysis of digital psychological data (DPD) is an increasingly popular method for behavioral health research. Under current practices, secondary research does not require human subjects research review so long as data are de-identified. We argue that this standard approach to the ethics of secondary research (i.e., de-identification) does not address a range of ethical risks and that greater emphasis should be placed on the ethical principle of justice. We outline the inadequacy of an individually focused research ethic for DPD and describe unaddressed "social risks" generated by secondary research of DPD. These risks exist in the "circumstances of justice": that is, a circumstance where individuals must cooperate to create a public good (e.g., research knowledge), and where it is impractical to individually exempt individuals. This requires researchers to emphasize the just allocation of benefits and burdens against a background of social cooperation. We explore six considerations for researchers who wish to conduct research with DPD without explicit consent: (a) create socially valuable knowledge, (b) fairly share the benefits and burdens of research, (c) be transparent about data use, (d) create mechanisms for withdrawal of data, (e) ensure that stakeholders can provide input into the design and implementation of the research, and (f) responsibly report results. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Missing Links in The China Model

Missing Links in The China Model Chenyang Li (bio) Daniel A. Bell's recent book The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy makes a significant contribution to political theory, political philosophy, and China studies. The book has already drawn a variety of responses (e.g., see Bai 2016, He et al. 2016, Nathan 2015, and Horesh 2016), some of which I believe are due to utter misreadings and misunderstandings. It is therefore important for us to spell out explicitly what kind of work we are dealing with here before we dive into other substantive issues. We should not take this book as an apologetics for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) even though it offers both positive and negative assessments of the Chinese communist regime, as any fair-minded work should. There is a tendency among scholars to avoid discussing certain topics in order not to be perceived as politically motivated to help governments with a less than commendable reputation. For example, when the Chinese government was [End Page 568] using harmony as a leading motif for policies, while some people would say anything in praise of harmony in order to please the government, there were also many who chose to turn their back on topics related to harmony in order to avoid being perceived as dancing to the music of the government. So the bandwagon goes both ways. This is unfortunate because scholarship should retain its own integrity and should not be influenced by politics. Professional ethics requires academics to say what a thing is as it is, regardless of what the government says or wishes us to say or not to say. In our case here, if we shy away from speaking positively of Chinese political meritocracy just to avoid being perceived as sleeping in the same bed as the Chinese government, which after all has a questionable reputation to say the least, we fail our professional responsibilities as serious academics. In the case of the CCP and China, I think the fact that the CCP survived the catastrophic Cultural Revolution and the devastating backlash of the June 4th incident in 1989 demands that serious scholars find out what the CCP did right more than what it did wrong. I am not saying that scholars should speak positively of political meritocracy even if they do not believe in it. However, if one studies political meritocracy and believes in its positive value, he or she should speak up, regardless of whether the Chinese communist government practices it well or not, and if the Chinese communist government does well as a political meritocracy we should find out more about this. Contrary to those accusing Bell as an apologist for the Chinese communist government, I think his book is a testimony both to Bell's integrity as a serious scholar and to his personal courage. Let me be explicit in saying that I am sympathetic to an integrated model of democracy and political meritocracy. I do not agree with a rather widespread assumption that the more democratic a society is the better it is. Besides the general and empty notion of "good," there is hardly anything of which it can be said that the more of it there is the better. Michael Sandel (1998) has argued that the appropriate amount of justice in a society depends on the circumstances of justice. Similarly, I believe the appropriate amount of democracy in a society depends on the circumstances of democracy. The circumstances of democracy should include the need for meritocracy in society. As Bell maintains, there should be a balance between democracy and meritocracy. However, I argue that Bell's model needs to be strengthened in two major areas. First, it lacks a mechanism of checks and balances on political power. Second, as a Confucian thinker, Bell needs to integrate (more of) the Confucian idea of "governance by virtue" into his model. Confucian governance by virtue is not merely about virtuous rulers; it is also about fostering a culture of virtuous behavior in government as well as in society at large. Let me first turn to the issue of checks and balances in government. After arguing for the need of both...

Bhandary on Liberal Care Provision

According to Asha Bhandary, there is a liberal (Rawlsian) justification for including “the receipt of dependency care among the benefits of social cooperation” (“Liberal Dependency Care,” 43). The novelty is to claim that such care is among the Rawlsian circumstances of justice. I argue that liberalism does not support this extremely strong claim. Dependency care is indeed among the goods generated by social cooperation, broadly speaking—but so are virtually all goods, such as pizza provision, scarcely any of which are among the circumstances of justice. Most of us have ample inclination toward caring for dependents—but neither is this extended to everyone else’s dependents, nor is it mostly a legal duty, as indeed having children at all is not. Nor should it be on liberal principles. Neither of the two Rawlsian Principles support general dependency care. And, Bhandary’s “strong proceduralism,” calling for the training of all persons in care-giving skills, would edge up toward totalitarianism—hardly a welcome outcome of liberalism.

International Criminal Trials and the Circumstances of Justice

Transitional justice is broadly understood to refer to formal efforts to deal with past wrongs in the midst of a transition from an extended period of conflict or repression to democracy. In this paper, I consider the role of international criminal trials in transitional justice. I argue that such trials may contribute to transitional justice, but such contributions are conditional on two main factors. The first factor is time. The second factor is what other transitional justice responses are adopted domestically.

Sharing the Earth: A Biocentric Account of Ecological Justice

Although ethical and justice arguments operate in two distinct levels—justice being a more specific concept—they can easily be conflated. A robust justification of ecological justice (justice to nature) requires starting at the roots of justice, rather than merely giving, for example, an argument for why certain non-human beings have moral standing of some kind. Thus, I propose that a theory of ecological justice can benefit from a four-step justification for the inclusion of non-human beings into the community of justice, starting with Hume’s circumstances of justice. I will further argue that the resulting theory of ecological justice should be biocentric—meaning that all living beings should be included into the community of justice, as they constitute a ‘community of fate’.

Public reason and multi-layered justice

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to outline a multi-layered conception of justice that is appropriate to the circumstances of justice in the European Union. Adopting the Rawlsian concept of public reason, it submits that duties of justice can only be imposed to the extent that the actors involved command a shared set of reasons by which these can be justified. The paper’s argument follows Rawls in using public reason to justify a qualitative distinction between the demands that derive from the domestic and the international domain of justice. It criticises Rawls, however, for misjudging the radical implications of this position in a world that has become much more internationalised than he recognised it to be.

Advantage, Restraint, and the Circumstances of Justice

Advantage, Restraint, and the Circumstances of Justice

On the circumstances of justice

An epistemic account of the circumstances of justice allows one to make three important claims about the Humean and Rawlsian ‘standard account’ of those circumstances. First, and contrary to Hume, the possibility and necessity of justice are rooted not in limited beneficence or confined generosity, but in the epistemic insight that the knowledge relevant to deciding what to do with the fruits of social cooperation is for a variety of reasons uncentralisable. Second, and regardless of whether Rawlsian ethical disagreement is more persuasive as a circumstance of justice than Humean confined generosity, it does not explain the possibility and necessity of justice, for the uncentralisability of social knowledge would be decisive even under conditions of unanimity. Finally, the epistemic account not only shows what the circumstances of justice are but, contra Cohen’s critique of the standard account, also provides at least some guidance as to what justice itself may be.

Call for Papers: Constitutions and Intergenerational Justice

Call for Papers: Constitutions and Intergenerational Justice

WHAT IS CIRCUMSTANTIAL ABOUT JUSTICE?

Abstract:Does social justice lose all application in the (imaginary, of course) condition in which people are morally flawless? The answer, I will argue, is that it does not — justice might still have application. This is one lesson of my broader thesis in this paper, that there is a variety of conditions we would all regard as highly idealistic and unrealistic which are, nevertheless, not beyond justice. The idea of “circumstances of justice” developed especially by Hume and Rawls may seem to point in a more realistic direction, but we can see that this is not so once we distinguish between conditions of need for norms of justice, conditions of their emergence, and conditions of applicability of the standard of justice. Justice, I argue, can have application even in conditions where no mechanism of justice is present or needed, such as the case of internalized motives of justice.

The Circumstances of Intergenerational Justice

AbstractSome key political challenges today, e.g. climate change, are future oriented. The intergenerational setting differs in some notable ways from the intragenerational one, creating obstacles to theorizing about intergenerational justice. One concern is that as the circumstances of justice do not pertain intergenerationally, intergenerational justice is not meaningful. In this paper, I scrutinize this worry by analysing the presentations of the doctrine of the circumstances of justice by David Hume and John Rawls. I argue that we should accept the upshot of their idea, that justice is context sensitive, even if this at first sight seems to invalidate intergenerational justice. On the basis of moral constructivism, I subsequently provide a fresh reading of the doctrine according to which it conveys the idea that justice is the solution to a practical problem. However, as the problem background is evolving, we need to properly characterize the relevant practical problem in order to make ethical theorizing relevant. Contrary to what has been claimed, the circumstances of justice do not then clash with intergenerational justice, but are the necessary presuppositions for its advancement.

Rawls and climate change: does Rawlsian political philosophy pass the global test?

Climate change and other global environmental problems constitute a significant challenge to contemporary political philosophy, especially with respect to complacency. This paper assesses Rawls’ theory, and argues for three conclusions. First, Rawls does not already solve such problems, and simple extensions of his theory are unlikely to do so. This is so despite the rich structure of Rawls’ philosophy, and the appeal of some of its parts. Second, the most promising areas for extension ‐ the circumstances of justice, the duty to maintain and promote just institutions, and his vision of social development ‐ are those that have not yet been explored. Third, unfortunately, Rawls’ views on these topics are both seriously underdeveloped, and largely stipulative. Hence, in trying to meet climate change, Rawlsians are more likely to add new theories to Rawls, and perhaps even to transform his original account, than to generate an approach “from the inside out”.

Saving the Polar Bear, Saving the World: Can the Capabilities Approach do Justice to Humans, Animals and Ecosystems?

Martha Nussbaum has expanded the capabilities approach to defend positive duties of justice to individuals who fall below Rawls’ standard for fully cooperating members of society, including sentient nonhuman animals. Building on this, David Schlosberg has defended the extension of capabilities justice not only to individual animals but also to entire species and ecosystems. This is an attractive vision: a happy marriage of social, environmental and ecological justice, which also respects the claims of individual animals. This paper asks whether it is one that the capabilities approach can really deliver. Serious obstacles are highlighted. The potential for conflict between the capability-based entitlements of humans and those of nonhuman animals or ‘nature’ is noted, but it is argued that this does not constitute a decisive objection to the expanded capabilities approach. However, intra-nature conflicts are so widespread as to do so: the situation is outside the circumstances of justice as they are standardly understood. Schlosberg attempts to reconcile such conflicts by re-examining what it means to flourish as a sentient nonhuman animal. This fails, because of the distinction between flourishing as a species, which often requires predation, and flourishing as an individual, which is as frequently incompatible with it. Finally, the paper considers how a capabilities theorist might move beyond such conflicts, identifying two possible strategies (which are not themselves unproblematic) for reconciling the demands of humans, animals and ecosystems.

When urgency matters. On non-discretionary corporate social responsibility

Business firms have been addressing concerns raised by management scholars and social activists regarding the social responsibilities of business firms in the last 50 years. Yet, many companies and business executives frame the issue in the language of discretionary donations or acts of charity. In this article, I shall argue that the significant normative question is whether and how business corporations ought to address those growing societal concerns as a matter of duty. In addressing this question, the article examines four normative justifications – namely, the principles of Membership, Ability, Contribution and Fair Play – for grounding moral responsibilities and identifying agents of justice. I shall argue that none of the aforementioned principles provide a comprehensive account of how to allocate responsibilities among non-state institutions. Consequently, I shall propose a multi-principled theory that arranges the application of these four principles according to the circumstances of justice and the degree of urgency of needs.

Political Membership in the Contractarian Defense of Cosmopolitanism

AbstractThis article assesses the recent use of contractarian strategies for the justification of cosmopolitan distributive principles. It deals in particular with the cosmopolitan critique of political membership and tries to reject the claim that political communities are arbitrary for the scope of global justice. By focusing on the circumstances of justice, the nature of the parties, the veil of ignorance, and the sense of justice, the article tries to show that the cosmopolitan critique of political membership modifies the contractarian premises in a way that is both unwarranted and unnecessary. While failing to establish principles of global distributive justice, existing cosmopolitan adaptations of the social contract device simply weaken the method's justificatory potential.

Mind the gap! Three approaches to scarcity in health care

This paper addresses two ways in which scarcity in health care turns up and three ways in which this dual condition of scarcity can be approached. The first approach is the economic approach, which focuses on the causes of cost-increase in health care and on developing various mechanisms of rationing and priority-setting in health care. The second approach is the justice approach, which interprets scarcity as one of the Humean [Symbol: see text]Circumstances of Justice.' Whereas these approaches interpret scarcity as a given fact, the third approach casts doubt on this interpretation. Rather, it interprets scarcity as a social, anthropological, and technologically induced construction of Modernity. This paper supports the theories of Hans Achterhuis, Ivan Illich, and Nicholas Xenos but also further elaborates their views with regard to health care by offering an approach to scarcity that interprets it as an economic translation of finitude. I argue that this approach, which entails a contemporary revaluation of the ancient Socratic attitude on human life and finitude, will be better able to deal with the pressing contemporary issues of setting limits on health care because it mitigates contemporary health care's tendency toward infinity in meeting - and creating - health care needs.

Contractarianism, Other‐regarding Attitudes, and the Moral Standing of Nonhuman Animals

abstract Contractarianism roots moral standing in an agreement among rational agents in the circumstances of justice. Critics have argued that the theory must exclude nonhuman animals from the protection of justice. I argue that contractarianism can consistently accommodate the notion that nonhuman animals are owed direct moral consideration. They can acquire their moral status indirectly, but their claims to justice can be as stringent as those among able‐bodied rational adult humans. Any remaining criticisms of contractarianism likely rest on a disputable moral realism; contractarianism can underwrite the direct moral considerability of nonhuman animals by appealing to a projectivist quasi‐realism.

Friendship and the Circumstances of Justice According to Aquinas

The facts about friendship (objections a-d) used to support the view that the circumstances of justice are displaced by the circumstances of friendship (the Inverse Proportionality thesis) are, in Aquinas's own understanding of friendship, either not true —(a), (b), (d)—or (in my own view) irrelevant to the Inverse Proportionality thesis—(c).Aquinas's theological view that there is no merit without (or “outside”) charity can also be expressed non-theologically: when two persons are separated by a wide gap, the actions of the inferior do not lay just claims on the superior unless the inferior is a friend. The inferior's actions become effective in entitling him to just deserts only when proportional equivalence between the superior's and the inferior's actions becomes possible. Proportional equivalence obtains only when the inferior's actions are seen as the common actions of both friends. An action is common to two persons when neither of the persons is merely a part or tool of the other, both cooperate freely, and both share reasons. Friends' actions are common actions.It must be stressed that this reading of Aquinas's view does not lend support to the notion that friendship takes precedence over justice (“you only have justice if you have friendship first”). In this reading, Aquinas believes that, in the transition from a superiorinferior relationship to a relationship between partners, friendship and the possibility of just interaction arise concomitantly.

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy