Area of specialization is open within political theory and political philosophy, but we are especially interested in applicants whose research is relevant to one or more of these GRIPP research themes:
1) The history of liberal and democratic thought, especially early modern thought;
2) Moral psychology and political agency, or politics and affect or emotions or rhetoric;
3) Democracy, diversity and pluralism;
4) Democracy, justice, and transnational institutions

Ph.D. must be in hand by 1 September 2011; preference may be given to candidates whose Ph.D.s will be in hand by 15 April 2011. Preference may also be extended to those with a knowledge of French, and to Canadian citizens or permanent residents; please indicate French knowledge and Canadian status in cover letter.

The fellow will be expected to be in residence at McGill for the academic year and to take part in GRIPP and RGCS workshops and conferences. The stipend will be at least $C 27,000 and may be higher. Summer fellowships, paid teaching on top of the stipend, an a research allowance are possible.

Please submit cover letter, CV, a writing sample of one chapter or paper, research statement, and three letters of recommendation via email to GRIPP.postdoc@gmail.com . Materials may be sent if needed to: GRIPP postdoctoral fellowship, Political Science, McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal QC H3A 2T7, but electronic submission is preferred. Deadline: September 15.

Via Abbas Raza, 3 Quarks Daily – the website you should be reading if you are not already — are hosting their second annual prize for the best blog writing in philosophy. Akeel Bilgrami will be the judge. The details of last year’s contest are here. You can nominate blog posts written in English in the last year and not longer than 4000 words.

For everyone intending to go to the Eastern APA in Boston this year, the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs will be holding a session on the Ethics of Compromise in Democracy on Tuesday 28 December, 2010, from 2pm-5pm. We’ll be looking at the topic of political compromise from a number of angles: compromise in international politics, the epistemology of disagreement, and the role of partisanship in politics. There’s been comparatively little systematic work on this ubiquitous political phenomenon, despite its moral and philosophical complexity, so we’ll be hoping to have a discussion that adds impetus to its study.

Chair: Randall Harp (Vermont)
Speakers:
Eric Beerbohm (Harvard): Compromise among Epistemic Peers
Simon Cabulea May (Virginia Tech): Deep Compromise in Partisan Politics
Dan Weinstock (Montreal): Compromises beyond Peace

Speakers
Martin O’Neill (York)
Michael Otsuka (University College London)
Thomas Porter (Manchester)
Alex Voorhoeve (LSE)
Andrew Williams (I.C.R.E.A. and Pompeu Fabra University)

Details
The Priority View is widely seen as a leading alternative to egalitarianism that avoids some of the difficulties associated with the latter.  However, in their 2009 Philosophy & Public Affairs article “Why It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the Priority View” (P&PA vol. 37, no. 2), Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve have offered a new argument to show that the Priority View is vulnerable to fatal objection.  This conference is devoted to exploration and criticism of that new argument and will include a ‘response to critics’ session with Otsuka and Voorhoeve.

Registration and further details
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/events/priority/

Please note: thanks to the Analysis Trust, there are a limited number of subsidised places for graduate students.  These places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

Contact
Please contact Noémie Rouault (noemie.rouault@manchester.ac.uk) if you have any queries.

The conference is to be held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on June 2-4, 2011. Papers can be in any of the three areas of Kant’s philosophy: theoretical, practical or aesthetic. Please identify the area under which you wish your paper to be considered. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes reading time (approx. 3000 words). Papers are due on October 15, 2010 and will be blind reviewed. Please keep identifying information on a separate page. We encourage graduate student submissions. If you are a graduate student, please identify yourself as such. A $100 travel award will be provided for the best graduate paper and this paper will be considered for the annual Markus Herz Prize. Send your submission by email to Sharon Anderson-Gold: anders@rpi.edu

Contents:
Lockean Theories of Property: Justifications for Unilateral Appropriation
Karl Widerquist (Georgetown University – Qatar)

Abortion and the Limits of Political Liberalism
Henrik Friberg-Fernros (University of Gothenburg)

On the Public Reason of the Society of Peoples
Alexander Brown (University of East Anglia)

Crooked Wood, Straight Timber – Kant, Development and Nature
Rafael Ziegler (Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald)

Human Security and Liberal Peace – Some Rawlsian Considerations
Alejandro Agafonow (The Autonomous University of Barcelona)

Compulsory Victim Restitution Is Punishment: A Reply to Boonin
Michael Cholbi (California State Polytechnic University)

Book Reviews:

Jonathan Israel, A Revolution of the Mind
Reviewed by Reidar Maliks

Alex Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics
Reviewed by Cristian Iftode

G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality
Reviewed by Kevin William Gray

Public Reason is an open access journal of political and moral philosophy,
but it is also available in print (ISSN 2065-7285; EISSN 2065-8958).
Public Reason publishes articles, book
reviews, as well as discussion notes from all the fields of political
philosophy and ethics, including political theory, applied ethics, and
legal philosophy. The Journal encourages the debate around rationality in
politics and ethics in the larger context of the discussion concerning
rationality as a philosophical problem.

Public Reason is committed to a pluralistic approach, promoting
interdisciplinary and original perspectives as long as the ideal of
critical arguing and clarity is respected. The journal is intended for the
international philosophical community, as well as for a broader public
interested in political and moral philosophy. It aims to promote
philosophical exchanges with a special emphasis on issues in, and
discussions on the Eastern European space.

Starting from 2010 Public Reason publishes two issues per year, in June
and December. Public Reason is an open access e-journal, but it is also
available in print.

Registration Open, send an email to Molesa@ceu.hu or MiklosiZ@ceu.hu

http://www.ceu.hu/events/2010-07-22/democracy-and-legitimacy-dealing-with-extremism

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

Meanwhile, the rise of the extreme right, together with heightened discrimination and segregation of disadvantaged minority groups give rise to another set of related questions about what governments may do to protect and assist these groups which might not be able to protect themselves, which might not be able to respond to prejudice against them. Is it permissible to restrict privacy rights by registering ethnic data in order to help fight against discrimination? Is it permissible to use such data for the purpose of reverse discrimination?

The conference is motivated by two sets of reasons: on the one hand we aim to discuss how the recent ‘turn to the right’ might affect liberal democracy and what can be done about it. On the other hand, we plan to do this by bringing together experts in both political theory, legal studies, public and social policy. We believe that cross-fertilisation is beneficial for all camps of enquiry.

Timetable:

THURSDAY, 22 JULY

Registration 9:30

Welcome 9:45

Keynote speech 10:00-11:15

T. Christiano, Democratic Authority and International Institutions

            Commented by Andrew Williams

Coffee 11:15-11:30

Panel 1 11:30-13:00

Enzo Rossi, Justice, Legitimacy and (Normative) Authority for Political Realists

Emanuela Ceva, Resolving, Containing, Managing: What Response to Value Conflicts in Politics?

Eszter Kollar, Ethical Insignificance and Political Significance of the Nation

Lunch 13:00-14:00

Panel 2 14:00-15:30

Richard Winfield The Vocabulary of Extremism: State-Sponsored Hate Speech Inciting Violence

Lucia Scaffardi, Freedom of Expression and Its Limits: Racial Hate Speech in Italy

Todd Grabarsky, The Rule of Law and Anti-Hate Speech Legislation in Democratic Germany

Coffee 15:30-15:45

Panel 3 15:45-17:15

Alexa Zellentin, Liberal Neutrality, Equal Citizenship and Cultural Differences

Nils Holtug, Secularism and Liberal Neutrality: The Case of Judges and Religious Symbols

Matthew Clayton, Rebutting Arguments for Religiously-Motivated Disobedience: Rawlsian Considerations

Coffee 17:15-17:30

Panel 4 17:30-19:00

Bernard Rorke, Anti-Roma Speech, Segregation and Discrimination

Stanislav (Stanko) Daniel, Mainstreaming Racism in Politics

Laura Ranca, Media(ted) extremism? Addressing Roma minority representation in Romania’s mainstream media

Wine reception at CEU Japanese Garden 19:00

FRIDAY, 23 JULY

Keynote Speech 10:00-11:15

Anthony Appiah, The theory and practice of cosmopolitanism           

Comments, TBD

Coffee 11:15-11:30

Panel 5 11:30- 13:00

Espen Gamlund, The Requirements of Toleration

Kristian Ekeli, The Political Rights of Anti-liberal Democratic Groups

Ekow Yankah, Rawls, Secular Communication and Exclusion

Lunch 13:00-14:00

Panel 6 14:00-15:30

Willem Korthals Altes, Hate speech, Religion, Discrimination

Janne Teller, May Allah Have Mercy on My Country

Naser Khader (Pending)

Coffee 15:30-15:45

Panel 7 15:45-17:15

David Heller, Regulating Hate Speech in Cyberspace: Local Norms, Global Inforcement?

Suzette Bronkhorst, The Internet and How Extremists Use Its Full Potential

Ronald Eissens, Liberty, Progress and Extremism: Lessons not Learned

Coffee 17:15-17:30

Panel 8 17:30-18:30

Rastislav Dinic, Tradition, Prejudice and Folk Epistemology

John Harris, Doubts about Democracy

Closing dinner at a restaurant in historic downtown Budapest 19:30

Theoretical and Applied Ethics (Revised Announcement)

The editors of a new undergraduate journal, Theoretical and Applied Ethics, are seeking referees for its editorial board. Chris Herrera, associate professor of philosophy at Montclair State University will be general editor of this journal, and Alexandra Perry, lecturer in philosophy at Bergen Community College will be managing editor. T&AE will be geared towards undergraduates, and each paper accepted for publication will have been blind-reviewed by a team of referees, all of whom hold doctorates in their respective specialties. Professor Herrera’s overall goal is to provide an online journal for high-quality papers in areas such as Medical Ethics, Business Ethics, and Ethical Theory. Current plans are for the journal to be published three times each year, with a Fall, Spring, and Summer issue.  The journal’s board of editors will be comprised of faculty from various universities. Suitable applicants will hold a Ph.D. in philosophy, and have an AOS in ethics, philosophy of law, or social philosophy. Interested applicants should send an abbreviated version of their C.V.s, along with a brief letter of introduction to TheoreticalAndAppliedEthics@gmail.com

I have no dog in this fight, as my lack of a Philosophy Ph.D. makes me ineligible on my face.  For that matter, I’m probably also ineligible when off my face.

According to Sen, reasoning about justice should not be confined to a single state or community, but rather be global and cosmopolitan. Justice requires “open impartiality” (Chapters 5-9). Non-compatriots’ interests are relevant to justice, as are their perspectives; these may help correct our parochial biases. Our actions at the level of the state affect people outside its boundaries, so we should consider their interests before acting. For example, the US reaction to the global recession has far reaching consequences to the global and hence most local economies. Also, our values may have their basis in ignorance and exposure to people outside of our circle may give use more adequate information for assessing them. Sen cites Adam Smith’s discussion of infanticide here. (404)

Sen refers loosely to “global democracy”. Unlike many cosmopolitans, he doesn’t reject a global state outright, but rather points to its current infeasibility. He connects the rejection of cosmopolitan accounts of justice with Rawls and Nagel’s view that justice primarily concerns institutional arrangements. If global institutions are necessary for justice, this may support justice’s limited scope. Instead, Sen relies on his conception of democracy as public reasoning and the role of governmental bodies (e.g., the United Nations and its different bodies), citizens’ organizations, “many NGOs, and parts of the news media”. (409) Instead of working toward a global state, we should work to strengthen global public reason. (401-9)

Fourth, Sen’s theory of justice has its roots in social choice theory, not on the social contract. (Chapters 2-6, 9) His theory of justice “concentrates, as the discipline of social choice does, on making evaluative comparisons over distinct social realizations.” (410) This leads to a concern with comparative justice and a focus on actual outcomes, rather than “perfect justice” that primarily examines institutions. (410-2) Sen returns to the distinction between niti and nyaya and reiterates the importance of taking into account actual outcomes instead of concentrating on just institutions or principles. (413)

The role of philosophy in justice is to “play a part in bringing more discipline and greater reach to reflections on values and priorities as well as on the denials, subjugations and humiliations from which human beings suffer across the world.” (413)

Questions and thoughts:

1) Since this is the final chapter, I think it’s worth asking what Sen hoped to accomplish in The Idea of Justice. Is The Idea of Justice a culmination of Sen’s work in political philosophy the way Theory of Justice incorporates and refines the papers that led up to it or is it a summary where the reader must consult Sen’s references to journal publications to fully evaluate his considered views?
I’m inclined to think that The Idea of Justice is not a definitive statement of Sen’s views. (Blaine mentioned that chapter 1 is not really aimed at professional philosophers or political theorists; the same could be said of the book.) First, most of the chapters are far too short on detail and discussion of the literature to satisfy a philosophical audience. Second, most of the discussion is non-technical and accessible in its general outlines to a non-philosophical audience (as the mainly favorable reviews in the mainstream press suggest). Third, Sen gives many references to his journal publications, suggesting that they are relevant to evaluating his fully formed position.

2) If I am right here, then it’s worth asking about the value of Sen’s approach. Who ought a theory of justice to address? One possibility is that it ought to speak to political philosophers and theorists immersed in the most recent scholarly discussions. My impression is that most of the people who have participated in this reading group find Sen’s book unsatisfactory on this account.

Another possibility is that a theory of justice ought to be accessible to a wide range of academics, including economists, sociologists, law, geography, education etc. I suspect that it may be better received by people who aren’t immersed in philosophy, particularly economists. One reason is that if we follow Sen, we can largely bypass the philosophical literature on justice, a plus for people in other disciplines who work on the topic. A third is that the theory should seem relevant to academics in general, politicians, and the reflective public.

Obviously, different work can engage each of these three audiences, but I think we need to ask this question for two reasons. First, how do we fairly evaluate a work? For example, should we assess Sen’s book based on how well it engages recent philosophical literature on justice? Second, the choice of audience is central to political philosophy’s ends. Presumably, political philosophy should have some indirect influence on policy. If Sen had tried to satisfy his philosophical critics, his book would need to be at least twice as long and would have a much smaller audience.

3) Social choice perspective plays a central role in Sen’s theory. In fact, it may be fair to claim that his theory of justice treats political philosophy as a sophisticated branch of normative economics. I believe a fair assessment of Sen’s book would require delving into his work on rationality and social choice. Social choice theory grounds his pluralism and informs his basic “comparative” framework. Sen starts with individual preferences, but subjects them to standards of rationality and public reason and asks how they can be aggregated in a morally salient way. The result is that quite a bit of substantial political theorizing is outside of the hands of political philosophers and left to public reasoning (where political philosophers can weigh in but have no special authority).

Political philosophers have reason to worry on two fronts: economics and the general public have a greater role in determining the just society. Should they accept this?

Sen analyzes human rights in terms of their content and their justification (their “viability”) (358). With regard to their content, human rights are moral rights that protect important freedoms and entail social obligations that people promote these freedoms. First, Sen stresses that human rights are moral rights - “really strong ethical pronouncements as to what should be done”. (357) They are not legal rights, though they are often enshrined in legal documents and institutions. (363) Law plays a central role in guaranteeing human rights, but other activities such as education, public monitoring, debate, and protest are also crucial. Indeed, there are cases under which giving human rights legal status may be counterproductive. Fining or jailing men who deny their wives an effective voice in family decisions is probably not the best way to promote women’s equality. (365)

Second, the purpose of human rights is to protect important freedoms. (376-9) As we have seen, Sen’s analysis of freedom includes an “opportunity aspect” and a “process aspect”. The capabilities approach captures the opportunity aspect (capabilities are real opportunities to achieve valuable functionings). (371) But human rights go beyond the capabilities approach in protecting the process according to which achieve these functionings. Two people with access to an identical set of functionings may be in a quite different situation with regard to human rights. For example, the rule of law may guarantee person A’s access valuable functionings, whereas person B may rely on the whim of a benevolent dictator. Leaving aside the fact that dictators generally do a poor job of guaranteeing human rights, many of us also care about how rights are guaranteed.

Sen objects to interest-based accounts of human rights because he thinks they interfere with our intuitions about the importance of freedom. His objection rests on the distinction between people’s “real” interests and the interests they perceive themselves as having. For example, we generally want to protect the human right to free political association, even if people choose to associate with political parties that do not promote their real interests. Sen admits that some interpretations of “interest” incorporate freedom, so some freedom-based and interest-based accounts of human rights converge.

Third, human rights do not protect all freedoms. Rather, they must meet “threshold conditions” of “sufficient social importance to be included as a part of the human rights of that person and correspondingly to generate obligations for others to see how they can help the person to realize those freedoms…” (367) Impartial discussion is needed to determine which rights meet this threshold.

Fourth, human rights entail social obligations. (360) Human rights impose universal ethical reasons for people to prevent their violation, but these reasons do not automatically entail specific actions. Obligations may be perfect, but they are often imperfect and diffuse. We need to ask about the agents’ other obligations, their ability to effectively prevent the violation of the human right, their agent-relative prerogatives, etc.

How does Sen justify a list of human rights and identify the obligations that they entail? On his account, human rights are justified like other ethical claims. To assert a human right is to presume that these claims will meet the standard of “open impartiality” discussed in Chapter 6. Human rights claims that “survive open and informed scrutiny” (385) and “unobstructed discussion” (386) deserve their status - at least until contrary arguments surface. Even if there is widespread agreement about which rights count as human rights, people are bound to disagree about their comparative weight, how they mesh with other ethical considerations, and the structure of the obligations they impose.

Sen is particularly concerned about the justification of second-generation economic and social rights such as the right to subsistence, medical care, and education. (379-85) He discusses two philosophical criticisms of human rights, the “institutionalization critique” and the “feasibility critique”. Onora O’Neill has argued that social, economic, and cultural rights must be institutionalized in a way that clearly identifies obligation-bearers. Human rights without obligation-bearers are not human rights at all. In response, Sen argues that first-generation rights also impose imperfect obligations. For example, citizens have obligations to notify the police when witnessing a crime and the international community has an obligation to act to prevent genocide. Furthermore, O’Neill’s condition that human rights economic, social, and cultural rights must be institutionalized undermines their ability to motivate institutional change.

Similarly, Maurice Cranston argues in his “feasibility” critique that economic and social rights require considerable government action for their realization, something that often cannot be achieved with some countries’ infrastructure and resources. Sen responds by noting that Cranston is mistaken in thinking that first-generation rights simply require that governments and people “leave a man alone.” (384) Maintaining rule of law and social stability is also beyond the means of quite a few governments, but few hold that this discredits their moral force. The proper response to the inability to meet the requirements imposed by a human right is social action.

Like most of the preceding chapters, there are many issues that could be raised, including whether Sen adequately addresses interest-based human rights accounts, fairly rebuts O’Neill and Cranston (and other critics), etc. I’ll conclude with two general questions.

1) Will Sen’s account of human rights satisfy either skeptics or activists? Skeptics are unlikely to be moved by the appeal to reasoned scrutiny and discussion and will still decry the impotence of human rights in the face of realpolitik. Moreover, Sen’s broad treatment of human rights is deflationary, arguably reducing them to important moral rights that have special rhetorical force. His metaphysical modesty and non-committal approach to the actual list of rights may play into the skeptics’ hands who will deny that there is anything particularly special about human rights that lack the sanction of positive law. Sen is a long way from the natural law tradition he discusses in the first part of the chapter. He holds not only that there is a trade-off between human rights - sometimes human rights conflict - but that sometimes other ethical prerogatives or obligations can take precedent over obligations stemming from them.

Similarly, activists will ask how his account supplements their work. We can return to the Preface and ask how the Parisians storming the Bastille, Gandhi or Martin Luther King would view Sen’s account of human rights. Does it help with “the identification of redressable injustice”? (vii) Does it “clarify how we can proceed to address questions of enhancing justice and removing injustice”? (ix) Sen’s account of human rights is in many ways refined common sense. Activists may complain that this doesn’t add much moral clarification or force to their causes.

2) There is a tension between Sen’s pluralism and “assertive incompleteness” and his account of human rights. Recall that Sen argues that impartial discussion may not lead to agreement about just social arrangements, including agreement on the list of human rights and their content. Human rights are moral claims of sufficient social importance that their guarantee entails social duties. Presumably, they should be subject to “plural grounding”. (2) If a human right is sufficiently disputed by reasonable people from a perspective of “open impartiality”, then it should be (tentatively) struck from the pantheon.

My worry is that Sen’s theory of justice may commit him to minimalism about human rights. For example, in the example of the children deciding who receives the flute, Sen seems to consider a libertarian distribution of property reasonable. This would cast doubt on the status of the second-generation rights he defends.

Democracy

Sen views democracy as not merely the presence of elections and ballots, but as “government by discussion,” which includes “political participation, dialogue and public interaction (326).” He believes that an unrestrained media is especially important to the functioning of democratic societies, for a number of reasons, one of which plays a central role in his discussion of famines: a free press, Sen tells us, contributes to human security by giving a voice to the vulnerable and disadvantaged and by subjecting the government to criticism. (More on this
below.)

Democracy and Famine

In 1982, in an article in The New York Review of Books, Sen made the observation that “no major famine has ever occurred in a functioning democracy with regular elections, opposition parties, basic freedom of speech and a relatively free media (even when the country is very poor and in a seriously adverse food situation) (342).” Further, while India was under autocratic British rule, famines were regular occurrences; once India achieved democratic self-rule famines ceased. (Apparently, Sen’s observation about democracy and absence of famine was initially met with a fair amount of skepticism. Now it is widely accepted.) Sen infers from the observed correlation that democracy prevents famine. He offers two reasons in support of this inference. First, democratic governments are accountable to their citizens and subject to uncensored criticism from the media. So, in order to maintain power, democratic governments have a strong incentive to eradicate famines. (Indeed Sen argues later in the chapter that the famine case is really an instance of a broader phenomenon whereby democracy advances human security by giving political incentive to rulers to respond to vulnerable citizens.) Second, because of the informational role of the free press, democratic governments are likely to know about the plight of citizens and therefore about the need for amelioration. By contrast, authoritarian regimes, which suppress public discussion, may be simply uninformed about the severity or extent of a famine and fail to provide assistance for that reason.

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Sen believes that an overly-institutional focus on democracy has caused particular trouble at the global level. John Rawls and Thomas Nagel may be right that there are no democratic global institutions–indeed, no institutions at all comparable to states. But this need not mean that there is no way to realize democratic ideals such as public discussion internationally. There already exist tentative practices of global deliberation, and they are worthy of support and encouragement, whatever the proper scope and limits of international institutions.

Of course, globalized public deliberation is only conceivable if the ideal of public dialogue has universal appeal. Sen believes that this ideal does have deep roots all around the world, including in areas that have little experience with popular elections. Of course, Sen also suggests that the divide between western and nonwestern experiences with democratic institutions is not as clearcut as the democracy-is-a-western-value story would have it. India was inspired by ancient Greece to experiment with formal democratic institutions (at least on a local level) long before the barbarian tribes of northern Europe. But societies have undeniably assigned value to public reason–the ideal underlying these institutions–for a very long time, and virtually everywhere. Sen illustrates this point using the Indian experience. He also discusses the Middle East in this context.

Sen concludes the chapter with a few words about the role of the media in a democratic society. (The transition to this topic is a bit abrupt.) Obviously, to the extent that the idea of public reason underlies and democratic practice, the media matters quite a lot. Sen argues that a well-functioning free press 1) enables the free expression of ideas, which is intrinsically valuable; 2) spreads information and subjects it to critical scrutiny; 3) protects the weak by subjecting the strong to the gaze of the public eye; 4) facilitates the formation of common values by the public; and 5) contributes to the pursuit of justice (though this last contribution is not clearly specified).

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In Chapter 14, Sen elaborates on the relationship between equality and liberty (or freedom) in relation to the capability approach. A number of issues covered in this chapter have become classics in the literature, and will likely be familiar to readers. But Sen also spends some time discussing the distinction between his approach and that of Philip Pettit – an issue that raises some interesting questions I would like to reflect on in this comment. But let me first briefly review the main points covered in this chapter of The Idea of Justice.

Sen begins the discussion in this chapter by rehearsing the idea (famously expressed in his Tanner Lectures) that all plausible theories of justice have some place for equality, reflecting the fundamental insight that, at some basic level, people must be seen (and treated) as equals. The real question to be answered, Sen concludes, is that of the precise metric of equality underlying competing theories. Sen’s own answer to the “equality of what” debate, as readers know, is to advance capability as the appropriate metric of advantage. However, Sen also insists that an egalitarian perspective informed by the capability approach is not committed to strict equality of capability. He gives us several reasons to resist this strong form of capability egalitarianism, affirming the “multiple dimensions in which equality matters” (p. 297). One important point is that capability only affects what Sen calls the opportunity aspect of freedom and is incapable (pun unintended) to fully capture its process aspect. For Sen capability-based considerations are a crucial but not comprehensive part of a general theory of justice.

In the remainder of the chapter Sen shifts his attention to liberty or freedom, in which he wants to bring home the point that freedom too should be considered a complex and multi-dimensional (or plural) value. Sen suggests personal liberty should be given a good deal of priority, because “it touches our lives at a very basic level” (p. 299), but equally cautions against the extreme view of giving freedom absolute priority (such that it would trump any other concern, no matter how important or urgent). But now the question arises how we should conceive of this freedom that takes priority among the long list of factors that affect how well our lives go. Here Sen makes three distinct points, each of which are controversial and allow for considerable disagreement:

1. When freedom is viewed as “effective preference” we should appreciate the importance of the distinction between direct control, indirect control and luck, for the simple reason that there are many ways in which I may get what I want without having a direct say in how I get it. For Sen the mere fact that I have a preference satisfied implies a type of freedom that matters to how well my life is going (“a freedom of some importance”, p. 304).

2. Relatedly, the plural conception of freedom admits of several ways in which freedom is threatened or impeded: through a lack of capability, through genuine interventions, or through a lack of independence (making one’s preference satisfaction “favor-dependent” in one formulation). Sen spends a whole section arguing about the precise relationship between Pettit’s republicanism and his own capability approach, a point to which I return below.

3. Finally, the proper understanding of freedom (individual or collective) must take account of the outcomes of actions in addition to whether they are properly deemed to be free. This insight relates to Sen’s “impossibility of the Paretian liberal”, a theorem that has spawned a cottage industry of technical literature – a topic I’m happy to leave to more qualified readers.

In the remainder of my comment I want to say a few words on what I personally believe is the more interesting contribution of this chapter, the discussion between Sen and Pettit.

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The Experiment Month initiative is a program designed to help philosophers conduct experimental studies. If you are interested in running a study, you can send your study proposal to the Experiment Month staff. Then, if your proposal is selected for inclusion, we will conduct the study online, send you the results and help out with any statistical analysis you may need. All proposals are due Sept. 1.

For further information, see the Experiment Month website: http://www.yale.edu/cogsci/XM

In Chapter 13, Happiness, Well-being, and Capabilities, Sen concentrates on three issues.  The first is the success of economics as a discipline in accounting for happiness and its importance.  The second is the relationship between happiness and capability. The third is the relationship between capability and well-being.

Turning to the first issue, welfare economics is the discipline devoted to the assessment of the goodness of states of affairs and policies.  According to Sen, it has been and largely remains utilitarian in character.  Happiness is often understood as the sole determinant of human well-being/advantage and as the sole criterion for evaluating societies and policies.  Well-being/advantage is usually defined in terms of utility.  Utility is defined as happiness.  Happiness is understood as desire-fulfillment.  Policy evaluations are based on a comparison of the “sum total of individual welfares.”  Many economists hold that interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible.

Sen advances three criticisms of welfare economics.  First, Sen argues that the new welfare economists are mistaken to think that interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible.  We can, Sen argues, get general agreement on partial orderings of the joy and pain in different lives.  Second, the informational basis of well-being/advantage in welfare economics is incomplete.  It should be broadened to include factors such as substantive opportunities, negative freedoms, and human rights.  Omitting this information prevents us from making important distinctions in our judgments of the relative advantage of individuals who enjoy the same level of happiness, but differ dramatically along these other dimensions.  Omitting this information also leads to distorted assessments.  Individuals who are persistently deprived may adapt to their circumstances to make life tolerable, learning to “take pleasure in small mercies” and refusing to desire or hope for change in their circumstances.  If we assess the well-being/advantage of such individuals on the basis of their happiness alone, then we would fail to get an accurate picture of their actual disadvantage.  Third, Sen argues that contemporary welfare economists fail to sufficiently recognize the limits of using a monetary metric to gauge utility or happiness.  Sen references empirical evidence suggesting that there is not a direct correlation between increasing wealth and increasing happiness and the joylessness of the lives of individuals in prosperous economies.

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The remainder of the chapter is devoted to criticizing Rawlsian primary goods and Dworkinian hypothetical insurance markets. Sen commends Rawls for paying attention to “special needs,” but contends that the Rawlsian structure mistakenly downplays human difference. Pace Rawls, human variations in conversion capacities should not be seen as derivative matters for attention at the legislative stage. Rather, in Sen’s view they are ubiquitous to how social structures should be organized and analyzed. Sen recognizes that the capabilities approach will not be able to give a complete or even a linear ordering of social states, but contends that it directs us to make the important comparisons about justice.

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Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA [at] ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ [at] ceu.hu by 31 May 2010. The conference is free of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

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