Political Theory

This book develops the first new, liberal theory of economic justice to appear since John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin proposed their respective theories back in the 1970s and early 1980s. It does this by presenting a new, liberal egalitarian, non-Marxist theory of exploitation that is designed to be a creature of capitalism, not a critique of it. Indeed, the book shows how we can regulate economic inequality using the presuppositions of capitalism and political liberalism that we already accept. In doing this, the book uses two concepts or tools: a re-conceived notion of the ancient doctrine of the just price, and my own concept of intolerable unfairness. The resulting theory can then function as either a supplement to or a replacement for the difference principle and luck egalitarianism, the two most popular liberal egalitarian theories of economic justice of the day. It provides a new, highly-topical specific moral justification not only for raising the minimum wage, but also for imposing a maximum wage, for continuing to impose an estate tax on the wealthiest members of society, and for prohibiting certain kinds of speculative trading, including trading in derivatives such as the now infamous credit default swap and other related exotic financial instruments. Finally, it provides a new specific moral justification for dealing with certain aspects of climate change now regardless of what other nations do. Yet it is still designed to be the object of an overlapping consensus—that is, it is designed to acceptable to those who embrace a wide range of comprehensive moral and political doctrines, not only liberal egalitarianism, but right and left libertarianism too.

The Second-Person Standpoint (SPS) advanced an analysis of central moral concepts as irreducibly second personal in the sense of conceptually entailing mutual accountability and the authority to address demands. The essays in this volume illustrate the second-personal framework’s power to illuminate a wide variety of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy. Section I concerns morality: its distinctiveness among normative concepts, the metaethics of “bipolar obligations”(owed to someone), the relation between moral obligation’s form and the substance of our obligations, whether the fact that an action is wrong is itself a reason against action (as opposed to simply entailing that sufficient moral reasons independently exist), and whether morality requires general principles or might be irreducibly particularistic. Section II consists of two essays on autonomy: one discussing the relation between Kant’s “autonomy of the will” and the right to autonomy and another arguing that what makes an agent’s desires and will reason giving is not “internal” practical reasons’ basis in desire, but the dignity of persons and shared second-personal authority. Section III focuses on the nature of authority and the law. Two essays take up Joseph Raz’s influential “normal justification thesis” and argue that it fails to capture authority’s second002Dpersonal nature, without which authority cannot create “exclusionary” and “preemptive” reasons. The final two essays concern law. The first sketches insights a second002Dpersonal approach provides into the nature of law and the grounds of distinctions between different parts of law. And the second shows how a second002Dpersonal framework can be used to develop the “civil recourse theory” in the law of torts.

We hear allegations of complicity all the time. Yet there are many ways of being mixed up with the wrongdoing of others. Not all of them are morally on a par; some are worse than others. Furthermore, contributing complicitly to wrongdoing, while still wrong in itself, might nonetheless be the right thing to do if that is the only way to achieve some greater good. Drawing on deep scholarship in philosophy, law and political science, and on a wealth of practical experience delivering emergency medical services in conflict-ridden settings, Lepora and Goodin summarize their analysis in a formula that can be used as a decision heuristic. Its usefulness is illustrated by applications both to stylized philosophical examples and to vexing cases of complicity in the real world, such as the complicity of humanitarian aid organizations with genocidaires controlling Rwandan refugee camps and the complicity of physicians treating patients who are being subjected to torture.