Jan Narveson Research Articles

Conditional Reasons and the Procreation Asymmetry

AbstractThis paper sketches a theory of the reason‐giving force of well‐being that allows us to reconcile our intuitions about two of the most recalcitrant problem cases in population ethics: Jan Narveson's Procreation Asymmetry and Derek Parfit's Non‐Identity Problem. I show that what has prevented philosophers from developing a theory that gives a satisfactory account of both these problems is their tacit commitment to a teleological conception of well‐being, as something to be ‘promoted’. Replacing this picture with one according to which our reasons to confer well‐being on people are conditional on their existence allows me to do better. It also enables us to understand some of the deep structural parallels between seemingly disparate normative phenomena such as procreating and promising. The resulting theory charts a middle way between the familiar dichotomy of narrow person‐affecting theories and totalist or wide‐person affecting theories in population ethics.

Moral Objectivity and Property: The Justice of Liberal Socialism

Abstract This paper restates the thesis of ‘The Requirements of Justice and Liberal Socialism’where itwas argued that liberal socialism best meets Rawlsian requirements of justice. The recent responses to this article by Jan Narveson, Jeppe von Platz, and Alan Thomas merit examination and comment. This reply shows that if Rawlsian justice is to be met, then non-personal property must be subject to public control. If just outcomes merit the public control of non-personal property and this control is not utilized, then justice has been subordinated to the objectively less important institution of private property.

Dependency Care before Pizza

This essay responds to Jan Narveson’s libertarian commentary on my earlier work “Liberal Dependency Care.” There, I argued that the underlying logic of the circumstances of justice warrants adding care to a liberal theory of justice. In this essay, I rebut Narveson’s skeptical claims about the liberal credentials of my justificatory argument by identifying the extent to which my view shares the same reasonable constraints on liberty as those defended by John Stuart Mill. I also suggest that a libertarian refusal to add care to the core functions of the state is plausible only if women’s labor remains invisible. Finally, I refute Narveson’s contention that my strong procedural principle of care provision is incipiently totalitarian. The case for public support to teach basic levels of attentiveness and responsiveness is analogous to the case for teaching the foundational skills of arithmetic, which are legitimately taught in primary and secondary schools.

Contractarian Libertarianism of Jan Narveson. Is It Still Libertarianism?

This chapter aims at presenting and scrutinizing a contractarian approach to libertarianism, which has been proposed by a Canadian philosopher, Jan Narveson, known as the main proponent of so-called contractarian libertarianism. The chapter begins with the short introduction followed by “Assumptions,” discussing Narveson’s understanding of morality, his critique of Rawlsian methodology and his view on natural law and natural rights. Afterwards, “Social contract: justification, procedure, motives” presents such elements in the philosophy of Narveson as advantages of contractarianism, levels of the social contract and its status, as well as motives of parties being subject to the social contract. The third part, entitled “Critics vs. Narveson” touches on a critical discussion of the subject by other theorists (Tibor R. Machan, John T. Sanders, Leo Groarke). The last section, “Is the Contractarianism of Narveson Libertarianism?” presents the thesis that Narveson’s contractarianism is not a justified basis of libertarianism. Albeit he comes to conclusions agreeable to libertarianism, his philosophy is better labeled as laissez-faire.

A Response to Jan Narveson: Why Libertarians Are and Are Not Like Turnips

Abstract I show how Jan Narveson’s critique fails to unseat my central argument that harm cuts both ways in our assumed idealized conflict situations, such that sometimes the poor harm the rich and sometimes the rich harm the poor. I further show how this supports my overall argument that libertarianism has gone over the brink into the waiting arms of welfare liberals and socialists. I also reject the; other reasons that Narveson provides for not recognizing the welfare rights of distant peoples and future generations which are independent of my argument about harm.

Libertarianism on the Brink

Abstract I argue that recent developments in my on-going debate with Jan Narveson have brought libertarianism to the brink where it is now able to cross over and join forces with welfare liberalism and even socialism. I summarize my debate with Narveson and then argue that a public concession Narveson made at recent meeting along with a new argument he advanced in response to that public concession have now brought libertarianism to this momentous brink where it can now be seen to cross over into the welcoming arms of welfare liberals and socialists.

On Jan Narveson’s “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis”

On Jan Narveson’s “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis”

Bargaining and agreement in Gauthier's moral contractarianism

Bargaining and distribution of benefits accruing from social cooperation are central topics in contractarian accounts of morality or distributive justice in general and David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement (MbA) in particular. In this paper, I raise some problems for MbA both with regards to bargaining over the benefits of social cooperation and the distribution of such benefits. The worries I raise piggyback on a couple of Jan Narveson's earlier queries of some of the topics in MbA: those of ‘questionable foundation’ and redundancy. However, I go beyond the substance of these queries by arguing that they raise fundamental worries about the correctness of the description of the elements of the bargaining situation, and the role and significance of agreement in MbA.

Pacifism: Equipment or Accessory of War?

It is my intention to attempt to define pacifism, in its engagement and concept, as a necessary requisite of war and military action, following a phrase used over a hundred years ago by Franz Rosenzweig when speaking of pacifism as “necessary equipment of war.” I will try to defend the importance of pacifism as an integral part of war (as such, pacifism as a requisite of war ought to shorten the period of war and mitigate destruction) and oppose this concept of pacifism to Jan Narveson’s old attempt at constructing pacifism as a position and then designating it as “untenable and unreasonable,” and then further oppose this to his later attempt to find in pacifism the cause of further (and more) violence for ever more vicious wars.

Are Liberty and Equality Compatible? by Jan Narveson and James P. Sterba.

Are Liberty and Equality Compatible? by Jan Narveson and James P. Sterba.

Liberty and equality. A critical response to the debate between James P. Sterba and Jan Narveson

This article examines the libertarian arguments of Jan Narveson and James P. Sterba regarding the compatibility of liberty and equality. It then posits that their arguments fail in solving tensions between liberty and equality, because all fundamental rights cannot be derived from liberty. A coherent scheme of human rights is only possible if human dignity is used to balance the conflicting interests of liberty and equality. It then proceeds to make some suggestions on how human dignity as core value might help to solve tensions between equality and liberty.

Comments on Are Liberty and Equality Compatible? by Jan Narveson and James Sterba

Journal of Social PhilosophyVolume 42, Issue 4 p. 403-415 Comments on Are Liberty and Equality Compatible? by Jan Narveson and James Sterba John Christman, John Christman Penn StateSearch for more papers by this author John Christman, John Christman Penn StateSearch for more papers by this author First published: 06 December 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2011.01541.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume42, Issue4Winter 2011Pages 403-415 RelatedInformation

Jan Narveson, This is Ethical Theory

Jan Narveson, This is Ethical Theory

Liberty, Games and Contracts: Jan Narveson and the Defence of Libertarianism, Malcolm Murray (ed.). Ashgate, 2007. 273 pages.

Liberty, Games and Contracts: Jan Narveson and the Defence of Libertarianism, Malcolm Murray (ed.). Ashgate, 2007. 273 pages.

This is ethical theory

Ethical questions lie at the very heart of all philosophy, and no one is better equipped to untangle the many facets of ethical theory than respected thinker and professor Jan Narveson. Drawing from theoretical notions as well as everyday applications, Narveson simplifies these nuanced ideas for any beginning ethicist. Discussing theoretical elements ranging from intuitionism to naturalism, emotivism to metaethics, Narveson's approach to this complex topic is one that any reader will find accessible.

Children's Rights and Children's Health

After decades of philosophical discussion, there is no federally guaranteed right to health care in the United States, nor any consensus that all citizens should have this right. It is the aim of this article to clear the philosophical path for a legal argument that at least children should have this right. First, I suggest that the moral rationale for a legal entitlement to education can reasonably and should be extended to health care. Second, I argue that a child’s right to health care is philosophically well grounded in all major theories of justice, even within right libertarianism, the political theory most hostile to welfare rights in general. My strategy is to offer an immanent critique of two prominent right libertarian accounts of what is owed to children by parents and society in general. After showing the internal inconsistencies in the accounts of Jan Narveson and Tristram Engelhardt, and analyzing in particular the latter’s right libertarian treatment of putative rights to health care, I show that no significant philosophical argument remains against the rights claims of children to a decent minimum of health care in affluent societies. In this way, I seek to clear the path for philosophers and lawyers to offer a broader philosophical and legal grounding for children’s rights to health care. Finally, I defend the notion that a rights-based approach to children’s welfare is indeed justified against the arguments of Daniel Callahan and Onora O’Neill.

Hare on De Dicto Betterness and Prospective Parents

Caspar Hare tries to extract a kernel of truth from Zsa Zsa Gabor’s “lame joke” that she keeps her husband young and healthy by marrying a new one every year. To paraphrase Jan Narveson, Zsa Zsa’s serial polyandry does not make her husband younger; it just gives her a younger husband. But Hare suggests that in some cases, a person should pursue what he calls “de dicto betterness”—making it the case that whoever occupies some role is better off, even if by doing so she makes it the case that different individuals occupy that role. De dicto duties arise when a person holds a position that requires her to serve the interests of a specific group of people: a safety officer for accident victims, a cancer researcher for cancer patients, and, Hare contends, a parent for her present and future children. Hare’s claims about the de dicto duties of public officials and medical researchers are true, in part, and interestingly so. But they do not work for finicky parents any more than fickle celebrities. Hare argues that in some contexts we expect a person to display a “psychological attitude that involves caring, not that the occupant of a certain role be as well off as possible, but that a certain role be filled by someone as well off as possible” (518–19). Those contexts have two features: “First, it is appropriate to expect the person in question to be partial” toward a group picked out by a definite description. Second, because “of the causal circumstances the person finds herself in, that

Liberty, games, and contracts: Jan Narveson and the defence of libertarianism

Contents: Biographical note on Jan Narveson Introduction, Malcolm Murray. Part I Contractarianism: Some remarks on the foundations of libertarianism, E.J. Bond Contracting justice, John T. Sanders Is agreement enough?, Tibor R. Machan Does scepticism beget libertarianism? A response to Narveson on reason, morality and politics, Leo Groarke Contractarian education, Chris Tucker. Part II From Contractarianism to Libertarianism: The value of values: the importance of autonomy in contractarian reasoning, Susan Dimock Simple games and complex ethics, Peter Danielson Why contractarians are not libertarians ... evolutionarily speaking, Malcolm Murray Getting the baseline right, Paul Viminitz. Part III Property and Liberty: Liberty, property and the libertarian idea, Ann Levey Who owns me: me or my mother? How to escape Okin's problem for Nozick's and Narveson's theory of entitlement, Duncan MacIntosh On original appropriation, Peter Vallentyne Morality as an evolutionarily stable strategy: a naturalistic account of libertarianism, Grant A. Brown Reconciling radicals: market contractarianism and fundamentalist utilitarianism, Sheldon Wein. Part IV Response: Social contract, game theory and liberty: responding to my critics, Jan Narveson. Bibliography Index.

Collective responsibility and contributing to an outcome

The debate between the opponents and proponents of collective responsibility frequently takes something resembling the following form. The opponents (H.D. Lewis, Steven Sverdlik, Martin Benjamin, Seumas Miller, Jan Narveson, and many others (1)) assert that individuals are the only bearers of moral responsibility and that it is unjust to hold someone responsible for something that is due, in whole or in part, to the actions of others. One has responsibility only for what can be attributed to one's own actions or omissions, regardless of whether what was done can be attributed as well to the actions or omissions of others. The proponents (Larry May, Peter French, Virginia Held, D.E. Cooper, and many others (2)) assert that not all cases of moral responsibility can be neatly reduced to ascriptions of responsibility to individuals. We must sometimes be held accountable for harms that go beyond what can be identified as the result of particular individuals performing particular actions. Those favoring an individualist approach sometimes concede (Sverdlik) that two or more moral agents can bear moral responsibility for the same state of affairs, a situation in which they can be said to share responsibility (a concession that is not granted by Lewis). Those who champion collective responsibility sometimes concede (French, Held) that in many types of situations the individualist principles suffice to make appropriate ascriptions of moral responsibility. Moreover, collectivists grant that if a collective bears responsibility for a state of affairs its members can also bear responsibility for it as individuals. But nevertheless they maintain there are other situations in which collectives bear moral responsibility, situations in which not all members of the collective bear responsibility as individuals for what happened. In this paper I propose an approach to collective responsibility that attempts to strike a balance between the individualists and collectivists. I agree with the collectivists that not all cases of moral responsibility are reducible to or distribute to the responsibility borne by the individuals involved. There can be cases of collective responsibility for an outcome in which some members of the collective are not responsible as individuals for the outcome. On the other hand, my approach is individualist in insisting that no one is a member of such a collective unless that person has done something or omitted to do something that warrants membership in the collective. Thus, membership is not determined in the manner of a contagious disease. In what follows I explain how my approach differs from that of the individualists and the collectivists. Although I do not claim to have an outright refutation of either point of view, I attempt to show that my approach corrects certain excesses of each. It forces the individualists to consider the contributions of persons who fall short of bearing moral responsibility as individuals for the outcome in question. Moreover, it encourages collectivists to limit membership in collectives to those who have made at least some minimal contribution to the outcome in question. Suppose we say that a qualifying act is an act that qualifies one for membership in a collective responsible for a state of affairs with the understanding that the qualifying act might be an act of omission. (3) My proposal is that, unless one has performed a qualifying act with respect to a given collective, one does not qualify as a member. The basic idea is that a moral agent must in at least some suitably weak sense contribute to the outcome to qualify for membership. Through either action or inaction one must make some minimal contribution to the outcome. What one does or fails to do must in some manner raise the antecedent probability of its occurrence. It might be objected that my account is question-begging. The membership of the collective is defined as consisting of the persons who contribute to the outcome for which the collective is responsible. …

Basic Positive Duties of Justice and Narveson's Libertarian Challenge

Are positive duties to help others in need mere informal duties of virtue or can they also be enforceable duties of justice? In this paper I defend the claim that some positive duties (which I call basic positive duties) can be duties of justice against one of the most important principled objections to it. This is the libertarian challenge, according to which only negative duties to avoid harming others can be duties of justice, whereas positive duties (basic or nonbasic) must be seen, at best, as informal moral requirements or recommendations. I focus on the contractarian version of the libertarian challenge as recently presented by Jan Narveson. I claim that Narveson's contractarian construal of libertarianism is not only intuitively weak, but is also subject to decisive internal problems. I argue, in particular, that it does not provide a clear rationale for distinguishing between informal duties of virtue and enforceable duties of justice, that it can neither successfully justify libertarianism's protection of negative rights nor its denial of positive ones, and that it fails to undermine the claim that basic positive duties are duties of global justice.