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Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defense of the Marriage-Free State

Clare Chambers

Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State is a critique of the state recognition of marriage and a proposal for an alternative form of regulation. Part One, ‘Against ... More

Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State is a critique of the state recognition of marriage and a proposal for an alternative form of regulation. Part One, ‘Against Marriage’, sets out the critique. State-recognized marriage is unjust as it violates two fundamental values: equality and freedom. Marriage has historically been an instrument for maintaining inequality between men and women both practically, through laws, and symbolically, through norms. Marriage also violates equality between same-sex and different-sex couples. Reform can remove some of these inequalities, but marriage inevitably involves inequality between married and unmarried people. Moreover, state-recognized marriage threatens liberty since it involves the state endorsing a particular way of life. Various arguments have been offered in favour of this state promotion, but none of them adequately support the state recognition of marriage as opposed to other, more inclusive measures. Part Two, ‘The Marriage-Free State’, sets out the alternative. Most feminist and egalitarian critics of state-recognized marriage advocate replacing it with either relationship contracts or alternative statuses such as civil or care-based unions. Neither option is ideal, particularly since both contracts and alternative statuses leave vulnerable people unprotected. Instead, the book proposes a piecemeal, practice-based model of regulation, applying to all people who are engaging in relationship practices that should justly be regulated. In this model, equality is secured by the regulations themselves and liberty is secured by opting out. Finally, the book considers how the state should act to ensure equality in private marriages, be they religious or secular.Less

The Age of Culpability: Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility

Gideon Yaffe

Reflection on the grounds for leniency towards children who commit crimes is the entry point into the development, in this book, of a theory of the nature of criminal responsibility and desert of ... More

Reflection on the grounds for leniency towards children who commit crimes is the entry point into the development, in this book, of a theory of the nature of criminal responsibility and desert of punishment for crime. The book argues that child criminals are owed lesser punishments than adults thanks not to their psychological, behavioral, or neural immaturity but, instead, because they are denied the vote. This conclusion is reached through the development of theories of the nature of criminal culpability, desert for wrongdoing, strength of legal reasons, and what it is to have a say over the law, theories that produce a bridge between limited participation in government and criminal culpability. The cornerstone of this discussion is the proposed theory of criminal culpability. To be criminally culpable is for one’s criminal act to manifest a failure to grant sufficient weight to the legal reasons to refrain. The stronger the legal reasons, then, the greater the criminal culpability. Those who lack a say over the law, it is argued, have weaker legal reasons to refrain from crime than those who have a say. They are therefore reduced in criminal culpability and deserve lesser punishment for their crimes. Children are owed leniency, then, because of the political meaning of age rather than because of its psychological meaning. This position has implications for criminal justice policy, with respect to, among other things, the interrogation of children suspected of crimes and the enfranchisement of adult felons.Less

Analyzing Oppression

Ann E. Cudd

This book presents a new, integrated theory of social oppression, which tackles the fundamental question that no theory of oppression has satisfactorily answered: if there is no natural hierarchy ... More

This book presents a new, integrated theory of social oppression, which tackles the fundamental question that no theory of oppression has satisfactorily answered: if there is no natural hierarchy among humans, why are some cases of oppression so persistent? The book argues that the explanation lies in the coercive co-opting of the oppressed to join in their own oppression. This answer sets the stage for analysis throughout the book, as it explores the questions of how and why the oppressed join in their oppression. The book argues that oppression is an institutionally structured harm perpetrated on social groups by other groups using direct and indirect material, economic, and psychological force. Among the most important and insidious of the indirect forces is an economic force that operates through oppressed persons' own rational choices. This force constitutes the central feature of analysis, and the book argues that this force is especially insidious because it conceals the fact of oppression from the oppressed and from others who would be sympathetic to their plight. The oppressed come to believe that they suffer personal failings and this belief appears to absolve society from responsibility. While in the book's view oppression is grounded in material exploitation and physical deprivation, it cannot be long sustained without corresponding psychological forces. The book examines the direct and indirect psychological forces that generate and sustain oppression. It discusses strategies that groups have used to resist oppression and argues that all persons have a moral responsibility to resist in some way. The concluding chapter proposes a concept of freedom that would be possible for humans in a world that is actively opposing oppression, arguing that freedom for each individual is only possible when we achieve freedom for all others.Less

Another Cosmopolitanism

Seyla Benhabib

Robert Post (ed.)

In these two lectures, the author argues that since the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, we have entered a phase of global civil society that is governed by cosmopolitan norms of ... More

In these two lectures, the author argues that since the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, we have entered a phase of global civil society that is governed by cosmopolitan norms of universal justice—norms which are difficult for some to accept as legitimate since they are sometimes in conflict with democratic ideals. In her first lecture, the author argues that although this tension can never be fully resolved, it can be mitigated through the renegotiation of the dual commitments to human rights and sovereign self-determination. Her second lecture develops this idea in detail, with special reference to recent developments in Europe (for example, the banning of Muslim head scarves in France). The European Union has seen the replacement of the traditional unitary model of citizenship with a new model that disaggregates the components of traditional citizenship, making it possible to be a citizen of multiple entities at the same time. The volume also contains an introduction by the editor, and contributions by Bonnie Honig (Northwestern University), Will Kymlicka (Queens University), and Jeremy Waldron (Columbia School of Law).Less

The Art of Creating Power: Freedman on Strategy

Benedict Wilkinson and James Gow (eds)

The Art of Creating Power explores the intellectual thought and wider impact — on military affairs, politics and the universities — of Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world’s leading ... More

The Art of Creating Power explores the intellectual thought and wider impact — on military affairs, politics and the universities — of Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world’s leading authorities on strategy, conflict and international politics. Freedman’s oeuvre is vast and his legacy, from nuclear strategy to US foreign policy via humanitarian intervention, terrorism, the Falklands and Iraq, has already been recognized around the world. Some of that work is considered in the present volume, although by no means all of it. The contributions to this volume address some of the highlights in the Freedman canon, as well as casting light into some of the less well-known corners of his thought and work. In this volume, senior scholars who have crossed the academic-practitioner boundary, and former students and colleagues in international and strategic studies who have been influenced by, and who have influenced, Freedman, trace the long trajectory of his career, examining his scholarly contribution to a whole host of areas - the book has five sections, reflecting Freedman’s different realms of scholarship: strategy, policy and history, ethics and intervention, theory and, lastly, practice. Recognizing that the importance of social context and constitutive interaction is vital to Freedman’s approach and, in practice, to research at the frontiers of knowledge, but with deep relevance, often, to the ‘real world’, the book as a whole provides signposts to, and markers of, a distinctive approach and a elements of a nascent school of thought — all testimony to a distinguished intellectual figure.Less

Becoming Who We Are: Politics and Practical Philosophy in the Work of Stanley Cavell

Andrew Norris

While a number of books and many articles have been written on the work of Stanley Cavell, this is the first monograph on his contribution to politics and practical philosophy. Though skepticism is ... More

While a number of books and many articles have been written on the work of Stanley Cavell, this is the first monograph on his contribution to politics and practical philosophy. Though skepticism is Cavell’s central topic, he understands it not as an epistemological problem or position but as an existential one. The central question is not what we know or fail to know, but to what extent we have made our lives our own, or failed to do so. Accordingly, Cavell’s reception of Austin and Wittgenstein highlights, as other readings of these figures do not, the uncanny nature of the ordinary, the extent to which we ordinarily fail to mean what we say. Bringing this out highlights Cavell’s debts to Heidegger and Thompson Clarke, even as it allows for a deeper appreciation of the extent to which Cavell’s perfectionism is a rewriting of Rousseau’s and Kant’s theories of autonomy. This in turn opens up a way of understanding citizenship and political discourse that develops points made more elliptically in the work of Hannah Arendt, and that contrasts in important ways with the positions of liberal thinkers like John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas on the one hand, and radical democrats like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe on the other.Less

Beyond Humanity?: The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement

Allen E. Buchanan

This book examines the ethical controversy surrounding biomedical enhancement: the use of biotechnologies to improve normal human capacities and characteristics. It deflates the heated rhetoric of ... More

This book examines the ethical controversy surrounding biomedical enhancement: the use of biotechnologies to improve normal human capacities and characteristics. It deflates the heated rhetoric of the debate and, unlike other treatment of the topic, is informed by an understanding of evolutionary biology. The book debunks the idea that the natural is always good, and explains why and how we might need to change human nature.Less

Beyond Punishment?: A Normative Account of the Collateral Legal Consequences of Conviction

Zachary Hoskins

People convicted of crimes are subject to a criminal sentence, but they are also subject to a host of other legal measures: Some are denied access to jobs, housing, welfare, the vote, or other goods. ... More

People convicted of crimes are subject to a criminal sentence, but they are also subject to a host of other legal measures: Some are denied access to jobs, housing, welfare, the vote, or other goods. Some may be deported. Others are subject to continued detention. Many have their criminal records made publicly accessible. These measures are often more burdensome than an offender’s formal sentence. This is the first book-length philosophical examination of these burdensome legal measures, called collateral legal consequences (CLCs). The book draws on resources in moral, legal, and political philosophy to shed light on whether these measures are ever morally justified. It analyzes the various kinds of CLCs imposed in different legal systems and the important moral challenges they raise, and it makes the case that these challenges have been largely overlooked by philosophers. The book examines whether CLCs can ever be justified as forms of criminal punishment—whether they are consistent with the values and principles that we believe should govern punishment. Then it considers whether CLCs are ever justifiable as civil measures, and specifically what could justify the state in imposing additional burdensome measures on offenders in addition to their punishment. Whether CLCs function as forms of punishment or as civil measures, the book contends that they are justifiable in a far narrower range of cases than we find in current legal practice.Less

Boundaries of Authority

A. John Simmons

Modern states claim rights of jurisdiction and control over particular geographical areas and their associated natural resources. Boundaries of Authority explores the possible moral bases for such ... More

Modern states claim rights of jurisdiction and control over particular geographical areas and their associated natural resources. Boundaries of Authority explores the possible moral bases for such territorial claims by states. The book maintains throughout that the requirement of states’ justified authority over persons has normative priority over, and as a result severely restricts, the kinds of territorial rights that states can justifiably claim, and it argues that the mere effective administration of justice within a geographical area is insufficient to ground moral authority over residents of that area. The book argues that only a theory of territorial rights that takes seriously the morality of the actual history of states’ acquisitions of power over land and the land’s residents can adequately explain the nature and extent of states’ moral rights over particular territories. Part I of the book examines the interconnections between states’ claimed rights of authority over particular sets of subject persons and states’ claimed authority to control particular territories. Part II organizes, explains, and criticizes the full range of extant theories of states’ territorial rights, arguing that a little-appreciated Lockean approach to territorial rights is in fact far better able to meet the principal desiderata for such theories. Part III of the book looks closely at the more property-like territorial rights that states claim—in particular, their claimed rights to control over the natural resources in and around their territories and their claimed rights to control and restrict movement across (including immigration over) their territorial borders.Less

Catching Capital: The Ethics of Tax Competition

Peter Dietsch

When individuals stash away their wealth in offshore bank accounts and multinational corporations shift their profits or their actual production to low-tax jurisdictions, this undermines the fiscal ... More

When individuals stash away their wealth in offshore bank accounts and multinational corporations shift their profits or their actual production to low-tax jurisdictions, this undermines the fiscal autonomy of political communities and contributes to rising inequalities in income and wealth. These practices are fuelled by tax competition, with countries strategically designing fiscal policy to attract capital from abroad. Building on a careful analysis of the ethical challenges raised by a world of tax competition, the book puts forward a normative and institutional framework to regulate the practice. In short, individuals and corporations should pay tax in the jurisdictions of which they are members, where this membership can come in degrees. Moreover, the strategic tax setting of states should be limited in important ways. An international tax organization (ITO) should be created to enforce the principles of tax justice. The book defends this call for reform against two important objections. First, it refutes the suggestion that regulating tax competition will harm economic efficiency. Second, the book argues that regulation of this sort, rather than representing a constraint on national sovereignty, in fact turns out to be a requirement of sovereignty in a global economy. The book closes with a series of reflections on the obligations that the beneficiaries of tax competition have towards the losers both prior to any institutional reform and in its aftermath.Less

Challenges for Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical Demand and Political Reality

C. A. J. Coady, Ned Dobos, and Sagar Sanyal (eds)

An enduring concern about armed humanitarian intervention, and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine that advocates its use under certain circumstances, is that such interventions are liable to be ... More

An enduring concern about armed humanitarian intervention, and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine that advocates its use under certain circumstances, is that such interventions are liable to be employed as a foreign policy instrument by powerful states pursuing geopolitical interests. This collection of essays critically investigates the causes and consequences, as well as the uses and abuses, of armed humanitarian intervention. Some of the chapters interrogate how the presence of ulterior motives impact on the moral credentials of armed humanitarian intervention. Others shine a light on the potential adverse effects of such interventions, even where they are motivated primarily by humanitarian concern. While some of these unwanted consequences will be familiar to readers, others have been largely neglected in the scholarship. The volume also tracks the evolution of the R2P norm, and draws attention to how it has evolved, for better or for worse, since UN member states unanimously accepted it over a decade ago. In some respects, the norm has been distorted to yield prescriptions, and to impose constraint, fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the R2P idea. This gives us all the more reason to be cautious of unwarranted optimism about humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect.Less

Choosing Tomorrow's Children: The Ethics of Selective Reproduction

Stephen Wilkinson

To what extent should parents be allowed to use selection technologies (such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis) to determine the characteristics of their children? And is there something morally ... More

To what extent should parents be allowed to use selection technologies (such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis) to determine the characteristics of their children? And is there something morally wrong with parents who wish to do this? Choosing Tomorrow's Children provides answers to these questions. In particular, the book applies the techniques of philosophical bioethics to address issues raised by selective reproduction, the practice of choosing between different possible future persons by selecting or deselecting (for example) embryos, eggs, and sperm. It offers answers to questions including the following. Do children have a ‘right to an open future’ and, if they do, what moral constraints does this place upon selective reproduction? Under what circumstances (if any) should sex selection be allowed? Should we ‘screen out’ as much disease and disability as possible before birth, or would that be an objectionable form of eugenics? Is it acceptable to create or select a future person (a ‘saviour sibling’) in order to provide life-saving tissue for an existing relative? Is there a moral difference between selecting to avoid disease and selecting to produce an ‘enhanced’ child? And should we allow deaf parents to use reproductive technologies to ensure that they have a deaf child? The book does not provide one overarching conclusion but rather assesses each argument-type on its merits. Insofar as it is possible to generalise though, Choosing Tomorrow's Children concludes that most of the arguments usually provided against selective reproduction are flawed in one way or another.Less

Concern, Respect, and Cooperation

Garrett Cullity

Three things often recognized as central to morality are concern for others’ welfare, respect for their self-expression, and cooperation in worthwhile collective activity. When philosophers have ... More

Three things often recognized as central to morality are concern for others’ welfare, respect for their self-expression, and cooperation in worthwhile collective activity. When philosophers have proposed theories of the substance of morality, they have typically looked to one of these three sources to provide a single, fundamental principle of morality—or they have tried to formulate a master-principle for morality that combines these three ideas in some way. This book views them instead as three independently important foundations of morality. It sets out a plural-foundation moral theory with affinities to that of W. D. Ross. There are major differences: the account of the foundations of morality differs from Ross’s, and there is a more elaborate explanation of how the rest of morality derives from them. However, the overall aim is similar. This is to illuminate the structure of morality by showing how its complex content is generated from a relatively simple set of underlying elements—the complexity results from the various ways in which one part of morality can derive from another, and the various ways in which the derived parts of morality can interact. Plural-foundation moral theories are sometimes criticized for having nothing helpful to say about cases in which their fundamental norms conflict. Responding to this, the book concludes with three detailed applications of the theory: to the questions surrounding paternalism, the use of others as means, and our moral responsibilities as consumers.Less

Confronting Injustice: Moral History and Political Theory

David Lyons

These essays challenge both theorists and citizens to confront grave injustices committed by their country. That calls on Americans to take a fresh look at their nation’s beginnings, including the ... More

These essays challenge both theorists and citizens to confront grave injustices committed by their country. That calls on Americans to take a fresh look at their nation’s beginnings, including the colonists’ early adoption of race‐based slavery even though it was unlawful and why those who rebelled against English oppression were responsible for greater injustices against their Native American neighbors. Confronting injustice requires Americans to consider how delegates to the 1787 constitutional convention readily embraced increased protections for chattel slavery, why the federal government later abandoned Reconstruction, and why the nation allowed former slave-owners to establish a new system of racial oppression called Jim Crow. It requires Americans to ask why America’s official rejection of white supremacy is combined with an unwillingness to address continuing racial stratification. Confronting injustice calls upon political theorists to test their views in the crucible of social history. It challenges those who debate abstractly the idea of an obligation to obey the law to consider the implications of grievous injustices. It calls upon those who assume that their society is now “reasonably just” to ask when that transformation occurred, despite the fact that children who are black or poor lack are denied equal opportunity.Less

Constructivism in Practical Philosophy

James Lenman and Yonatan Shemmer (eds)

This book presents twelve chapters on constructivism — some sympathetic, others critical — by a group of moral philosophers. ‘Kantian constructivism holds that moral objectivity is to be understood ... More

This book presents twelve chapters on constructivism — some sympathetic, others critical — by a group of moral philosophers. ‘Kantian constructivism holds that moral objectivity is to be understood in terms of a suitably constructed social point of view that all can accept. Apart from the procedure of constructing the principles of justice, there are no moral facts.’ So wrote John Rawls in his highly influential 1980 Dewey lectures ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory’. Since then there has been much discussion of constructivist understandings, Kantian or otherwise, both of morality and of reason more generally. Such understandings typically seek to characterize the truth conditions of propositions in their target domain in maximally metaphysically unassuming ways, frequently in terms of the outcome of certain procedures or the passing of certain tests, procedures or tests that speak to the distinctively practical concerns of deliberating human agents living together in societies. But controversy abounds over the interpretation and the scope as well as the credibility of such constructivist ideas. The chapters here reach to the heart of this contemporary philosophical debate, and offer a range of new approaches and perspectives.Less

Contractualism and the Foundations of Morality

Nicholas Southwood

Contractualism has a venerable history and considerable appeal. Yet as an account of the foundations or ultimate grounds of morality it has been thought by many philosophers to be subject to fatal ... More

Contractualism has a venerable history and considerable appeal. Yet as an account of the foundations or ultimate grounds of morality it has been thought by many philosophers to be subject to fatal objections. This book argues otherwise. It begins by detailing and diagnosing the shortcomings of the main existing models of contractualism, ‘Hobbesian’ contractualism (or contractarianism) and ‘Kantian’ contractualism. It then proposes a novel, deliberative model, ‘deliberative contractualism’, based on an interpersonal, deliberative conception of practical reason. It argues that the deliberative model of contractualism represents an attractive alternative to its more familiar rivals and that it has the resources to offer a more compelling account of morality's foundations, one that can do justice to the twin demands of moral accuracy and explanatory adequacy.Less

Cosmopolitan Peace

Cécile Fabre

This book articulates a cosmopolitan theory of the principles which ought to regulate belligerents’ conduct in the aftermath of war. Throughout, it relies on the fundamental principle that all human ... More

This book articulates a cosmopolitan theory of the principles which ought to regulate belligerents’ conduct in the aftermath of war. Throughout, it relies on the fundamental principle that all human beings wherever they reside have rights to the freedoms and resources which they need to lead a flourishing life, and that national and political borders are largely irrelevant to the conferral of those rights. With that principle in hand, the book provides a normative defence of restitutive and reparative justice, the punishment of war criminals, the resort to transitional foreign administration as a means to govern war-torn territories, the deployment of peacekeeping and occupation forces. It also outlines various reconciliatory and commemorative practices which might facilitate the emergence of trust amongst enemies and thereby improve prospects for peace. Although the book’s arguments are unashamedly analytical and its conclusions resolutely normative, it makes liberal use of historical and/or contemporary cases—in keeping with the approach taken in Cosmopolitan War.Less

Cosmopolitan War

Cécile Fabre

The book articulates and defends a cosmopolitan theory of the just war. It takes the following two views as its starting point: first, the individual is the fundamental locus of concern and respect; ... More

The book articulates and defends a cosmopolitan theory of the just war. It takes the following two views as its starting point: first, the individual is the fundamental locus of concern and respect; second, political borders are arbitrary from a moral point of view and largely irrelevant to individuals' entitlements central. With those two assumptions in hand, the book shows that some key principles of just-war ethics — notably, the just-cause requirement, the requirement of legitimate authority, the principle of discrimination, and the requirement of proportionality — need defending. It does so by examining different kinds of war in the light of those assumptions: wars of national defence, wars over scarce resources (subsistence wars), civil wars; humanitarian wars, wars in which private actors such as mercenaries are deployed, and asymmetrical wars.Less

De Tocqueville

Cheryl Welch

Alexis de Tocqueville is one of the most topical and debated figures in contemporary political and social theory. This introduction to de Tocqueville's thought examines in detail his classic works ... More

Alexis de Tocqueville is one of the most topical and debated figures in contemporary political and social theory. This introduction to de Tocqueville's thought examines in detail his classic works and their major themes. This book argues that Tocqueville's major themes tap into deep anxieties about democratic practices and his writings help us to identify the major fault lines in democracy at the turn of the new century. Beginning with a consideration of Tocqueville's distinctiveness against the historical background and intellectual context of his time, this book goes on to trace the development of his thought on democracy and revolution, history, slavery, religion, and gender, including chapters dealing with his writings on France and the United States. The final chapter then explores Tocqueville's historical legacy and his contemporary significance, illuminating the reasons why this displaced 19th century aristocrat has become one of the most topical figures in contemporary political and social theory.Less

Debates in Indian Philosophy: Classical, Colonial, and Contemporary

A. Raghuramaraju

This book elucidates the debate between Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, V.D. Savarkar and Gandhi, and Sri Aurobindo and Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya. It also compares and contrasts for the ... More

This book elucidates the debate between Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, V.D. Savarkar and Gandhi, and Sri Aurobindo and Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya. It also compares and contrasts for the first time, scholars like Sudhir Kakar and Tapan Raychaudhuri. The debates in classical, colonial and contemporary Indian philosophy are specifically reported. A discussion on Indian state, civil society, religion and politics is presented. Moreover, the association between science and spiritualism is explained.Less