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Three questions that loom large in moral and political philosophy are these: Can deontological moral constraints be justified? When, if ever, are we morally responsible for what we do? How is the ideal of equality best configured? Deontology, Responsibility and Equality deals with selected aspects of these three broad questions. It critically discusses certain attempts by Frances Kamm and Thomas Nagel (among others) to account for the impermissibility of minimizing violations in terms of moral status. Also, it challenges the view that there is a morally relevant difference between doing and allowing harm and, especially, between killing and letting die. In relation to the second question, it concentrates on recent developments within compatibilist accounts of moral responsibility prompted by the work of Harry Frankfurt. It challenges his purported refutation of the principle of alternative possibilities as well as certain positive compatibilist, identification- based accounts of respon
This edited volume offers a critical discussion of luck egalitarianism – one of the most prominent views in contemporary political philosophy – through an exploration of the theory of one of its leading proponents, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen. When (if ever) can inequalities in how well peoples’ lives go be justified? Luck egalitarianism provides an appealing answer: inequalities are just if, and only if, they are the result of the exercise of individual responsibility. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen lucidly defends and specifies this view in his own book Luck Egalitarianism. The authors in this volume offer a critical discussion of the key features of his view. They discuss disagreements withi...
"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" says the Bible. In other words: there is something problematic about one person blaming another, when the blamer's faults are even greater. Such blaming is hypocritical and, typically, we see ourselves as entitled to dismiss hypocritical blame. This is so, paradoxically, even when in fact we are blameworthy for that which we are being blamed hypocritically. This book explores the concept and ethics of hypocritical blame, and its wider ramifications, from a philosophical perspective.
This text addresses these three issues: What is discrimination? What makes it wrong?; What should be done about wrongful discrimination? It argues that there are different concepts of discrimination; that discrimination is not always morally wrong and that when it is, it is so primarily because of its harmful effects
While it has many connections to other topics in normative and applied ethics, discrimination is a central subject in philosophy in its own right. It plays a significant role in relation to many real-life complaints about unjust treatment or unjust inequalities, and it raises a number of questions in political and moral philosophy, and in legal theory. Some of these questions include: what distinguishes the concept of discrimination from the concept of differential treatment? What distinguishes direct from indirect discrimination? Is discrimination always morally wrong? What makes discrimination wrong? How should we eliminate the effects of discrimination? By covering a wide range of topics,...
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen tackles all the major questions concerning luck egalitarianism, providing deep, penetrating and original discussion of recent academic discourses on distributive justice as well as responses to some of the main objections in the literature. It offers a new answer to the “Why equality?” and “Equality of what?” questions, and provides a robust luck egalitarian response to the recent criticisms of luck egalitarianism by social relations egalitarians. This systematic, theoretical introduction illustrates the broader picture of distributive justice and enables the reader to understand the core intuitions underlying, or conflicting with, luck egalitarianism.
Explores the nature of the ideal of relational equality and how it relates to distributive ideals of justice.
"What makes affirmative action morally (un)justified? That is this book's core question. Its main contribution consists in a meticulous scrutiny of the strength of the six main arguments for-i.e., the compensation, the anti-discrimination, the equality of opportunity, the role model, the diversity, and the integration-based justifications-and the five main objections to affirmative action-i.e., the reverse discrimination, the stigma, the mismatch, the publicity, and the merit-based objections-and of how these arguments relate to one another. The book argues that all of the five main objections to affirmative action are either flawed or quite limited in terms of their implications. With regar...
What role should (non-normative) facts such as people’s confined generosity and scarcity of resources play in the normative theorising of political philosophers? The chapters in this book investigate different aspects of this broad question. Political philosophers are often silent on questions of what types of facts are relevant, if any, for normative theory, and what methodological assumptions about agency and behaviour need to be made, if any such assumptions are necessary. However, due to recent debates among and between idealists, non-idealists and realists in political theory, the issue about the relation between facts and norms in political philosophy/theory is beginning to attract greater attention from political theorists/philosophers. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
Applied philosophy has been a growing area of research for the last 40 years. Until now, however, almost all of this research has been centered around the field of ethics. A Companion to Applied Philosophy breaks new ground, demonstrating that all areasof philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind, can be applied, and are relevant to questions of everyday life. This perennial topic in philosophy provides an overview of these various applied philosophy developments, highlighting similarities and differences between various areas of applied philosophy, and examining the very nature of this topic. It is an area to which many of the towering figures in the history of philosophy have contributed, and this timely Companion demonstrates how various historical contributions are actually contributions within applied philosophy, even if they are not traditionally seen as such. The Companion contains 42 essays covering major areas of philosophy; the articles themselves are all original contributions to the literature and represent the state of the art on this topic, as well as offering a map to the current debates.