Im gegenwärtigen ethischen Diskurs um Menschenrechte nimmt der Fähigkeitenansatz von Martha Nussbaum eine prominente Stellung ein. Er verspricht, eine überzeugendere Antwort mit Blick auf die Herausforderungen universaler Normen zu geben als andere. Doch gelingt ihm dies? Was zeichnet ihn aus? Und was kann er zu aktuellen gesellschaftlichen Kontroversen beitragen? Vor dem Hintergrund der anhaltenden Diskussion um Frauenrechte und Religionsfreiheit, die sich z.B. in der Burka-Debatte konkretisiert, zeichnet Cornelia Mügge Nussbaums Argumentation detailliert nach und diskutiert, wie sie den Herausforderungen von Geschlecht und Religion begegnet. Es lohnt sich, so ihr Plädoyer, Nussbaums Ansatz in der Menschenrechtsdebatte stark zu machen, wenngleich das Universalitätskonzept weiterentwickelt werden sollte.
Notions such as wellbeing, freedom, and social justice are integral to evaluating social progress and developing policies. One increasingly influential way to think about these concepts is the capability approach, a theoretical framework which was pioneered by the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen in the 1980s.
In this book Ingrid Robeyns orientates readers new to the capability approach through offering an explanation of this framework. Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice also endeavors to resolve historical disputes in the literature and thus will be equally engaging to those familiar with the field. The author offers a novel and illuminating account of how the capability approach can be understood in a variety of academic disciplines and fields of application. Special attention is paid to clarifying misunderstandings that have been caused by different disciplinary assumptions and the interpretive consequences they have for our consideration of the capability approach.
Robeyns argues that respecting the distinction between the general capability approach, and more specific capability theories or applications, helps to clear up confusion and misinterpretation. In addition, the author presents detailed analyses of well-known objections to the capability approach, and also discusses how it relates to other schools of analysis such as theories of justice, human rights, basic needs, and the human development approach.
Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice offers an original and comprehensive account of the field. The book will appeal to scholars of the capability approach as well as new readers looking for an interdisciplinary introduction.
Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempt to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a `constructivist' vindication of reason and a moral vision in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, automony and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasises differences between Kant's ethics and recent 'Kantian' ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. This reassessment will add significantly to the understanding of Kantian practical philosophy.
This collection of essays brings together the central lines of thought in Onora O'Neill's work on Kant's philosophy, developed over many years. Challenging the claim that Kant's attempt to provide a critique of reason fails because it collapses into a dogmatic argument from authority, O'Neill shows why Kant held that we must construct, rather than assume, the authority of reason, and how this can be done by ensuring that anything we offer as reasons can be followed by others, including others with whom we disagree. She argues that this constructivist view of reasoning is the clue to Kant's claims about knowledge, ethics and politics, as well as to his distinctive accounts of autonomy, the social contract, cosmopolitan justice and scriptural interpretation. Her essays are a distinctive and illuminating commentary on Kant's fundamental philosophical strategy and its implications, and will be a vital resource for scholars of Kant, ethics and philosophy of law.
This rich study explores the elements of Hegel's social and political thought that are most relevant to our society today. Combating the prevailing post-World War II stereotype of Hegel as a proto-fascist, Charles Taylor argues that Hegel aimed not to deny the rights of individuality but to synthesise them with the intrinsic good of community membership. Hegel's goal of a society of free individuals whose social activity is expressive of who they are seems an even more distant goal now, and Taylor's discussion has renewed relevance for our increasingly globalised and industrialised society. This classic work is presented in a fresh series livery for the twenty-first century with a specially commissioned new preface written by Frederick Neuhouser.
At the centre of John Rawls's political philosophy is one of the most influential thought experiments of the twentieth century: which principles of justice would a group of individuals choose to regulate their society if they were deprived of any information about themselves that might bias their choice? In this collection of new essays, leading political philosophers examine the ramifications and continued relevance of Rawls's idea. Their chapters explore topics including the place of the original position in rational choice theory, the similarities between Rawls's original position and Kant's categorical imperative, the differences between Rawls's model and Scanlon's contractualism, and the role of the original position in the argument between Rawls and other views in political philosophy, including utilitarianism, feminism, and radicalism. This accessible volume will be a valuable resource for undergraduates, as well as advanced students and scholars of philosophy, game theory, economics, and the social and political sciences.
Religionen spielen nach wie vor eine wichtige Rolle in demokratischen Gesellschaften. Jürgen Habermas spricht deshalb von der ›postsäkularen Gesellschaft‹. Viele weitere Philosophen der Gegenwart (Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, MichaelWalzer) prägen mit Habermas zusammen diesen gegenwärtigen philosophischen Diskurs über Religion in der politischen Philosophie. Dieser Diskurs wird in seinen Strukturen und Argumenten in dem vorliegenden Band analysiert und kritisch diskutiert. Kernfragen des Autors sind, wie Religion und ihre gesellschaftliche Funktion philosophisch verstanden werden kann, was die zentralen Problemstellen des Diskurses über Religion in der politischen Philosophie sind und wie diese mit Blick auf frühere Konzeptionen (Friedrich Schleiermacher oder John Dewey) konstruktiv weitergedacht werden können. Aus der Beschäftigung mit der Religion werden abschließend Schlussfolgerungen für die Debatte über Demokratie gezogen. Die praktische Philosophie kann damit sowohl zur Reflexion der gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung von Religion als auch zur Klärung der Frage, wie Demokratie angesichts pluraler weltanschaulicher Konstellationen heute verstanden werden kann, wichtige Beiträge leisten.
Introduction
It is now a truism – which I dispute – that a politics of difference is equivalent to ‘identity politics’, about claims of justice concerning cultural difference. There are at least two versions of a politics of difference: a politics of positional difference and a politics of cultural difference. They share a critical attitude towards a difference-blind approach to policy and politics. They differ, however, in how they understand the constitution of social groups, and in the issues of justice that they emphasise. While both versions of a politics of difference appear in contemporary political debates, over the last two decades the attention of both public discourse and that of political theorists has shifted from the politics of positional difference to a politics of cultural difference. This shift is unfortunate because it tends to obscure important issues of justice, limiting the framing of difference politics to a liberal paradigm. We should affirm both approaches but be clear on the conceptual and practical differences between them.
As a 1980s social movement tendency, the politics of difference involved claims of feminist, anti-racist and gay liberation activists that the structural inequalities of gender, race and sexuality did not fit well with the dominant paradigm of equality and inclusion. In this paradigm, the promotion of justice and equality requires non-discrimination: the application of the same principles of evaluation and distribution to all regardless of their particular social positions or backgrounds. In this ideal, which many understood as the liberal paradigm, social justice means ignoring gender, racial or sexual differences among people. Social movements asserted a politics of difference, theorists arguing that this difference-blind ideal was part of the problem. Identifying equality with equal treatment ignores deep material differences in social position, division of labour, socialised capacities, normalised standards and ways of living that continue to disadvantage members of historically excluded groups. Commitment to substantial equality thus requires attending to such differences.
In the context of ethnic politics and resurgent nationalism, a second version of a politics of difference gained currency in the 1990s, focusing on differences of nationality, ethnicity and religion. It emphasised the value of cultural distinctness to individuals, as against a liberal individualism for which culture is accidental to the self or something adopted voluntarily.
This book shows under which conditions religious reasoning for generally binding norms can be legitimately introduced into democratic decision-making, even if societies are religiously diverse and pluralistic. To this end, the philosophical and social scientific discussion on this subject, which is still continuing today, is first systematically reviewed and critically discussed, starting with New Atheism, continuing with John Rawls and Thomas Nagel and ending with contemporary contributions by Jürgen Habermas. Subsequently, the book adopts the standpoint that the evaluation of religiously founded claims in democracy can only be determined by their practical consequences, thus leaving broad scope for their integration.
In this volume a diverse group of economists, philosophers, political scientists, and psychologists address the problems, principles, and practices involved in comparing the well-being of different individuals. A series of questions lie at the heart of this investigation: What is the relevant concept of well-being for the purposes of comparison? How could the comparisons be carried out for policy purposes? How are such comparisons made now? How do the difficulties involved in these comparisons affect the status of utilitarian theories? This collection constitutes the most advanced and comprehensive treatment of one of the cardinal issues in social theory.
A volume of studies of utilitarianism considered both as a theory of personal morality and a theory of public choice. All but two of the papers have been commissioned especially for the volume, and between them they represent not only a wide range of arguments for and against utilitarianism but also a first-class selection of the most interesting and influential work in this very active area. There is also a substantial introduction by the two editors. The volume will constitute an important stimulus and point of reference for a wide range of philosophers, economists and social theorists.
This chapter explores modes of finding oneself in the other. The conservatism defended here is Hegelian: in each of three cases that this chapter distinguishes—namely, that of accepting the given, of valuing the valuable, and of valuing the valued—the subject is at peace with the object. For decades, the author has harbored strongly conservative, that is, strongly small-c conservative, opinions, on many matters that are not matters of justice. This chapter is thus meant to mount exposition and the beginnings of a defense of what Cohen believes to be his widely, although perhaps not universally, shared, conservative attitude.
This book proposes a holistic transdisciplinary approach to sustainability as a subject of social sciences. At the same time, this approach shows new ways, as perspectives of philosophy, political science, law, economics, sociology, cultural studies and others are here no longer regarded separately. Instead, integrated perspectives on the key issues are carved out: Perspectives on conditions of transformation to sustainability, on key instruments and the normative questions. This allows for a concise answer to urgent and controversial questions such as the following: Is the EU an environmental pioneer? Is it possible to achieve sustainability by purely technical means? If not: will that mean to end of the growth society? How to deal with the follow-up problems? How will societal change be successful? Are political power and capitalism the main barriers to sustainability? What is the role of emotions and conceptions of normality in the transformation process? To which degree are rebound and shifting effects the reason why sustainability politics fail? How much climate protection can be claimed ethically and legally e.g. on grounds of human rights? And what is freedom? Despite all rhetoric, the weak transition in energy, climate, agriculture and conservation serves as key example in this book. It is shown how the Paris Agreement is weak with regard to details and at the same time overrules the growth society by means of a radical 1,5-1,8 degrees temperature limit. It is shown how emissions trading must – and can – be reformed radically. It is shown why CSR, education, cooperation and happiness research are overrated. And we will see what an integrated politics on climate, biodiversity, nitrogen and soil might look like.
In The Law of Peoples (1999), John Rawls invented a fictional Muslim state that he called Kazanistan. The genealogy of Kazanistan I offer here is the first examination of Islam in Rawls’s papers. It contributes to a critical body of work about the Muslim Question and how Euro-American thinkers construct Islam. In recent years, theorists have turned to Rawls’s papers. The archival turn, however, has neglected the last phase of Rawls’s career and his book-length attempt at thinking internationally. I address this oversight and critically examine Rawls on Islam and global politics. I historicize Rawls’s turn to Islam, Kazanistan’s late introduction, and its transformations across drafts. By examining “the Kazanistan papers,” I highlight the dissonance between Rawls’s philosophical discourse on Islam and the contemporaneous geopolitics recorded in his archives. This disjuncture, I suggest, is characteristic of the logics of liberal deflection from empire and liberal “inflection” into the Muslim Question.
Towards Justice and Virtue challenges the rivalry between those who advocate only abstract, universal principles of justice and those who commend only the particularities of virtuous lives. Onora O'Neill traces this impasse to defects in underlying conceptions of reasoning about action. She proposes and vindicates a modest account of ethical reasoning and a reasoned way of answering the question 'who counts?', then uses these to construct linked accounts of principles by which we can move towards just institutions and virtuous lives.