Well-ordered Society Research Articles

The supreme emergency exemption: Rawls and the use of force

Both Rawls and Walzer argue for a supreme emergency exemption and are commonly thought to do so for the same reasons. However, far from ‘aping’ Walzer, Rawls engages in a reconstruction of the exemption that changes its focus altogether, making clear its dependence on an account of universal human rights and the idea of a well-ordered society. This paper is therefore, in the first instance, textual, demonstrating that Rawls has been misinterpreted in the case of supreme emergency. In the second instance the approach is reconstructive, providing a reinterpretation of Rawls that fits his treatment of supreme emergency with his broader commitments in just war and international relations. This reinterpretation enables us to draw out a pattern of argument that Rawls appears to share with a much more strident liberal cosmopolitanism.

Die Konzeption des Messias bei Maimonides und die fruehmittelalterliche islamische Philosophie (Maimonides' concept of the Messiah and early medieval Islamic philosophy) (review)

Reviewed by: Die Konzeption des Messias bei Maimonides und die fruehmittelalterliche islamische Philosophie (Maimonides' concept of the Messiah and early medieval Islamic philosophy) Esther Seidel, Independent Scholar Die Konzeption des Messias bei Maimonides und die fruehmittelalterliche islamische Philosophie (Maimonides' concept of the Messiah and early medieval Islamic philosophy). By Francesca Yardenit Albertini. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. Pp. xxiv + 472. Francesca Albertini's voluminous study, Die Konzeption des Messias bei Maimonides und die fruehmittelalterliche islamische Philosophie, wishes to put a fresh emphasis on the link between Maimonides' concept of the Messiah and his ideal of the leader as a political figure. For Maimonides, Albertini argues, the arrival of the Messiah will be realized only through human effort and appropriate behavior: it is man who bears responsibility for this event through his moral actions. The Messiah, on the other hand, as the leader of the community, seeks to implement the new order in society through which Divine Law will be established and followed precisely. Hence, the Messiah's arrival is not an apocalyptic, eschatological event as understood by Christians. Instead, it marks a new era of restoration of the Law, which alone guarantees a well-ordered society as the necessary precondition for knowing God (p. 7). This wide study demands the reader's full concentration for a number of reasons: the style of writing, although it covers much ground, is compact, and the amount of historical and philosophical material (e.g., Aristotle's eudaimonia, shariʿa and fiqh in Islamic law, principles of faith in early Kara'ite writing, Plato's philosopher king, and prophecy and politics in Alfarabi), not to mention the changing religious conceptual contexts and nuances of meaning, all feature in different chapters to elucidate the main theme, but the leitmotif is not always clearly visible. While the reader may derive benefit from various chapters, in particular the one on early Islamic thought and its influence on Jewish Kara'ite thought and Maimonides' own thinking, shorter summaries and relevant conclusions would have provided some welcome guidance through this expansive study. Also, "Muʾtazil" has been clumsily translated into German (I suggest: "der, der sich absetzt" rather than "zurücksetzt"), and the whole case for reason and rational debate within Islam could have been put more strongly. Nowhere is there a recognition that it was precisely Islamic thought that forced Jewish thinkers into taking a more rational approach themselves with regard to their own belief. In addition to the issue of convoluted presentation, another more urgent concern is the subject matter itself and how it has been studied and depicted here. Albertini herself recognizes some of the difficulties. She points out that Maimonides himself made no clear differentiation between the terms "Messiah," "Messianism," and "Messianic Age" (p. 427), and perhaps more worryingly—in view of her own stated aim in this study—that Maimonides focused his attention precisely not on the Messiah's political role, but on the significance of the Messiah's announcement of the new period in time (ibid.), by which he meant a period when human beings dedicate themselves to acquiring knowledge of God (p. 430). [End Page 723] Although Albertini acknowledges the latter as Maimonides' aim, she continues throughout her study to emphasize the practical and political against his rational outlook. And yet, she admits herself, there is "a danger—proportional to ignorance—to put too much emphasis on the messianic age, which for Maimonides produces wrong ideas of God" (p. 430). How, then, are we to interpret Maimonides' own discomfort with the notions above referring to the Messiah and notions such as "bodily resurrection," and how does Albertini explain Maimonides' own hesitancy to address these concepts conclusively? Some of the answers to these questions lie in Albertini's assertion of a fundamental division in Maimonidean scholarship represented by two camps of interpreters (p. 276). The first group prefers to judge each work produced by Maimonides as a separate entity, written at a given time and under particular circumstances, so that it allows them to take into account Maimonides' own development in character and personality. The second group of interpreters, among whom Albertini places herself, makes a claim to Maimonides as a "systematic thinker" and purports...

Contractarian Compliance and the 'Sense of Justice': A Behavioral Conformity Model and Its Experimental Support

Abstract The social contract approach to the study if institutions aims at providing a solution to the problem of compliance with rational agreements in situations characterized by a conflict between individual rationality and social optimality. After a short discussion of some attempts to deal with this problem from a rational choice perspective, we focus on John Rawls's idea of 'sense of justice' and its application to the explanation of the stability of a well-ordered society. We show how the relevant features of Rawls's theory can be captured by a behavioral game theory model of beliefs dependent dispositions to comply, and we present the results of two experimental studies that provide support to the theory.

Facing ambivalence in education: a strange(r's) hope?

This article explores how our understanding of ambivalence would shift if we saw it as an inherent and essential part of the ordinary work of education. Following Bauman's sociology of the stranger and Derrida's deconstructions of hospitality, the article unfolds in three parts. In the first part we discuss the preconditions of modern education which since the Enlightenment has been guided by the postulate that there is and ought to be a rational order in the social world. In the second part we consider the intolerance of strangers the modern will-to-order has caused. Since the stranger appears as a liminal category that falls between the boundaries of already established social categories, she can only be viewed as an antithesis of a well-ordered society. In the third part we ask how educational spaces hospitable to strangers can be opened up, and argue that we would do better not to construe living with ambivalence as a problem, but as a quest for humanity and justice.

Sprawiedliwość globalna: szlachetny ideał czy rzetelna teoria? Miłowit Kuniński

In the article two seminal theories of global justice are compared: one concerned with individuals (Pogge’s), the other with peoples (Rawls’s). The striking feature of Pogge’s theory is that noble aims are to be achieved through the implementation of global justice for the permanent betterment of the situation of people living in extremely severe conditions. It is not entirely clear, however, whether helping them is a moral obligation or is due rather to a sense of guilt towards the descendants of the exploited. Justice among peoples, in turn, is a set of rules of the well-ordered society of peoples based on a social contract decided upon by the representatives of peoples. Rawls’s theory of relations among peoples is realistic, although he unconvincingly argues in favour of peoples as moral agents, neglecting the fact that the representatives play a governmental role, and that the social contract is in the end achieved by states rather than peoples.

Realism in political theory

In recent decades, a ‘realist’ alternative to ideal theories of politics has slowly taken shape. Bringing together philosophers, political theorists, and political scientists, this countermovement seeks to reframe inquiry into politics and political norms. Among the hallmarks of this endeavor are a moral psychology that includes the passions and emotions; a robust conception of political possibility and rejection of utopian thinking; the belief that political conflict — of values as well as interests — is both fundamental and ineradicable; a focus on institutions as the arenas within which conflict is mediated and contained; and a conception of politics as a sphere of activity that is distinct, autonomous, and subject to norms that cannot be derived from individual morality. For political realists, a ‘well-ordered society’ is rarely attainable; a modus vivendi without agreement on first principles is often the only practical possibility. Not only will ‘full compliance’ never be achieved, but also it is an assumption that yields misleading accounts of political norms. While realists offer a number of compelling criticisms of ideal theory, there are some lacunae in their stance. It is not yet clear whether realism constitutes a coherent affirmative alternative to idealism. Nor have realists clarified the extent of conflict that is consistent with political order as such. And because both sides accept ‘ought implies can’ as a constraint on the validity of political norms, much of the debate between realists and idealists revolves around deep empirical disagreements that are yet to be clarified.

Global journalism ethics

Ward, Stephen J.A. (2010). Global Journalism Ethics. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, pp. 296. Ward notes that traditional journalism values and practices are being questioned due to global nature of modern journalism and rapid changes brought about by digital and wireless technologies. Ward concludes that journalists are struggling to maintain credible ethical identity as they sail roiling sea of modern media world (p. 3). Ward's bold objective is to look at journalism's future and offer conceptual inventions to help move journalism forward, with an eventual goal of converging theoretical foundations and practical proposals. Although those looking for concrete practical proposals to follow in global setting might be disappointed that Ward doesn't get quite that far, his impressive theoretical framework provides an excellent starting point for scholars interested in journalism in wired, globalized world. As Ward writes, goal of book is to supply the basic philosophical concepts to begin invention of detailed and theoretically solid global [journalism] ethics (p. 235). The book is divided into two sections, although it covers three distinct topics. In first and longest section, Ward explains his approach to and presents his general theory of ethics. In chapter one, Ward explains basic idea of and his naturalistic approach, which conceives of as rational, human invention. In chapter two, he describes his holistic approach to reflective engagement, explains his three-level theory of ethical reasoning, and presents an accompanying model of journalism informed by that theory. Ward uses chapter three to argue that aim of should be congruence of - theory that humans should strive to flourish or grow on four levels - and right - a Rawlsian theory of right for liberal democratic or well-ordered society (p. 103). Ward argues this congruence leads to ethical flourishing or combination of the good and the right. Ultimately, goal of these first chapters is to argue that true aim of is creation of liberal democracy in which citizens are truly free to govern themselves with meaningful decisions that actually influence structure and function of government. In second section, Ward expands on his theoretical foundations and discusses how his theories of form basic concepts of global journalism ethics, with an emphasis on how journalism can advance democracy. In chapter six, Ward presents his third topic, and finally applies his ethical framework to practical question: To what extent can global journalist be patriot? The book's greatest strength is Ward's presentation of his personal approach to and his systematic theoretical discussion of and philosophy, as he lays foundations for his vision of and global journalism ethics. Ward's intelligence is evident, and his deep appreciation for and understanding of classic works of political and moral philosophy greatly inform his work. His approach to is rooted in social contract theory, classic liberal democratic theory, John Rawls's theories of justice and human good, and cosmopolitan ethics, an ethical system that asserts the equal value and dignity of all people as members of common humanity (p. …

Deliberation, Reason, and Indigestion: Response to Daniel Dombrowski’s Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism

Deliberation, Reason, and Indigestion: Response to Daniel Dombrowski’s Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism Zandra Wagoner (bio) Democracy requires a rather large tolerance for confusion and a secret relish for dissent. —Molly Ivins, Nothin’ But Good Times Ahead1 I. Introduction I am delighted to respond to Daniel Dombrowski’s book Rawls and Religion. Dombrowski and I share a number of what he would call comprehensive doctrine, such as the ethical treatment of animals, the relational worldview of process thought, and the idiosyncratic love of pacifism. So, immediately I was drawn in and claimed Dombrowski as a kindred spirit. With so many commonalities, including an interest in political philosophy and religion, I approached this book with a built-in desire to engage with and respect his thinking. To be honest, I wondered if I would be able to critically engage Dombrowski’s book given our common worlds, but of course, in a pluralist world of free and equal citizens, our comprehensive doctrines can only overlap to a certain degree. And as Dombrowski rightly cautions, “too much unity leads to monotony.”2 It is in the spirit of both deep appreciation and necessary contrast that I offer the following comments. My comments are structured around four themes: A difference in emphasis, religious participation in politics and public reason, political liberalism and inequality, and reflective equilibrium. II. A Difference in Emphasis “Democracy requires a rather large tolerance for confusion and a secret relish for dissent.” This quote comes not from a political philosopher but from writer and columnist Molly Ivins. Ivins captures my political sensibility and helps [End Page 179] to foreground a difference I perceive between Daniel Dombrowski’s political theory and my own. Dombrowski’s understanding of politics, significantly shaped by John Rawls, leads to an emphasis on the “well-ordered society,” optimistically poised in the direction of “over-lapping consensus,” “reasonable agreement,” and “rational deliberation.” By way of contrast, my understanding of politics, significantly shaped by Chantal Mouffe’s “Radical and Plural Democracy,” and other closely related theory’s like Isabel Stengers’s “Cosmopolitics” and Bruno Latour’s “issue-oriented politics,” foregrounds a different constellation of terms, such as “conflictual consensus,” “antagonism,” “dissent,” and “power.”3 I want to focus on this difference as a way to engage with Dombrowski’s important book in political philosophy, Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism. I share a great deal with political liberalism’s goal, most significantly, its desire to preserve a pluralistic democracy where a pluralism of cultures, subjects, individual choices, and conceptions of the good are assumed and assured in our collective life together. As Chantal Mouffe explains, “Pluralism lies at the very core of modern democracy; if we want a more democratic society, we need to increase that pluralism and make room for a multiplicity of democratically managed forms of associations and communities.”4 In Rawls and Religion, Dombrowski presents John Rawls’s political liberalism as the most promising political philosophy for creating a just, pluralist democratic society. In particular, Dombrowski argues that political liberalism is best suited to address the problem of how to create a well-ordered society in a context of pluralism where citizens are divided, often in profound ways, by incompatible comprehensive religious and philosophical doctrines. The aim of political liberalism is not to present an alternative comprehensive doctrine, [End Page 180] but to suggest a method for adjudicating in a fair way the disputes that arise from a pluralistic society of competing comprehensive doctrines and to do so in a way that recognizes, respects, and affirms citizens as free and equal. According to political liberalism, citizens are free to subscribe to any number of comprehensive doctrines, religious or nonreligious, as long as they do not violate the key virtue of any democratic society—justice—and its corresponding notions of equality and freedom. For Rawls and Dombrowski, the centrality of justice is a common sense claim that is drawn not from any one comprehensive doctrine, but from the heritage of democratic societies. As the key virtue of any pluralist democracy, “justice as fairness” is a minimal vision of the good life that provides a horizon for our political life together...

Michael Confino (1926-2010)

Michael Confino (1926-2010) Alessandro Stanziani Michael Confino was not only one of the greatest historians of imperial Russia but also one of the few who were able to connect the historiography of Russia with that of other countries. For this, he was recognized by a worldwide community of historians and social scientists. Born in Sofia in 1926, he attended university in that city in 1945-48. He emigrated in 1948 to Israel, where he was a kibbutz member, a political activist, and a high-school teacher of history and sociology. In 1955, he decided to complete his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1955-57) and in Paris, where he received his doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1959 under the supervision of Roger Portal. Confino was highly influential in the development of Russian studies in Israel: he founded and chaired (1964-69) the Department of Russian Studies at Hebrew University, chaired the Russian and East European Research Center at Tel Aviv University from 1971 to 1977, and held the Samuel Rubin Chair of Russian and European History and Civilization at Tel Aviv University from 1980 to 1995. Throughout his life, he was a path-breaking scholar who never lost his taste for questioning tendencies and categories in historiography that were uncritically accepted by others, such as "the Russian leviathan," "the revolutionary intelligentsia," "the passive peasant," or "Russian mentalities." He began working in the 1960s on agrarian relations in tsarist Russia. At the time, debate focused on the role of the Russian state in the rise of serfdom and on the passage "from feudalism to capitalism." The young Confino drew inspiration from a debate that was taking place at the same time among European medievalists. Following the seminal works of Marc Bloch (published from the 1910s through the 1930s), historians were progressively accepting the idea that feudalism had never existed as a system and that European serfdom was less a legal construction than a social practice. These new insights shattered the Marxist theory of historical stages as well as liberal interpretations of "the end of feudalism." [End Page 930] When extended to tsarist Russia, as in Confino's work, this analysis was radically disruptive. The very existence of "feudalism" in Russia was now under attack, and with it the entire Marxist and Soviet interpretation of Russian history—namely, the presumed passage from feudalism to capitalism under late tsarism and hence the historical explanation for the revolution. Confino refused to acknowledge serfdom as a system opposed to capitalism. According to him, the peasants felt bound to their landlords not because they were compelled by the law but because the peasant commune governed the entire agrarian economy, including seigniorial tenure. The peasants were willing to feed the landowners insofar as the latter served the tsar. Indeed, the three-field system was intimately linked to the peasant commune's practices of redistribution and to the relationships thereby created not only within the village but also between peasants and landlords. The Russian village thus formed a coherent system, and the peasants dictated their organization and rhythms to the landlords, not the other way around.1 Thanks to Confino, this approach has been widely accepted and remains widespread among scholars even now.2 This line of argument led Confino to smash another icon of Russian historiography: the role of the state. The conventional Marxist and liberal historiographies of Russia stressed the powerful role of the state, which was described as having promoted serfdom and controlled the continuities and changes in Russian history. A continuous line was drawn from medieval Rus' to the Soviet state. The corollary was the lack of a civil society, which was considered a mere passive recipient of state action—a "well-ordered society," in Marc Raeff's terms. Confino firmly criticized this approach. According to him, society did exist in imperial Russia, and it was not obliterated by the state. There was no such thing as a "divorce between state and society." As he recently summarized his main point, "if such a pervasive alienation did exist, it would have signified that there were no social relations between the groups, and if there were no such relations, then there would have...

Human Nature in Marxism-Leninism and African Socialism

Understanding the true nature of the human being is no doubt a sine qua non for developing an ideology for a desirable praxis. This paper examines the pitfalls of Marxist-Leninist scientific socialism and African socialism. It argues that a critical analysis of both ideologies reveals a lack of clear understanding of the nature of man by their proponents. An exhaustive account of the nature of man must explain self-consciousness, the urge to avoid pain, the desire for a purposeful life and for freedom from external interference, the passion for distinction, and, most importantly, the desire to acquire personal property. The paper further contends that socialism (whether scientific or African), does not allow room for the pursuit of personal ambition. This accounts for the failure in the implementation of both Marxist-Leninist socialism and African socialism. The paper avers that there is need to understand that the human being cannot simply be seen as a socio-economic or historical being; rather, consideration of the intrinsic elements which constitute the true nature of personhood is quintessential to achieving a well-ordered society.

The Unit

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessThe UnitLloyd I. Sederer M.D.Lloyd I. Sederer M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Dec 2009https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2009.60.12.1692aAboutSectionsView articlePDFView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View articleWhat is the purpose of a life? the author ponders. Does a life—yours or mine—exist to sustain the collective and its well-being, where value is in what a person produces, or does life have intrinsic value, where purpose derives from who a person is?In the society that Holmqvist creates for her readers the former has hegemony. If you are a woman of 50 or a man of 60, living alone, without a child, and not a critical worker, you are designated as "dispensable" and go with trepidation but without resistance to a "Reserve Bank Unit." There you become a source of biological material (which means your organs are harvested, one by one—a kidney, a cornea, a slice of your liver) and a subject for experimentation until your utility is complete, at which time you make your "final donation," ending your stay in the Unit.In Holmqvist's eerie, chilling, yet almost plausible social order, all citizens exist to further the gross national product (GNP): lives either advance or diminish the "capital" of the nation. Value (and meaning) issues from an individual's contributions to the national capital; for some, that means disappearing one day from the community and entering the Unit, where they further the social good as donors of body parts and subjects for advancing the scientific knowledge thought useful to the GNP.And the GNP has been prospering, so the Unit can afford to be an ideal setting where comfort prevails, everything is free, and people have the time to attend to one another as the burdens of everyday existence vanish—as did its entrants from their antecedent but dispensable lives. For the residents of the Unit having trouble adjusting, and they appear numerous, there is an ample supply of capable psychologists to assist with coping (when they are not busy performing mind or drug experiments); physicians are occupied removing organs and aiding in physical recovery to prepare a Dispensable for her or his next contribution.One has hopes for the protagonist, Dorrit Weger, who falls in love with another resident of the Unit and whose life changes in a profound way. She rails against the pain she witnesses among those around her and the grief of those still alive. At one point, Dorrit's anguish enables her to see, through the veneer of this well-ordered society, that her accommodations are a "luxury slaughterhouse." Holmqvist maintains the tension throughout and draws the reader into resisting what seems on the surface so reasonable yet curdles the blood.This moral tale may be more credible to persons from European or Asian cultures, where the individual is more subordinate to a community ethos, as we witness since health care and education are universal in all but one advanced (Western) culture. An ethos of community before individual would hardly fly in Texas, Oklahoma, or Montana, to mention but a few places in the United States. Yet Holmqvist gives us a lesson in human nature and social engineering through a story that is spare, compelling, and all too human. I am reminded of what the great urbanist, Jane Jacobs, wrote, "Perhaps the greatest folly possible for a culture is to try to pass itself on using principles of efficiency." However adorned, the totalitarian state in waiting warrants vigilance since it seems to meet many a human need.The reviewer reports no competing interests.Dr. Sederer is medical director, New York State Office of Mental Health, and adjunct professor, Columbia School of Public Health, New York City. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 60Issue 12 December, 2009Pages 1692-1693PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES December 2009 Volume 60 Number 12 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 December 2009 Published in print 1 December 2009

The Unit

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessThe UnitLloyd I. Sederer M.D.Lloyd I. Sederer M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Dec 2009https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2009.60.12.1692aAboutSectionsView articlePDFView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View articleWhat is the purpose of a life? the author ponders. Does a life—yours or mine—exist to sustain the collective and its well-being, where value is in what a person produces, or does life have intrinsic value, where purpose derives from who a person is?In the society that Holmqvist creates for her readers the former has hegemony. If you are a woman of 50 or a man of 60, living alone, without a child, and not a critical worker, you are designated as "dispensable" and go with trepidation but without resistance to a "Reserve Bank Unit." There you become a source of biological material (which means your organs are harvested, one by one—a kidney, a cornea, a slice of your liver) and a subject for experimentation until your utility is complete, at which time you make your "final donation," ending your stay in the Unit.In Holmqvist's eerie, chilling, yet almost plausible social order, all citizens exist to further the gross national product (GNP): lives either advance or diminish the "capital" of the nation. Value (and meaning) issues from an individual's contributions to the national capital; for some, that means disappearing one day from the community and entering the Unit, where they further the social good as donors of body parts and subjects for advancing the scientific knowledge thought useful to the GNP.And the GNP has been prospering, so the Unit can afford to be an ideal setting where comfort prevails, everything is free, and people have the time to attend to one another as the burdens of everyday existence vanish—as did its entrants from their antecedent but dispensable lives. For the residents of the Unit having trouble adjusting, and they appear numerous, there is an ample supply of capable psychologists to assist with coping (when they are not busy performing mind or drug experiments); physicians are occupied removing organs and aiding in physical recovery to prepare a Dispensable for her or his next contribution.One has hopes for the protagonist, Dorrit Weger, who falls in love with another resident of the Unit and whose life changes in a profound way. She rails against the pain she witnesses among those around her and the grief of those still alive. At one point, Dorrit's anguish enables her to see, through the veneer of this well-ordered society, that her accommodations are a "luxury slaughterhouse." Holmqvist maintains the tension throughout and draws the reader into resisting what seems on the surface so reasonable yet curdles the blood.This moral tale may be more credible to persons from European or Asian cultures, where the individual is more subordinate to a community ethos, as we witness since health care and education are universal in all but one advanced (Western) culture. An ethos of community before individual would hardly fly in Texas, Oklahoma, or Montana, to mention but a few places in the United States. Yet Holmqvist gives us a lesson in human nature and social engineering through a story that is spare, compelling, and all too human. I am reminded of what the great urbanist, Jane Jacobs, wrote, "Perhaps the greatest folly possible for a culture is to try to pass itself on using principles of efficiency." However adorned, the totalitarian state in waiting warrants vigilance since it seems to meet many a human need.The reviewer reports no competing interests.Dr. Sederer is medical director, New York State Office of Mental Health, and adjunct professor, Columbia School of Public Health, New York City. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 60Issue 12 December, 2009Pages 1692-1693PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES December 2009 Volume 60 Number 12 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 December 2009 Published in print 1 December 2009

NIETZSCHES BEGRIFF DER SOZIALEN GERECHTIGKEIT

Up to now researchers have maintained that Nietzsche's philosophy has no concept of social justice or have hardly noticed such a concept. On the contrary, the essay argues that social justice plays an important role in Nietzsche's political thinking. It shows that his conception of justice is modelled after Plato's antique concept of political justice. The main thesis of the essay is that this conception is embodied in Nietzsche's notion of a well-ordered state or society. An additional thesis concerns the anthropological basis of what Nietzsche holds to be a just social order. This basis is constituted by his conviction that people are not only fundamentally unequal but also extremely different in worth and rank.

On Positive Rights and Duties: What Can “Thin” Universalizability Tell Us About the Moral Content of Educational Policies?

EDUCATION GROUNDED IN MORAL AGREEMENT In a well-ordered society, goods (such as educational goods) ought to be distributed in a manner consistent with justifiable principles of justice. However, if our principles of justice do not tell us something meaningful about the moral features of such goods, it could be reasonably said that there is in fact no justifiable distribution at hand. If persons establish a principle of justice as worthy of recognition by all, this recognition must be grounded in jointly understood, convincing reasons. We can understand why the distribution is done only in terms relating to our understanding of what those goods represent. Otherwise, I may agree with you that we should abide by a certain distributive principle, but I may not share your reasons for adopting the principle itself.

Social Norms in the Courts of Ancient Athens

Ancient Athens was a remarkably peaceful and well-ordered society by both ancient and contemporary standards. Scholars typically attribute Athens’ success to internalized norms and purely informal enforcement mechanisms. This article argues that the formal Athenian court system played a vital role in maintaining order by enforcing informal norms. This peculiar approach to norm enforcement compensated for apparent weaknesses in the state system of coercion. It mitigated the effects of under-enforcement in a private prosecution system by encouraging litigants to uncover and punish their opponents’ past violations. Court enforcement of extra-statutory norms also permitted the Athenians to enforce a variety of social norms while maintaining the fictions of voluntary devotion to military and public service and of limited state interference in private conduct.

A Rawlsian Perspective on Justice for the Disabled

I aim to identify and describe some basic elements of a Rawlsian approach that may help us to think conscientiously about how, from the standpoint of justice, we should treat the disabled. Rawls has been criticized for largely ignoring issues of this sort. These criticisms lose their appeal, I suggest, when we distinguish between a Rawlsian standpoint and the limited project Rawls mainly undertakes in A Theory of Justice. There his explicit aim is to find principles of justice, which are to govern the basic structures of a closed, well-ordered society that exists under reasonably favorable conditions, that would be chosen by parties in the original position from among a small set of traditional conceptions of justice. Once we develop a conception of justice for a society like that, Rawlsians hope we can make certain revisions to find principles of justice for a society like ours. Finally, I sketch what seems to me a plausible way for a Rawlsian to begin thinking about how a society like ours should provide justice for its disabled citizens.

European Viking Themed Festivals: An Expression of Identity

Viking themed festivals are now widespread throughout Europe and are a popular expression of heritage identity. The Anglo-American stereotypical representation of Viking heritage is of sea-faring, sexist and bloodthirsty men raping and pillaging. In contrast to this image, in Scandinavia the dominant image of Vikings in popular culture finds fewer references to war and warriors. Here the Viking representation is very much concerned with the people who ‘abroad were known as pirates, but at home lived in a well-ordered society’. European Viking themed festivals have largely attempted to give greater credence to the latter representation. However, it is often the more bloodthirsty image that initially inspires Anglo-American tourists to visit sites. Based upon qualitative research, in this paper we examine the geographical and organisational depth of Viking themed festivals in Europe. Furthermore, we argue that at Viking themed festivals the past is constructed and idealised by participants as an authentic way of life and that this is used as an expression of identity.

Rawls as a critical theorist

An interpretation of John Rawls’ ‘justice as fairness’ as a deliberative critical argumentative strategy for evaluating existing institutions is offered and its plausibility is discussed. I argue that ‘justice as fairness’ aims at synthesizing the moral values claimed byexisting social institutions into a coherent model of a well-ordered society in order to demand that these institutions stand up tothe values that they promise. Understood in such a way, ‘justice as fairness’ provides a set of idealizing ‘mirrors’ through which power dynamics in society can be viewed but does not function as a model for an ideal society.

Melbourne, Middlesbrough and morality: policing Victorian ‘new towns’ in the old world and the new

On the surface, there could be few greater contrasts to the early twentieth-century observer of urban development in Britain and its dominions than that between ‘marvellous’ Melbourne . . . the [golden] Metropolis of the Southern Hemisphere’, in the new world of south-east Australia, and Middlesbrough, that grim, utilitarian ‘Ironopolis’, in the old world of north-east England. On closer inspection there were certain commonalities that make useful a comparison between the two in the early and mid-Victorian period. The focus of this article is narrow – the creation of uniformed police forces and their role in the creation of a well-ordered society in two dramatically expanding new towns – but forms part of a wider set of issues relating to the development of urban governance in the nineteenth century.

Knee-Jerk Formalism: Reforming American Education

Introduction During the 1980s, a huge outcry emerged about the decline of American education and the danger it posed for American society. The same outcry continues today accompanied by a demand that high, testable, national standards be adopted and that failing schools be closed or subject to competition from private secular or religious schools, or less regulated, nonunionized public schools. The current conservative reform movement (composed of an interesting alliance of know-it-all and know-nothing groups) is profoundly mistaken in its view of education and will fail because it has ignored the mountains of empirical evidence that run counter to its aims and policies. The movement's formalism, or divorce from reality, could stem from garden-variety ignorance or, as I suspect, because its views serve purposes other than education. Also divorced from reality are the liberal defenders of public schools as well as liberals and conservatives who are debating issues in higher education. To understand the wrong-headedness of all American thinking on education, one must begin with its foundational assumptions. Chief among these is the taken-for-granted assumption that education is a powerful force for good because it turns out (or can turn out) good workers and good citizens. Americans also believe that education sifts and sorts (or can sift and sort) each generation to identify nature's hierarchy of talent to ensure us that those at the top, middle, and bottom of society deserve to be there. Included in the American consensus is the assumption that elite high schools, colleges, and universities are the template for progress by lesser schools. Seventy-five years of educational research casts deep doubt on all these beliefs. This study argues that significant improvements in education can be made only if there are drastic improvements in the life circumstances of America's lower classes. Improving the life circumstances of the lower classes also means providing their schools with the resources they need. And not least in this new outlook on education is the need to recognize that schools have little causal power in their own right--there is strong evidence that formal education at both elite and nonelite levels is not related to positive outcomes in either citizenship or work. If we want good citizens and good workers/professionals, we have to figure out how to produce them directly. America's Misplaced Faith in Education Secular America's consensus on education began with Thomas Jefferson who wanted a society that allowed human nature's best to emerge and to rise to the top as leaders. In Jefferson's time this idea was revolutionary just as a similar idea in Plato's Republic had been revolutionary. Both Jefferson and Plato imagined a society led by high-ability individuals recruited from all class levels. And both stressed the importance of education in developing a natural elite and thus a well-ordered society. Jefferson's faith in education was later combined with a faith in free markets and free elections to become America's social philosophy of classlessness through freedom and equality. For Americans, it is axiomatic that there should be no arbitrariness in the relation between social rewards and personal worth. Since the founding of their New Jerusalem, Americans have believed that they had found the way to realize nature's hierarchy of talent and to put unequal rewards on a just and natural basis. For Americans, the key to overcoming the artificial barriers of social condition, religion, ethnicity, and race, and to revealing the true universe of individuals, is equal opportunity and competition in the spheres of economics, politics, and education. In this trinity of free markets, education holds a special place in American hearts. It is alleged to have great power to improve people and solve problems; nothing is more characteristic of an American faced with a problem than to attribute it to a lack of education. …