Requirements Of Distributive Justice Research Articles

Thinking ethically: The utilitarianism approach in moral decision making

Many of us routinely employ moral reasoning when making daily judgments. When questioned about why we feel we have a moral responsibility to execute specific behaviors, we frequently cite the pleasure or the avoidance of pain. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, providing the most effective approach for determining ethically correct behavior in every given circumstance. In Jeremy Bentham's writings, he believed that the most promising method to achieving such an agreement was to choose the policy that would provide the most significant net benefits to society once the harms were considered. (1) The author will examine utilitarianism's definition, application, and issues in this work. (2) consequentialism, whose central tenet is that an act's ethical position depends on its consequences' value; (3) The difference between utilitarian rule and action. Both agree that actions should be judged based on their results, but the former interprets "actions" as classes of actions while the latter as particular actions. Moreover, (4) conclude the arguments against utilitarianism. It is asserted that utilitarianism cannot accommodate the magnitude of our commitments to others, the presence of moral and political rights, and the requirements of distributive justice. In a time that has been called by some the "time of self-interest," utilitarianism serves as a compelling reminder that morality demands us to look beyond the self for the sake of all.

Under(mining) the Kondhs: a normative critique of the case of Niyamgiri

ABSTRACT The article explores the broader question of how to assess socioeconomic development from a normative perspective, especially in relation to indigenous peoples, by perusing a case study. The case of Niyamgiri indicates how mining of natural resources for the sake of economic development negatively impacts the lives of the Kondhs, a community of indigenous peoples who reside in the region. Most conversations regarding it have revolved around the issues of displacement, cultural genocide, debilitating ecological effects in the region, and a social movement's ability to thwart overtures of global capital. I choose John Rawls's account of distributive justice to analyse the case because it is a political conception of justice, which can accommodate claims that arise even from the premises of culture. I use it to argue that the practice of development evinced by the case fails to meet the requirements of distributive justice. In my analysis, I show that development in Niyamgiri denies its stakeholders their basic liberties, fails to provide them with fair equality of opportunity, and does not adhere to egalitarian standards of distribution reflected by the difference principle, leading ultimately to a denial of their self-respect.

The Role Of Islamic Courts In Land Reforms In Pakistan

A vast majority of Muslim scholars opine that land reforms including the fixation of ceiling on individual land-holdings can be carried out without offending any Islamic teachings. Moreover, article 253 of the Constitution empowers the Parliament to prescribe the maximum limits as to property or any class thereof which may be owned, held, possessed or controlled by any person. Likewise, such reforms are considered essential as for as requirements of distributive justice is concerned and to further the desired Islamic goals of social justice, eradication of social evils and to ensure economic well-being of the poor attached to earth. To achieve these desired goals, land reforms laws were introduced in the country. However, the beneficiaries of feudalism and landlordism challenged these laws in the Islamic Courts to protect their vested interests. These judicial forums were split in their findings regarding the fate of these laws. This article analyses the findings of these forums to suggest that weather those who uphold these laws have stronger reasons.

Bioethics and Moral Agency: On Autonomy and Moral Responsibility.

Two clusters of essays in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy provide a critical gaze through which to explore central moral, phenomenological, ontological, and political concerns regarding human moral agency and personal responsibility. The first cluster challenges common assumptions in bioethics regarding the voluntariness of human actions. The second set turns the debate towards morally responsible choice within the requirements of distributive justice. The force of their collective analysis leaves us with a well-founded basis critically to approach any account of bioethics or health policy that is insufficiently attentive to the central challenges of human freedom and responsible free choice.

Regulating Access to Knowledge: Traditional Knowledge Policy in India

A key proposition of the access to knowledge movement is to promote the dissemination of knowledge and culture without legal restrictions and liberated from the structural iniquities of knowledge markets. There are two types of arguments which lend support to this proposition: philosophical arguments about the requirements of distributive justice and property and aesthetic and epistemological arguments about the nature of creativity in knowledge and culture. Movements to protect and preserve traditional knowledge are often at odds with this central proposition of the A2K movement as they argue for restrictions on transfer and use of traditional knowledge and culture. Critics argue that the ‘public domain’ and ‘access to knowledge’ are categories that pay too little attention to the cultural and ethical settings in which traditional knowledge is created, preserved and regenerated as well as the political economy of knowledge transfers. These arguments may be described as the ‘culture’ and the ‘politics’ argument respectively. If these arguments are right, then A2K has no useful contribution to make in the domain of traditional knowledge policy in India. This paper argues that a critical review of the evolution and practice of traditional knowledge law and policy in India reveals that the the tension between Access to Knowledge and the protection of traditional knowledge is neither necessary nor empirically supported.

A Just Retirement Pension System: Beyond Neoliberalism

AbstractThis article takes issue with the neoliberal conception of justice that has informed much of retirement pension policy in recent decades. Drawing upon an appraisal of a spectrum of liberal philosophical perspectives, it develops an evaluative framework that specifies the appropriate normative foundations of the design of retirement pension systems. We contend that justice is comprised of three core principles: need, which legitimates the social minimum that is necessary to sustain an adequate standard of living for the least advantaged; desert, which provides a justification for allocating income in accordance with differentials in work participation prior to retirement; and equality, which provides a normative rationale for universal citizenship entitlements. Their corresponding design features may be used to assess the degree to which the design of retirement pension systems is consistent with the requirements of distributive justice.

Assessing the Capacity of Pension Institutions to Promote Distributive Justice: A “Liberal” Conceptual Framework

Much of the literature regarding distributive justice and pensions has focussed disproportionately on the material preconditions for social solidarity, particularly statutory measures that would narrow the scope of differentials in the distribution of income and wealth. While we are sympathetic towards this emphasis, we contend that justice is comprised of a range of distinctive normative principles. Drawing upon an appraisal of the principal arguments of two highly influential public philosophies, this article develops a liberal conceptual framework which specifies the normative foundations of appropriate pension scheme design. The core principles of justice are need, which legitimates the social minimum that is necessary to sustain an adequate standard of living for the least advantaged; desert, which provides a justification for allocating income in accordance with differentials in work participation prior to retirement; and equality, which provides a normative rationale for universal citizenship entitlements. Their corresponding programme design features may be used to assess, empirically, the degree to which the design of pension institutions is consistent with the requirements of distributive justice.

GLOBAL JUSTICE AND THE SPECTER OF LEVIATHAN1

In a recent article on “The Problem of Global Justice,” Thomas Nagel argues that global socioeconomic justice presupposes a sovereign world state. I seek to undermine his arguments, which exemplify and give explicit voice to a widespread tendency in political philosophy to assign what I regard as excessive weight to the idea of the sovereign state with “a monopoly of force” (p. 115)—in other words, Leviathan. Nagel’s reasoning is worthy of attention in its own right and also because it is perhaps the most careful attempt to provide individualistic foundations for Rawls’s Law of Peoples thesis that requirements of distributive justice do not apply to the world as a whole. Nagel advances two main arguments for the claim that global socioeconomic justice is possible only within a sovereign world state. The first of these, which I discuss in section II, generalizes Hobbes’s state of nature argument for the view that “actual justice cannot be achieved except within a sovereign state” (p. 114) to “a wide range of conceptions of justice” (p. 115), including non-Hobbesian “conceptions [. . .] that are based on much more other-regarding motives” (p. 116).

On Seeking a Rationale

One familiar objection to consequentialist moral theories is that they conflict with the requirements of distributive justice. Another objection that has received considerable attention is Bernard Williams' charge thatconsequentialist theories call upon agents to violate their integrity. Samuel Scheffler has sought rational responses to these objections in The Rejection of Consequentialism.' The present paper is primarily a methodological study of one aspect of Scheffler's book. It is argued here that the particular sort of response to objections sought in the book lacks any clear philosophical value. Scheffler proposes to accommodate the requirements of distributive justice within a consequentialist moral theory by factoring distributive considerations into the evaluation of alternatives. He advocates a modified version of a suggestion by T. M. Scanlon according to which outcomes are lexically ordered, with first place going to any outcome that maximizes the level of well-being of the worst off. Scheffler recommends doing away with the strict lexical-ordering